Ben Cooper

@btcooper.bsky.social

96 Followers 284 Following

Senior data officer at Dogs Trust Research. All about R, data viz, stats, hillwalking, Warhammer and a whole host of other nerdy pursuits!

A cargo bike with a bunch of quite heavy plywood sheets trapped to the back with a combination of ratchet straps and bungee cords
A cat staring out of a window, fully illuminated by a stroke of lightning
Text that reads "More broadly he said artificial intelligence was going to be a "game changer" for vaccine research and that AI tools had the potential to predict how the immune system would respond to a vaccine making development much faster and would "save lives"."
Screenshot of news article: Shark expert Tom 'The Blowfish' Hird explains that bull sharks have "certainly got a fire inside them" and "are known to retaliate when they have been either chased by boats or when they've been tagged".
A cargo bike with fully-loaded pannier bags. Strapped to the back, like a rudder or tail, is a long strip of aluminium, extending from underneath the saddle, and sticking off the back of the bike.
Looking out over the city of Edinburgh, hidden in fog. Four hills are visible, which look like islands in a sea of clouds.
Photo of a single daffodil growing amongst heather moorland. The city of Edinburgh is stretched out below - Arthur's Seat is visible, rising above the city.
Selfie at the top of a mountain, with a wee bit of snow on the ground
Photo of an extremely red sunrise over hills and a reservoir
A graph on a smart watch face showing that "altitude" has increased steadily over the last four hours.
Image showing two figures on a donkey, being led by a third. The image is titled "Feast of the Ass", and an information box tells us that this is a Western Christian festival celebrating the "Flight into Egypt" which occurs on the 14th of January.
Text reading "We apologise again for the fault in the subtitles. Those responsible for sacking the people who have just been sacked, have been sacked."
Monitoring output from a solar panel array showing that on 7th of December only 120 watt-hours of electricity was produced
A cat is asleep on a radiator. A hand reaches out and touches it. The cat meows loudly in response
Universities: You have 4 years to complete your PhD, but we'll only pay you for 3. Also universities: Officially you can't work more than 8 hours a week, even during write-up Also also universities: Please pay your £100 write-up fee out of your own pocket.
Graffiti on a toilet wall, which reads "Bruce Willis was a ghost the whole time". A second person has responded below "Wait, even in Die Hard?!" to which a third person has responded "Especially in Die Hard"
A large number of Warhammer 40k figures (all necrons)
Two painted Warhammer pieces - the same model as in the original post.
The eastern coastline of Maui, Hawaii
A Brocken Spectre - the viewer is looking down into a mass of low-lying clouds, but the sun is behind them. So what this looks like is a circular rainbow, in front of which is a fuzzy shadow of the viewer themselves at a great distance
Mountain peaks rising above a sea of clouds during a temperature inversion
A mountain is only just visible through dense fog, despite being extremely close to the photographer.
What is Steve? Steve - or to give it its full name, Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement - is unpredictable and only lasts for a short time. Little is known about its formation and why it can sometimes appear during an aurora display. While auroras happen in an oval shape, Steve appears as a ribbon and lasts for 20 minutes to an hour before disappearing. While Steve is only spotted in the presence of an aurora, it is not a normal aurora as scientists suggests it comprises a fast-moving stream of extremely hot particles called a sub-auroral ion drift, or SAID. As Steve is unpredictable and only lasts for a short time, recording occurrences from the ground is rare. The last sightings of Steve in the UK were back in November 2023. While there have been photographs of Steve for decades, it only got the name Steve in 2016, following a US citizen science project funded by Nasa and the National Science Foundation.
A cargo bike with a lawnmower being carried in the front rack