William Trewby

It occurs to me that Sadiq Khan is in reality what Sir Kier advertises himself as: working class kid made good turned blandly competent centre left administrator. It turns out I don't mind it when someone really is that! Not my favourite politics but definitely in the "willing to vote for it" range.

This is an excellent rule for storytelling but also implies that Philip Pullman witnessed the death of God as a boy.

the cast of Star Trek Voyager in street clothes awkwardly posing with late-90s computer hardware and consumer electronics

this is what it feels like to post on bluesky

The Green victory in Denton is the result which will have the biggest effect on Labour, far more so than a Reform win.

The blithe assumption progressives have nowhere else to go has been proved catastrophically wrong.

Can’t help thinking of this quote from a Labour minister, a year ago…

Newcastle pubs ban AI art from breweries to protect local creatives As two pubs in Newcastle ban AI art, artists discuss the impact it can have on creatives.

"If I was to use ChatGPT for my designs rather than our designer Sean, that's taking money out of the local area into the hands of a multibillionaire ... removing value from the local community and local artists [and] into the hands of some of the richest people in the world."

#AIslop #refuseresist

The students claiming uni Covid compensation 'for the principle' Dozens of universities have received legal letters over what students say they missed out on during Covid.

This is causing despair in academe. (1) We were forced to close during Covid. We had no choice! (2) We're not service providers like a restaurant, we are institutions of state. (3) We did everything we could. (4) This will cripple current students' education.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

What can you do to turn around isolated towns that have lost their main industry?
Some good discussion on here this morning I thought, I’m catching up.

Imo the answer is the same for any other place: focus as much as you can on the assets you do have.
Easier said than done, but better than nothing…

I haven't encountered this too much (that I can tell!) but it's also more than zero, and I have a similar reaction to Rose here. As she says... it's just very bizarre to do a philosophy degree if you don't actually want to think and work through ideas. What... what are you doing here?

the loss of the World Service would be a tragedy and huge lost of soft power for Britain

Like one of the advantages of FPTP is that you can still win by telling 15%, even 25% of the population "Fuck off, we don't care what you think".

Because it tells us what they think about creativity and about the nature of the human. It's all about creating product quickly - getting the job done fast, and not about the value of the process. It's profoundly depressing, and diminishes us.

Kurt Vonnegut famously wrote abt this and called it "becoming" :)

learning lessons from HS2. The government will cancel your project half way through, so add extra stupid bits on it. When they cancel the bangor-dublin leg we pretend to be angry but we still get HS3.

Very true. There are Reasons that I spend so much time banging on about properly implementing safeguarding and harassment prevention programs in academia and in the broader science and tech community.

Quick science policy thread 1

Changes in the governance of UK science since the mid 1980s make it extremely hard to be strategic (that was the point), in terms of both process (dropped) and capability (hollowed out).

me on phone: this is the worst possible time to dump me margaret

tattoo artist: im not quite done so I could make it say I love margaritas

I'm no expert but I always thought "Our product will falter if people stop buying it" was the way business works. I suspect though that you'd need to be a tech bro to consider saying that as a warning to the *world*.

1 [A spoof advert for a life management app. It opens with a glossy, sorted-looking person smugly addressing us]   Hey there. 2 Feeling the January panic already?  3 [Title panel] Then sign up for Stressifyly today.  4 [Show the app on a phone] Stressifyly (We couldn't decide between ‘Stressly' and ‘Stressify') 5 Stressifyly is the cute stress-management app that has given up pretending it's all ok. [the rest of the advert depicts on-screen app tools a la Headspace / Liven / Grammarly etc] 6 Complete your daily freak-out rings  'You've nearly been anxious all day!' 7 Get daily reminders to your devices [A woman jogging, her watch saying to her: "Hey! You should’ve met the right guy by now."] 8 Use innovative visualisation tools  [Show a visualisation of a mountain of work: ‘your work mountain / you’ next to a tiny person] 9 Delve into our ambient sound library [Listening to a recording called ‘The background hum of global decline’ illustrated with an image of trump, putin, a robot, flames etc] 10 Chat to our AI Berater Buddy to start manifesting failure [AI person on phone]: You’re gonna cock this up [Person holding phone, eyes closed] I’m gonna cock this up 11 Do some journaling thing as if that will somehow help [person typing a journal entry on phone: "Today I had too many difficult things to do" 12 And generally pay us to tell you that adult life will go away if you just fiddle around with your phone some more 12 [Advert ending image]: Stressifyly: Stay underwater. [Ends]

Stressifily

Fabian was quicker :) But yes, we have an open postdoc position in bacterial bioenergetics and membrane biology, using on B. subtilis as the model. Come join us! @cbcb-newcastle.bsky.social is a great place to work, and we are a friendly, international lab. Visa+IHS fees covered. #microsky

wikipedia turns 25 today! the last unenshittified major website! backbone of online info! triumph of humanity! powered by urge of unpaid randos to correct each other! somehow mostly reliable! "good thing wikipedia works in practice, because it sure doesn't work in theory" - old wiki adage

Coverage in the Guardian of responses to Paul Nurse's comments on Musk & the Royal Soc Code of Conduct. Plenty of Nobel Prize Winners defending Nurse and Musk & Fellows seem uncomfortable to be named when they disagree. Also quotes from me & @scurry.bsky.social.

www.theguardian.com/science/2026...

fully into paternity leave mk. II, and what better time to get back into micro games, when there are a few (blessed) minutes to spare?

Wordle 1,670 3/6

⬛⬛⬛🟨🟩
🟩⬛🟩⬛🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

indeed, 𝘙𝘶𝘨𝘰𝘴𝘪𝘵𝘢𝘭𝘦𝘢 𝘰𝘳𝘺𝘻𝘢𝘦 looke like fusilli, which are notably better at holding on salsa di pomodoro than spaghetti... and as pasta addicts, we fell instantly in love with the shape of this newly described alphaproteo from the Rhizobiales 🤭
#MicroSky

All of the companies that make the software I use are increasing their prices, to account for an "investment" in AI.

I'm sat here imagining how my clients would feel if I added 30% to each invoice, because I "really got into gambling".

!! #microsky

It's hard to believe this is real, but I think it is.
And most depressingly: Tyler does not say "What the fuck are you even talking about Sam, and why are you in this job?"

"Thank Heavens Reeves froze the thresholds," says the median voter in 2029 as they walk past the derelict sports centre and down the empty high street to cast their vote.

Looking for a PhD? 🚀 MIBTP projects are out lots to explore!
🔬 #Bacteria • #AMR • #Interdisciplinary • FUN!
My projects explore how Gram-negative bacteria build and maintain their three-layered cell envelope, using cryo-EM, fluorescence microscopy and biochemistry.
warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fa...

a tad smaller than crysanthemums...
(👉ALT)

Retrospectively removing indefinite leave to remain would be immoral and economically damaging. It would tear families apart.
Attacking it as ‘potentially illegal’ is completely beside the point.
Argue with the (awful) idea. Don’t try ’well, actually you can’t do that’.