Gav Roberts

Clear out toys now!

Love being reminded to do this every year. It's a win/win all round

Around a quarter of the world's population are affected by insomnia. Sleepless Planet is the result of Maureen Burdock's investigations into the causes. It's going to help a lot of folk. @psupress.bsky.social

theslingsandarrows.com/sleepless-pl...

James Watson, dead at 97, was a scientific legend and a pariah among his peers James Watson, the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA who died Thursday at 97, was a scientific legend and a pariah among his peers.

A Sharon Begley byline, almost 5 years after her death.

Upon hearing the news James Watson had died, a STAT reporter said in our Slack, "I wish I could read what Sharon would have written."

Incredible news: Sharon in fact did pre-write a Watson obit. And it is masterful and excoriating.
🧪🧬🧫

Land for the People (Scotland) Bill - Land Matters Introduction This blog introduces my proposals for a comprehensive Land Reform Bill - one that goes far further than existing proposals in reforming Scotland’s land governance. I plan to publish furth...

Folk often ask me what I would do by way of land reform legislation. Have a read of this blog to find out. It seems pointless to do much further detailed work since there is so little appetite for such measures andywightman.scot/2023/12/land...

Comic con today included trying to explain the concept of a rom com to a Dalek

One of these rich dudes invested in a food company with all proceeds going to kids in need. The other started Sundance Institute, boosting the lives of countless artists. Hey modern rich dudes, don't be a typical greedy AI crypto-prick, be like these two.

The photo shows four images of the same Roman iron stylus pen, one below the other. The knib to the left. It has an inscription which runs along its length on four sides. The four images show the four lines of inscribed text which read: ‘ab urbe v[e]n[i] munus tibi gratum adf(e)ro
acul[eat]um ut habe[a]s memor[ia]m nostra(m)
rogo si fortuna dar[e]t quo possem
largius ut longa via ceu sacculus est (v)acuus’ ‘I have come from the City. I bring you a welcome gift with a sharp point that you may remember me.
I ask, if fortune allowed, that I might be able (to give) as generously as the way is long (and) as my purse is empty.’ The pen was used to write on wax-filled wooden writing tablets. Found in London (Roman ‘Londinium’) by MOLA. Photo by Juan Jose Fuldain/MOLA

Timeless humour!

A 2,000 year-old Roman souvenir pen with a joke inscription roughly equivalent to:

“I went to Rome and all I got you was this cheap pen!" 😂

Dated circa 70 AD, this iron stylus pen was recovered in London during excavations by MOLA.
📷 Juan Jose Fuldain/MOLA

#Archaeology

Photo of an Ancient Egyptian artists’s small, naturalistic painting of a standing hippopotamus on a flake of white limestone, dated c. 1479–1425. The hippo is painted in profile with head lowered and to the right. The body is outlined with black paint and painted brown. The belly, eyes, and ears are painted red. Although the ancient Egyptians were well aware of the danger and destructive power of hippos, this painted hippo has rather a friendly face! Dimensions: H. 10.8 cm (4 1/4 in); W. 12 cm (4 3/4 in); Th. 1.7 cm (11/16 in) Egyptian artists made practice sketches on flakes of limestone, sometimes for use as templates when transferring an image to the wall of a tomb or a temple. Limestone flakes were readily available because of the constant construction of temples and rock-cut tombs. A number of such sketches were recovered at Deir el-Bahri during the 1922-23 MMA excavations. This painting was acquired by the museum in the division of finds.

Artist’s painting of a hippo on a flake of limestone 🦛❤️

Perhaps a practice sketch, or just for the joy of painting 3,500 years ago!

From Deir el-Bahri, Thebes, Egypt, c. 1479–1425 BC. 📷 The Met www.metmuseum.org/art/collecti...

#Archaeology

Briefing: the sorry state of the UK asylum system - Free Movement In this briefing we will take a look at what is really going on with the main features of the contemporary asylum system: arrivals, the backlog, detention,

New from Free Movement: Briefing: the sorry state of the UK asylum system | Colin Yeo
freemovement.org.uk/briefing-the...

The shift away from Google and Microsoft will surely gain momentum in the next few years... I'd be strongly in favor of the EU subsidizing open source alternatives to all this enshittification
www.zdnet.com/article/the-...

This is so good.

These are my favourite kinds of artefacts and art - things that are ridiculously old (at the top end this is closing in on 6000 years old) but it has so much soul and whimsy. Look at its little feet!

Almost 6,000 years and we're still the same. We have always made silly little things.

You may not have seen In. by New Yorker cartoonist Will McPhail. Take a look. It's a charming look at someone navigating modern life handicapped by being all broadcast with no reception.
theslingsandarrows.com/in/

Racing car taking a corner with trackside banners for Zoom all over the place

Good to see Formula 1 management employing subtitles at races 👍

Huge and happy congrats to this brilliant ensemble of finalists!

@yarntheory.bsky.social
@edenrobins.bsky.social
@nghivo.bsky.social
@andreahairston.bsky.social
@margaret.bsky.social
@vajra.me
@vandroidhelsing.bsky.social
@nalohop.bsky.social

Never been a huge fan of VR (probably just my age) - so I do like this description “cultural academic Keren Zaiontx coined a sharp term for our consumption of immersive entertainment: “narcissistic soectatorship” via New Scientist …

It’s True: The JAWS Shark is Public Domain A story with legal drama, a mystery, snow leopards, and, uh, naughty bits.

The Jaws image, you know the one, is and it turns out always has been public domain.

And when I see fascinating Jaws info I immediately think of @pftompkins.bsky.social

cc: @ferociousj.bsky.social

ironicsans.ghost.io/how-the-jaws...

Graph of petrol prices over time in absolute and real terms

⛽️ Petrol is the cheapest it’s been in real terms since 2001, but no govt has gotten credit for freezing fuel duties. 1. It’s an implicit carbon subsidy - so much for Net Zero - and 2. it penalises city-dwellers.
Excellent piece from @tomcalver.bsky.social here: www.thetimes.com/comment/colu...

Oooh, you mean it's OK to leave, realise it's a mistake, then rejoin? 😉

Love, Misha is an extraordinarily confident and accomplished first graphic novel from a creator with the world at their feet. A non-binary teen goes on a journey of discovery with their mother. @surmulefyr.bsky.social @01firstsecond.bsky.social
theslingsandarrows.com/love-misha/

Hear bloody hear

Latest show from @wohnensound.bsky.social today (Thursday 8th) and on demand on @resonancefm.bsky.social mixcloud channel

Because no one spends as much on science as the US does, destroying NIH, NSF, NOAA, NASA, EPA, USDA, USGS, etc. is leading to a brain drain, but it's not to other countries but rather from science. This senseless destruction of US science will hurt the US and the world for a very long time.

@cerysmatthews.bsky.social its the sort of thing you may have featured already. If not, please look at Selina Wisnom (uni of Leicester) book “The Library of Ancient Wisdom” about the amazing lost library of Mesopotamia. Clay tablets that were preserved by the very act of the library being burnt.

modems screaming at us in the 90s was a warning and we didn't take it

Entirely this: I’d add that being serious about climate change is a hygiene factor for many voters. In not a single UK constituency does concern about climate drop below 50% - hitting 68% in Clacton. There’s a debate on the ‘how’ and particularly how to do it fairly but much less on the principle.

More than a century before the mobile phone, a #Victorian love poem using #textspeak. See two even earlier examples here: https://publicdomainreview.org/collections/nineteenth-century-textspeak/

A duck that has become ungovernable.

This duck has decided to make her nest in the middle of the main tourist footbridge, in defiance of all gods and reason.

The town has ceded to her. We regulate around her. She is the highest authority. Please Do Not Feed Her.