🚨NEW FUNDING: Introducing the 2025 Round of the @wellcometrust.bsky.social Accelerator Awards! 🚨 Our funding scheme for researchers of Black, Bangladeshi and Pakistani applications has reopened.   💰 £200,000 per researcher 🗓️ Up to two years ✅ Apply by 15 July 2025 ⤵️https://lnkd.in/e6PT-TQR

It was back to work today for me after 6 beautiful months of parental leave with my little family. I wrote about how going back to work makes me feel on LinkedIn here: www.linkedin.com/posts/shomar... ❤️ to wonderful @wellcometrust.bsky.social colleagues past and present who made this happen.

Article of the year and it is only January: www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Is BlueSky our only hope?

Concern as some universities get early access to REF guidance. Staggered release of people, culture and environment guidance causing “significant amount of anxiety”. www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-u...

Are you working on making a meaningful change in your academic institution? You think people and values should be at the heart of the process? Then the Values-Enacted Leadership Institute is for you. Join my @humetricshss.bsky.social colleagues today for an info session at 18:00 CET!

We are so finished. Starmer and Badenoch's lunchtime sandwich split www.bbc.com/news/article...

The absolute wickedness of the mother who reported this young man to the police 😦. May she find no peace. apple.news/A5HC0JFTjQ7-...

Given that BlueSky has so few employees, I suggest that people do most of the work of closing right-wing grifters down themselves. Don’t name them or share them at all and block them individually. If the grifters are only talking to themselves, that will be enough to drive them off.

I wonder what Elon Musk thinks about this CEO murder and the legions of blue tick weirdos on the bad place endorsing violence. Is that healthy discussion?

Counterpoint: Do

Goodness me there are a lot of homophobes in football. 🙃❌

We have a contract opportunity live @wellcometrust.bsky.social at the moment seeking a partner organisation to help us deliver up to £1m in small grants to Black-led academic researcher initiatives and networks 🧫🔬🧪👨🏾‍🔬👩🏿‍🔬. More info is available below. www.linkedin.com/posts/faith-... #academicsky

**Black UK PhD students** This is the programme you want! It is all the bells and whistles, full fees and stipend, any subject, industrial experience offered, 50 other Black scholars already on board and administrated in an environment of care. **Tell everyone**

Triggered partly by John Lewis Christmas ads and partly by a conversation I had today…why do some people still think that marginalised people are now unfairly over-represented in positions of power and/or on TV, when all the data I’ve seen suggests this isn’t the case…?

This is a really interesting and insightful essay - brings together a wide range of different political phenomena, and offers some useful conceptual frames for making sense of them

The gang is all here. Wellcome!

Lots of chat about Bluesky being an echo chamber just for harbouring more reasonable debate and moderation. Does that in itself make it an echo chamber? Twitter used to be a place where anyone’s voice could be heard even if it was problematic and the discussions were at least a bit more reasonable.

We need a word for "Sorry if you followed me from a starter pack and weren't expecting this"

The idea that you *must* coexist with and listen to people who are cruel, unjust, and just plain unpleasant to be around is the logic of abusers, by the way

Blimey, for a minute I thought Ant & Dec had landed him on I'm A Celeb

I really don’t understand this whole ‘stay on Twitter and fight’ thing. You’re jousting with bots and reply guys and wading through ads it’s not Waterloo.

You should follow Paula - can’t wait for the book!

Hello! I’m Paula, I’m a historian & my first book will be out next April! WHEN WE RULED: THE RISE & FALL OF 12 AFRICAN QUEENS & WARRIORS was shaped by my research trip across 10 countries (Côte d’Ivoire, Bénin, Madag., SA, Rwanda +), meeting local historians & storytellers. #blacksky #skystorians

What sorcery is this?? *Furiously scans following list*

Me re-discovering every person, thought-leader, friend or account I have is moving here from #TheOtherPlace:

Who’s gonna do the London Black t*itter starter pack I miss you guys

*Is* the verb for posting here a “skeet”? Is that what I am hearing?

To all my fellow Arsenal fans, give this a signature: openletter.earth/arsenal-supp...

Within minutes of looking at X, I am angry again.

I don't think I've seen a start pack for UK science & research policy, but it looks like we might have critical mass now! 👇A collection of wonks, commentators, journalists, organisations and senior figures with an interest in policy-for-science. Additions welcome! go.bsky.app/UYei1fk

All this place is missing is a good trending feed. Please share if you have found one.

Glad to see that things are heating up here again but yet it still feels healthy and normal… for now.

I never want to hear anyone describe a person in the public eye as someone “who tells it like it is” ever again.

With huge respect to Sir Paul Nurse, and his vast amounts of experience, surely the Royal Society can do better than re-elect someone who has had the role before. If it can't then what does that say about the next generation of scientific leaders? www.theguardian.com/science/arti...

I really want Bluesky to take off so I can leave X for good. I’m not sure Threads is it either.

I still think #BlueSky is the best Twitter since Twitter. If they brought more journalists and news sites here, it would work perfectly. How a ‘utopian vision’ for social media became a ‘toxic mess’ www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

every morning i have to stop sleeping. because of wokeness

I am convinced that most users in the #otherplace app are Russian bots designed to amplify any non issue. #EnglandShirt

To the average voter, there probably isn’t enough of a difference between Labour and the Tories except for the “mood”. I doubt it will substantively lose because of that, but when in government it will immediately be on the back foot. How do you sustain momentum off that?

I seem to have engineered myself into being a 6am riser. I don like it.

Oh wow, this place is open now? I feel nervous

I won’t forgive the British govt for not making Covid boosters readily available to everyone.

Enjoyed the Villa draw. Warmed me cockles

Locked out of my x account because I changed my phone. Maybe this is the the push I need.

V2 The Luck of Draw: Wellcome’s Institutional Fund for Research Culture wellcomeopenresearch.org/articles/8-5... We discuss: * How we funded (partial randomisation) * Who the funding went to * What we want the funding to achieve #researchonresearch #partialrandomisation #researchfunding

Being in France is once again making me appreciate everyone who is multilingual. Definitely a work in progress for me.

Dear everyone - stop advertising on X. Stop buying Teslas. Do not financially support anything this man does www.cbsnews.com/news/elon-mu...

New Open Letter in Wellcome Open Research: The Luck of Draw: Wellcome’s Institutional Fund for Research Culture wellcomeopenresearch.org/articles/8-5... We discuss: * How we funded (partial randomisation) * Who the funding went to * What we want the funding to achieve

As someone who is regularly alarmed at the nonsense that appears in the Cortana field of my work laptop, it all makes sense now.