Lovely thread on a particular piece of weak work published by Nature.
Research will be better off when we stop automatically ascribing high quality to Nature papers. Some are good and, in my field at least, some are very poor and ill-thought out. At its core Nature is more a magazine than a journal
Ah yes, I agree that's the mechanism. It doesn't alter the fact that they can't spell or capitalise his name correctly, even though it is a valid name of someone born *in the UK*.
[At least they didn't just anglicise it to death though!]
100%. Sometimes that will involve the private sector, sometimes it won't: whatever works. As you say, the key is to be outcomes focused. Right now we are process-focused (i.e. the primary goal is to involve the private sector).
The US just doesn't seem to want any friends at the moment. It seems really .. grumpy? That's the only word I can think of for it.
Ah right: yeah ground source is surprisingly expensive. Or maybe it's not surprising - I certainly don't know enough about the challenges. In any case it's hard to make it pay for itself, at least on small scales.
That much? Hmm. Solar should cost somewhere between 5k and 10k (they're the quotes I have seen recently).
Surely a zero percent upfront loan covering 100% of the costs is a good way forward, no? Seems quite cheap for the State too.
And still the legal system of that country can't spell, or even capitalise, his name correctly 🤷♂️ There's just such a distance to be travelled in the relations between the British and Ireland.
Oh I wanna see the data on that one! If the heating energy is the same then it seems odd to use as much energy in an A rated house - you would just be much too warm. Of course cooking/washing will not change with BER. As others have said, solar won't decrease energy usage - just carbon and price.
Wow. Have the US and Israel really lost this war that quickly?
www.theguardian.com/world/2026/m...
Thankfully we have a fair amount of wind and some solar insulating us to some extent. But why not get energy independence? We have that possibility, once we decide to have that ambition!
www.theguardian.com/business/202...
Does Ireland have a moral obligation to Irish immigrants (expats is such a racist term) in the middle east? So many are there to avoid paying tax in Ireland, so why do Irish taxpayers need to bail them out? I mean, we do have an obligation, but it's a curious one
www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2026...
I feel it's more of a US crisis or maybe a US-Israel crisis, no? Certainly leaving the US out of the framing in the headline seems a bit biased @irishtimes.com
Emmmmm ... globalised markets ... win some, lose some
Do you mean both of the US carriers? Or some Iranian drone carriers?
Not quite: Irish citizens resident in the UK are also allowed to vote: a quirk of the CTA. British citizens resident in Ireland are allowed to vote in Irish elections also.
Not really sure of the value of those provisions, but they're there.
Well now…
Yeah, sorry, I didn't express myself well. Learning to the test is fine - as long as the test is sufficiently unpredictable.
As things stand most universities do make past papers available (even when I was in college they were available). However, they are set by lecturers so it doesn't quite end up being teaching-to-the-test, but there's a lot of learning-to-the-test.
You mean past papers ought not be available?
I'm interested in knowing other folks' opinion on this: what do you think the pros and cons of universities making past exam papers available to students?
For me: one sample exam paper should be made available, but that's it. It seems to me that anything else encourages studying only to the exam
Nuclear (fission) power is *slow* to get to market. About 20 yrs ago I was in favour of Ireland exploring it, but it's too late for that now.
Nice illustration of the fact that business owners frequently don't know a lot about their market: they know enough to make profit, but that doesn't necessarily mean knowing a lot.
The next time business owners in Dublin complain about plans to make the city nicer we'll hopefully keep this in mind
I totally agree: one cannot solve a problem without clearly stating it. If no one has done that so far, then doing it is clearly a critical contribution to knowledge.
Bringing in a model for building houses that works will upset developers and landowners a lot - a tiny minority of the population. Not bringing in a working model will lose our democracy for us
www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2026...
Are you interested in protoplanetary disk substructures and their role in planet formation? Come to our session at the EAS meeting this year! Abstract submission is open until March 2nd! More info: eas.unige.ch/EAS_meeting/...
I appeared as an expert witness before the Joint Committee on AI at the Houses of Oireachtas (parliament of Ireland) to discuss "AI: truth and democracy" this morning. You can read my opening statement here: www.oireachtas.ie/en/publicati...
The whole debacle in the UK (not Epstein - specifically the fallout) seems relatively unimportant - great entertainment though!
A very eye-opening follow-up: the account owner openly admits they were posting hateful content simply to develop, and monetise, a big TikTok account bsky.app/profile/jim....
Thanks for using the image for Ireland (rather than Ireland + Britain): makes it an easier read
