Paul Boldrin

@paulboldrin.bsky.social

1142 Followers 1564 Following

Everything that can be electrified will be electrified. Electrochemist at Ironic Metals Ltd - developing low carbon iron production. Post about science, climate, London, cycling, kids, Spurs and politics.

Exerpt from a New York Times article entitled "Trump’s Plan for Science: More Money for A.I., Less for Universities": "He also directed federal science agencies to focus on a handful of priorities set by the White House, including physical sciences, chemistry and biological sciences. Those fields, he wrote, were crucial to what he called the Trump administration’s “national missions” — a list that includes artificial intelligence, nuclear fusion, robotics, quantum computing and space exploration. The report is less clear on the areas of scientific research for which the federal government should reduce funding. It says federal agencies “should prioritize foundational research in the biological sciences over the life sciences.”"
Rage Against the Machine's self-titled debut album cover, featuring Malcolm Brown's award winning photo of Buddhist monk Quảng Đức self-immolating in Saigon in 1963 in protest at the South Vietnamese government's oppression of Buddhists. Longer story here: https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/rage-against-the-machine-self-titled-defiance/
Jovan Owusu-Nepaul of Labour
Twitter post saying: "Every lifelong Catholic I've ever met is like "I think we're supposed to give this food to poor people" and every adult convert is like "the Archon of Constantinople's epistle on the Pentacostine rites of the eucharist clearly states women shouldn't have driver's licenses.""
Map of solar PV potential across the UK showing the highest potential in the southeast and the lowest in Scotland.
A pile of 5 or 6 ducklings huddling together by the water with mum sitting slightly to one side.
Purple Adidas rucksack with pink stripes dating from around the turn of the century.
Tonight queen meme for Centrica wanting to reopen the Rough gas storage facility.
A family of Mandarin ducks eating pumpkin seeds in the Regent's Canal.
"Sure grandma" meme with the grandma saying "and the whole world will pay the US a 20% tax on oil they buy"
Can you summarise any important information from the last 100 messages in the 6B WhatsApp group? I wish I could, but I can’t see into your WhatsApp groups or pull messages from 6B directly. I don’t have access to your chats, contacts, or any private messages for privacy reasons. If you copy/paste the important bits here, or upload a screenshot/export, I can absolutely summarise it for you and pull out dates, tasks, decisions, etc.
A hot dog purchased at the Japan - Netherlands World Cup game looking extremely unappealing.
Bar graph showing CO2 equivalent emissions from LNG, demonstrating that the warming potential from escaped methane is similar to or greater than the warming potential of the CO2 released when the LNG is finally burnt.
Anakin Padme meme
Rainfall radar showing heavy showers all round London at 12:00.
GDP per capita for UK, France, Germany and Italy from 1992 - 2007, showing UK started the period with the lowest GDP per capita and finished with the highest.
Only heard of one of these - Thee Headcoatees. They were the first band I ever saw live, supporting Mudhoney in 1995. I have no idea what a cutoff should be for "obscure", but I arbitrarily picked less than 100 "haves" on Discogs. So I have many obscure records from the late 90s/2000s, and almost all of them are terrible. But ones which spring to mind which I still occasionally listen to (or would love to listen to again but have sadly lost over the years): Wall of Sleep - Wall of Sleep - there are at least two other bands called Wall of Sleep but these ones are from 1995 Coventry and released this amazing pyschedelic doom album on the Bevis Frond's label Woronzow. And then split up. A perfect one for listening to with the lights down low and the smell of your favourite burning leaves in the air. Vialka - Curiosités Des Coutumes Populaires - bizarre nomadic French experimental punk. This one is from 2005 but they've been releasing stuff for years and still are I think. My favourite song on this album is called Shitty Monkeys Among the Missing - Disorder of the Templar. Disclaimer - I know these guys. But still, an absolutely brutal slice of mid-00s sludgecore/grindcore with obligatory British humour and references to smoking too much weed. Finally, not an album, but I did have an amazing hardcore punk song that I absolutely loved on the compilation album Peace-War, called "Endless Blockade for the Pussyfooter" which was by a Japanese hardcore band called GISM. I never saw a copy of the record it was on, I never met anyone who had it, but I just looked it up on discogs and saw it's going for over £200! Anyway, god knows why I bothered writing all that seeing as it's unlikely that anyone will have the faintest clue what I'm talking about, but it did fill my lunch break with reminiscences of old bands I liked.
Quote from Simon Case: "Those leading the Brexit revolution have never taken control of all of the key institutions of power in the UK – it took three years to deliver a leave prime minister, and parliament has yet to see a leave majority. Whitehall has never been given clear and consistent instructions that an alternative vision of the country’s future is to be pursued. Whilst the constitutional change has been completed, the vision has never been defined and implemented. The revolution has failed."
Map of improvements being made with sign saying "Cycle logo markings introduced to create awareness of cyclists on the road"
Photo of a tin of olives stuffed with blue cheese.
A politician wearing some shorts which could legitimately be described as short.
Extremely tiny moorhen chicks on the Regents Canal.
Guy dressed in a hot dog suit wondering whose party was in government when the current system of schools being routinely run by academies was set up. People looking on scornfully in the background.
Geoguesser game asking to tap as close as possible to Istanbul with a 3x hard rating for the question.
Labour's West of England mayor chooses Green councillor as her deputy Steven Morris Steven Morris Steven Morris is a Guardian correspondent covering the west of England. There has been an unusual outbreak of harmony in Bristol – two political parties building bridges. In what they say is a first for England, Helen Godwin, the Labour mayor of the West of England, unveiled Cllr Tony Dyer, the Green leader of Bristol city council, as deputy mayor. Godwin’s people say this is the first appointment by a Labour leader of a Green politician as deputy mayor of any combined authority in England. Godwin said the pair were united over issues such as improving transport, building new homes and creating new jobs. Dyer said working together across political parties was the way to make sure the west of England fulfilled its potential.
A view across a pancake-flat muddy field. In the background there are several trees and a small hillock, which is apparently a much loved local landmark that people do not want to see solar panels from the top of.
12 ducklings and their parents in a canal.
Pie chart showing German electricity production by source in 2025. 20.6% of electricity is produced from burning coal.
12 ducklings and 2 adult ducks (presumably their parents) swimming in a canal.
Screenshot from the HPLAS list of service providers showing Shelter as the legal advice provider for Bath.
Unsurprisingly a photo of "A Social History of Engineering" by WHG Armytage.
Photo of a toilet with windows on two sides offering views over a valley and the sea.
Cricket ground with rocks and the sea in the background. A wild goat is grazing just off the pitch.
A view out through a series of interlocking spurs with the sea in the background. Most of the spurs are forested, although being early in the year are bare of leaves, but towards the sea one is covered in the bright yellow flowers of gorse bushes. The sky is blue with a few white clouds.
View from a bedroom window at dusk into a heavily forested valley leading down to the sea. There are a few stone buildings in among the trees.
Bluesky post saying "Genuinely insane that we have to talk about this again but okay. listen up blue sky. explanations. are. implicit. endorsements. If you understand something well enough to explain it, you actually like it and think it's good. Simple as!"
Screenshot from iamkate's UK electricity tracker (https://grid.iamkate.com/) showing high levels of clean power and UK generating more than 100% of demand with it.
Excerpt from "The Secret Lives of Colour" by Kassia St Clair: "to use to get the best and richest browns - recommended for translucent glazing layers for shadows and skin tones. Some suggested just using the muscles and flesh, while others thought that the bones and bandages should also be ground up to get the best out of this "charming pigment". Gradually though, toward the end of the 19th century, fresh supplies of mummies, authentic or otherwise, dwindled. Artists were becoming dissatisfied with the pigment's permanency and finish, not to mention more squeamish about its provenance. The Pre-Raphaelite painter Edward Burne-Jones hadn't twigged the connection between 'mummy brown' and real mummies until one Sunday lunch in 1881, when a friend related having just seen one ground up at a colourman's warehouse. Burne-Jones was so horrified he rushed to his studio to find his tube of mummy brown and 'insisted on our giving it a decent burial there and then'. The scene made a great impression on the teenage Rudyard Kipling, Burne-Jones nephew by marriage, who was also a guest at lunch. 'To this day,' he wrote years later, 'I could drive a spade within a foot of where that tube lies'. By the beginning of the 20th century demand was so sluggish that a single mummy migh provide a paint manufacturer with pigment for a decade or more. C. Robertson, a London art shop that had first opened its doors in 1810, finally ran out in the 1960s. 'We might have a few odd limbs lying around somewhere,' the managing director told Time magazine in October 1964, 'but not enough to make any more paint. We sold our last complete mummy some years ago for, I think, £3. Perhaps we shouldn't have. We certainly can't get any more.'"
A photo of Juan Mata
Punnett square with x-axis “Not Getting Good Pussy” And “Getting Good Pussy”, y-axis “Will destroy your life” and “will save your life” with Cat in the Hat in the top left.
A bee learning to avoid Iranian bombs using a secret tunnel to avoid carrying its nectar through the Strait of Hormuz.
Graph of gas generation vs electricity price for the week of 31/7/25 - 7/8/25 showing much less correlation between gas generation and prices.
Graph of gas generation vs electricity price in the UK in the last week, showing that the price rises with increasing gas generation, with prices rising very fast below 5 GW of gas generation and then much slower above 5 GW.
Graph of gas generation vs electricity price in the UK in the last week, showing that the price rises with increasing gas generation, with prices rising very fast below 5 GW of gas generation and then much slower above 5 GW.
Graph of gas generation vs electricity price in the UK in the last week, showing that the price rises with increasing gas generation, with prices rising very fast below 5 GW of gas generation and then much slower above 5 GW.
Graph of gas generation vs electricity price in the UK in the last week, showing that the price rises with increasing gas generation, with prices rising very fast below 5 GW of gas generation and then much slower above 5 GW.
Incredibly sociopathic car driver dumping their car dangerously on the pavement by a zebra crossing less than 50 metres away from completely free legal parking spaces.
"Ange is looking more and more like a miracle worker every day. Think this is karma for sacking a European trophy winner." - Daz, 2026
Really?
Warwickshire County Cricket Club logo looking incredibly similar to hermit Balatro card.
On a visit to the constituency on Sunday (February 22) Polanski said he wanted to 'legalise, regulate and control' all drugs, which he said was a 'public health, evidence-based' approach'.