Re: my last post, Piet Hein is an endless source of dark humour these days. DEFENCE WANTED In International Consequences The players must reckon to reap what they've sown. We have a defence against other defences, But what's to defend us against our own?

TWO PASSIVISTS - Piet Hein Eradicate the optimist Who takes the simple view that human values will persist no matter what we do. Annihilate the pessimist whose ineffectual cry is that the goal's already missed however hard we try.

On the eve of our submission window opening, we felt we should add an AI policy

Nearly a decade ago, I placed my only ever bet in a betting shop that Casper Ruud, then a 17 year old outwith the top 100 in the world, would win a Grand Slam before he turned 30. He's now 27 and has more final appearances *without a win* than anyone in the Open Era. But with Sinner gone...🤞

I watched the Enfield Council meeting online. Conservative leader Georgiou opened his nomination of the new mayor, Emma Supple, by saying that she was a good candidate as "wife to Ian, mother to Lucy", not her own achievements. But his nomination for Deputy Mayor was just *weird*.

Here is the apotheosis of the insanity: we must burn through our remaining fossil fuels in order to "take advantage of #AI". AI can give us NOTHING that will make worsening & accelerating climate crisis worth it. This 'last gasp tech-as-saviour' attitude is cult-like.

It needs a lot of work (I feel like while everything has a meaning for me, that meaning probably doesn't really get across), but here's a palindrome written this evening, inspired by the unseasonal heat. I'd like to come back to this and refine it...

34.8ºC at Kew Gardens breaks its May AND June records by OVER 4ºC for its May record set in 1922 and by 0.2ºC for its June record set in 1976. Unprecedented heat for the UK in late May, and likely to be bettered tomorrow. A rounded 35ºC temperature should not happen in May.

Reform is now in a position to destabilise much of the broad consensus that has underpinned post-devolution Scotland—including its language, writes Christopher Silver

Adapis parisiensis

This is written for laypeople and goes through the main points from the Code. It's written like a Q&A between me and the trans woman I invented to have the conversation with, who is as fed up of this shit as most of my trans woman friends.

Important news in Barnet Council. There, the 31 Labour and 31 Conservative councillors have modified the constitution of the council to reduce the rights of ungrouped councillors. With this, they have excluded the single Green councillor, Charli Thompson, from *every* committee.

“Rayner endured months of scrutiny over her living and tax arrangements. But when it emerged that Farage’s partner had bought an £885k house for cash, much of Fleet Street ignored it,” writes Alan Rusbridger

If I were still directly in academia, I'd be at this like a *shot*

Though the election results are grim, let's remember that the projected national vote share for Reform is down on what it was last year from 30% to 26%, and the trend is for it to continue to decline. Let's continue exchanging and spreading hopeful messages, and acting to build the world we need.

Those who want the UK to expand domestic oil and gas production are trying to hold onto a world which no longer exists, writes Sam Alvis

Reform UK sent this appalling leaflet through our door in Enfield with very divisive and misleading figures. Now the same exact leaflet has been delivered in Suffolk with names and values changed. This is not just one bad candidate, but a template from head office. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Solar panels don’t damage the countryside you just don’t like the way they look. Skylarks. Linnets. Yellowhammers. www.ecoportal.net/en/solar-pan...

Great thread. We've torn down our mistakes before, and we will again.

No media on, no AI demon. #palindrome

At last! Ediacarans and Cambrian animals in the same site! Amazing! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Yesterday I had a conversation in which a bunch of academics (a) defended the use of generative AI in research and writing. (b) expressed the opinion that "machines will take over in five years, causing mass starvation". One even saw this as a good thing.

I'm choosing to believe that this is a statement from this actual dog.

All the good work being done by Miliband and his department is totally undermined by the government cosying up to data centres. Embracing AI is such a lose-lose-lose situation.

I've infiltrated an Irish pub for Super Saturday. Three wins from three, please... 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🇮🇹🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿

Right, England men. Time to buck up for next week. Get Kildunne in for an inspirational speech. Anything... It may not be the title decider Borthwick wanted but it'll still be a title decider.

This is maybe the best Six Nations in history. And this weekend has been one of the greatest rounds the tournament has ever had.

Great article on AMOC collapse and acting to avoid even unlikely tipping points. There is no issue preparing for/preventing disasters that never materialise, but failing to prepare for one that does would be BAD. www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/world/enviro... [disclaimer - written by my sister]

I occasionally write poetry, usually formal and/or heavily constrained. This one is about interpreting ambiguous data - in this case the dying 'condylarth' and its discovered remains. Each half of the poem has the same letters in the same order.

I've got so fed up with people refusing to believe that I'm Scottish that I've started denying their Englishness (it's always English people) by picking a different English accent from theirs and telling them that they don't sound like that so they can't be English. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

The old poem says about the land around Moffat: "Frae Annan-fit tae Eric-stane Man and horse lang syne hae gane Neath greenwood gay" For so long, the greenwood has been held back by sheep, but it is returning quickly thanks to exclusion and rewilding. Relatively low cost and effort, high impact.

I have a clear, old, memory of a TV show with a blue piano and a magical triangle that could become a portal, but until yesterday could never locate it. Turns out it was about an anti-fascist underground revolutionary group, and I watched it aged 5 or 6.

Allowing our labour to enrich the modern tech aristocrats without compensation? Keir Hardie's spinning could be a new source of renewable energy.

What a result!! Huge congratulations to the amazing Hannah Spencer - everyone in Gorton and Denton has just made history. This result shows @greenparty.org.uk can win anywhere, that the politics of hope can win over the politics of hate & there is no longer any such thing as a Labour safe seat 💚

Exciting news - Otherlands Illustrated has been shortlisted for an Edward Stanford Travel Writing Award in the Children's category. Good to see that time travel counts, and looking forward to going into @stanfordstravel.bsky.social to find out how we've done! www.stanfords.co.uk/edward-stanf...

North pole winter sea ice is now over a metre thinner than when I was born. There's only c. 1.5 metres left. #ClimateCrisis

🚨 Hot off the press: Our look into of the palaeontological database landscape and its sustainability into the future. Palaeo databases are invaluable and continue to transform our research field - but they are vulnerable... (1/6) 🧪 ⛏️ www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The palaeontology cluster sits between historians and archaeologists, children's authors, open science advocates, and biologists, which makes sense. But zoom in, and our *nearest* neighbours are "Queer Taylor Swift fans". Which also frankly makes a lot of sense.

We've got a mystery rodent visiting our attic and making lots of noise, and the best bit about this is that the pest control is putting in a camera trap to figure out if it's a rat or a squirrel, and I'll get a notification on my phone! Looking forward to some nighttime footage of the sneaky beast.

(1) Long 🧵 Time. Today we learned that paleontologist Jack Horner (the same guy who helped give us "Jurassic Park") is in the Epstein Files. As a paleontologist, I feel compelled to say something because this touches my field and I want to make my stance clear on this...

Imbolc. The snowdrops return to the garden. With a dark and rainy day, folklore says that the Cailleach can't go out to collect firewood, and winter comes to an end.

Jack Horner also apparently went fossil hunting in North Dakota with Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, and Robert F Kennedy Jr some time before the ranch visits.

Today, on the walk to school, we saw a tiny goldcrest confidently bouncing about in a bare tree. Never having seen one before, the boys were utterly engrossed. We ended up very nearly being late, but the time to stop and admire it until it flew away was so worth it.

On this day in 1793, the Russian Empire under Catherine II continued its annexation of Poland-Lithuania in a series of partitions; they wouldn't be independent until 1918. As it's also Burns Night in two days, here's what the bard thought of those trying to seize land and install new governments...

BIG news in Scottish palaeobiology, with evidence from Aberdeenshire's Rhynie Chert that Prototaxites has weird anatomical features that make it look like it's not actually a fungus but some previously unknown, entirely extinct *other* type of eukaryote. So so cool.

How to get into nature.

just so it's clear: this is the exact core function of genAI Fascist government and climate deniers love it because it can produce the aesthetics of knowledge without any actual tendency towards truth. It is automated denialism. Shame on every climate scientist promoting its use (there are lots)

There's only a few days of it left, but the Wyllyotts Theatre panto (Cinderella) in Potters Bar is so so good. Outrageous dames, really good songs, and Morgan Phillips as Buttons is one of the best in the Clown role I've ever seen.

Well, #PrehistoricPlanet might have speculated that a Thylacoleo in a tree is dangerous, but ours is always very cheery.

🎉 Children's Book of the Year! 🎉 Gavin and I will be signing copies at Foyles, Charing Cross Road, tonight! And there's mulled wine and mince pies for free, and lots of other exciting authors too. www.foyles.co.uk/highlights/f...