Penelope usually hides on #Caturday but she’s made an appearance looking for fuss this afternoon

Listening to a history book by a well regarded author and finding it quite flowery and dramatic. I’ve concluded that this kind of historiography is simply relationship drama for older men. #Books

having one of those days where I'm frustrated and annoyed by literally everything.

Stupidest story of the day. All birds, the shoe brand, will be pivoting to #AI. https://www.ft.com/content/a4b63cc1-2d1c-44c8-a22a-425cf0efb5cf

Off to go door knocking with Hannah Spencer. Today's local election work for the #greenparty

Lovely people, these Reform UK candidates for the upcoming election, and great to know they're on our side.

I've set an alert for a used/out of print book and every time I get a notification the price has gone up. Now £250. Sigh. #Books

history rhymes. this passage from Dalyrymple's history of the East India Company is about Britain in 1599 and the excised word is 'religion', but you could easily be talking about #Brexit today.

Off to do my local election leaflet round for the #greenparty. Most people have no idea how much work volunteers do to keep democracy functioning. I've put in a minimum of four hours unpaid labour every day for the past week with more tomorrow. Three weeks to go...

nice article from @stephenkb.bsky.social on the failings of Starmer the middle manager who's been promoted far beyond his competence level.

I applied for a studentship at a famous university, got shortlisted, interviewed and rejected. Three years later, the people who interviewed me started publishing papers describing how they executed my project. I applied for a post-doc fellowship at a famous university, got shortlisted […]

The new must-read; just as I bundle up some books for that especially select Oxfam bookshop on Strutton Ground... #charityshopworld tansyhoskins.org/my-new-book-charity-shop-world

RE: https://mastodonapp.uk/@Silversnapples/116385126639570689 Not a voter? Bad news, your employer and your landlord are. Register now.

There's nothing quite like putting forward a small piece of work to a group of people and dealing with their feedback. I'm particularly enjoying answering the same question over and over again.

RE: https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/116369551683567626 I was just thinking about this stuff a few day ago. Process knowledge is also important at the national scale. A country can't just buy a bunch of books and get skills. It need to invest in people; people who learn to do stuff by doing it […]

I’m sitting behind Krishnan Gurumurthy at the #greenparty local election launch. In 2022 we had almost no press. Now we have everyone from Novara media to the Daily Mail.

An analogy I stole from an electrician friend: 90 per cent of his work is repair. But none of his training was 'we've set up a wire so it may kill you if it goes wrong: good luck!' and there is a reason for this, and it's not because it would have been dangerous to do so:

Maybe we need some Mastodon merch, like a nice "AI people tears" mug

Far too many in our culture see healing as something to be done on behalf of the abuser rather than the abused, and ego e it as repair not of the damage done to the victim’s life, but of the damage done to the abuser’s reputation— which is how we can tell that this is a culture of abuse.

Two of the establishments in this article are within spitting distance of my home, and frankly they are both overrated. https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2026/apr/04/not-quite-greggs-tiktok-creators-put-londons-gentrified-bakeries-to-the-test

after 20 years, the key for my bike lock has broken off... in the lock. I have a spare, so now going to try to remove the key end with some combination of blu tac, super glue, needle nosed pliers and toothpicks. Hooray.

Penelope likes to stand on her hind legs and bloop herself on my finger #Caturday

Who needs physical reality anyway? www.theguardian.com/business/202...

My partner made soup out of some candy beets in our veg box, and the resulting borscht tasted exactly like Heinz tomato soup. In case anyone would like to reproduce this childhood flavour. #Cooking

I’ve got a badge-making machine and I’m unreasonably excited about making abstract found image badges with it

Don't Just Tax the Uber Rich, Reform the Corporate Structure That Creates Them https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/reform-corporate-structure The real engine of inequality is structural: corporate and financial practices that concentrate wealth among shareholders while shortchanging other […]

How Australia killed populism open.substack.com/pub/iandunt/...

Email from the COO of a UK university describing that they hold off hiring academic positions until they can use them to game REF. #academicchatter

What are the gnomes going to be doing?? 🫢

I don't want to ask the assistant a fucking question – why would I want to ask the fucking assistant a fucking question, I'm very obviously WhatsApping my fucking wife for fucks sake, when will this shit fucking END, get out of my fucking sight, sorry for swearing

Reading some Marxist critique from the 1980s and these people seem completely lost in their own verbiage #academicchatter

Thanks autocomplete, I see what you’re trying to do there, but my name is neither John nor Chris 🤦🏽‍♀️

I've made up a pair of jeans from a new indie pattern company, and I absolutely hate everything about them. I think what enrages me most is the shallow pockets. Why the fuck would you do this? The pattern also features 1cm seam allowances, meaning no flat felled seams, so you can put in a lot […]

Google has dropped their AI summaries of UGC for health queries, which they claimed would “demonstrate the potential of AI to transform health outcomes around the globe”. I think this claim was accurate - outcomes would have been transformed - but everyone involved in launching this feature […]

Hi I’m Ryan and I spent a month pooping in holes at -50c just to take a picture of a cat Here’s the cat: #mongolia #sonyalpha #wildlifephotography #conservation #pallascat #photography #travel

A Reader in my former department has forwarded me an enquiry from a 16 year old student wanting my insights into my topic area. I’m honestly stumped as to what to do with this. I’m unemployed and already working several days a week for free writing papers, doing peer reviews, attending events […]

Palantir CEO Makes Shocking Confession on Disrupting Democratic Power https://newrepublic.com/post/207693/palantir-ceo-karp-disrupting-democratic-power They’re saying the quiet part out loud now. This should be a reason for terminating all of Palantir's government contracts, with immediate […]

​​​​Cost of Net Zero by 2050 less than a single fossil fuel price shock​ – The Climate Change Committee (CCC) https://www.theccc.org.uk/2026/03/11/cost-of-net-zero-by-2050-less-than-a-single-fossil-fuel-price-shock-ccc/

Controversial opinion: if you're a white European man, with a full-time academic job, in a famous institution, winning awards from wealthy organisations, getting an all expenses paid trip to give a conference keynote, then you are ill-equipped to speak about "[discipline] from the margins" […]

I’m reading a book about textile and fashion technologies which, incredibly, does not discuss hemp cultivation or processing at all. Baffling omission.

Urup, Island in Russia. Urup is an uninhabited volcanic island in the Kuril Islands chain in the south of the Sea of Okhotsk, northwest Pacific Ocean.

Right wing fallacies: - building more roads to reduce traffic - bombing other countries into democracy - more police leads to less violence - trickle-down economics

Why are all the events on the same day? I’m bad enough at managing my calendar as it is.

When someone says „Scientists do not want you to know“ you can dismiss everything from there on. Scientists want you to know. They are desperate that you know. They can’t shut up about what they found out and want you to know.

Imagine if the hype was around the Greens' rise rather than Reform Imagine if instead of putting far-right issues on the agenda, mainstream parties talked about hope, justice, redistribution, public services etc That would put real change on the table and that's why Reform is a safer bet for them

I bought a new inspirational #Cat poster after a very late night out in Manchester. The artist is Jacqueline Colley

Kemi Badenoch’s statement on the#gortonanddenton by-election is comedy gold https://x.com/KemiBadenoch/status/2027338096526643553 Apologies for link to the bad place, but that’s where Kemi is hanging

I'm in an experts seminar, contributing to UN Environment Programme's textile policy for a just transition etc etc. I'm the only non-white person here. Sigh.