Happy birthday to the Peak District National Park, designated #otd 13 April 1951. Originally 555 square miles of moor and valley, the 'great north roof of England.' It would never have happened but for one woman... 1/4

Mysterious Lake District barn joins national treasures on heritage list

Kathleen Vega Bramhall (daughter of Women's Eng Soc president Laura Annie Willson) followed in mother’s footsteps, worked as buyer for parents' co, & set up lathe company with her husband. Mother built housing estates & named Vegal Crescent after her womenwhomeantbusiness.com/2021/03/25/l...

Smaller universities employ thousands, sell products to customers across the world and export British soft power. They are successful businesses, often bringing wealth to our poorer communities. Why does the government want to stop that? Why aren't more MPs fighting for them?

This week on Wonkhe: With "close to home" now the fourth most important factor in university choice, Mack Marshall and Jim Dickinson argue that DfT's failure to recognise students as a transport user group is becoming an access and participation problem

Join us as Head of Sustainability and Resilience, an exciting new role leading the institution as our expert on sustainability, climate action and resilience. Apply now: https://www.istructe.org/about-us/work-for-us/ #climate #sustainability #netzero #climateresilience #builtenvironment

Mamdani launches Office of Curb Management

I've been a badminton player all my life & I love this sport. But we go through an embarrassingly vast number of fragile feather shuttles. I'm so happy that someone is FINALLY taking this seriously. Current plastic shuttles don't work, but we can work it out if we want: www.bbc.co.uk/sport/badmin...

Margaret Partridge electrical #engineer & contractor wrote "for sheer exciting experience give me a town to light". @wes1919.bsky.social founder Supported female #apprentices incl Beatrice Shilling. Changed international law on night work for women b #OTD 8 Apr 1891 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margare...

I've just written up a blog post about play and Pride in Place. There's so much more to say, and likely much more to come, but I wanted to try to make an early argument for play to figure centrally in Pride in Place programmes and reflect on what's already emerging: blogs.ncl.ac.uk/alisonstenni...

The law on dangerous driving is confusing because most have lost an understanding of what minimum driving standards look like. (Not my choice of headline) www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Amateur astronomers with telescopes equipped with video cameras are requested to look for impact flashes on the Moon tonight, to coordinate with #ArtemisII observations. Details here: www.geodes.umd.edu/impactflash

This map, published in 1962, falls within an area of Scotland called Easter Ross. The loosely defined area to the east of Ross in the Highlands of Scotland, Easter Ross has been the focus of many geological papers and other publications. Learn more: webapps.bgs.ac.uk/memoirs/docs...

Calling all woodworkers & coppice crafters! 🌳✨ Butser is hosting a brand new WOOD FAYRE 11-12 July in association with our friends at the Hampshire Coppice Group! We will be holding 2 comps for HURDLE and SPAR making & entries are open! www.butserancientfarm.co.uk/whats-on/calendar/wood-fayre

My Easter books cartoon for @theguardian.com

Interesting piece arguing: “… everyone wants a village, but no one wants to be a villager” Here’s the call to action: “The question worth sitting with is simple: what small social risk will you take this week?” kasperbenjamin.substack.com/p/everyone-w...

Expanding Bristol Airport won’t bring jobs or economic benefits locally - most flights aren’t for work, and money often leaves the region. Meanwhile, carbon emissions and traffic will rise, with limited sustainable transport links. Growth should benefit local communities, not the aviation industry.

What do you mean bluesky is boring? My feed is full of brilliant stuff. Learn to curate your feed better guys. 😉🤷‍♀️

Ancient egg for Easter--it's Leda again, worrying that the Zeus-eagle dad is about to peck the egg containing Helen open. In this one Clytemnestra (left) is an older sister waving hi. Granddad Tyndareus bemused. Made in Athens 440-430 BCE, Now in Boston.

Imagine if as much media time was spent on each of the 165 Iranian schoolgirls killed by an American bomb as is being spent on one downed US airman. #r4today #bbcnews

On the 6th of November, 1941, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt visited Bristol as a show of support to American troops stationed there. Her itinerary included visits to the White and “Colored” social clubs - US soldiers were racially segregated even when stationed overseas.

Good piece on teenage “link ups”, placing an emphasis on the destruction of youth clubs and youth services, the exclusion of young people from public space, and these young people’s everyday lives - and how social media facilitates “in real life” connections. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

Voters in Wales failed by inaccurate UK media reports on devolved issues, study finds

In a world energy crisis it is not the job of government to allow everyone to carry on with unchanged behaviours. It's the job of government to ensure we all do our bit, and to help those in real need.

so they're closing the West Coast Main Line for a week, huh? the single line connecting London to four of Britain's next five biggest urban conurbations? that's mad, weird that no one's ever thought to build an alternative route, perhaps even one that runs at a high speed, too. crazy

Windows needed urgently! "Four of this type exactly. Exactly! But hurry, hurry, by tomorrow!" The writer provided a helpful diagram - notice the little man with his arms up denoting height! Egyptian hieratic script on a pot shard, c.1200 BC 📸 Me #FindsFriday #archaeology🏺

This #vss365 is written from the perspective of the pen of Oscar Wilde

1/ Why is atmospheric CO₂ accelerating faster than fossil fuel emissions are growing? The answer is buried in the data, and it's more worrying than most people realise. A thread. 🧵👇

Outlook 😬🤦‍♀️

Self-taught French mathematician & physicist Sophie Germain overcame extreme social barriers to become a pioneer in number theory & the theory of elasticity. She is one of the 72 women whose names are to be engraved on the Eiffel Tower. She was born #OTD in 1776. #WomenInSTEM #mathematics

Good morning and Happy Nigella Day! Because all is briefly right with the world and as a special treat, it's free to read. www.ft.com/content/4819...

I’m enjoying all the podcasts about Apple’s 50th birthday and the nostalgia fest but it is quite annoying how all these gen X Americans remain completely ignorant of the whole home computing scene we had in Europe in the early 80s. It’s as if Apple was the only thing happening.

I recently met with people from across the immigration advice sector in Bristol – who shared detailed accounts of the harms that will be caused by government’s new immigration policies, and what they could do instead. 🧵…

Det er visst funny tweet-tid. Her er noen jeg har lagret.

The dark side of the balloon boom – is it time they were banned?

LIFTOFF of #Artemis II on 1 April 23:35 BST/00:35 CEST 2 April 2026 from Kennedy Space Center, carrying the second Orion spacecraft with its ESA European Service Module! #ForwardToTheMoon @exploration.esa.int

The event list for the excellent Cheltenham Science Festival is out today, and there is LOADS to get stuck into. I'll be doing events on indoor air pollution (cookers, aerosol sprays, cleaning products, boilers..) and water management (water companies & more besides). Full event list in the link.

This is my favorite climate change chart. Japanese monks, aristocrats, and emperors kept meticulous records of cherry blossom festivals for 1,200 years and accidentally built the world's longest climate dataset.

Say hello to the UK’s most successful growth industry: organised waste crime | George Monbiot

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Denby group have appointed administrators. It is hoped this historic pottery can be saved. #SaveDenby www.denbypottery.com/pages/save-d...

It’s a source of constant shame for learned/professional societies, companies, and higher education institutions that they don’t offer a minimum/living wage to interns 💰 Here the @royalastrosoc.bsky.social is rightly in the dock 👇🏾 Please read and sign ✍️ tinyurl.com/ras-letter

Back to #Glass-tonbury, our project to recreate Roman window glass today. We emptied 4 buckets of hot embers from yesterday's firing (in which we baked a couple of potatoes for an excellent lunch). The furnace still had 200 degrees worth of residual heat when we re-lit it.

More than 1,500 mathematicians are demanding that their field’s most prestigious meeting be moved from the U.S.

Lovely working with PhD student Sharareh Ghanbariazarneir, Dan Maskell, Antony Darby & Kaveh Heshmati @uniofbath.bsky.social. Funded by EPSRC dCarb & BRE Trust @swanseauni.bsky.social Paper is #OpenAccess: go read it, critique it, build on it. Questions welcome 👇 doi.org/10.1080/0961... #IEQ 7/7

New #OpenAccess paper alert! Our study on temperature, humidity & workplace productivity is out in Building Research & Information We asked how various mixtures of temperature and humidity affected people's perceived v. real workplace performance. Perhaps surprisingly, these don't match 🧵 1/7

"The rarity of transgender athletes in elite competition suggests their exclusion is a solution in search of a problem." theconversation.com/sex-test-use...

Maybe these need to be put on a few menus/supermarket walls. These are from the UK National Food Strategy, showing the proportion of UK land used for different things (huge for beef/lamb, tiny for crops), & where we get our calories and protein (68% & 52% from plants). The difference is staggering.

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

This is a lovely short video from the Royal Society on why soil is one of the most amazing things on Earth: www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmJU... Beautifully done. And soil is our topic for this week's Rare Earth, so lots more on the joy, importance & surprises of soil will be coming soon. 🪱🌱🍄