James

@studiousbadger.bsky.social

807 Followers 2293 Following

Stargazing vet from the Dark Satanic North. Once hit the stumps from the boundary aged 11, all down hill since then. Was in practice, now harping on about #OneHealth, transboundary infectious disease and whatnot 🇬🇧🇦🇺🇪🇺

The cover of Blur's Parklife album, but the text has been changed to 'burnham' and 'labourlife'.
Post by David Allen Green. The six last PMs are featured with the caption “Reversed, wrong-headed, lied; unhinged, wrong-headed, deprived.”
Lloyd Bridges as Steve McCroskey in Airplane (1980)
1776: James Watt develops the steam engine. 120 years late, 1896: Arvid Högvom and Svante Arrhenius note that industrial activity is adding co2 to the atmosphere, and calculate how much the earth will heat up if the co2 conc doubles. Their answer closely matches modern estimates. 128 years to present day (at the time of writing), 2024. Subtitle: WE FIGURED OUT THE GREENHOUSE EFFECT CLOSER TO THE START OF THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION THAN TO TODAY.
Expectation: James Bond’s Lotus Esprit from The Spy Who Loved Me (1977), in submarine mode. Reality: A Tesla Cybertruck stuck doorsill-deep in a lake.
Couple in bed together, backs to each other. Her: “I bet he’s thinking about other women”. Him: “How did Death Star gravity work?” Diagram: like a planet? or like a ship?
Figure from Lewis, K., 2020. The Science of Antibiotic Discovery. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2020.02.056. Antibiotics are shown on a timeline by year of discovery. The 'golden age' of discovery in the 1940s-1960s is clear.
Nic Lyndhurst, an actor who looks a bit like Nic Cage who looks a bit like John Travolta, wearing a tan overcoat and a porkpie hat a bit like Columbo if you squint a bit. That’s it. That’s the joke.
Excerpt from Britannica article on the League of Nations: In a March 1920 vote, ratification was defeated again in the Senate, and the hope of U.S. membership disappeared, as it proved, forever. The effect of this event upon the future of the League was, in one sense, decisive, since it ruled out all possibility of collective security as embodied in the Covenant. There was no certainty of a complete economic boycott which, it was confidently expected, would suffice to make even the most aggressive government prefer to settle its disputes by negotiation rather than by armed attack. The other component parts of the system could still function, and did in fact function, though with less effectiveness than if the United States had fully participated therein.
NASA concept art comparing the approximate altitude of the Orion capsule during Artemis II to the orbit of NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), which has been studying the Moon since 2009, and the average altitude of the seven Apollo missions that orbited the Moon between 1968 and 1972.
Sign reads: “The Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea Albert Bridge Notice: ALL TROOPS MUST BREAK STEP WHEN MARCHING OVER THIS BRIDGE”
Excerpt from the linked article: “The ECB has confirmed to The Times that it has requested England players do not speak before Gould and Key have spoken publicly, but that they will they will be able to talk openly after that.”
XKCD 327: [Mrs. Roberts receives a call from her son's school on her wireless phone. She is standing with a cup of hot coffee or tea (shown with a small line above the cup) facing a small round three-legged table to the right. The voice of the caller is indicated to come from the phone with a zigzag line.] Voice over the phone: Hi, This is your son's school. We're having some computer trouble. [In this frame-less panel Mrs. Roberts has put the cup down on the table turned facing out.] Mrs. Roberts: Oh, dear – did he break something? Voice over the phone: In a way – [Mrs. Roberts is now drinking from the cup again looking right. The table is not shown.] Voice over the phone: Did you really name your son Robert'); DROP TABLE Students;-- ? Mrs. Roberts: Oh, yes. Little Bobby Tables, we call him. [Mrs. Roberts holds the cup down.] Voice over the phone: Well, we've lost this year's student records. I hope you're happy. Mrs. Roberts: And I hope you've learned to sanitize your database inputs.
An extract from a book page titled ‘spells charms and incantations’ that has been doing the social media rounds since forever. A finger points to a highlighted passage; ‘you may fascinate a woman by giving her a piece of cheese.’
NICE explainer titled ‘Vaccinations for school-based children and young people: invitations, reminders and escalation of contact’. In particular, the section on Gillick competence: Assessing Gillick competence • Be aware that young people under 16 can give their own consent to vaccination if they are assessed to be Gillick competent. • School age immunisation providers should ensure that they a have a policy in place to support school aged immunisation teams in assessing Gillick competence. Include guidance on what action to take when a young person's vaccination preference is different from that of their parents or carers.
Mike Ehrmantraut from Breaking Bad & Better Call Saul, portrayed by actor Jonathan Banks. A bald, weathered older man with a grey goatee, wearing an open-necked collared purple shirt and a dark, lightweight jacket, stares into middle distance.
A skip, pictured on a back street in Bankside just short of double yellow lines. It is filled with greenery and trees, a lovely garden. The Shard towers above London in the distance. The arches of a railway are to the right of the street.
Bengal City takeaway menu, proudly proclaiming a 10% discocunt for orders over £10
Cheese vending machine at The Courtyard Dairy, Settle, North Yorkshire
Betfred odds on next Conservative leader as of 12:25 on 15th Jan. James Cleverly is 4/1 at the top of the list.
Except from Wiki page linked: John Malcolm Thorpe Fleming Churchill, DSO & Bar, MC & Bar (16 September 1906 - 8 March 1996) was a British Army officer. Nicknamed "Fighting Jack Churchill" and "Mad Jack", he fought in the Second World War with a broadsword, longbow, and a set of bagpipes.
A copy of ‘Wish you weren’t here’ by Gabby Hutchinson Crouch next to a fast-asleep black Labrador.
A child reaches up to a museum exhibit telephone handset in a classic British red ‘phone box.
Extract from paper: “Conclusion The Brexit voting decision has given rise to a number of questions, especially about farmers' voting decisions. The study found that, for the sample group examined, voting choice was strongly influence by farmers' perceptions about EU legislation, their attitudes towards the EU, their perceived capacity to control factors that impact on the farm performance, and their sense of self and notions of autonomy within the confines of prescriptive agricultural policy. The sense that leaving the EU would make agricultural policy less restrictive and the farmers' need to make farming more profitable, allow for reinvestment and to have more power in markets and have more confidence in their decision making were all key drivers of their voting preference, but will this happen in practice? This research identifies a range of influences that affect farmer decision making that are worthy of further research in different contexts to see how they inform and influence wider farmer decision making. An important research question that this study presents is that if attitudes against EU regulation and perceived capacity to control factors that impact on the farm performance are key to farmers' engagement with and acceptance of regulatory and market requirements and associated policy instruments, what is it that shapes those farmer attitudes and perceptions of agency and self-identity in a largely prescriptive regulatory and market environment?”
Car smashing through the window in the opening titles of The Professionals
Photo of John McClane in the Die Hard a/c duct scene, blu-tack’d to a microwave.
Cover of Baa Baa Smart Sheep, by Mark and Rowan Somerset. A cartoon smiling sheep dog-sits page centre, resting his chin on his front hooves, smiling, eyes fixed as if daydreaming. An orange boxout reads "Warning! Contains Mischief".
Excerpt from Dirk Gentley’s Holistic Detective Agency, by Douglas Adams: “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. Unfortunately this Electric Monk had developed a fault, and had started to believe all kinds of things, more or less at random.”
Excerpt from 'London Rules' by Mick Herron: "He thought about that for a moment, long enough to see the next two seconds of action, neither of which were much fun for River, who caught a blow on the side of the head which would have him hearing bells for a while. Helping River, it occurred to Coe, would involve getting in the way of such moments: giving the man another target to bounce his fists off while River caught his breath. So okay, a window it was, and Coe turned to retrace his steps, but as he did so his foot caught that stray tin of paint, knocking it from its perch; sending it swirling, lid over base, thirty feet down to the alley below." "Oh shit, he thought."
A black lab in the middle of a lake, clutching a tennis ball in her mouth.
Samuel L. Jackson and Robert Carlyle in 51st State (Formula 51 in the US)
Siri’s summary of an article about students using AI to cheat: “The article describes the author's experience with Al-generated work in their classroom. The author used a "Trojan horse" technique to identify Al-generated work, which revealed that nearly 40% of the submissions were at least partially Al-generated. The author expresses concern about the impact of Al on education and the importance of critical thinking and independent learning.
Title card for Skirmish with Alan Partridge. "After a couple of years of being clinically fed-up, Alan has "bounced back". He's got the third best slot on Radio Norwich, a military-based quiz show on cable TV called Skirmish, a 33 year-old girlfriend called Sonja, an autobiography (Bouncing Back) and is only living in a caravan until his new house is finished."
Whenever there is an aggressive legal letter in the news, some people online urge that the recipient respond with the famous reply given in Arkell v Pressdram. But here the BBC could not afford to be so playfully robust. In that hallowed incident, Private Eye knew they could stand by their journalism and so could be less worried about how any litigation would go. They could risk an elegant response ending with an expletive. In this situation, however, the central facts were not in the BBC's favour. They had mucked up.
Website error message: "The BillingAddress1 value is too long". Err, it's still my address.
Entrance to the Beckett Wing, St. James’ University Hospital Leeds
Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov (names assumed to be aliases), both implicated in the poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal, interviewed on Russian state TV.
Brigadier Sir Bernard Proudfoot-Smith, who picked up a "teensy veensy bit" of an accent while working undercover in Germany, played by Bill Wallis in the Blackadder Goes Forth episode 'General Hospital'.
Excerpt: "I do see faces that I haven't seen before," says Robert Stordy, standing by the town's market on a Tuesday lunchtime, although he admits he does not know where those new faces are from.
"Keeping the British End up" scene from The Spy Who Loved Me
David Mitchell dressed in cricket whites and a parka jacket, holding a cricket bat, from the Mitchell & Webb “can Pisswiddle win the Ashes?” sketch.
Cover of the short story ‘A feeling of power’ by Isaac Asimov. A suited astronaut looks towards a rocket. There is a nuclear mushroom cloud in the distance.
A can of… I don’t know. Industrial sealant? Expanding loft insulation? It says cheese whizz, anyway.
Two RR Vipers mounted on the back of a DAF truck - photo & insane engineering from jetpower.co.uk
XKCD Single-panel cartoon, two person exchange: "Silicate Chemistry is second nature to us geochemists, so it's easy to forget that the average person probably only knows the formulas for olivine and one or two feldspars" / "and quartz, of course" / "of course". Text below: Even when they're trying to compensate for it, experts in anything wildly overestimate the average person's familiarity with their field.
A man with a baby in a papoose arrangement strapped to his chest. The baby carrier and matching nappy bag are in military desert camouflage colours, complete with low profile ‘tactical’ stars & stripes flags.
Empire garrison troops run across the Nasma Klein river dam in Andor season one. Actually the Cruachan Dam near Oban in Scotland.
UK export markets for goods and services in the 4 quarters to the end of December 2024. US £196.3bn, 22.5%. EU £358.1bn, 41%.
Michael Caine as Harry Palmer in The Ipcress File.
Tim Minchin and band on stage at the Liverpool Empire, part of the ‘songs the world will never hear’ tour.
Yorkshire CCC website ticket queue page. People are clearly interested in tickets for day 5.
A black lab lounges on a sofa
A father’s day card envelope, addressed to ‘legal guardian’.
BBC Breakfast news reporter Phil McCann reports on fuel shortages from a BP petrol station forecourt in Stockport, 2021.
Black lab sits patiently to attention, eyes on the camera.
Tweet by @renolunio “whoever designed the arabic 7 up logo is the smartest person alive. the red circle is just the english word for seven spelled phonetically and the 7 is [a stylised version of] the [arabic word for] ‘up’ they managed to keep the logo's silhouette while making it read right to left”
A large billboard at the 2006 Edinburgh Fringe. Tim Vine’s name appears in huge letters as if lit by theatre bulbs, framing the man himself, who appears happy, arms raised in welcoming joy. The text beneath reads “IS NOT APPEARING AT THIS YEAR’S EDINBURGH FRINGE“
Black lab with her nose against the camera.
The grave of Maggoty Johnson, England’s last Jester, who died at Gawsworth New Hall on 5 May 1773 aged 82, pictured in the nearby wood that still bears his name and is reputed to be haunted by his ghost.
Channel 4’s official Twitter account in 2023, responding to news that Twitter was to become X: “People still call our streaming service 4OD so good luck”