A few people have asked me if it's too late to sign up for this afternoon. It's not! There's lots of online tickets left and some in-person ones in Milton Keynes, which include free wine and nibbles. If you unexpectedly find yourself free at 4.30 today, please do join us.

Came upon a note that reminded me how glorious some of the patch notes for Dwarf Fortress could be

You can now get the vibe of "Twin Peaks, but in the Lake District" purely in PDF from both itch.io and DTRPG :) Community copies are available on itch for those who need them. Itch: montfordtales.itch.io/ashers-ridge DTRPG: www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/5...

Years ago we put googly eyes on a giant paperclip and stuck it to the wall. Now the blu tack has melted and the paperclip has grown ears and this is basically what Darwin was talking about. #NationalPaperclipDay

When was it Slideshare became an irrelevance? A couple of years ago, presentations would get hundreds of views, multiple downloads and you could embed them in Wordpress. These days it's just tumbleweed and the featured presentations are duller than ditchwater.

Full Fact’s Government Tracker is monitoring the government’s delivery on its promises. It looks at progress ont 92 key pledges, from Labour’s 2024 election manifesto and from further announcements made since fullfact.org/government-t... Currently, two-thirds are achieved, in progress or on track

21st May 2026 Cream Tea at Le Patissier.

Shoutout to the very senior professor in HCI who gave a talk last month about how AI can do qualitative data analysis better than people now.

New dataset published: this is the audio + transcripts of AI-generated podcasts using NotebookLM to analyse how it "translated" source documents from different times and cultures. My favourites are the 20 podcasts generated from an empty PDF. The paper about it is in press. doi.org/10.18710/RNT...

Only a few days left to go and see the Radical Rural exhibition at @themerl.bsky.social Well worth it if you can visit. Growing up around Newbury and Greenham in the 80s and 90s there were a few familiar nostalgic exhibits.

He reads the silly post He reads the scoldy post He reads the jokey post And the pedantic post He reads the posts that remind him of the bad site He reads the posts that remind him of the worst site Don’t screenshot that, troll behavior

today is septidi 27 Floréal in the year of the Republic CCXXXIV, celebrating chives

Yes, I reacted to the phrase “producing a piece of PhD-level research in an hour or so, with no serious mathematical input from me” - because the main “product” of a PhD is the RESEARCHER not the articles.

Day 10 of me feeling obliged to tell you that SCRATCH MOSS is 99p on Kindle because if I don’t do it every day then something terrible might happen like that guy on Lost who had to input a code every 108 minutes. www.amazon.co.uk/Scratch-Moss...

Tesco getting a bit ahead of itself

Very sorry to see that the last undergrad archaeology class at Uni #Sheffield was taught yesterday. The wanton destruction happening now in academia on both sides of the Atlantic will be widely seen as the violence it is one day. #SaveSheffield #SaveSheffieldArchaeology

We have an *extremely* important announcement to make. From Wednesday, we will be launching our puffin live cam, coming to you from the Farne Islands. So you can watch puffins all day long. In celebration, please enjoy this clip of puffins being really busy for 39 seconds straight.

1976) Wickerbot. Helps keep visitors to your remote island community toasty and warm.

This is so, so well-articulated.

If you're a freelancer in the UK and your clients are not paying you on time, you are entitled to charge them interest. You can refer them to the Late Payments Directive. www.gov.uk/government/p... And you can calculate what you're entitled to here: dontpaylate.uk

498) Villagebots. Inform young men that there's a place they can go when they're in a new town. Somewhere that has everything for them to enjoy and where they can hang out with all the boys. #SmallRobotsRemastered

Today’s poem is called ‘Index of Poems I Shall Never Write’.

#WonderfulBirdWednesday Right in the middle of rain, the photo was captured the split second a droplet of water landed on the #Robins head like a crown! 👑 04/2026 #Birds #Nature #FlawlessTiming 🌟 #FMSPAD #SomethingThatFlies #Birdsky #Wildlife #Photography #BirdPhotography #Macrophotography

PHOTO OF THE DAY. The head of Statue of Liberty, displayed in Paris (1878). 📷 Albert Fernique.

Starting in 50 mins ... a few tickets left. Walking the Weirdstone - Online Talk (Fundraiser) www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/walking-th...

For me, holiday time=reading time. I don’t remember where I saw the signpost this marvellous book, but it feels a bit more likely that it was @bsky.app than @linkedin.com! Thank you @mikecollins.bsky.social and @markchilds.bsky.social for firing up so many synapses!

'Cychwyn heddyw i France. Cewch lythyr yn fuan. Gwelwch fy llun tu ol i'r dot. Cofion oll Tom.' Translation and more at georgefergusonliverpool.wordpress.com/2026/04/09/9...

I know Appalachian horror is apparently a thing in the US, so I suppose Withered Hill is Pennine horror?

Final call for registrations for the (free) Research and Scholarship in Digital Education conference featuring student presentations & keynotes from Professors Allison Littlejohn, Sukaina Walji and Tim Coughlan. 9:00 April 10th, 13:00 11th, 18:00 13th. Registration & programme: lnkd.in/eJU_SU5M

Today, MSF is going public with something we've been fighting behind closed doors for months: Gilead will not sell us their new HIV drug, lenacapavir. The sticking point isn't even price, they just refuse to sell. Open letter linked + explainer 🧵1/ www.doctorswithoutborders.org/latest/gilea...

Books on baking banana bread available now 🍌 www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

@kballestrini.bsky.social Thought this might be of interest classicalstudies.org/awards-and-f...

"Is everyone who lives in Ignorance like you?" asked Milo. "Much worse," he said longingly. "But I don't live here. I'm from a place very far away called Context. It's such an unpleasant place that I spend almost all my time out of it.”

Instead of keep remaking adaptations of Lord of the Rings, adapt Withered Hill, you cowards.

We prayed in silence for the friends at home and the officers present each in turn saluted the grave. If ever I was really, deeply profoundly, sincerely impressed it was at this funeral service within the boom of the guns. I shall never forget it georgefergusonliverpool.wordpress.com/2026/03/25/2...

Duckling season has begun, and DucklingWatch is back for another year! Please submit your mallard brood sightings in GB to citsci.org/projects/ducklingwatch and share this post to spread the word 🦆

"But if all the roads arrive at the same place at the same time, then aren't they all the right way?" asked Milo. "Certainly not!" he shouted, glaring from his most upset face. "They're all the wrong way. Just because you have a choice, it doesn't mean that any of them has to be right."

Series 2 of Malevolent, subtitled "Threshold" begins April 1st for Public and February 2nd for Patrons... youtu.be/vPTri2Vihh0 Trailer by: @jametc.bsky.social @thirdchildart.bsky.social @shnikkles.bsky.social

every quantitative measure is actually a stack of qualitative assumptions in a trenchcoat

Thinking of Liam Green Hughes and his wife on the day of his funeral liamgreen-hughes.muchloved.com

The discovery of a Phantom Tollbooth Bluesky account may be the best thing in my world today. #SEVENTEEN!

A tomahawk missile costs the taxpayers the same amount of money as one five-year major NIH research grant. Remember that every time they tell us one of those missed the target, blew up paintings of enemy aircraft or tanks, or was the fifth and unnecessary hit on the same target.

'Footfall melodiously because you trample on my hallucinations.' From www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/the...

HUGE ANNOUNCEMENT 15 years ago, a group of us started The Pericles Group (periclesgroup.org) in order to formally work on our games & learning endeavors. It has been an amazingly fulfilling ride creating Operation LAPIS, successful Kickstarters (CARD-tamen, VERBA, Underlings of Underwing), (1/7)

@hookland.bsky.social The power of the Hum seems to be shaping the Austrian Power grid www.apg.at/en/projects/...

Yesterday evening, for the second time in a year, the Met Police raided Westminster Quaker Meeting House and arrested a number of young nonviolent activists. STATEMENT: www.quaker.org.uk/news-and-eve...

It is publication day for SCRATCH MOSS. Please be buying it from your vendor of choice, or ask your local library to get it in. Available in paperback, ebook and audiobook. www.canelo.co/books/scratc...

NEW ANALYSIS: UK emissions fell 2.4% in 2025 as coal fell to a 400-year low. Incredibly, we used less coal last year than than in 1600, when Queen Elizabeth I was on the throne and Shakespeare was writing Hamlet. All the details in our article: www.carbonbrief.org/...