Liz Dobson

Peter Mandelson embroiled in scandal on Groundhog Day. Apt.

I know you've heard that a federal judge ordered the release of 5 year old Liam Conejo Arias and his father, and that they're now home.

But did you look at the judge's order?

It's less than 2.5 pages and well worth a minute. "Jesus wept."

Link to pdf: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

They're ahead of schedule.

#RedDwarf

Things Can Only Get Better drowns out Rishi Sunak's election speech The song Things Can Only Get Better blared out in the background as Rishi Sunak announced that a surprise general election.

In a UK not so far far away a prime minister called a snap election and all you could hear was 'things can only get better' being blasted at him by legendary activist Steve Wray. It was great. Here's a clip. www.joe.co.uk/news/things-...

When excellent MPs stand up for what’s right and then get suspended by their party we should be very worried. Chris Hinchliff has been a staunch defender of nature and is far closer to the public view than the prime minster. Such arrogance 😡. Great quote here from Craig Bennett, agree 💯 .

Parents sue over son's asthma death days after inhaler price soared without warning Cole Schmidtknecht, 22, had insurance but couldn’t afford to refill his asthma inhaler after the cost jumped from $70 to more than $500.

This is “healthcare” in the United States. A pharmacy benefit manager randomly decided they just weren’t going to cover this man’s inhaler anymore, so he couldn’t afford it. He died of an asthma attack. Devastating.

www.nbcnews.com/health/healt...

The image presents a comparison between two types of lawns to promote #NoMowMay. On the left side, titled "Why have a lawn like this?" it displays a grid of uniform green squares representing a plain, regularly mowed lawn. On the right side, titled "When you can have a lawn like this?" the grid intersperses colourful icons of a sunflower, a pink flower, a ladybug, a frog, a bee, a butterfly, a white flower with a yellow centre, a tulip, another sunflower, a red mushroom with white spots, and additional flowers, symbolising a lively, biodiverse lawn encouraged by letting grass grow naturally during May.

#NoMowMay has begun! 🌼

The rare chance to help nature by doing nothing.

‘Okay which one of you accidentally added Robert Cecil to the chat?’

"When a complex system is far from equilibrium, small islands of coherence in a sea of chaos have the capacity to shift the entire system to a higher order." Iya Prigogine, Noble prize-winning chemist

"When a complex system is far from equilibrium, small islands of coherence in a sea of chaos have the capacity to shift the entire system to a higher order."

Iya Prigogine, Noble prize-winning chemist

One of the top two talks at #rewired25, @jessrmorley.bsky.social looking philosophically (& necessarily) deeper than the usual AI healthcare hype. TLDR summary: AI is systemic ie. Like electricity, and can be more effective at population level, but individual is where the current focus is

Also pitching in for Clementine Cake (Nigella recipe). Delicious and super easy.

Understanding the therapeutic toolkit for inflammatory bowel disease Nature Reviews Gastroenterology & Hepatology, Published online: 31 January 2025; doi:10.1038/s41575-024-01035-7The management of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) continues to evolve. This Review is a practical guide on the therapeutic toolkit for IBD,…

New online! Understanding the therapeutic toolkit for inflammatory bowel disease

A reminder that cycle infrastructure allows more women to cycle

The Internet Archive has to date downloaded 500 terabytes of US government websites, which it crawls at the end of every presidential term. The whole archive is fully searchable. This effort's housed by a donation-funded nonprofit, not a branch of the US government. blog.archive.org/2024/05/08/e...

Here are some nice prickly pear also

Away on hols, so please enjoy this beautiful sunset from last night instead of my usual musings. From Las Hayas on the Canary Island of La Gomera. Normal service will sadly be resumed soon

Pavement Parking – in the House of Commons at 1:55 pm 29 January 2025

Good to see this ...

www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=...

David Oliver: Losing too many NHS hospital beds has been an act of avoidable self-sabotage with predictable consequences In recent decades we’ve surely lost too many general and acute hospital beds in the UK, without creating sufficient alternative capacity outside hospital. This has resulted in entirely predictable ris...

My latest @bmj.com piece . Having spent much of Tuesday in a severely overcrowded ED with corridor/waiting room care galore & much of Monday on a ward unable to discharge patients waiting for community services that they absolutely *do* need - policy meets real life.

www.bmj.com/content/388/...

Efficient transport infrastructure often looks empty.

Inefficient infrastructure looks "busy".

So the secret is out. The ITV team that made Mr Bates vs the Post Office has been making a drama about the phone-hacking scandal. Featuring David Tennant as Nick Davies. And Mr Bates himself (aka Toby Jones) as me. An altogether less heroic role for Toby, but he’s brilliant as always

Fun fact: if you're buying from a creator on etsy, you can reduce their etsy selling fees from 6.5% to 2.5% by ordering via 'shopname.etsy.com' instead of 'etsy.com/shopname' or searching from the main site. It costs you the same but the creator makes more

Amidst the DeepSeek debate, here is a highly readable and researched piece on whether it's the model (open code, remember) or run environment (local or cloud) that censors. It's the run environment, notably (state) controlled clouds. Which puts things in a very different perspective. Recc'd reading

This morning I read that DeepSeek used training data generated from other language models which has companies like OpenAI fuming, and I can't stop thinking about how there's a lesson in there

SUV Alliance

A new UK group is suggesting a five-point manifesto to address the rise of SUVs www.suv-alliance.org.uk

EU medicines agency quits X, moves to Bluesky The European Medicines Agency (EMA) said on Monday it would no longer post on X and would use rival Bluesky instead, becoming the latest organisation to quit a social media platform that some have criticised for its content.

EU medicines agency quits X & moves to Bluesky

"EMA will no longer post updates and content on X. We believe the X platform no longer suits our communication needs” the agency said in a statement

www.reuters.com/world/europe...

We know the main reason that people don’t cycle is because they think it’s unsafe … but it appears the opposite is true, cycling makes you live longer in better health.

Lifetime risk and projected burden of dementia - Nature Medicine A cohort study of over 15,000 US adults found that the lifetime risk of developing dementia from ages 55 to 95 is 42%, with the highest risk in APOE ε4 carriers, women and Black adults, and projected ...

Lifetime risk of dementia after age 55 years - 42%.

"This is unconstitutional," I scream as the facial recognition equipped robot dogs drag me to my cell.

"This goes against everything America stands for!" I shout, as the algorithmic sentencing machine condemns me to death.

"This is not who we are!" I remind the firing squad of child soldiers

Study: Mediterranean diet changes gut bacteria, boosting memory and cognition Tulane University News and Press Releases

Mediterranean diet changes gut bacteria, boosting memory and cognition: A new @tulaneu.bsky.social study suggests the Mediterranean diet's brain-boosting benefits may work by changing the balance of bacteria in the gut. [MedSky]

You just gotta love London knitting. Merry Christmas all