emmatonkin.bsky.social
LightNews LightNews
emmatonkin.bsky.social
emmatonkin.bsky.social
@emmatonkin.bsky.social
1.1K followers 4.1K following 770 posts
Researcher, sometimes lecture - currently digital health, data ethics, misc other. Charity swimathons. Ink, fiction, occasional yarn. Zombologiste à temps partiel. Citoyenne de nulle part. Franglaise. πόλλ’ ἠπίστατο ἔργα, κακῶς δ’ ἠπίστατο πάντα.
Posts Replies Media Videos
emmatonkin.bsky.social
Me: waking up totally exhausted after attending a virtual workshop held on Japan time (8 hours ahead)

Samsung, chirpily:
Samsung says "Tired of being tired? Become one of those morning people with Samsung Health. But first, let us know your biggest morning challenge in the comments below..."
April 27, 2025 at 1:41 PM
emmatonkin.bsky.social
One more, because hey:
A poem that reads: This window is damaged. It is awaiting repair. Do not use. This window is tired. It will show you what is, not what you hope for. This window is cheerless. Despite the sunshine its sky is grey. This window is exhausted. It leans heavily on the support of its frame. This window has collapsed. Its world is askew. Do not use. ­
March 21, 2025 at 12:27 PM
emmatonkin.bsky.social
A couple of pics from my little bit of rural France, which I can't help but contrast against events occurring elsewhere [detail in alt text]
A sign/graffiti that reads, "Trans non binary: you are not alone" A series of posters featuring women in science, medicine and technology: Suzanne Noël, cosmetic surgeon; June McCarroll of California, who apparently came up with the white line in the middle of roads; Bette Nesmith Graham, American originator of liquid paper aka Tippex; Maria Telkes, Hungarian-American inventor of solar energy tech in home; Stephanie Louise Kwolek, an American chemist who came up with Kevlar; Maria Beasley, American, who worked on life raft tech; Elizabeth Magie, American game designer who designed Monopoly; Florence Lawrence, Canadian American silent movie star and inventor of the turn signal for cars; Caresse Crosby, American literary godmother to a whole bunch of Parisian authors, scandalous publisher and holder of the patent for a modern "backless" bra; Austrian-American actress Hedy Lamarr, for wireless transmission encoding; Anna Connelly, American inventor of a fire escape/emergency staircase design; Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, British-American astrophysicist who studied the composition of stars; Tabitha Babbitt, American designer of circular saws used for lumber milling (I keep wanting to write "Bobbitt", thanks to Lorena, but anyway); Melitta Bentz, German inventor of a coffee filter design. There were others beyond this photo, though sadly Carmela Vitale, designer of the little tripod that stops your pizza sticking to the lid, was not among those present.
March 19, 2025 at 2:40 PM
emmatonkin.bsky.social
In France, you can buy an economy size bag of sugar-coated Smurfs in the supermarket. Until now, I never had a reason to contemplate the philosophical question of what I would do if I had a whole bag of Smurfs.
Bag of Haribo smurfs.
March 12, 2025 at 6:41 PM
emmatonkin.bsky.social
Google thinks that Yasuo Takamatsu is a fictional character. That's a startling assertion, Google.

(Context: www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazin...)
A Google search in which Yasuo Takamatsu is labelled a 'Fictional Character'.
February 28, 2025 at 6:16 PM
emmatonkin.bsky.social
Shared this with the other half, who pointed out this invaluable item in Nisbets pro cookery catalogue:
An item from a cookery catalogue: A large metal hammer with spikes, a black handle, and a cost of £115. It is labelled "Dick meat tenderiser".
February 14, 2025 at 2:18 PM
emmatonkin.bsky.social
Leakey's Bookshop in Inverness. Not the cheapest and by now so notorious in Instagram that they have a note that limits the size of tour groups, but we found it on a rainy November day and I got lost there for hours.
February 8, 2025 at 12:23 PM
emmatonkin.bsky.social
Urgh, yes. I had to catch a 6am-ish train to get to Exeter for my PhD student's graduation, which is at 9am, I assume because geographers get up early. I have been on this train for well over an hour and it is STILL stubbornly dark outside.
Pamorama of a rural train station in the dark. It is proper dark. Current view outside. Still pretty dark.
December 12, 2024 at 7:46 AM
emmatonkin.bsky.social
The whole Zipf law thing fascinated me for years, and now it regularly reminds me of this Douglas Adams quote:
Screenshot of a quote that reads: It is a curious fact, and one to which no one knows quite how much importance to attach, that something like 85% of all known worlds in the Galaxy, be they primitive or highly advanced, have invented a drink called jynnan tonnyx, or gee-N'N-T'N-ix, or jinond-o-nicks, or any one of a thousand or more variations on the same phonetic theme. The drinks themselves are not the same, and vary between the Sivolvian 'chinanto/mnigs' which is ordinary water served at slightly above room temperature, and the Gagrakackan 'tzjin-anthony-ks' which kill cows at a hundred paces; and in fact the one common factor between all of them, beyond the fact that the names sound the same, is that they were all invented and named before the worlds concerned made contact with any other worlds. What can be made of this fact? It exists in total isolation. As far as any theory of structural linguistics is concerned it is right off the graph, and yet it persists. Old structural linguists get very angry when young structural linguists go on about it. Young structural linguists get deeply excited about it and stay up late at night convinced that they are very close to something of profound importance, and end up becoming old structural linguists before their time, getting very angry with the young ones. Structural linguistics is a bitterly divided and unhappy discipline, and a large number of its practitioners spend too many nights drowning their problems in Ouisghian Zodahs.
November 28, 2024 at 12:59 PM
emmatonkin.bsky.social
Terry Pratchett described this phenomenon in Witches Abroad. Apologies for large image. It's a long quote. www.tumblr.com/sirterryprat...
The Oggs were what is known as an extended family—in fact not only extended but elongated, protracted and persistent. No normal sheet of paper could possibly trace their family tree, which in any case was more like a mangrove thicket. And every single branch had a low-key, chronic vendetta against every other branch, based on such well-established causes célèbres as What Their Kevin Said About Our Stan At Cousin Di’s Wedding and Who Got The Silver Cutlery That Auntie Em Promised Our Doreen Was To Have After She Died, I’d Like To Know, Thank You Very Much, If You Don’t Mind. Nanny Ogg, as undisputed matriarch, encouraged all sides indiscriminately. It was the nearest thing she had to a hobby. The Oggs contained, in just one family, enough feuds to keep an entire Ozark of normal hillbillies going for a century. And sometimes this encouraged a foolish outsider to join in and perhaps make an uncomplimentary remark about one Ogg to another Ogg. Whereupon every single Ogg would turn on him, every part of the family closing up together like the parts of a well-oiled, blue-steeled engine to deal instant merciless destruction to the interloper. Ramtop people believed that the Ogg feud was a blessing. The thought of them turning their immense energy on the world in general was a terrible one. Fortunately, there was no one an Ogg would rather fight than another Ogg. It was family. Odd things, families, when you came to think of it… Witches Abroad by Terry Pratchett (via cat-sophia)
November 22, 2024 at 2:53 PM
emmatonkin.bsky.social
It's trying, but it will fail. I did see one person attempt a snowball, though.
Motorscooters in slushy snow. It is attempting to stick on the windscreens. Bike sheds, a wall and trees in dense white slushy snow. It is just attempting to stick on the glass of the bike sheds, but it will lose the battle because it is probably a little too warm.
November 19, 2024 at 10:49 AM
emmatonkin.bsky.social
There we go, slushy snow outside the cafe in Queens' building, Bristol. Once I have finished this coffee I might pop out and see if it's sticking
November 19, 2024 at 10:37 AM
emmatonkin.bsky.social
Text reading: The Electric Monk was a labour-saving device, like a dishwasher or a video recorder. Dishwashers washed tedious dishes for you, thus saving you the bother of washing them yourself, video recorders watched tedious television for you, thus saving you the bother of looking at it yourself; Electric Monks believed things for you, thus saving you what was becoming an increasingly onerous task, that of believing all the things the world expected you to believe.
November 19, 2024 at 10:09 AM
emmatonkin.bsky.social
Seems to me that there's a reasonable argument that hanging around in the same space if anything further winds people up.
Screenshot from article: Settle (2018) articulates this argument in her recent book, Frenemies: How Social Media Polarizes America. She convincingly argues that core features of social media platforms, such as the fusion of social and political content, the ubiquity of social feedback, the ability to easily infer other users’ political identity, or the incentives to produce “clickbait-y” and inflammatory content to catch people’s attention, have a direct impact on the aggregate level of psychological polarization. The mechanism behind these effects is that these features facilitate the type of psychological processes behind affective polarization: the reinforcement of social and political identities, in combination with citizens’ biased information processing. As Reference Settle (2018) shows through a series of survey studies and lab experiments, social media usage (and the type of partisan content that is shared on Facebook) increases the perceived differences between individuals’ own position and where they perceive the outgroup to be, makes political and social identities more correlated, and contributes to the stereotyping (and negative evaluations) of the outgroup.
November 16, 2024 at 2:33 PM
emmatonkin.bsky.social
Quote from an article stating: Of course, the fact that social media increases exposure to diverse political ideas from weak ties does not necessarily mean it has no effect on political polarization. Past research shows that repeated exposure to cross-cutting information leads to political moderation (Reference Mutz 2006), which could explain why political polarization in the United States has actually increased the least among those citizens who are least likely to use social media (Reference Boxell, Gentzkow and Shapiro 2017). However, a growing body of work challenges this finding, arguing that it is precisely this increased exposure to cross-cutting views that may be having polarizing effects (Reference Bail et al. 2018; Reference Suhay, Bello-Pardo and Maurer 2018). In a lucid recent book, Reference Settle (2018) identifies the heightened awareness of political identities in social media as a key factor driving affective polarization (Reference Iyengar, Sood and Lelkes 2012).
November 16, 2024 at 2:30 PM
emmatonkin.bsky.social
There is far too much going on, so here in lieu of anything helpful to say is a pic or two of a construction barrier outside Bristol train station. Not sure who this character is or what, if anything, they're from, but it's brightened the place up a fair bit.
A mural on a construction barrier, featuring a dark-haired protagonist gazing at the viewer. In front of the barrier, the pavement is speckled with fallen leaves. The skyline in the background is surprisingly blue for a November afternoon in Bristol. A mural on a construction barrier, featuring a dark-haired protagonist gazing at the viewer.
November 14, 2024 at 2:27 PM
emmatonkin.bsky.social
This year the ARDUOUS workshop is taking place in Wiesbaden, Germany at the Informatik Festival 2024. For more information on the submission guidelines and #cfp, check out our new website: arduous.eu

Submit by May 26, 2024
The ARDUOUS workshop 2024 on annotation of user data for ubiquitous systems will take place alongside the Informatik Festival, on the 24th of September.
April 24, 2024 at 9:45 AM