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Abelian

@abelian.bsky.social
125 followers 412 following 888 posts

Trying to commute less these days. DMs turned off because of the UK censors.

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Abelian @abelian.bsky.social · 4h
"Cry 'God for Harry, England, and Saint George!'" "Oh do put a sock in it, Harry, your mum was in Monmouth when you were born so you're not allowed to identify as English."
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Abelian @abelian.bsky.social · 14h
My grandparents wouldn't have one in the house, even in their 90s when the rest of the family offered to pay for it. They associated a ringing telephone with urgent bad news, because for anything else you'd just send a letter.
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Abelian @abelian.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
A word to HR people: if you are advertising a job located in the Canton of Zurich, double-check that the web site hasn't automatically relocated it to Canton.
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Abelian @abelian.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Serial bus stop demolition in Devizes, fortunately without any deaths so far: www.gazetteandherald.co.uk/news/2660299...
gazetteandherald.co.uk
Safety bid takes step forward after bus stop repeatedly destroyed
A bid has been launched to improve safety measures around a Devizes town centre bus stop after it has been repeatedly destroyed in car crashes.
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Abelian @abelian.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Sorry, forgot to add the link: www.shropshirestar.com/news/bus-sto...
shropshirestar.com
Bus stop demolished by straw load as council appeals for culprit to come forward
The parish council has asked people not to use the shelter
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Abelian @abelian.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
We aren't going to have a sensible historically informed discussion like that. What we will get is a campaign of deafening abuse led by our increasingly feral press, which will regretfully conclude that the blame for the slave trade lies with the Lib Dems. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/ng-i...
theguardian.com
How enslavement became state-backed operation supported by Conservative and Lib Dem forerunners
Tory and Whig MPs were central to funding trafficking of enslaved people and many opposed abolition of the slave trade
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Abelian @abelian.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Bright clothing and lights, bus passenger edition. No mention of mandatory bus helmets, but it is surely only a matter of time. www.lincolnshireworld.com/your-world/b...
lincolnshireworld.com
Be Seen – Lincolnshire bus passengers urged to shine phone screens at bus stop to attract drivers’ attention
Be Seen – Lincolnshire bus passengers urged to shine phone screens at bus stop to attract drivers’ attention
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Abelian @abelian.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Another bus stop destroyed. We don't know what the vehicle was, so technically it could have been a bicycle ridden by some farmer.
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Reposted by Abelian
Jay Hulme @jayhulmepoet.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
I'm going to tell you a story and then, at the end, I'm going to ask you if anyone happens to have the niche knowledge I need to help... The story begins, as so many of my stories do, in an ancient church in the middle of a city. But it's not now. And it's not hundreds of years ago. It's the 1960's
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Abelian @abelian.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
It'll be something tedious like diesel, but the police should definitely keep us entertained by interviewing the idiots every week about dogging.
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Abelian @abelian.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Do they not have the budget for Cambridge graduates these days?
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Abelian @abelian.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Chas and Dave fan club.
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Abelian @abelian.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Not now, That London.
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Abelian @abelian.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
OTOH, maybe PPE students should read more history... bsky.app/profile/step...
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Abelian @abelian.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
I can't speak for the engineers, but in my day postgrad scientists and mathematicians usually read history and literature for pleasure, played musical instruments, learned languages, and so on. Fewer historians had an interest in, say, differential geometry or astrophysics. Has it changed so much?
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Abelian @abelian.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Time to say goodbye... www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
bbc.co.uk
'Cheeky' fees prompts choirs to pull out of Andrea Bocelli gig
Choirs say they're withdrawing from the Principality Stadium event because of the £42 per member charge.
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Abelian @abelian.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
www.theguardian.com/news/blog/20...
theguardian.com
A wee trip to London
A new advert for Ryanair in a Norwegian newspaper offers flights from Oslo to "London Prestwick" airport. Prestwick international airport is located 30 miles from Glasgow, and nearly 400 miles from Lo...
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Reposted by Abelian
Katja Diehl @katjadiehl.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Why I don´t talk about helmets? I lost too many wearing them. On Car-Free Day, 22 September, Nicolò, a seven-year-old child, was killed by a motorist in Turin. He was riding in the bike lane, wearing his helmet, riding to school with his father. A car driver killed him anyway. Photo Fabio Ferrari
A tiny ghost bike painted white.
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Abelian @abelian.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
After the Senedd elections, I think they're expecting it. FPTP is brutal to third-placed parties.
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Abelian @abelian.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Do you believe any ethnic identities exist? If, in Japan, you had met someone of Korean ancestry with a recognisably Osakan manner, would you conclude that there is no such thing as Japanese ethnicity?
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Abelian @abelian.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
I *think* this is referring to two separate people with the same name:
Just a year later, the Thomas Tunnock lifeboat, named in honour of the businessman's late brother and grandfather, was launched to great acclaim.
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Abelian @abelian.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
I think it's more that only the rescue worker was left on board, the actual migrants having been transferred and therefore not at risk from the knife crime in question.
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Abelian @abelian.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Oh, I can easily imagine Labour defining Englishness for them, with the EHRC providing helpful guidance on what to do if you spot a biological foreigner. Farage will be elsewhere, asking why NHS England is treating people who aren't English.
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Abelian @abelian.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Has anything in the last few years given you confidence that British politicians will support self-ID?
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Abelian @abelian.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
We all know what the ethnonationalists are trying to do. They want the power to assert and police an exclusionary definition of Englishness. The response of the rest of us to that should not be "Here's a different exclusionary definition - let us police it for you."
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Abelian @abelian.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Until a few years ago I would have been confident that just about everyone would accept people born overseas to English parents as English. Now, I'm not so sure, and it isn't just the far right. Plenty on here declaring that Englishness is about the accident of where you were born.
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Abelian @abelian.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
I don't think that Sunak's identity particularly stokes the Great Replacement conspiracy theory, but "army kids can't be English" might do it.
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Abelian @abelian.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
We had nearly fifty years of EU freedom of movement. We sent military families abroad for many years before that. There must be thousands of English people who were born abroad; it isn't unusual and they aren't somehow French or German just because they weren't born in England.
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Abelian @abelian.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
The NFBUK strikes again.
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Abelian @abelian.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
If you're heading to the coast this weekend, allow me to recommend RNLI jelly babies. A bit fruitier and less sugary than the usual. I usually buy a few bags when I'm passing.
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Abelian @abelian.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
TLDR: the Equal Earth projection does not eliminate East/West bias, it entrenches it in a way that the Mercator projection never did.
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Abelian @abelian.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Here's a less Eurocentric choice of meridian, that moves the distortion away from the Pacific. I don't think the West Africans are going to like this one, though:
Equal Earth map centred on the Pacific.
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Abelian @abelian.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
The UN-approved Equal Earth map centred on the Greenwich meridian. The geography of the Pacific Rim has been wildly distorted to (checks Guardian) eliminate Western bias.
Equal Earth map. Manages somehow to be even more Eurocentric than the Mercator projection.
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Abelian @abelian.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Suntory?
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Abelian @abelian.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Maybe a minefield and some machine guns would help?
Ms Tonks believes there is a risk of future deaths due to there being a supermarket car park and an alleyway leading to the town centre on either side of a busy ring road, with no guardrails to stop people crossing.
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Abelian @abelian.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Some people watched too many Colditz films as kids, and it shows.
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Abelian @abelian.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Summary: there's parking on one side of a busy road, and the town centre on the other side. People want to cross the road, but that isn't safe. Is the solution: a) Guard rails b) Guard dogs c) Guard towers d) A pedestrian crossing in the place where pedestrians want to cross?
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Abelian @abelian.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Just put another crossing in, you absolute divots. www.expressandstar.com/news/coroner...
expressandstar.com
Coroner raises road safety concerns following fatal crash in Stone
A coroner has asked Staffordshire County Council to look at road safety improvements following a fatal accident in Stone.
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Abelian @abelian.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Poor headline from @theguardian.com on an otherwise decent article. The Mercator projection exaggerates areas near the poles (like Siberia) at the expense of equatorial regions (e.g. Central America). That is not "western bias". www.theguardian.com/science/ng-i...
theguardian.com
‘A map is never neutral’: meet the cartographers who took on centuries of western bias
Equal Earth projection, adopted by the UN last week, provides an alternative to 16th-century Mercator display
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Abelian @abelian.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Dudley.
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Abelian @abelian.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
(Boggle)
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Abelian @abelian.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
British villages will declare themselves independent rather than build a pavement along a rural road.
A parish councillor, Mike Nixon, said the proposed site had no pedestrian access areas, and that the nearest path was about a mile and a quarter away, down a busy unlit road.
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Abelian @abelian.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Here in the UK, more than 40% of human drivers speed in 30mph zones. Even if you accept the weird idea that accuracy doesn't matter on the stretches of road where the limit isn't changing, limiters are a huge improvement on that. www.gov.uk/government/s...
gov.uk
Vehicle speed compliance statistics for Great Britain: 2024
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Abelian @abelian.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Any chance we could identify the cyclists most likely to run into pedestrians, and buy them a Range Rover before it happens? Feels like this is what many people want.
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Abelian @abelian.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
(Apologies if you meant cars. I have no idea why those are still legal.)
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Abelian @abelian.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Pedestrian killed at bus stop by car driver, again. Not a floating bus stop, so we're out of ideas to stop this happening next time. #BusStopCrash www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
bbc.co.uk
Woman dies after car hits pedestrians at Corby bus stop
A man is being questioned by police over the crash, which has also left a teenage boy injured.
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Abelian @abelian.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
I knew Sir Ed Davey was a wrong 'un. The moment I spotted him bungee jumping, I said to myself "there's a man with forerunners, and I bet they backed the slave trade." www.theguardian.com/uk-news/ng-i...
theguardian.com
How enslavement became state-backed operation supported by Conservative and Lib Dem forerunners
Tory and Whig MPs were central to funding trafficking of enslaved people and many opposed abolition of the slave trade
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Abelian @abelian.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Because they are legal to use, just not on the street. See also e-scooters, most quad bikes, and fruit knives.
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Abelian @abelian.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Doesn't that create an incentive for wealthy oldies to sink even more of their money into housing? Kind of like what we've done for farmland?
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Abelian @abelian.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
About the economics of solar farms: www.theguardian.com/environment/...
theguardian.com
Britain’s biggest community solar farm forced to shut over grid overload fears
Timing of Devon switchoff ‘could not be worse’, says board, as members face an estimated £2m in lost revenue
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