Out and About in London The Pride Progress flag reminds me to explain, as if you hadn't realized, that tomorrow (4th July) is the day of the Pride in London parade. Having a meeting to attend this week and another thing to do in London next week, it proved impossible to resist staying over the…

There are #Pride flags all over London, even at the HQ of the Elon Musk Appreciation Society...

Clarivate is axing Research Professional News so it can concentrate on its core business of peddling bogus metrics. www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-o...

Bumped into a protest by union members of #UNITE at the #InstituteforCancerResearch and promised to post a picture in a spirit of solidarity, which I am happy to do... #ICR

Structures on Gigaparsec Scales It seems that the authors of the Nature paper, Francesco Sylos Labini and Marco Galoppo, misinterpreted the distances of galaxies in the DESI DR1 sample in a way which boils down to an error of a factor (1+z), where z is the redshift. This hugely amplifies and…

Rather warm in London today, and set to get very hot over the weekend. And that's just the weather... 😉

Gravitation https://botfrens.com/collections/74/contents/22806

Edward Cumbutt England Marriages, 1538–1973

Structures on Gigaparsec Scales It seems that the authors of the Nature paper, Francesco Sylos Labini and Marco Galoppo, misinterpreted the distances of galaxies in the DESI DR1 sample in a way which boils down to an error of a factor (1+z), where z is the redshift. This hugely amplifies and…

I'm so proud of Yassin. He made Bristol and Britain his home. He has contributed so much as a Green Party Cllr to his city and to the community in Lawrence Hill. Solidarity in the face of this Reform fuelled racist hate. Hope always wins!

Remarks after Dinner As seems to be the case quite often these days I was asked to deliver "some remarks" after the conference dinner this evening at 170 Queen's Gate. Over the years I've come to realize that the best way to approach this sort of request is to keep it short, tell a few jokes, and…

Brian Schmidt enters the fray... www.timeshighereducation.com/news/nobelis...

Staff and Students at @ucc.ie will protest on tomorrow Thursday from 12pm – 2pm outside the main entrance. They want the EU to do more to uphold international law and protect civilians in Gaza and occupied Palestinian territories.

In a Random Universe… So here I am, in that London. I'm attending a small meeting at called A Random Universe which is celebrating the occasion of the 60th Birthday of cosmologist Andrew Jaffe. The meeting is being held at South Kensington Technical Imperial College and covers cosmology,…

The Oireachtas is leaning into Microsoft for its comms, even as other European governments abandon US tech. Switching to the US big tech provider, for phone systems and more, comes at a time of fierce debate about tech sovereignty.

New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "Inflation at the End of 2025: Constraints on $r$ and $n_S$ using the Latest CMB and BAO Data" by Lennart Balkenhol (Institut d’Astrophysique de Paris, France) and 12 others based in FR, IT, CH, UK, US and AU. doi.org/10.33232/001...

New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "Boris and Exponential Integrators in the Theory of Particles Interacting with Magnetic Turbulence" by Andreas Shalchi (U. Manitoba, Canada) doi.org/10.33232/001...

In a Random Universe… So here I am, in that London. I'm attending a small meeting at called A Random Universe which is celebrating the occasion of the 60th Birthday of cosmologist Andrew Jaffe. The meeting is being held at South Kensington Technical Imperial College and covers cosmology,…

I have arrived at last in a Random Universe afheavens.github.io/Andrew-at-60/

It's a cow, apparently.

Train is running 11 minutes late owing to animals on the railway.

Managed to publish three @ojastro.bsky.social papers this morning while on the train to London.

New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "On the effective spin-mass ratio relation of binary black hole mergers that evolved in isolation" by Sambaran Banerjee (Helmholtz-Instituts für Strahlen und Kernphysik, Germany) & Aleksandra Olejak (MPA Garching, Germany) doi.org/10.33232/001...

New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "A systematic survey for hypervelocity runaways from thermonuclear supernovae" by Kareem El-Badry (Caltech, USA), and 18 others based in the USA, Germany, Austria and the UK. doi.org/10.33232/001...

New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "Idealized Global Models of Accretion Disks with Strong Toroidal Magnetic Fields" by Minghao Guo & Eliot Quataert (Princeton U., USA), Jonathan Squire (U. Otago, NZ), Philip Hopkins (Caltech, USA) & James Stone (Princeton) doi.org/10.33232/001...

A Voyage of Adventure… I'm all at sea. The ship is called the "James Joyce". It took me a while to get onboard as the instructions were extremely long and difficult to understand. I decided to take this route to the UK for a change and I must say it is very civilised (if a bit slow).

A Voyage of Adventure… I'm all at sea. The ship is called the "James Joyce". It took me a while to get onboard as the instructions were extremely long and difficult to understand. I decided to take this route to the UK for a change and I must say it is very civilised (if a bit slow).

There's a ship off the starboard bow...

The ship is called the "James Joyce". It took me a while to get on board because the instructions were incredibly long and difficult to understand.

About to embark on a Voyage of Adventure..

Flaming June – Frederic Leighton Flaming June by Frederic Leighton (1895, Oil on Canvas, 120 ×120cm, Museo de Arte de Ponce, Puerto Rico) Since this June has seen a heatwave across Europe and even here in Ireland, I was reminded of the expression "Flaming June" which I thought until relatively…

Reminder to register for the LGBTQ+ STEMinar in November. Just a little over a month to submit a talk to the STEMinar! All details found here: sites.google.com/view/lgbtqst...

New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "Analysis and implications of the spatio-spectral morphology of the Fermi Bubbles" by Ami Tank (Indian Institute of Technology) and Roland Crocker & Mark R. Krumholz (Australian National University) doi.org/10.33232/001...

New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "A first measurement of baryonic feedback with Fast Radio Bursts" by Robert Reischke (Universität Bonn, Germany) and and Steffen Hagstotz (Ludwig-Maximilians Universität München, Germany) doi.org/10.33232/001...

Glass by Mikhail Larionov, 1912 https://botfrens.com/collections/212/contents/137762

Lonicera japonica The spell of hot weather seems to have moderated somewhat: the temperature has fallen to a more civilised level in the low twenties and we've even had a little rain today. Last night, however, was very sultry. After dinner I stepped outside into the garden to get a bit of fresh…

Some dejected #Galway supporters in Maynooth this evening after their team lost to #Dublin in the Quarter-Final of the All-Ireland Senior Football Championship at Croke Park.

Too Much Information...

Flaming June – Frederic Leighton Flaming June by Frederic Leighton (1895, Oil on Canvas, 120 ×120cm, Museo de Arte de Ponce, Puerto Rico) Since this June has seen a heatwave across Europe and even here in Ireland, I was reminded of the expression "Flaming June" which I thought until relatively…

Mel Brooks produced The Elephant Man: this was his response to Paramount’s demand for changes "We are involved in a business venture. We screened the film for you, to bring you up to date as to the status of that venture. Do not misconstrue this as our soliciting the input of raging primitives."

One for the Irish literati...

Well. (Again)

I heard rumours about Donaldson's flat well over a decade ago. It was 'common knowledge' here. It could have come out at any point. Ask why it's coming out now.

The capital was awash with rainbow colours for the 2026 Dublin Pride parade 🌈 Read 👉️ buff.ly/IJYnHEb #GCNnews

I am told, to my consternation, that Panama hats actually come from Ecuador.

Weekly Update from the Open Journal of Astrophysics 27/06/2026  Since the last update we have published a further three papers, bringing the number in Volume 9 (2026) to 129 and the total so far published by OJAp up to 577.

A treat on RTÉ Lyric fm: a live performance of Beethoven's String Quartet No. 14 in C♯ minor, Op. 131

The most obvious answer for “Why is MAGA’s most respectable far right propagandist hiring so many mainstream British political commentators” is “The British press is ram-packed with utterly repellent wingnut cranks”.

My brain.

Hungarians turn out in thousands for first Pride march since Viktor Orbán was voted out