Daniel Villar
@daniel-a-villar.bsky.social
Conservation biologist and behavioural ecologist. Treasurer of Scientists for Labour. Postdoc at @durhamanthropology.bsky.social, DPhil from @biology.ox.ac.uk
A fundamental study on the compositional resolution of the marine fossil record. What range of time scales are represented in typical fossil samples? "TA [Time Averaging]... scaled proportionally with ...an inverse of sediment accumulation rate" www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... 🧪⚒️ #Geology #Paleobio
Besides the point of the article but I confess it’s discombobulating to see a rather nasty nationalist phenomenon I pretty much exclusively assign to my time in Esh Winning in front of my 1st year doctoral flat
Oxford Clarion@oxfordclarion.bsky.social · yesterdayLeaders of flag-raising group Raise the Colours Oxfordshire placed trackers on highway workers’ cars to find out their home addresses, the High Court has heard. RTC then attempted to intimidate the highway staff into no longer removing flags by repeating their addresses to them.
Reminds me of a line from (I think) Stuart Macintyre’s Concise History of Australia, that Chifley was voted out in 1949 due to the resentment over high petrol prices by people who couldn’t afford a bus fare when he’d entered office
James Austin@jamesdaustin.bsky.social · yesterdayYep, the great weakness of social democracy is that it works. Its gains are taken for granted and the collective responsibility it demands can be resented by those it emancipates. It ends up defending what it creates rather than looking forward. Not sure we have a good solution here
My cordon sanitaire, it is very sick
Hugh Brechin@hughrbrechin.bsky.social · yesterdayI did assume that this was a case of a local organisation having totally lost the plot, but Kemi Badenoch is now forcefully and explicitly defending the selection of a former neo-Nazi with a significant criminal history as a candidate. Crackers and terrifying.
Glad someone senior from the sector is pushing back. Labour MPs need to understand the serious real anger from graduates and the people who produce them. And the dangerous financial situation they have allowed to fester, or indeed worsened, in one of Britain’s leading sectors.
Labour has harmed universities as much as Trump, London School of Economics head says
LSE vice-chancellor Larry Kramer points to domestic student fees freeze, international student limits and rise in employers’ national insurance
ft.com
A rogue company that’s using its reach to destabilise liberal democracies the world over. Should be banned yesterday
BeijingPalmer@beijingpalmer.bsky.social · 5d agoreading the Southport Inquiry into the murder of 3 little girls (+ injury/trauma to many more), and the murderer's online history, and it's noticeable that they literally single out X as the only institution/company that refused to cooperate.
When I went to Oxford (!) for uni a decade ago Tories held 1 of the city’s constituencies. Now they don’t even have an MP anyplace in Oxfordshire.
Glen O'Hara@gsoh31.bsky.social · 5d agoThe way the Tories just shrug and go 'oh well we got absolutely obliterated in a huge city, that's not our patch'... Incomprehensible to Tories through most of the c19th and c20th. They've got to snap out of it.
I know localism is very popular within the party atm, but this is fundamentally why I’m still sceptical of it. Much as I wish we lived in an age of robust local communities, I fear that for most people it’s easier to learn about national and international than the local in politics
Jennifer Williams@jenwilliamsft.bsky.social · 5d agoA bit on something that’s worrying me as.ft.com/r/9fe0cfe2-f...
It's obviously a minor element in the wider racism/sexism of this bloke, but the fact that he's single-handily stopped CalMac offering tours of the ferry bridge is exceptional shithousery. Actively sapping the joy from children. We do need to bring back the stocks for people like this.
Michael@michaeljsc.bsky.social · 5d agoActually quite angry reading this. I know it’s a bit passé to talk about “why don’t politicians crack down on people not using headphones on the bus” but I think we do need to reckon with platforms that incentivise people to completely disregard the norms of civil society and get away with it.
My boiling hot take on this is that, if tech companies are going to fund this kind of research (looking at Schmidt too), then the money needs to be given *no strings* to an independent arm's length research body, pooled with other funding, and treated as a donation not as direct funding.
Hetan Shah@hetanshah.bsky.social · 5d agoAnthropic AI research fund offers $5m - $30m for social science research on themes of AI impact on workers; transition initiatives; income support; building worker stakes; and wider evidence on public investments. Total fund of $200m available www.anthropic.com/news/economi...
Looking at great-grandparents, all of my great grandmothers were housewives; so amongst the men it’s: - Journalist - Consular officer - Physician - Gambler
John C@badsocialism.bsky.social · 6d agoI mean if we roll the side it's 12% chance of lawyer (Ireland) and an 88% chance of subsistence farmer (Ireland and Trinidad) so, erm
More to the point, this is happening in *non-white* countries as well: Japan, Turkey, and India have huge far-right nativist blocs. So it's not merely white supremacy or nostalgia for the days when the West ruled. Nor is it happening purely in developed post-material countries.
Sam@samd.bsky.social · last wk.what’s going on with the world man. why is the far right resurgent everywhere? it’s easy to blame whatever policy boogeyman (neoliberalism, housing shortage, immigration, etc etc) but I think it has to be something deeper. maybe lived memory is dying out of how evil fascism is
Like humans, monkeys likely use symbolic features to encode geometric shapes, such as symmetry, parallelism, and right angles. Geometric intuition may be the latest trait that turns out not to be unique to humans after all. In PNAS: https://ow.ly/rAwU50Zto10
I do wonder to what degree this fact hasn’t entered people’s heads stems from how much more concentrated urban our vote is in the south, making the south look a lot less red than the north on a map
Edward@fornbirkibeinn.bsky.social · last wk.There are more Labour held seats in Kent than in County Durham. There are more Labour held seats in Berkshire than in Cumbria.
Attacks on university research will not spare the Hard Sciences™
Carl T. Bergstrom@carlbergstrom.com · 2w ago2. Remarkably, given how universally unpopular this would be, the intent seems accept the ruination of US health and medical research as collateral damage.
EARLY VIEW in IBIS Museum specimens reveal ecological and morphological differences between North and South Island Kōkako (Passeriformes, Callaeidae) | onlinelibrary.wiley.... Ana B. Navarro et al | #ornithology
I did IB, so not representative: For literature in translation: Crime and Punishment — absolutely loved it Don Quixote — really enjoyed it 100 Year of Solitude — I’d already read it in Spanish English stuff: Great Gatsby - didn’t like it much The Sun also Rises - I don’t like Hemingway much
Tenebrous Press@tenebrouspress.bsky.social · 2y agoUS and UK friends, I'm curious: What books were part of your required reading for highschool literature class? Which of them do you remember loving, and which did you loathe?
The Tories have decided that their 2024 coalition was too broad, and they’ll be damned if they ever win Tunbridge Wells or Henley again
James Heale@jaheale.bsky.social · 2w agoExc: Grant Shapps believed to be one of at least 10 ex Tory MPs who have failed their assessments as Badenoch overhauls selection process spectator.com/article/gran...
It's driving me insane. The govt spends £1.4 trillion a year. Borrowing estimates are often by tens of billions over a year. But we're supposed to imagine money is budgeted to the last penny.
Karl Whelan@karlwhelan.bsky.social · 2w agoChrist almighty. The British obsession with itemized “pay fors” for everything is insane. This is just really not how fiscal policy or government works anywhere functional.
We must remember the Utøya massacre, and remember it for what it was: a far-right attack specifically targeted against democratic socialist activists. Today, the ideologies of its perpetrator are openly espoused by a global network of nationalist oligarchs as they wage war on democratic societies.
Roberta Metsola@president.europarl.europa.eu · 2w agoFifteen years ago today, 77 lives were taken - most of them young - on an island that should have been a place of summer, friendship, and first ideas about the world they wanted to build. On that day, Norway grieved, and Europe grieved with it. Utøya. Oslo. We remember.
Not sure enough attention has been paid to the fact our DESNZ secretary is a refugee who escaped a brutal civil war to be welcomed and to excel, in the UK. A very real symbol of what Britain can be when it welcomes people - and how refugees can contribution hugely to our nation.
At some point someone in government has to turn around to the police and say "how are the public meant to take you seriously if you constantly find excuses not to do your jobs"
Crowsa Luxemburg@quendergeer.bsky.social · 2w agoyou can literally commit any crime you want if you're in a car
If confirmed Miatta Fahnbulleh as Energy+Net Zero Secretary, Angela Eagle as Environment Secretary, and Jonathan Reynolds as Business Secretary is good news for the green economy. Strong signal of both support for ambitious reforms and continuity around some of the better parts of the govt's agenda.
Great fun to present some of my findings on drivers of the length of bird sex in the largest auditorium I’ve ever presented in at @isbe2026.bsky.social #ISBE2026 #behavioural_ecology #ornithology
And with that, 89 years of Tab exclusion from No. 10 comes to an end
Many will be rightly horrified by this philistine policy by the Trump admin, but bear in mind that the underlying logic, that HE exists solely for aggrandising pelf, also undergirds HE policy in many supposedly more enlightened countries here in Europe, including in the U.K.
NPR@npr.org · 2w agoIf an undergraduate program's graduates don't earn more than workers who never went to college, that program could be cut off from federal student loans. But is a degree just about making more money?
This is a pan-occidental phenomenon. Whether it be Reform voters in the Red Wall, Trump voters in the rust belt, AfD voters in Ost, RN voters in Calais, or Vox voters in Andalusia, there seems to be an agreement that these represent the true and noble people of the country and can’t be criticised
Faine Greenwood@faineg.bsky.social · 3w agoThere really is a Noble Savage attitude among some American liberals and leftists towards white red state voters, yeah.
While I broadly think this is a marginal policy in both directions... ... its a hell of a signal to foreground it as he is and combined with Mahmood + wider signalling is a hell of a set of gifts to give to the Greens immediately.
Ellie Mae O'Hagan@elliemaeohagan.bsky.social · 3w agoHow did drilling in the north sea, a policy that has relatively no advantages whatsoever, become some kind of test of political seriousness? www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
