Aris Dacanalis

When the memorandum (a behemoth of a bill) was being passed in an emergency midnight session in parliament, he was the only MP that was absent (not ill). He had gone to his holiday home on the island of Aegina when the rest of parliament was voting the most humiliating bill in modern Greek history.

‘Conservation Volunteers Needed' overlaid on an image of a document being conserved.

Do you have a steady hand and an eye for detail? We're looking for volunteers to help us with our conservation work! This is an exciting opportunity to help us look after the past for generations to come.

If you're interested, get in touch at archives@buckinghamshire.gov.uk

The British library is in crisis: why does nobody care? The widespread indifference to the British Library's crippling cyberattack demonstrates a perilous failure to value the knowledge infrastructure vital for national prosperity

I’ve written a piece on the curious lack of media and political interest in the issues faced by our national @britishlibrary.bsky.social. This is strange given we live in a world where ideas, knowledge and research are a long-term source of innovation and insight
www.cityam.com/the-british-...

Atkinson Hyperlegible Font - Braille Institute Read easier with Atkinson Hyperlegible Font, crafted for low-vision readers. Download for free and enjoy clear letters and numbers on your computer!

periodic reminder of the existence of Atkinson Hyperlegible, a free font available from the Braille Institute designed to improve readability for people with low vision

I use it in talks because it's pretty and also because, as an audience member, I am perpetually squinting at people's slides

Sheriff Gordon - the Joker has escaped from Arkham!

But in theory what you emit depends on what you absorb - so is it a case of it emits everything anyway but only some wavelengths survive at certain altitudes because the others get scattered?

But why? How does the O2 concentration affect the wavelength? Whats the Physics?

Aurora color guide! What creates the different shades?

Different atoms getting "excited" at different altitudes

The bright reds are a sign of a particularly intense event

Academics in Assyria in the 7th c BC complain that admin is preventing them from doing research and teaching

Fellow parents! Carers! Anyone looking after children over half-term! Here is a thread of videos showing TOYS you can MAKE at home from scrap stuff you probably have lying around. First, the utterly delightful "balancing bird" alomshaha.com/balancing-bi...

every sports team is a Ship of Theseus

Greeks still buy “mataki”=“little eye” pendants as wearables or,
, larger sized ones for the entire house. They ward off the “evil eye”. There is also a little prayer you can recite for someone else to banish it and a “litmus test” of sorts involving olive oil to determine if one is under its effect

Amazing how setting up your #microsoft authenticator account with an organisation requires logging in with your org. credentials, followed by… two-factor authentication using… you guessed it: the authenticator account which you are trying to set up in the first place. Catch-22. *slow clapping*

We got the call

Love these. I single out Sommerfeld as a modern grandad of Nobel laureates of the past century

If you don’t teach your students your subject, you’re not doing your job.

If you teach your students to ask AI first, you’re ensuring they’ll never be *needed* for any job.

You’re also guaranteeing that knowledge of your subject slowly dies.

Asking ChatGPT is gaining neither knowledge nor skills.

Any last minute free spaces? Eventbrite says sales ended atm

photo of paulina borsook

1/ A longtime Wired editor just wrote a mush-brained essay about how he totally missed the political rot of Silicon Valley (& still doesn't get it).

But in the late 1990s, a Wired journalist warned of a toxic ideology bubbling up from tech. Paulina Borsook has largely been erased. Let's change that

Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin ✨ figured out what stars are made of ✨ when she was just 25. 🔭🧪

Her PhD thesis basically established the Harvard astro department — at a time when Harvard didn't officially allow woman students.

I wrote this little profile to mark the 100th anniversary of her thesis:

Top #Equinox fact: Today is the day that the Sun rises due East and sets due West.

At the December solstice the sun rises in the South East. At the June solstice it rises in the North East. As the days pass between the two, the sunrise position slowly changes passing due East each equinox.👇🤩 🔭🧪

Dear @ukri.org,

I think JJ Thomson nailed the perils of having Government agencies use “clear eyes” to decide where to focus research funding to maximise benefit to society. 🧪

(www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-v...)

A close up of a medieval manuscript showing St John the Baptist pointing at a lamb. He's looking particularly haggard.

The archive's Community Engagement Officer looking similarly tired. He is in one of the archive's strongrooms, wearing an orange shirt. He is a white man with long brown hair and a short ginger beard.

Spot the difference: John the Baptist from the Hours of Joanna I of Castile and our Community Engagement Officer remembering how many emails he has to respond to

How does lava sound when it comes to the surface of the Earth? Listen to a lava flow oozing out of its effusive vent high on the southwestern side of #Etna, 28 August 2025. That day no visits by tourists were allowed on the site, which permitted this (relatively) clean recording

A white protoplanetary disc at the centre of the picture takes up most of the frame. The elliptical cloud of dust and gas consists of some gaps creating a ring-like structure to the cloud. In one of the larger gaps/rings a little dot (a planet) is visible.

A very hungry planet! 🪐

What appears to be a ripple in space is actually a newborn planet, eating its way through its dusty cradle around a younger version of our Sun 🌞

Read more: https://www.eso.org/public/images/potw2534a/

🔭 🧪 #exoplanets
📷 ESO/R. van Capelleveen et al.

This is one of the most beautiful things I have witnessed, the craft here is impeccable.

Northumbria, 9th c.AD. “WHAT DO YOU MEAN, YOU LOST IT”… “I guess I must have dropped it while riding”. “DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW MUCH IT COST”

At 17, Hannah Cairo Solved a Major Math Mystery | Quanta Magazine After finding the homeschooling life confining, the teen petitioned her way into a graduate class at Berkeley, where she ended up disproving a 40-year-old conjecture.

Delightful story about a 17-year-old homeschooler who disproved the 40-year-old Mizohata-Takeuchi conjecture. She decided to apply straight to graduate school, skipping the rest of high school and college. When she finishes, a PhD will be her first degree.

Honestly, this 8.8-mag quake and tsunami seems a fabulous demonstration of the capabilities that the US, Japan, and others have marshalled to protect their citizens.

This doesn't just exist. It has to be built and maintained.

I see grocery/takeout shaming discourse going around again, so this is your periodic historian reminder that cooking from scratch daily while working has never been sustainable, and for millennia everyone either relied on takeout & restaurants or ate in huge households w/ big dorm-like group dining.

Will it be enough to stop the predictable clickbait antics about a SN every time it dims, precisely like it has done for the last few decades ? My gut feeling says no…