David Spurrett

The name is from the specific isabellinus, Neo-Latin for "greyish-yellow", and is likely in reference to Isabella I of Castile, who is said to have promised not to change her undergarments until Spain was freed from the Moors. "Wheatear" is not derived from "wheat" or any sense of "ear", but is a 16th-century linguistic corruption of "white" and "arse", referring to the prominent white rump found in most species. The genus name Oenanthe is derived from the Ancient Greek oenos (οίνος) "wine" and anthos (ανθός) "flower". It refers to the northern wheatear's return to Greece in the spring just as the grapevines blossom.

The etymology of the isabelline wheatear is a lovely combination of unexpected facts.

a picture of a huge, low, heavy cloud of black oil over Tehran

This is the cloud of oil currently hovering over Tehran, released when the US bombed the city's oil depots. A stew of particulate matter, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, benzene, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, heavy metals & volatile organic compounds is raining down into the city right now. 1/2

Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi | The dry and the wet burn together The war launched against Iran by the United States and Israel is a war of choice and of hubris. There is scarcely even...

‘The Islamic Republic is likely to emerge transformed or weakened in ways not yet visible. But the notion that it would simply dissolve under pressure was always fanciful.’

@eskandarsadeghi.bsky.social on the US’s war on Iran, from the blog.

www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/ma...

This is how I access bluesky.

This is a far bigger fuel, fertilizer, food crisis for Asia and Europe than it is for the US.

US dependence on Persian Gulf oil has almost never been lower

A thread by @sstapczynski.bsky.social on how Asia is alreaddy within days facing a destabilizing.
x.com/SStapczynski...

'Pervert Glasses' isn't bad. 'Mark Zuckerberg's Pervert Glasses' for formal occasions, I guess. I'll do my bit for the trend. But one of the comments on the quoted tweet suggests 'Pedoscopes' which is more catchy. Meme-wranglers assemble!

Stasi-scopes?

Had to doublecheck the date on this

Spyfocals is very nice. (Spy is a good element, I think, because it suggests the larger agency - and the Pedoscope wearer doesn't act alone, but with and subject to the whims of a cloud-enabled leviathan.)

Movie buffs on the other hand could prefer to call them "Norman Bates-Bans".

The classically trained, for example, might go for "Gyges Goggles".

They’re calling it the most reassuring message of all time

'Pervoscopes' combines the advantages of the two above, but is still not as good a 'Wank Panzer' (for Cybertruck).

'Pervert Glasses' isn't bad. 'Mark Zuckerberg's Pervert Glasses' for formal occasions, I guess. I'll do my bit for the trend. But one of the comments on the quoted tweet suggests 'Pedoscopes' which is more catchy. Meme-wranglers assemble!

"... he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart; his passport shall be made,
And crowns for convoy put into his purse..."

"... he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart; his passport shall be made,
And crowns for convoy put into his purse..."

Mom, come pick me up, the best lack all conviction and the worst are full of passionate intensity.

Boxing is like ballet, except there's no music, no choreography, and the dancers hit each other. (I can't remember where that's from...)

Anyone Else Have Those Weird Dreams Where Sobbing Future Generations Beg You To Change Course? The human subconscious is such an interesting thing. No matter how much you think you’ve got it figured out, it’ll always spit out the most random stuff. Take me, for example. After coming home from a...

Commentary: Anyone Else Have Those Weird Dreams Where Sobbing Future Generations Beg You To Change Course?

Fun fact: the dining room at Mar-a-Lago, built in the mid-1920s, was dubbed "the Mussolini room" by its designer because it was intentionally modeled after Rome's Chigi Palace that was occupied at the time by Il Duce.

Two photos. The first shows Catturd tweeting: Name one US inspired regime change that hasn't ended in absolute disaster The next tweet shows him posting an AI illustration of Khamenei turned into a pile of dust. It says "I'm eliminated."

Two tweets. The first shows Laura Loomer promoting her show, where she says "A message has been sent that we are not interested in going back to the way politics were prior to Donald Trump, prior to 2016. We don't want warhawks. We don't want any more Neocons. We want American First. Period. End of discussion." The next tweet says: Today is a great day. Our military is amazing. @PeteHegseth is an absolute killer. Now you see why the Deep State worked so hard against him. It’s great having a Sec War who has Infidel literally tattooed on his body. He actually gets it. God bless him.

Two tweets. The first shows Will Chamberlain tweeting: The Republican Party is no longer the party of regime change and endless wars. If you want to be its standard-bearer that is a non-negotiable position. The next tweet shows him posting "Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is dead." The tweet has a USA flag attached.

Two tweets. The first shows Gunther Eagleman tweeting: "Warmonger Lindsey Graham just rushed to Fox to advocate for U.S. involvement as soon as he could. He is also pushing for a US-backed regime change in Iran. I would like to renominate Graham to get a one-way ticket to the frontlines of every war he wants America involved in." There's an attached video of Graham speaking. The next shows Eagleman tweeting: UST IN! President Trump is HARD AT WORK all weekend after the massive strikes on Iran! He’s already on the phone with Saudi Arabia, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte! Trump is a machine!" There's an attached video of a news segment about the war in Iran.

manufacturing consent through lowly paid influencers

The enemy’s wicked ideology, Mandrake

Building benchmarks is only one way scholars can help steer AI development. We can also measure the effects of AI on students, build better datasets, or tune new open models. Openness itself could be our most important contribution. Universities have huge libraries, and the legal doctrine of fair use should protect models trained on those collections for a nonprofit educational purpose. At the moment, we are not pressing this advantage. Higher education has been so cautious about fair use that the private sector can now train more freely on our libraries (via Google Books) than is possible for academic AI researchers. We need to be bolder: It is our duty to ensure library collections remain open to the public in a form that empowers 21st-century readers. If our intellectual heritage gets enclosed in proprietary tools, we will find ourselves making the same bad bargain we made with scientific publishers, who sell our own research back to us at a steep markup.

We're in a strange situation rn where Google can train freely on books from university libraries—but researchers *at* universities have limited access. I'm optimistic this can be fixed, but if you're in admin or working at a foundation, please know: univs are failing here & resources are needed.

Trump’s State of the Union Reminds Us The Republican Party Is Truly Lost More evidence that the Republican Party has been entirely transformed into the party of violence and authoritarianism.

“It is a hallmark of fascist politics that the ruling party becomes a kind of institutionalized gang…with cruelty and brutality as the organizing principles and violent bravado as the main form of political expression.”

www.liberalcurrents.com/trumps-state...

This is a cool paper. I think that the idea that there is a market for 'attentional landscaping potential' is very useful.

Angine de Poitrine - Full Performance (Live on KEXP) YouTube video by KEXP

Please listen to, and watch this. Several times. It is glorious. youtu.be/0Ssi-9wS1so?...

PhD student grant (3 years) on the evolution of written communication My team recruits a PhD student to work under the supervision of Olivier Morin on the evolution of written communication, within a project jointly led by Olivier Morin, Hugo Mercier, and Marc Allassonn...

CALL: a PhD grant (3 years) to do a PhD with me at @cognitionens.bsky.social on the evolution of graphic codes. euraxess.ec.europa.eu/jobs/410213

You may laugh, but the Macbeths are a much better role model for a marriage than Romeo and Juliet. They discuss their problems (killing the king of Scotland), share their hobbies (killing the king of Scotland), and resolve their conflicts (by killing the king of Scotland).

The Matrix: Reloaded.