Industrial electrification is now a security imperative, not just a climate one. Our new @ox.ac.uk @ecioxford.bsky.social analysis finds up to 90% of industrial energy demand could be electrified. The potential is there. The main constraint is policy. www.ox.ac.uk/news/2026-04...

There probably are other ways to stop Reform but voting Labour is a good way.

It would probably not cost the UK much to acquire Denby and it would generate a decent chunk of happiness for the nation.

Seems stupid to lose this manufacturing. And depressing to end up with sketchy imports of who knows what provenance. Business needs support with electrification, probably.

I genuinely think some people do not want to look this in the eye/think about it because it is so awful. We wrote what I thought was a pretty eye-opening story about all this and I was surprised by the lack of engagement tbh

Hotel / apartment prices are very much elevated for the end of May in Marseille. Starting to suspect it is something to do with 'Jul' but we don't really know who that is. Or is it football?

Also, the evidence of Cat Little of the Cabinet Office is apparently too dull and downright un-scandalous for the BBC to bother putting it on their web site.

Was it a good idea to sack Olly Robbins? Tbqh I have no clue, it looks complex.

Europe's electricity: 29% fossil fuels in 2024, down from 53% in 2005. Progress. But transport is still 92% fossil. Buildings: 71%. Industry: 61%. And 95% of EU oil and 88% of gas imported. Switching suppliers doesn't fix this. Electrification and efficiency do. More here: rdcu.be/feOjc

There’s probably some other Wells-like point to be made about Planet Bs. Aliens who moved to Earth might really not get on with the bugs etc. that we have here. Who wants someone else’s disgusting ecosystem?

Very sympathetic to this but there is a missing step in the argument, I feel. Between ‘there are n earth-like worlds out there’ and ‘if you went to one of them you’d be in trouble’.

There’s no shortage of people promising that interspace colonisation is just around the corner, pending the resolution of some minor technological challenges. But, as the astrophysicists Arwen E Nicholson and Raphaëlle D Haywood argue, there really is no such thing as a ‘Planet B’ #EarthDay

Blue plaque for Cecilia Payne. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Fun fact: the under-construction East Anglia Three offshore wind farm is being fitted with the longest blades yet used in UK waters. Each blade (manufactured in Hull) is longer than a football field. The rotor diameter is 236 m – it's hard to understand the scale of these machines!

I feel that Mackie is responsible for a wild goose chase in ethics, with his formulation of 'queer facts'; that is, a class of facts that are specially motivating (in a special way). Korsgaard, e.g., writes about 'reading what-is-to-be-done-ness' off moral facts as they whiz by (I paraphrase).

After all, some people go off the rails with respect to established scientific truths; they say they don't believe what's true. That's a problem, but we don't thereby start to worry about the lack of a motivating force in natural facts.

Some interesting but puzzling remarks in Parfit, to the effect: what difference would moral truths make, if there were any? They would, perhaps, allow moral discussions to come to an end; that is, they would end at the truth. Moral theories would converge. People would go forwards with confidence.

New, original films that are under 90 mins and enjoyable.

Ed Miliband has said he'll “double down, not back down” on government’s clean energy mission in the face of critics calling on him to change course The Energy Sec said "solar panels, heat pumps and EVs are not woke, or a left-wing conspiracy, or even a Marxist plot. They're actually common sense"

Miliband doing the lord’s work today.

Anyway, Robbins. Quite mixed, this, so far. The risks didn’t relate to Epstein, the vetting was ‘borderline’, and Robbins didn’t read the findings, (which sounds tricky for him, unfortunately).

Williams on my mind still. He asks after the ‘content’ of external reasons, where this content does not reduce to some internal reason content. But I wonder if this is a bit like debates over multiple realisability. Perhaps an external reason supplies an agent a _new way to arrange_ motives.

Now wondering if Williams’s internal v. external reasons distinction is a useful one. It says, roughly, that for a reason to be external, it must somehow convey a motivation to anyone who encounters or comes to believe that reason.

I feel that what you have to say about Mandelson is that he was properly vetted while also being a moral sleaze. Sort _that_ out.

Have read a few commentaries on 'developed vetting'. If the final decision on DV is made by a senior civil servant, and that official grants DV, then the applicant can't be said to have failed DV, can they?

More than 40% of ships globally transport fossil fuels. Nearly all of them run on fossil fuels too.

Love the 1940s nutrition approach.

Hesitant to do a picture side-by-side, given how that is often done on social media. But look, I think you can fairly prefer one or more of these implementations to the others without invoking any change of category 'into the technological'.

Reconsidering Heidegger's essentialism of technology. Still not on board with it. Critiques of capitalism seem to do a much better job of getting at ideas of exploitation and degradation.

Best case: they have lots of shitty food on board instead of small amounts of it.

David Papineau has a nice essay ('The Rise of Physicalism') which traces a history of 'the completeness of science' (i.e. every cause is physical). Helmholtz, who trained as a doctor, has a central role there. The motivation was to rule out 'sui generis' causes.

I like this, although wish it had the word 'supervenience' in it somewhere.

US Navy food story seems legit. www.reddit.com/r/navy/comme...

Very surprised at the story that the US is struggling to resupply its ships. eu.usatoday.com/story/news/p...

A fun read in the breezy James Burke 'Connections' style. crookedtimber.org/2026/04/14/h...

Big news! The first power from the third giant offshore wind farm being built on Dogger Bank has been transmitted back to Britain

Happy Tax Day, New York. We’re taxing the rich.

OK we may not have papal infallibility any more but fairly sure the pope remains a specialist in his field nonetheless.

Nothing to contribute to the ‘vibecession’ discussion apart from this bit of Williams: “… if a utilitarian administration operates not on the basis of what people prefer, but on the basis of what they would prefer if they were better informed, it is possible …”

this really is a significant blow to the global far right. Hungary under Orban was more than a financier and place to host events: it was a proof of concept

Will go out in a limb and say that the London revival dates from the 1970s, and it includes building appreciators like Scruton. The city had been hollowed out a bit, interesting property was cheap, and various characters moved in. This is when Neal’s Yard Dairy started, for ex.

Scruton was an interesting character, but not someone I’d call an intellectual lightweight. He was of this 1970s British reactionary set; all men I think, who are slightly fascinating to me, because they are out of my living memory, but only just.

If Matt Goodwin is speaking in Budapest, 5pm today, he has kept v quiet about being there. He posted extensively about Hungary's 2018, 2022 election results, but nothing at all on 2026

this is exactly why I get so annoyed by people who say “oh I live in a blue state, it doesn’t matter who I vote for so I’ll protest vote for the Green Party” when you’re up against fascists, you need as big of a margin as possible

When it comes to the energy transition I'm a glass half full person. I know: plenty of people would say that's terribly naive. They point to the scale of the challenge. They point to vested interests. They point to hard-to-abate sectors. And they're not wrong. But here's what they miss. 🧵

Using the fundamental #physics phenomenon of #beats, trial & error, and unmatched metallurgy & bell casting skills, the Chinese assembled 12-tone chromatic bronze bell sets like below, 2000-3600 yrs ago. Essentially 1st uncovering the mass relation to tone as well. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bianzhong

Fog repeater.

1967 Stock traction control, still in use on the Bakerloo line. Retired on the Victoria line. Responsible for the clicking you can hear.