Richard Irvine

@emmacrewe.bsky.social Hiya, do you know who's convening the seminars this year?

Tankie fuckwit

"Do you support genocide" asks the fucking Stalinist.

Are you and @profdanhicks.bsky.social familiar with one another? Seems like you should be

Indeed; I looked it up; "If, in the opinion of Council, the conduct of any Fellow... is injurious to the character or interests of the Society.." etc. The President's statement moves the goalposts; but in a farcical way because it pretends Musk's appointment was something other than PR.

So it makes no sense to talk about "values that allow science to flourish" when those weren't the grounds on which he was made FRS. He was appointed BECAUSE of his public profile. So how he uses that public profile is absolutely salient to whether he should be fellow. The Royal Society are cowards.

...He's a celebrity recipient because people in institutions like the Royal Society aren't immune to wanting to cling onto relevance/ influence/ stay where the money is/ boast that they met celebs...

This sort of argument might make logical sense if talking about someone who got the FRS based on their scientific work but then turned out to be a twat (e.g. Crick being a creepy eugenicist). But it flounders here because you can't pretend Musk was given a FRS because of scientific merit...

Think they're based in Brussels these days? Not as exotic sadly.

I like Altan Gobi but the last time I was there I discovered that Sengur were making a wheatbeer and that has become my favourite Mongolian beer

"it was all just too polite."

I absolutely agree with this review of the 2025 Liverpool Biennial, which left me quite underwhelmed and honestly a bit disheartened.

We shouldn't be so harsh on them, it keeps the prices low for the customer. I mean, you can't charge the bargain price of €102 for a book if you're going to pay for cover art.

Yep, I had already disconnected from it because it was 99% bots and bullshit. Let's not forget how frequently it was breaking down in the year after the takeover. Ethics and politics is one thing; but X is just a terrible platform from a design point of view. Why would I waste my time there?

Joke of a University

1813 a Great Auk killed at Papa Westray, Orkney, the penultimate Great Auk record for Britain. Which Miss Traill was kind enough to send Mr. Bullock the specimen for his London Museum?

www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/wor...

It's so awful on every level I can't help but feel that it's a Swiftian satire that pushes the position to its extreme conclusion precisely to show how morally repugnant it is. Right? Right...? Surely?

Danny Kruger's book Covenant was a deeply thoughtful outline of the post-liberal position (not to say I agreed with it all). Disappointing that he's thrown it in the bin & defected to Farage's grifters, who have no interest in a "renewed social contract", only divide and rule for personal enrichment

I used to spend my summers working in construction in Ireland and... yes. That's my recollection of it. It just rains.

I think one of the key differences is that this place is not algorithmically led. I have no doubt that people have said morally dubious things in the wake of Kirk being shot, but they're not on my timeline; whereas X's algo elevated and pushed extreme views onto my timeline hour by hour.

A key theme of today's ritual is to recall the generations who fought for Gibraltar's existence, and to communicate that sense of belonging for future generations. Here are two flags flown at the National Day rally that give a sense of the lively development of Gibraltarian national identity today.

Happy Gibraltar National Day!
Today commemorates the sovereignty referendum of 1967, when the people of Gibraltar voted to reject Franco and retain their British sovereignty. Wonderful to be back on fieldwork here.

It's amazing how precisely Tuchel conforms to the typical character of an FA coach/ England manager: an infantilising boss reliant on yes men, allergic to flair players, setting teams up to underwhelm with a negative style of play.

And yet:
"'Look how absurd I was when I was young' forestalls cruel criticism, but it falsifies history... Those emotions were real when we felt them. Why should we be more ashamed of them than of the indifference of old age"-Graham Greene, A Sort of Life (which I read during that stay in Gibraltar)

Reading over the fieldnotes for my undergraduate dissertation research in Gibraltar - 22 years ago (!) - before heading out there again for National Day and a short bit of fieldwork.

Still the best fieldnotes I've written but it's hard not to cringe at the po-faced scrawlings of youth.

Hard to explain the impact of this deeply personal work by @wildtwin.bsky.social. There's a sadness to it, no doubt, but in the afterglow I felt uplifted and the Liverpool streets seemed full of mystery and promise again. Well worth seeing for anyone who's in town.

Right. Of course people do overrun and there need to be allowances for that. And the wider tenor of American policy in this area is chilling, that goes without saying. But the idea that their PhD programmes by design require >4 years has always seemed crazy to me.

I just looked up what a labubu is and I'm going to have nightmares. Creepy little things.

Yer da paints roundabouts

A life-sized bronze statue has been unveiled on the island of Papa Westray, Orkney, in memory of the last known Great Auk Pinguinus impennis killed there in 1813. The statue is an exact replica of the preserved remains of the bird, which are held by the Natural History Museum.

That is a very good way of looking at it. Nice to think that we might have gained some benefit, however small, for participating in what is so plainly a wrong turning for humanity.