theoxforddom.bsky.social
By day, freelance sci-comm do-gooder. By night, korfball dinosaur, Human Scientist and Jersey bean, living in exile on the fens.
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You did. And quite right too.
I'm entirely with you: this stuff is all about maintaining social hierarchies, and it's my business to break those down
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This is so wild, like, the English language and people are products of endless invasions, conquests, and migrations. The origins of the English are not even English so is ANYONE English? Has anyone EVER been English?
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I'm definitely not, but you see, I'm white, so I can pass...
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That's what they all say
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Their pseudo-spat with the Institute of Physics over the word "boffins" was great.
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When not leading on dubious reports of aliens contacting earthlings, the Daily Star has been consistently, if irreverently, on the money regarding the antics of self-serving politicians for several years.
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I was thinking exactly this earlier. If this were being done by [insert whatever Marxist-Leninists are called these days] then all the fires of hell would already have been unleashed upon them. Fascists, on the other hand...
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Horniman Museum?
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2. Even if Trump's "I'm king" tweet *is* characterizable as a joke, you're never "just joking." Nobody is ever "just joking." Humor is a social act that performs a social function (always).
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In case it's useful, we can all see it
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As Douglas Adams put it, here we are, "two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change".
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5?
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Anarchists, the lot of them
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The German saying is, if you sit at a table with 9 nazis there are 10 nazis at the table.
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"... in this case, the big businessmen of America."
John Tipple, "The anatomy of prejudice: Origins of the robber baron legend." Business History Review 33#4 (1959): 510–523, quoting pp. 510, 521. via en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robber_...
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Makes me think of Trainspotting:
"Choose life… But why would I want to do a thing like that? I chose not to choose life. I chose somethin’ else. And the reasons? There are no reasons."
I think they should turf Musk out: of course they should. But let's not kid ourselves that that would be costless
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Seconded
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I agree with all this. The thing I'd add is that the RS is *deeply* political: it's essentially an arm of govt (in particular DSIT). My guess is the hierarchy is doing anything it can to avoid picking a fight with a hugely influential person in the US government, even if he is a fascist.
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I think they *should* break ranks and assert their (at least nominal) independence but, sadly, I don't think they will unless they get a nod and a wink from govt that it's ok to do so.
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The RS is the UK's de facto national academy of science and will feel (and may actually be) unable to take radical action without the approval of govt. The UK govt line is to play nice with the fascists in Trump's cabal, and so for the RS to break ranks would be a pretty big step.
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My guess is there will be people in the room who want to defenestrate Musk, but that the argument is being won by those who do not want to (essentially) create a diplomatic incident by pissing off an influential person in the US govt.
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I've been in some rooms like that: my guess is that they are desperately hoping for a steer from government...
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“Don’t fly so much”, “recycle”, “eat less meat”, which all of us good folk are trying to do, is a bit of a joke when governments are giving the go ahead for further oil exploration etc.
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Elon is trying to become the president of Dunning-Kruger University.
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But only half as many as a circle
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Infinity
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When I was 19 my brother was going to see Gil Scott Heron and asked me if I wanted to come.
"Never heard of him" said I, and went to the pub instead.
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There are some that spring to mind...
Treasure Island
The Hobbit/Lord of the Rings (the hobbits are stand-in children. Discuss. 10 marks)
The Brothers Lionheart
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time
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Abu Dhabi Science Festival, by any chance? I was tapped up for that gig in about 2012... I mentioned at one point that I wanted it to be for *all* the people in Abu Dhabi and they unaccountably seemed to lose interest in me after that.