blue plaque on old brick wall, with the words Here was the site of Manchester’s oldest Pissotiere house retained for posterity. Last used A.D. 1896

eh wot pardon

Green Party wins Cliftonville by-election called after councillor jailed The by-election was called after the Cliftonville division's serving councillor was jailed for coercive behaviour.

Every time a #reform councillor goes to jail, an angel gets its... No, hold on, a green councillor wins.

#Green #Party wins Cliftonville by-election called after councillor jailed - BBC News share.google/Feevc7blaV5b...

aye - olivier previewed this in his Vienna talk

eek - that a member’s picture?

Why bother doing astronomy and other blue-skies research? @e-astronomer.bsky.social discusses funding crises in the US & UK, and how researchers should (and shouldn't) justify the required investment. ☄️🔭🧪⚛️
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

A single remaining stone from the convent is in somebody’s garden in St Catherine’s Place.

Am I remembering correctly that he also gave her a wedding ring made of his own foreskin? In other news, the chip shop at the corner of the Meadows used to be The Siena Fish Bar. There are mystical resonances everywhere.

ah, but does the Pope shit in the woods?

eh wot pardon?

Is astronomy a luxury? After years of spending taxpayer's money, stunning images and groundbreaking science are emerging from the JWST space observatory, the Euclid space mission, and the newest telescope, the Vera C. Rubin...

My latest Science water-cooler piece: Is Astronomy a Luxury? #astronomy www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

solar panels 174m across…

Excellent job done by @robertmassey.bsky.social on Beeb R4 this morning talking about the crazy Reflect Orbital plans for big shiny mirrors in space #astronomy

The Royal Astronomical Society logo over a purple, starry background.

The RAS is alarmed by the threat to ground-based astronomy posed by proposals put forward by Elon Musk's SpaceX and Reflect Orbital.

We have opposed the plans with @eso.org and the International Astronomical Union. Find out more at: ras.ac.uk/news-and-pre...

Satellite proposals threaten the night sky In the United States, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the agency responsible for authorizing satellite launches and operations…

The FCC just opened public comments on SpaceX's plan to launch a million satellites to do AI compute in space. Under the current proposal, an environmental review won't be required. Please consider submitting a public comment to oppose this damaging plan.
darksky.org/news/two-sat...

oh! good luck!

lasair.lsst.ac.uk Rubin alerts are now flooding in ! Millions of them. Get them here #astronomy

Éliane Radigue, French composer and musique concrète legend, dies aged 94 The Paris-born artist reinvented the synthesizer through meditative and feedback-drenched sonic explorations

Another giant passed. I will line up some calming droney music for my day www.theguardian.com/music/2026/f...

SpaceX rocket fireball linked to plume of lithium A SpaceX Falcon 9 crashed to Earth last year. Now scientists have measured the pollution it caused.

Atmospheric pollution from falling SpaceX debris. Nice write up, with quote from yours truly squeezed in at end www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

keep pushing

Annoyingly LLMs etc are called "generative AI" because they make apparently new sentences or pictures. But all they do is re-assemble the world's online content. You could have done that given more time. It is trad machine learning that has the prospect of genuine novelty and insight

Claims that AI can help fix climate dismissed as greenwashing Industry using ‘diversionary’ tactics, says analyst, as energy-hungry complex functions such as video generation and deep research proliferate

We urgently need public friendly terms that separate Machine Learning from LLMs etc, which these days all just get called "AI". The AI industry is conflating the two for greenwashing purposes www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

shop window with sign saying “get off the internet, destroy the right wing”. Sign above the door says “Queer Books. All Welcome”.

excellent shop window, Glasgow Southside.

Looks like a gravity dominated cosmological simulation. Find myself wondering what the power spectrum of initial fluctuations was.

spot on Professor Rice

UK government proposes 30% budget cut to astronomy and physics research: 'It's pretty disastrous' "You can't have a cut of that scale and not expect to see a massive impact."

More on catastrophic cuts to UK astronomy & particle physics. Costs of facilities & international subscriptions go up so grants line and individual projects are cut. If the Government is serious about backing science & technology, they need to fix this. www.space.com/astronomy/uk...

this letter is very well written, with all the right points... pure research is not just a diversion, it is an enabling infrastructure

Understood. Which makes Chapman's answers at the Parliamentary committee ("there are no cuts, just STFC coping with its increased costs") a little disingenuous

good advice John. And “political pressure” should involve *both* public awareness and behind the scenes information gathering and manoeuvring

That is worrying. So maybe more of a cunning strategy than a daft cockup.

The STFC Funding Crisis – Guest Post by George Efstathiou The following guest post by George Efstathiou is a response to the current STFC funding crisis I blogged about here, and specifically to a letter by the Executive Chair of STFC, Professor Michele D…

Excellent guest post on Telescoper's blog about the UK astronomy funding crisis, by George Efstathiou. I added a comment. The core problem is "STFC governance structure" - we are being squeezed by being in bed with the national labs #astronomy telescoper.blog/2026/02/06/t...