💯right!!!!

So I’ve begun a Substack where I keep detailed reading notes on #Schattenfroh, a new novel from #DeepVellum claimed by some to be a masterpiece (I tend to agree so far). Read or spread it around, if you can. I’m working hard on this. open.substack.com/pub/schatten...

Sorry, but disagree with @hausfath.bsky.social here. You open Pandora's box, you ain't closing it again. We've already seen with Paris that well intentioned international agreements do not translate into physical reality and SRM governance is a much harder problem. Zero is the only safe level. /1

Every so often I find seven short poems from new books in my reading pile and put them together with the idea that people might like to read one a day over the week (binge reading is also fine, of course). Here's the latest selection:

“I think [economists] have mathematics envy... They just want to prove theorems. That’s my main peeve about economists. They seem more interested in solving logical problems and aesthetic puzzles rather than a deep desire to understand what the real driving forces are.”  @financialtimes.com

Acclaimed historian and novelist Marina Warner’s latest book, Sanctuary, is a rich exploration of what it means to make space for the “arrivant”, writes Franklin Nelson.

Impassioned plea for more mixed-methods research (quant & qual) from @timharford.ft.com "The hard data is never as eloquent as a good story. Humboldt would measure the cactus but also sketch it; drag his barometer up a volcano, but spin a yarn about the epic climb." www.ft.com/content/d419...

This is a time of extraordinary geopolitical change & uncertainty, shaping and being shaped by rapid technological change, w/ major shifts in data&AI deployment, capabilities & markets This risks undoing a period of slow but meaningful steps towards ensuring data and AI work for public benefit.

www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-v... @ukri.org

Nice to see my talk at World Design Congress quoted in this roundup. “The challenge is that we have to work at two speeds simultaneously: with immediate urgency, and with the vision to begin the slow project of reimagining our relationship with the living world” www.dezeen.com/2025/09/16/w...

"There is no point growing the economy if it is not done sustainably and with regeneration at its heart" #design www.dezeen.com/2025/09/16/w...

Robert Redford, 1936-2025

Morning! Society for Hopeful Technologists newsletter #2 is arriving in inboxes now. A little bit on Musk and X, much more about future plans + organising buttondown.com/society-of-h... and great to have a group of fellow organisers coming together 💪

We’re delighted to announce the third #RLUK #AHRC @armauk.bsky.social Research Catalyst Cohort #REPRCC for academic libraries. Over the next year they will develop their research confidence, skills & capabilities bit.ly/47JXXty 🎉 Congratulations #librariesXresearch cohort! 👇

Call for Applications: www.ukri.org/opportunity/...

"it’s not only engineering degrees that inspire invention." 💯

Pierre Bourdieu and Erwin Panofsky: Architecture, Scholasticism and the Concept of Habitus progressivegeographies.com/2025/09/14/p...

@stuartelden.bsky.social is a master of the illuminating microstories of intellectual history; this one on how Bourdieu's translation of Panofsky shaped his and contemporary French thinking is a gem progressivegeographies.com/2025/09/14/p...

After a superb week for #design, with the World Design Congress, a major AHRC investments and the London Design Festival, here are my reflections on what design means to me - a discipline of care, and our laboratory for the future anatomiesofpower.wordpress.com/2025/09/13/w...

This is what love of country looks like to me, and it's all about helping others. @britishcouncil.bsky.social @scott-mcd-1.bsky.social

I visited the British Council team in Kyiv this week after the bombing of our office. I could feel their anger, defiance and determination to continue with our important work.

After a superb week for #design, with the World Design Congress, a major AHRC investments and the London Design Festival, here are my reflections on what design means to me - a discipline of care, and our laboratory for the future anatomiesofpower.wordpress.com/2025/09/13/w...

St Andrews top in Scotland and second in the UK in the @theguardian.com University Guide 2026 🎉 Maths, History, and International Relations take the top spot in the new rankings with a further 16 subjects ranking in the top 10 🎉 Read more 👇 ow.ly/hzCj50WWe9R #EverToExcel

Summary of an extremely important report on China's investment in the green energy transition

1/ New report from @bentleyallan.bsky.social's Net Zero Policy Lab: As the US withdraws from green tech industries and pressures allies to follow suit, China is stepping in to power the developing world's energy transition. The scale is staggering. www.netzeropolicylab.com/china-green-...

This Science Park will be such a terrific opportunity if all its inhabitants work together... www.bbc.com/news/article...

Have just read on the BBC that "the UK's first 'super-university', stretching across an entire region" is to be creaed by merging the universities of Kent and Greenwich, and I'm thinking it's a shame they've never heard of the University of the Highlands and Islands.

"It is particularly telling that those with science and engineering jobs, who you might expect to be more au fait with new technologies, are some of the most sceptical " Steve Thomas, Prospect www.politicshome.com/news/article...

BHP are excited to welcome our September guest editor - Alexander Booth!!! @wordkunst.bsky.social THEME/S: _LANDSCAPE LABYRINTH_ __Submissions are open from today 1st September – and will remain open until 25TH SEPTEMBER__ Sendxxx burninghousepress.com/2025/09/01/s...

British research has perfected discipline and outsourced magnificence. The fix is to practise demonstration statecraft – visible proofs of capacity that pair theatre with delivery. A new essay by me for the Better Science Project: betterscienceproject.substack.com/p/the-counte...

@ersatzben.bsky.social asks for #Science policy not to weaken standards, but rather to rediscover a form of democratic splendour: demonstration statecraft that inspires awe by visibly delivering on ambitious goals.

We’re over the moon to announce that Manya Wilkinson has been awarded this year’s Hawthornden Prize for Literature for her novel LUBLIN. Having previously won both the RSL Encore Award and the Wingate Prize, LUBLIN continues its prize-winning journey. www.hawthornden.org/hawthornden-...

"Prestige without purpose cannot sustain doctoral education. The future will belong not to more PhDs, but to more types of doctorates." Ianis Matsoukas @timeshighered.bsky.social www.timeshighereducation.com/blog/prestig...

"it was the 2008 crisis that knocked us off course." @samfr.bsky.social

We go on. We do not turn back. The world becomes so small we can fit it into a handshake, into a glance cast across the room, a finger raised to the lips. Everyone’s fingers are crossed behind their backs. ‘Then the Fog’, a poem by @joriegraham.bsky.social: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Of ghosts and angels: The Painted Room by Inger Christensen, translated by Denise Newman #WITMonth roughghosts.com/2025/08/30/o...

Experiments in nature; Penone Thoughts in the Roots (Serpentine Gallery); Jarman The Black Paintings (Amanda Wilkinson) "Around you the landscape lies transfigured. Here is the Amen beyond the prayer." Jarman

"To speak as though these people are anything other than ordinary is to reinforce the violence they have already experienced, the refusal to see them humanly." Rowan Williams www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

what amazing #science... and of course there's #poetry for it too... This is the dead land This is cactus land Here the stone images Are raised, here they receive The supplication of a dead man’s hand Under the twinkle of a fading star. T S Eliot

New image from the James Webb Space Telescope! It's peered through 3,400 light-years and dense cosmic dust to reveal the ancient star at the heart of the Butterfly Nebula. This dying star offers a glimpse into what may happen to our own sun at the end of its life. www.ukri.org/news/james-w... 🦋🧪

Historians may have words to say about this.

1. Modeling data does not a historical argument make. 2. Lefebvre might have written an early classic, but his sources are not the complete 'archive' of Great Fear rumors. 1/n

Sad to see John Walter’s imaginative artwork coming down from the Thames Tideway site in Bermondsey. Hoping there is a new artwork to come…

The British Council needs and deserves every support for their work Tyrants fear soft power and friends value it because it reaches further and lasts longer. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre... ‪@scott-mcd-1.bsky.social‬

AHRC grant opportunity – Funding new networks to explore opportunities for widening cultural heritage and climate change engagement and policy across both the UK and international communities. Apply by 14 Oct 2025:

Kiss me, end of summer, on the mouth Tell me you won't go too far away Come back with love upon your shoulders And your weight won't have been in vain Sandro Penna, tr Alexander Booth @wordkunst.bsky.social @seagullbooks.bsky.social

To those who are going to read Schattenfroh when it's published in a month. I encourage you to use my visual guide, but it is not a good idea to go through it before you start reading the book. Consult it as you make progress through the novel. theuntranslated.wordpress.com/2025/06/19/a...

"the new AHRC funded Community Hub, which will support inclusive, community-led research across the UK GLAM and heritage sectors ... The ‘Spaces, Places and Belonging’ Community Hub will offer three grant schemes - Seed Corn Grants, Skills Bursaries, and Project Grants" tinyurl.com/tnacommunity...

H G Wells, dotd 1946 "Without Rebecca West’s kiss H.G. Wells would not have run off to Switzerland to write a book in which everything burns, and without H.G. Wells’s book Leo Szilard would never have conceived of a nuclear chain reaction...