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Hugh Pumphrey @hughpumphrey.bsky.social · 7h

SNP and @scottishgreens.org will take your vote as meaning that you are mad for independence, even if you are not. (Disclaimer: I am not pro-independence.)

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Hugh Pumphrey @hughpumphrey.bsky.social · 8h

Hwaet the fuck?

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Hugh Pumphrey @hughpumphrey.bsky.social · 8h

Maybe the second last, to become the last if I retire ahead of you. (Actually, this semester I do not teach in a room with a chronic overrunner teaching the previous hour. But I know who they are. . . )

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Hugh Pumphrey @hughpumphrey.bsky.social · 9h

Point made in the past by me and others: bsky.app/profile/hugh...

Hugh Pumphrey @hughpumphrey.bsky.social · Jul 26

This. Honestly, what is worse:

(a) @labouruk.bsky.social in a coalition with @libdems.org.uk and/or the Magic Grandparty (brilliant name, BTW)

or

(b) A Farageist government elected on a small percentage of the vote?

It is time that the UK grew up regarding PR and coalitions.

Iain Roberts @slowbikeiain.bsky.social · Jul 26

I don't blame Corbyn for setting up the Magic Grandparty. It's not his job to keep Farage out.

But there's someone who could stop Farage becoming PM with 30% of the vote: Keir Starmer. He could introduce PR to the Commons and end this farce of squeezing multiple parties into a two-party system.

Hugh Pumphrey @hughpumphrey.bsky.social · 9h

The phoneline for getting your winter jabs in Scotland is a case in point. I couldn't use the web site because I had cluelessly missed an appointment and wanted to grovel and rebook ASAP.

(Fortunately the wait was not too long and the lady who answered was very nice about it.)

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Hugh Pumphrey @hughpumphrey.bsky.social · 11h

This thread is worth your attention: a little bit of the history of science that I was unaware of.

New-Cleckit Dominie @ncdominie.bsky.social · 12h

An image for #ALD25. This is Evelyn Strutt, Lady Rayleigh (www.npg.org.uk/collections/...).

She's not often numbered among "women in science", but she had a crucial role in the work attributed to her husband, because he didn't know German and she did.

Old photograph showing a woman in late Victorian costume holding a book.

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Hugh Pumphrey @hughpumphrey.bsky.social · 11h

Reminder added to the Door of Discontent that @ucuedinburgh.bsky.social members should get their strike ballots posted.

Door with some handwritten notices including "Plz post your strike ballot before Tues 23 Oct"

Hugh Pumphrey @hughpumphrey.bsky.social · 12h

Uhhhh, wow! I had no idea that those were a thing.

Hugh Pumphrey @hughpumphrey.bsky.social · 15h

Learn me this: how and where did you attach the camera so that it looks back down the road, but then tracks an overtaking vehicle past you? Do you have a tiny person under your saddle manning the camera?

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Hugh Pumphrey @hughpumphrey.bsky.social · 17h

Came here to say that. As @rebelraising.bsky.social implies, @scottishgreens.org are a secessionist party foremost and a green party second.

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Hugh Pumphrey @hughpumphrey.bsky.social · 1d

Correct to credit @carolecadwalla.bsky.social --- maybe also credit @thenerve.news . Tagging @ashcasting.bsky.social
as the contact on @bsky.app for BBC Points of View.

Hugh Pumphrey @hughpumphrey.bsky.social · 1d

Thanks for the link.

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Hugh Pumphrey @hughpumphrey.bsky.social · 1d

Yeah, that. I was wondering about France for retirement as I speak tolerable 5-years-of-school French and only "dos cervezas por favor" Spanish. Until Brexit. Fuck you very much, Farage, Johnson and David Davies.

Hugh Pumphrey @hughpumphrey.bsky.social · 1d

Without having a copy to hand, I am fairly sure that the practice of putting an egg in beer (stout in this case) is referred to in Dylan Thomas's "Under Milk Wood".

Hugh Pumphrey @hughpumphrey.bsky.social · 1d

As I am now at the stage of my career best described as "bad tempered old git" I hereby volunteer to be that user.

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Hugh Pumphrey @hughpumphrey.bsky.social · 1d

Agreed, but could we also allow any ASCII character, please? I am not even asking for unicode (except possibly for the £ sign). I am fed up of being told that my response is unacceptable because it contains a comma. (The otherwise solid gov.uk set of web sites are among the worst offenders.)

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Hugh Pumphrey @hughpumphrey.bsky.social · 1d

Definitely worth a read.

THE NERVE @thenerve.news · 2d

‘Are the flags that now bedeck our suburbs and estates patriotic or racist?’

In his second weekly column, Stewart Lee looks at the changing significance of England flags over the years

Stewart Lee: The thugs have taken my flag. So I’ve taken theirs

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Hugh Pumphrey @hughpumphrey.bsky.social · 1d

Can't be bothered working round the Times's paywall. But when I moved from England to central Scotland in 1992 it felt more like home than East Anglia did. (I'm from NW England originally.) In the intervening years it has come to feel not like home at all.

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Hugh Pumphrey @hughpumphrey.bsky.social · 1d

Now, @vizcomic.bsky.social are on @bsky.app , so we should tag them when mentioning their content.

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Hugh Pumphrey @hughpumphrey.bsky.social · 3d

That is the second half of the "pink fir apple" crop dug up. There are about 7kg: not bad for something that is not so much a crop that I nurture, more a persistent perennial weed that I try to corral.

Hugh Pumphrey @hughpumphrey.bsky.social · 3d

Indeed: three easily-detectable ones in a day: bsky.app/profile/hugh...

Hugh Pumphrey @hughpumphrey.bsky.social · 3d

Busy day for earthquakes yesterday according to the gravity meter at Univ of #Edinburgh: two in the Philippines and one in the Drake Passage. The Drake Passage quake was also picked up by the @raspishake.bsky.social . #geophysics #seismology

Gravity meter output for 2025-10-10 and the first part of 2025-10-11. Three earthquakes are visible during 2025-10-10.

Share image from the shakenet app showing waves from an earthquake in the Drake Passage arriving in Edinburgh

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Hugh Pumphrey @hughpumphrey.bsky.social · 3d

It's a shame that @labouruk.bsky.social and Lothian East MP Douglas Alexander in particular don't really engage with @bsky.app I think they should know about "Douglas Alexander's Genocidal Nipples". Maybe @secret-labour-mp.bsky.social could tell them.

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Hugh Pumphrey @hughpumphrey.bsky.social · 3d

I don't think that they read that account. If they had the tiniest clue about how @bsky.app works they would realise that they own a domain and call themselves ed.ac.uk or edinburgh-uni.ed.ac.uk to make it clear that it is a genuine account.

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Hugh Pumphrey @hughpumphrey.bsky.social · 3d

That was really informative --- thanks. The extra complication, I suspect, is when a web site uses your email address as your user name, probably treating any changes in capitalisation less gracefully than the whole system for delivering email does.

Hugh Pumphrey @hughpumphrey.bsky.social · 3d

Busy day for earthquakes yesterday according to the gravity meter at Univ of #Edinburgh: two in the Philippines and one in the Drake Passage. The Drake Passage quake was also picked up by the @raspishake.bsky.social . #geophysics #seismology

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