We should have known this man's failing was somehow the fault of a woman.

I'm one of those trans women. I worked ground ops for Artemis I.

I am torn between celebrating the success of my friends and peers and grieving how my dream of working for NASA was shattered by hateful assholes in Tallahassee

Hans Zimmer is a transphobe. A tweet reads "I worked for him. I did good work that he praised, but after transitioned he quickly had me fired. He had cue notes named "tr*nnv fight"' etc etc... It's a pattern of abuse that will inevitably come out over time, and I'm glad that the industry is changing slowly."

I regret to inform y'all that Hans Zimmer fuckin sucks.

I have always disliked Alamo Drafthouse. I just don’t get why it inspires such devotion in some people as a moviegoing experience. I wrote this 3 years ago, and only after several years of gestating annoyance at things like Alamo: takeonecinema.net/2023/cinema-...

"contributing to" is key. Do organisations want to spend resources on making corporate software work properly or spend resources on making software improvements that can be used by every other user of that software?

this is really a no-brainer. governments should be using *and contributing to* open source products and the only reason I can imagine they mostly don’t is backhanders and deals with commercial vendors

"France Launches Government Linux Desktop Plan as Windows Exit Begins. France is transitioning government desktops to #Linux, with each ministry required to formalize its implementation plan by autumn 2026."
linuxiac.com/france-launc...

A stage with two people sitting and one person at a podium. The slide behind says 'small changes: taking back control of our universities through open software'.

A man standing at a podium speaking.

A stage with two people sitting and one person at a podium. The slide behind refers to the UCU Edinburgh strike happening at the time and links to ucuedinburgh.org.uk

A forward view of a man standing at a podium speaking.

Some photos from @uksg.bsky.social conference last week where I was given the chance to discuss using open software for open research and open access.

Photos by Peter Lawson Photography.

RIP to my carbon emissions for the last two weeks. carbon.simonxix.com/transportation

Back in Scotland after a full week in England. Since 26th March, I've had a family holiday in Aberdeenshire, UKSG Conference in Glasgow, a friends' wedding in Croydon, and the OBF Experimental Publishing Retreat in East Sussex. Time for more than two days in a row without travelling or conferencing.

"When my wife's beloved Kindle DX was bricked by obsolescence through no fault of her own, it gave me a frisson of excitement and anticipation to take on Darth Bezos and break open the Kindle so she could once again read her favorite books"

www.zdnet.com/article/your...

The point of being an academic is not being “pragmatic” but to try to give as truthful and complete and messy picture as possible. If an academic is in the business of pragmatism, they should switch to policy.

Tourism worries after delay to new Harry Potter train season The operator of the Jacobite steam train has sought a safety exemption to use old-style carriages - but this needs to be reviewed.

This story keeps recurring as "mean govt wants to spoil kids' fun" but is actually "arsehole company refuses to meet legal safety standards and thinks it can bully its way into an exemption"

Not sure if this kind of behaviour just goes with the brand now

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

A cover image for 'In Our Own Words' (showing blue line drawings of people reading, writing, and running) on a blue banner with the text: A collective work that is at once research, art, and activism. Rooted in decolonial queer and trans* theories, it emerges from lived realities and centres the voices of queer and trans* Central Asians. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2218/ED.9781836451518

Happy publication day to 'In Our Own Words: Documenting the Queer Everyday in Central Asia'!

Exceptionally proud to be the publishing partner for this collective work that is at once research, art, and activism.

Check it out!

#OpenAccess

books.ed.ac.uk/edinburgh-di...

"Moving to a country because I want to live somewhere the social fabric still feels intact" is my extreme Anglophobia in practice.

It's so funny that I haven't experienced any of this so-called Anglophobia as an English-born man who moved to Scotland. Maybe it only happens to dicks and maybe it's because they're dicks, not English.

This was also my final Open Book Futures and @copim.bsky.social event too. It's been a privilege to work with the Experimental Publishing Group for the last five years, pushing the boundaries of publishing and encouraging new ways of thinking in open publishing. Truly the passing of an era.

I remember predicting this on Twitter ages ago, where someone promptly accused me of being some kind of eco-doomster predicting the demise of all technology within the decade.

An embroidery hoop containing a sewn aerial view landscape. It depicts an apple orchard in bloom in the centre, allotments to the left and sheep in their field at the bottom. Train tracks go past the top of the orchard and allotment.

Sewn train tracks past an apple orchard (to the left).

An angled view of a sewn vegetable allotment surrounded by rough land, trees and with train tracks to the left.

An angled view of embroidered bushes and paths going through them leading to an orchard, allotment and fields.

'A simple (perfect) life' - my spring landscape is finally finished! An apple orchard in bloom, old railway, sheep with their lambs and an allotment being prepared for growing :) Zoom in to see all the other tiny details too... I think this might be my favourite aerial embroidery I've ever done!

A stage with two people sitting and one person at a podium. The slide behind says 'small changes: taking back control of our universities through open software'.

A man standing at a podium speaking.

A stage with two people sitting and one person at a podium. The slide behind refers to the UCU Edinburgh strike happening at the time and links to ucuedinburgh.org.uk

A forward view of a man standing at a podium speaking.

Some photos from @uksg.bsky.social conference last week where I was given the chance to discuss using open software for open research and open access.

Photos by Peter Lawson Photography.

Online Conference: Practicing Experimental Books: Celebrating Copim’s Book Pilots - Copim We are excited to announce the details of our two-day online conference on Experimental Publishing Practices.

Then we move on to #Binding ...

Bob Stein (Founder of Tapestry) delivers the keynote before joining the panel discussion with @chromatinfuel.bsky.social @whitneytrettien.bsky.social Rebecca Aston & Julien McHardy

2/2

Experimental Publishing Group. Experimental and Group are in black font; Publishing is in purple font.

📢 Join us for day 2 of our online conference - Practicing Experimental Books: Celebrating Copim’s Book Pilots

The first session of the afternoon focuses on Open Peer Reviewing

Featuring @literaturegeek.bsky.social @openreflections.bsky.social and many more!

Find out more 👉 buff.ly/4GI05kP

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Snitch.

A reminder, again, that the establishment have to maintain that the Corbyn era was a non stop cascade of Hitlerian racism because otherwise their response - a decade of public pants shitting, Boris Johnson, diamond hard Brexit and Keir Starmer - seems like an insane overreaction.

This is Cathy Rutherford, Glasgow born trade unionist. I love this clip, but even more for knowing that it stems from a core of lifelong political activism

I'm giving a keynote 4/9 on speculative+experimental kinds of peer review, built on my "Organized Futures: Speculative Design for More Just+Joyful Scholarly Infrastructure" article journals.publishing.umich.edu/jep/article/... For Experimental Publishing Practices conf: copim.pub/online-confe...

It's hard graft but someone has to do it.