Haven’t been on here for a bit. Thought I’d share a blog post after a few conversations I’ve had recently about AI. Like there’s a lack of non experts musing on it…I know! But if nothing else give the podcast Talk Easy with Tristan Harris a listen.. imaginaryastronaut.xyz/notebook/202...

I just started reading FUEL and am loving it - it’s such a brilliant idea to have an anthology of prize winning flash fiction (and navigable by a list of first lines!), and even better that profits go to fuel poverty charities - check it out! 👇✨

“Good shit takes time. Extend time, bend time, crip time.” RIP Alice Wong - Year of the Tiger: An Activist’s Life

I’m so happy (and a bit shy) to share that my first ever selected poems are in this collection from @thebrokenspine.co.uk Thank you so much to editors David Hanlon and Katie Jenkins, and I can’t wait to read all the work.

I have loved being co-chair of Unlimited and learned so much - and after 5 years it’s time to step back and invite new folk into the role. If you’d like to contribute to making positive change in the culture sector, check out our info pack and please share widely!

Feeling despair about all the shit going on in the world lately and particularly in response to all the flags near us, we decided to paint hope all over our house. It’s so lovely to come home to and also to hear kids chanting ‘hope’ as they go past on the way to school.

The Decode ME study is such a big deal for people living with ME/CFS. We’ve spent decades being dismissed by docs and now there is finally a glimmer of hope for better understanding, even pathways to treatment in the long term….just need more funded research and the gov to pay attention….

The Met Office is currently looking for people to suggest up to 5 names for storms... It would be great if thousands all suggested the same 5 names (in alphabetical order as that's how storm names appear): BigOil, BP, Equinor, Exxon, Shell. www.metoffice.gov.uk/forms/name-o...

Meantime, if you don’t have the spoons to respond to the very long Green Paper with the damaging proposals for cutting disability welfare support, you can sign a very quick petition here petition.parliament.uk/petitions/72...

Some rare good news just now. The repairing of the harm their ‘guidance’ has caused will be hard however. And a reminder that @goodlawproject.org are a great organisation to support.

Yes, it's another request to sign and share an open letter. These are the times we live in... Disabled people are being cut out of working life, contrary to what the government say they are doing...if you're in the culture sector, please read, sign, share. www.tinyurl.com/AtWLetter

Wow, look at this: the carbon intensity of UK electricity is currently only 32g/kWh and 86.5% of our electricity right now is coming from renewables. Come on world, this IS possible! And it will only get better (meaning: cleaner, healthier, less intrusive) 🎉 (graphic from grid.iamkate.com )

Open this image up fully. Look to the top right. That's Phobos, one of the moons of Mars. And that bright point of light? Earth.

Gutted to read this - I have posted here previously about the proposed cuts to PIP and meantime we’re seeing damaging and life changing cuts to Access to Work that are happening right now… particularly to those I know working in the arts

Dear Restaurants…especially all the cool small ones in Bristol, I’m looking at you - it is time to update your approach to access and to stop telling folk who are immune compromised/vulnerable to illness, that it’s not possible to book your outside tables. Of course it’s possible!

I am planning an event @wshed.bsky.social for the culture sector around our collective role in building togetherness to combat the rise of the far right. I am talking with Hope not Hate and imagining a mix of talk and workshop covering. Is this something you would be interested to attend?

Doing some reading around Time - and am loving @emergencemagazine.bsky.social’s Volume 5 on Time. In particular this piece - the best big picture poetic writing on Earth’s geology I’ve come across emergencemagazine.org/essay/wrinkl...

Bug folk! Who is this lovely and very tiny winged visitor to our garden? Is it a butterfly or a moth? This is is a daisy head that’s about 1.5cm diameter….I’ve never seen a butterfly this tiny - they emerge from a chrysalis full sized right, or do you get baby butterflies?!

An open letter to the Equality and Human Rights Commission from the Culture Sector, in solidarity with Trans, Nonbinary and Intersex communities. Sign your name here: tinyurl.com/ehrcletter Please share widely, and if you are not able to sign for your organisation, please share with someone who can

The problem isn’t disability – it’s inaccessibility. 56% of the artists behind the 83 UK projects funded by @immersiveartsuk.bsky.social identify as disabled or having access needs. Director Jo Verrent shares how we made this happen and why it matters! 🔗 Read the blog: bit.ly/42MB19T

Thank you @electricliterature.com and @sfmontgomery.bsky.social for including the "lyric and evocative" Ultimatum Orangutan by @mailbykite.bsky.social in your Poetry Collections About the Disabled Experience. Read this wonderful list and explore the magazine electricliterature.com/7-poetry-col...

Science tells us biological sex is not binary, good legal practice tells us this ruling is not fair, and trans representation would have told us the real impact- nobody is any safer from this decision and trans folk are now at even greater risk of harm. This is a great org to follow and support👇

Since we’re all talking about it I want to blow up a real female space pioneer, Mae Jemison, an actual astronaut. She’s a graduate of Stanford and Cornel Medical School, served in the peace corps, started an educational nonprofit, and worked for the CDC researching vaccines. That’s a woman in space

“The Royal Society is dead. Three hundred and sixty-five years of history, and it’s ended it as a beard for a fascist. What an utterly utterly shameful end for a once-great society”

A clear, thoughtful and open piece about the decision not to cancel a Mayoral Transport Hustings event @wshed.bsky.social Makes me think that perhaps the nature of our times is that we need truly democratic platforms to remain open AND for peaceful protest to exist alongside each other.

Colander partial eclipse in bristol.

Made it along for a bit to the #cripsagainstcuts protest on College Green in Bristol - so great to see Green Party co-leader @carladenyer.bsky.social showing up to speak

Five things you might not know about PIP and a thread. 1) PIP is not a ‘benefit’ of disability, it’s welfare support to cover the additional costs of living with chronic illness or disability - medicine, transport, therapy, specialist equipment (and no, not all of these are available on the NHS)

If you want to write to your Labour MP about disability benefit cuts but have limited spoons, here’s a template from @sensecharity.bsky.social you can use: t.co/E8QB6EDi9o Public backlash *does* work at times so let’s keep the pressure up. You too, non-disabled allies!

Dear #BookSky can you help us find our lost audience? We left 140,00 people behind on X and we want to reconnect!

If you’re looking for an Instagram alternative and use assistive tech, Flashes is a new app in Beta mode that is looking really nice…and even better are holding some spaces open for access testers..

Super great that one of the major funding bodies that supports my physics research is now officially in opposition to me being the one to do it.

I finally have a limited run of prints available for a project I made in the last couple of years. It’s a series of re-imagined portraits of women in science from the 18th and 19th centuries. imaginaryastronaut.xyz/shop

Love a mystery historical object, (currently reading a book about the Voynich Manuscript that @clarered.bsky.social gave me for Xmas). Have been intrigued by these since a colleague told me about them a few yrs ago. I want it to be a tactile stimming toy but the weaving/winding theories seem strong

🚨BREAKING. From a program officer at the National Science Foundation, a list of keywords that can cause a grant to be pulled. I will be sharing screenshots of these keywords along with a decision tree. Please share widely. This is a crisis for academic freedom & science.

I've been working with a collective exploring Transformational Governance, and I wrote a blog which was sposed to be about my learnings from being in a fundraising role, and ended up being more about my questions. Which are of course learnings of a sort... medium.com/transformati...

I love Instagram and also hate how easily the scrolling algorithm sucks my distractible brain into all the reels I didn’t ask for. Also want to ditch Meta since their new hate speech rules explicitly allow it against LGBTQ folk. So am pleased @flashesapp.bsky.social are about to beta a photos app

Oh come ON now. This new JWST image is just ASTOUNDING. I feel like I’m falling looking into it, and that I would fall forever, and that I would enjoy it. NASA, ESA, CSA, K. McQuinn (STScI), J. DePasquale (STScI)

Here's a personal blog post on the taboo and complexity of vaccine injury — fighting to become a human data point. Tricky to talk about without people either assuming you've lost the plot or co-opting you into their conspiracy theories. Wish me luck. 😉 imaginaryastronaut.xyz/notebook/202...

People are very concerned about the proximity of the LA wildfires to the priceless museum collections of the Getty Villa and the cultural artefact that is the Eames house. Meantime the climate change protesters who chucked soup at a glass covered Van Gogh, to make exactly this point, are in prison…

Over 160 calls for submissions of poetry, fiction, flash, non-fiction, art, photography & more - competitions, literary journals, residencies, bursaries etc - open or with deadlines in January 2025. Best of luck & pls share! www.thisiswordbox.com/wordbox-blog...

Christmas Day murmurations at Ham Wall, Somerset

Dream job as Director of Regenerative Futures going at @wshed.bsky.social Also do give their Bluesky account a follow if you haven’t already. www.watershed.co.uk/jobs-opportu...

The care that saved my life is a scandal to the uk health secretary

Max procrastination instead of doing my tax return.. updating my website with this blog I wrote for Fevered Sleep at the start of the year. Life went a bit pear shaped just after that so I never shared it - about Time, from a physics and ‘crip time’ perspective www.feveredsleep.co.uk/our-blog-1/t...

Another great article by @francesryan.bsky.social that I wish she didn’t have to write. Also, there is zero benefit about ‘benefits’ - it’s the most misleading name for minimal state support accessed through a morally bankrupt and dehumanizing system that is not fit for purpose.

After feeling (totally unnecessarily) grumpy that everyone seems to have their Christmas trees up already, and despite having cracked into mince pies already myself, I clearly needed this lovely article from my mate Alom this morning…

Great list to follow for anyone interested in hybrid writing. I can also recommend Tania’s Unbox Your Words on Substack if you’re a writer looking for inspiration and fellow hybrid travellers to share thoughts with.