Eric Glover
@dolichon.bsky.social
Astronomy, classics, London. My book on Hipparchus now published.
Analemma and Equation of Time in one image.
Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans@astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 11h agoNASA picture of the day today is a real 🏴beauty! This is a composite image of the ~5000yo Callanish Stones on the Isle of Lewis. The amazing Giuseppe Petricca has only gone and photographed the Sun at noon there, every few days, for a whole year. #Dedication 🔭🧪👌 ℹ️: science.nasa.gov/image-articl...
Somebody in Nato, Denmark or Greenland seems to have spotted that telling Trump he can have an enormous victory + then offering him the status quo of the last 25-50-75 years is an off-ramp
Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 2d agoTrump: "We will immediately begin the process of developing a large Military presence in the appropriate part of Greenland, of which there are many"
If the govt doesn't call this (& higher gilt yields) the Trump tax, then it is simply failing. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
UK inflation pushed up by petrol and diesel price rises
Summer holidays and disruption to global oil supplies by the Middle East conflict stoked price growth.
bbc.co.uk
Bit tangential, but I recently asked Copilot to summarise a paper of mine on Herodotus. It correctly picked out a number of key points, but, amusingly, got the basic conclusion completely wrong.
Liv Mariah Yarrow (will not "cheat like hell")@profyarrow.bsky.social · last wk.I attended a small group discussion on the utility of LLMs in research for classicists at @thegraduatecenter.bsky.social yesterday. Biggest take away: always check the results! Other points new(ish) to me in thread. 1/
Maybe unpopular view: the Igs have run their course, have now become too famous (Igbait papers are definitely a thing), and should be quietly retired. Otherwise there's a risk they'll hang about like a famous comedian whose shtick seemed hilarious when you were in your teens and has not aged well.
Markus Eichhorn@markuseichhorn.bsky.social · last wk.I wasn't aware of this: the 'stepping-on-snakes' paper was retracted following ethics concerns. Even Ig Nobels need to follow standards in research practice.
Indeed, we fall for language every time (cf. Stroop effect). Weizenbaum demonstrated this in the 60s with ELIZA, even though its capabilities were tiny compared with LLMs.
Anthony Moser@anthonymoser.com · last wk.this is, I think, one of the inherent problems with LLMs using natural language interfaces: they are a statistical tool *that looks like* a logical tool statistical approaches can be a useful way to find related information! BUT for it to be useful you have to *know that's what it's doing*
Well ok, but can you expect universities to employ people who understand numbers and evidence?
Dan Neidle@danneidle.bsky.social · last wk.Universities UK wants the government to scrap employer National Insurance for everyone under 25. It doesn’t say what that would cost. Or how many jobs it would create. So we did the maths: £6–7bn a year, or £60-100k for every additional job. A 🧵 on dumb tax policy.
If you think sticky notes are a modern era invention.... this one dates from the 1560s! Found today in a Worshipful Company of Vintners accounts book. The Vintners received its first Royal Charter in 1363 and managed the import, regulation & sale of wine. Today it supports many causes.
On this day 7th Sept 1838 Grace Darling and her father rescued sailors from from the shipwrecked Forfarshire Artist: John Berry
Good Qs and worth reading but the answers can be broadly summed up as: "Me? A Conservative? You must have me confused with someone else."
Jim Waterson@jim.londoncentric.media · 2w agoJames Cleverly makes his introductory pitch to London Centric readers on why he should be mayor... whether Brexit was good for London... whether the capital really is a crime-ridden hellhole... and whether he wrote his message to Londoners using ChatGPT... www.londoncentric.media/p/james-clev...
It’s the 49th anniversary of the launch of Voyager 1 today, so here’s a pedantic but mercifully short thread about a famous quote attached to the event
Odd This Day@oddthisday.bsky.social · last yr.As it’s the 48th anniversary of the launch of Voyager 1, it’s time to celebrate Carl Sagan saying that the record on board should contain some Bach, were it not for the fact that “that would just be showing off”. Except he didn’t. Someone else did...
The core of the Milky Way rising over the waters of Church Bay, Bermuda, last week. #astrophotography
Did you know you can see the planets during the day? This is Saturn, photographed 11 minutes after sunrise on 11 June 2021 from Monterrey, Mexico. At the time, Saturn was 1,346,765,000 km from Earth, or about 75 light-minutes away. Credit: Daniel Borja
A spokesman for WaterBastard™️ said: “We are currently working hard to create superb value for shareholders”
Village spells out ‘help us’ with plastic bottles as nearly 2,000 homes still without water
A community has spelt out “help us” with thousands of two-litre plastic bottles as disruption to water supplies continues after almost a week.
kentonline.co.uk
Love the idea of being a thought leader.
Richard Van Noorden@richvn.bsky.social · last mo.Dean of Science at Stellenbosch University writes that although AI generates almost all the words for his articles (including this one): "AI did almost all of the writing. I remain the expert and the thought leader behind the piece." www.nature.com/articles/d44...
Also most likely to fall victim to Triffids, so that’s a bonus.
Luke Tryl@luketryl.bsky.social · last mo.Among our segments Dissenting Disruptors who watched the eclipse were by far the most likely to say they looked at the sun directly.
This stopped me in my tracks. An independent study by @qmul.bsky.social has found that after ULEZ was introduced, children’s lungs grew faster in Central London and have now caught up with children outside of the capital. Incredible.
Queen Mary University of London@qmul.bsky.social · last mo.Air pollution stunts children’s lung growth. New Queen Mary research found that improvements in air quality after the introduction of London’s ULEZ are associated with accelerated lung growth in children. Read more: shorturl.at/Jx86o
Every time I see "Roman telescope" in my feed, the ancient science guy inside me goes "Wait -- what?"
Didn't turn up to meet the Count, either. I'll get my coat.
Sky News@news.sky.com · last mo.'He called this by-election and he's not turning up to the count'
Having fun with the colander approach to eclipse watching today in #Coventry with @robjlow.bsky.social #eclipse #eclipse2026 #SolarEclipse
