I inadvertently made some faces! They were supposed to be display stand bases. 😂

Imagine you are a tourist from outside the USA. You go to Washington DC to admire the museums, monuments, and culture of the city, like the White House; allegedly the guiding beacon of America, only to find a gladiatorial fighting ring obscuring the view. What impression will you take home?

I see I'm not the only one thinking this. There are *SO* many parallels with "Idiocracy" from 2006.

With talk of this weekend's "blue micro moon", it might be a gvood time to (re)read my 2018 article on the "super blue blood moon", in which I also coin the terms maximoon and minimoon. Remember every moon is super. theconversation.com/super-blue-b...

I've just heard there's going to be an Ultimate Fighting Championship event at the Whitehouse. We are now living in "Idiocracy", the movie. The transformation is complete. For reals. 😭

Hot here, so I'm having #Waldorf salad for dinner 😊

It's a bit warm in the shed today, and this is with the DOOR OPEN!!! #Heatwave

Righto, think I’m ready now. Going to get this packaged up and then I can forget about it until Friday.

#Solar + #Batteries is the answer Yesterday, I put back onto the grid twice as much energy as I used, and didn't use *ANY* energy from the grid. 😊

First tick of the season removed. This one tried hard to be as inaccessible as possible. A good job I'm still flexible 😂

For the first time in my life I’ve had occasion to interact with another country’s medical system and good lord the US system is Not It.

Overwatch released on this day 10 years ago.

IT'S ONE WEEK TO RETROFEST! Saturday is sold out and Sunday is going fast. Run to your computer and buy tickets now to avoid disappointment! See you next week! www.retrofest.uk/tickets.php

Happy #TillysGameversary 🎂 to Windows 3.0, released yesterday in 1990! Windows 3 was a hugely popular Solitaire game for the IBM PC. Less well known was that it also came bundled with a rudimentary file management system and basic GUI.

Happy #TillysGameversary 🎂 Pac-Man, released today, in 1980! A pitiless monster, Pac-Man’s hunger transcends the corporeal; not even the souls of the dead are safe. In a haunted, digital Hell-maze, there is no hope. No hope at all... A game so awful, it kills ITSELF if you get too far!

I'll be exhibiting here! 😊

A sneak preview of one of the items I'll be bringing to #retrofest in #Swindon in just over a week's time. 😊

One of the scariest machining jobs I've ever done. Not because of danger to me, but because I absolutely can not screw this up. It's for an exhibition in 10 days, which is not enough time for a replacement. Lots of water as a lubricant is helping a lot. 😬

This is brilliant!! Immigration brings new ideas and enriches everyone. These people have been lied to, but sadly they just can't see that they have, even when it is writ large right in front of them.

Isambard can barely contain his excitement - because it's Retrofest in just TWO WEEKS! Tickets are selling fast - www.retrofest.uk/tickets.php #retrofest2026

Yes! ✋Except my computer was an Ohio Scientific Instruments Challenger 1/P

Is it just me, or does #Norway 's entry into #Eurovision look and sound very similar to Seven Nation Army by White Stripes? 🤔

Back from the far side of the Moon, external cameras on the Orion spacecraft capture the moment the crew module (with the four Artemis II astronauts inside) separates from the service module before reentry and splashdown on April 10, 2026. | Video credit: NASA

I'm struggling to understand the difference between "granite" and "stone", and why the latter would be more durable than the former. Anybody got any insight? 🤔 (you'll have to listen to the video to hear about the granite) www.bbc.co.uk/news/videos/...

Retro Computer Club last Sunday! 💻🤩 We had some great machines out on display; - A HH Tiger - An Atari Falcon - A Compukit UK101 assembled from a kit in the 1980s, still in good working order! Thank you to all who come along and create a warm friendly atmosphere! 👏 1/2

We have more merch! :) www.retrofest.uk #retrofest2026

It would get my vote.

I'll be exhibiting here😊

This unassuming little crescent is actually something cool: It's a crescent Mars, seen by NASA's Psyche spacecraft as it approaches the Red Planet for a gravity assist flyby next week. Details: go.nasa.gov/4tsCLPQ

Indeed!! We should all strive to be a bit more "Attenborough"👍

🎈Happy 100th Birthday🎈 ⭐Sir David Attenborough!!⭐ Truly, an inspiration. www.bbc.co.uk/news/resourc...

Seconded.

This is amazing! It shows just how many satellites there are now (too many).

Meanwhile the California grid now boasts the equivalent of 12 nuclear power plants worth of batteries -- the total cost of which was, I suspect, less than a single nuclear plant.

Getting people to care is a tough call these days, but essential if we are to re-kindle interest in .. well .. anything, really. Show how stuff matters to them, and they will be all ears.👍

Sometimes adding noise can improve image quality 😊

I have a really nice (horrifying) image stack that one of my research team members made, that powerfully demonstrates what a huge problem satellite streaks are for wide-field imaging. This is a 3 hour stack of star-subtracted 5 minute exposures using the […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

#MayThe4th I’m posting my drawings one by one and don’t want to jump the gun and post newer stuff… so here are my older Storm Trooper drawings. Both drawn in white crayon 🖍️ on black paper. ❤️ #TillysArt

How infuriating to hear the chairman(?) of Asda on the Today programme implying that land use for solar farms might significantly hurt UK food production. It's nonsense. Golf courses use more than solar ever will & beef/lamb production is huge yet provides a tiny fraction of our protein & calories.

‪A long time ago in a test chamber far, far away... ...we tested a #StarWars TIE Fighter's electromagnetic properties 😉 To those who celebrate, #MayTheFourthBeWithYou Happy #StarWarsDay! @technology.esa.int @nl.esa.int @science.esa.int @starwarsexplained.com

Astronomers have shown that the gravitational acceleration galaxy clusters exert on each other obeys an inverse square law, 1/r^n with n = 2.1±0.3, on distance scales of the order of 100-750 Mega light-years. This rules out many theories of “Modified Newtonian Dynamics”.

Chinese researchers have created a bamboo-based plastic as strong as petroleum-based plastics, which can fully biodegrade in soil in just 2 months phys.org/news/2025-10...

After 18 years in storage, my #Caterham Seven finally saw the light of day. This is just after I gave it a wash to remove years of dust and debris. Later on, I got the engine running and it sounds great!!

The movie Idiocracy's prescience is uncanny.

My simple Moon Lander game for #RetroFest next month is starting to take shape

This!! 👇 I grew up on high travel clicky keys in the 1980s. While I still have my original computer, and love it, there's no way I'd want to do any serious coding on it. Give me my lovely, modern, light touch, low travel keyboard all day long. So much nicer to code on.

I bought my first set of Fortner bits. I think I'm in love 😍

I posted about spacecraft knots in 2012! Well, I edited a post by knot tyer David Fred: www.planetary.org/articles/201...

Absolutely incredible. NASA Astronaut Reid Wiseman, who commanded Artemis II, took this footage from the far side of the Moon with his iPhone. Watch with sound on.

Of course, the creeps don’t want anybody else’s babies to be smart, just their own… Somehow we have to convince people that *other* people’s kids growing and being healthy and learning and succeeding is good for everyone, actually