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Mark Ferguson

@aumnishambles.bsky.social
82 followers 122 following 73 posts

Carer, Gardener, Linuxhead, Other [= Brit/Sco\whatever].

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Mark Ferguson @aumnishambles.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
dear bcc could you just put badenoch at the beginning save me the reading thanks
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Dr. Elizabeth Sawin @bethsawin.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
I've known ever since I first encountered the Limits to Growth in the 1980s that collapse was possible. What I didn't have the ability to imagine was how stupid and small would be the conductors of the trip down the last miles of that road.
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Mark Ferguson @aumnishambles.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
#tftd "if you are not served by the technology that you habitually use, you are conditionally enslaved by it." (and to paraphrase:Ellul the Protestant, Illich the Catholic, and Berry the agrarian hippy walk into a pub... and collectively refuse to order their drinks via the QR code menu.)
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glastomichelle.bsky.social @glastomichelle.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Restoring balance on Autumn Equinox. Images taken this morning here in Glastonbury. Happy Equinox to everyone. #autumn#autumnequinox#mabon
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Mark Ferguson @aumnishambles.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Private law enforcement roaming the streets of Essex recruited from MyLittlePony. Something something immigrants
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Nahel Belgherze @wxnb.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
geopera.com/blog/bhote-k...
geopera.com
Bhote Koshi Flood 2026: A Reconstruction from Open Satellite Data
How open satellite imagery reconstructed the 26 August 2026 Nepal flood: flow heights, velocities, sediment depths, and an interactive 3D model.
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HappyToast @happytoast.co.uk · 15/08/2026
A blueish box of a person with the words “Just be nice yeah? For starters like.” next to them.
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Private Eye Magazine @privateeyenews.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
Water companies panic as drought worsens in UK From the new Private Eye, out now.
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Mark Ferguson @aumnishambles.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
Ok so 'big(er) brains' is an ultimate good in human evolution, right? Aaand this stops when talking about species with bigger brains than us, amirite? And also what about chickens 🐔. #tftd
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Max P III @blackballer.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
The US would have won this war if physical reality was totally different lol
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Mark Ferguson @aumnishambles.bsky.social · 15/07/2026
www.theguardian.com/education/20...
theguardian.com
Florence Welch’s mother says cuts to arts and humanities ‘absolutely tragic’
Exclusive: Prof Evelyn Welch, vice-chancellor of Bristol University, believes her daughter’s success shows value of arts education
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Steve Carter @shieldaig.bsky.social · 11/07/2026
Come on Clacton; Stand up and be counted: www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNp1...
youtube.com
Count Binface vs The Establishment | Official Satirical Music Video
YouTube video by James Cunliffe
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George McGavin @georgemcgavin.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
Wimbledon 2026.....Henman Hill - out! Murray Mount - out! Now it's got to be Arthur's Seat! You heard it first here!!!
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lauren @lauren.rotatingsandwiches.com · 06/07/2026
i've been trying to figure out exactly why the world cup is making all of bluesky insane and i thinj it's a confluence of our sports posters working territory outside their usual lane and our politics posters being deeply, deeply underwater
The definition of a true fan:
You'd rather see your team lose fairly than win unfairly."the ball knowing curve" ranging from unconsciously incompetent to unconsciously competent, with median american politics posters and median american sports enjoyers way to the left
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Mark Ferguson @aumnishambles.bsky.social · 02/07/2026
www.theguardian.com/football/202...
theguardian.com
Trump is avoiding the World Cup because it’s packed with good things he doesn’t like | Barney Ronay
For all its gloss and elitist governance, football will not bend to the will of a president so eager to demonise and exclude
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Mark Ferguson @aumnishambles.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
The thing is
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Mark Ferguson @aumnishambles.bsky.social · 30/04/2026
"What might it mean to organise our lives differently?" Lisa is speaking about one particular community, but imo this generalises very broadly with ease. @ecovillagefindhorn.bsky.social youtube.com/shorts/yYpyF...
youtube.com
Ecovillage Findhorn is an Ongoing Experiment - Lisa Mead
YouTube video by Ecovillage Findhorn TV
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Mark Ferguson @aumnishambles.bsky.social · 20/04/2026
"Starmer says it ‘beggars belief’ he wasn’t told about Mandelson vetting failure as he faces down the Commons – UK politics live" honestly beginning to like the goy - sharp as a scalpel, sexy as a bag of potatoes.
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Mark Ferguson @aumnishambles.bsky.social · 20/04/2026
just #fyi, if you are not moderating and cultivating yr LLM's with carefully crafted sub_prompts, intriguing dichotomies, and effective_memory you could possibly be missing out on one of the benefits of modren life. OTOH, you may be engaged with two gigantic matrices and a pipe.
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Eliot Higgins @eliothiggins.bsky.social · 19/04/2026
Palantir put out a 22-point summary of their CEO's book The Technological Republic. It's pitched as a defence of the West, but if you read it through the VDA framework, verification, deliberation, accountability, what it's actually doing looks rather different. twitter-thread.com/t/2045574398...
Opening text of a thread by Palantir from X
Because we get asked a lot.

The Technological Republic, in brief.

1. Silicon Valley owes a moral debt to the country that made its rise possible. The engineering elite of Silicon Valley has an affirmative obligation to participate in the defense of the nation.

2. We must rebel against the tyranny of the apps. Is the iPhone our greatest creative if not crowning achievement as a civilization? The object has changed our lives, but it may also now be limiting and constraining our sense of the possible.

3. Free email is not enough. The decadence of a culture or civilization, and indeed its ruling class, will be forgiven only if that culture is capable of delivering economic growth and security for the public.

4. The limits of soft power, of soaring rhetoric alone, have been exposed. The ability of free and democratic societies to prevail requires something more than moral appeal. It requires hard power, and hard power in this century will be built on software.
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Nature @nature.com · 18/04/2026
This researcher created a fictional illness, and fake studies funded by the Professor Sideshow Bob Foundation and University of the Fellowship of the Ring and the Galactic Triad. LLMs warned people the illness was real. go.nature.com/4mDXXka
go.nature.com
Scientists invented a fake disease. AI told people it was real
Nature - Bixonimania doesn’t exist except in a clutch of obviously bogus academic papers. So why did AI chatbots warn people about this fictional illness?
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paulusthewoodgnome @paulusthewoodgnome.bsky.social · 02/04/2026
Sending people to the moon... 🚀 🔭 Beautiful. Amazing. This could/should be the defining narrative of America in 2026. Only, of course, it isn't. #Artemis2 #ArtemisII
Launch of Artemis 2
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Randall Munroe @xkcd.com · 02/04/2026
Home Solar xkcd.com/3226/
4-panel comic. (1) [Two people standing next to house with solar panels on roof. Person 2 has a black hat.] PERSON 1: Wait, you got solar panels? I thought you were against renewables. (2) PERSON 2: Oh, definitely. I hate the environment and want to harm it as much as possible. I’d *love* to have an oil furnace. (3) PERSON 2: But the technology just isn’t there and the cost is too high. I despise solar, but it makes more financial sense in my situation. (4) PERSON 2: But with the money I’m saving, I can buy and burn industrial waste in my yard to try to make up for it. PERSON 1: Ah, yeah, carbon onsets.
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Mark Ferguson @aumnishambles.bsky.social · 25/01/2026
Burns Night. Imagine: Bobby Burns, Dick Gauchan, Hamish Henderson walk into a bar. Gerry Rafferty is havin' a wee half wi John Byrne, an' the lassie behind the bar says.... ?
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Mark Ferguson @aumnishambles.bsky.social · 16/12/2025
There is, imo, so _so_ much more to life than this. #hth
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Mark Ferguson @aumnishambles.bsky.social · 11/12/2025
another crimbo card, text from my sister, graphics by Ggl bano nanana; and in the words the great prophet Douglas Adams, i bid you 'share and enjoy' +
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Mark Ferguson @aumnishambles.bsky.social · 09/12/2025
So sorry, couldn't help it Ggl was so helpy tho... Any good for a crimbo card? Well, I tried.
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Mark Ferguson @aumnishambles.bsky.social · 12/11/2025
"Ricky Gervais plays himself with a twist. He’s rude, obnoxious, hurts and upsets people, but his wife died, so it’s OK. " for any reasonable definition of ok www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio...
theguardian.com
‘I’m still processing how awful it was’: your zero-star screen disasters
From a Dustin Hoffman performance less witty than a stunned mollusc to the worst piece of garbage ever inflicted on TV viewers, here are Guardian readers’ most atrocious watching experiences ever
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Mark Ferguson @aumnishambles.bsky.social · 01/11/2025
The police have not made any arrests so far. However, it is thought that those involved have fled to a nearby ravine. www.thesun.co.uk/news/3719093...
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🎃Autopsy of Ashley Lynch 🔪🎞️ @ashleylynch.bsky.social · 12/08/2025
Man, I just read a quote from Carrie Fisher that's going to be burned into my brain forever. "Things are getting worse faster than we can lower our standards."
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Nature @nature.com · 05/02/2025
Nature research paper: The genetic origin of the Indo-Europeans go.nature.com/3Q4IRof
go.nature.com
The genetic origin of the Indo-Europeans - Nature
Ancient DNA reveals how the explosive expansion of Yamnaya steppe pastoralists began with a small community north of the Black Sea speaking ancestral Indo-European, and detects genetic links with Anatolian speakers, stemming from a common Indo-Anatolian homeland in the North Caucasus–lower Volga region.
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Nature @nature.com · 14/01/2025
Book review: The astonishing scientists who starved to protect plants during the Second World War go.nature.com/4gSJOfk
go.nature.com
The astonishing scientists who starved to protect plants during the Second World War
The trials and tribulations of the world’s first seed bank reveal botanists’ enormous generosity and sacrifice during the siege of Leningrad.
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Eoghan Daltun 🌍 @irishrainforest.bsky.social · 14/09/2024
Today, a thread on the ferns living in my place, and some (layperson's) pointers on how to identify them. 1. First up is polypody ('many-footed') fern, which mostly grows as an epiphyte, and is very heavily associated with temperate rainforest. 🌏
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Mark Ferguson @aumnishambles.bsky.social · 22/01/2024
Artificial spider silk is like: nuclear fusion reactors, quantum computing, air cars and whole_world_wide human decency - always in development, maybe ready in 20 years.
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Mark Ferguson @aumnishambles.bsky.social · 22/01/2024
Ok so look at the header: cool, dna, tiny memory, big dollar. Now, I suggest, extrapolate... into a world where this is normal, big, and cheap. Also, the footer: who amongst us knows what APR is? Yeah, really.
mostly text
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Mark Ferguson @aumnishambles.bsky.social · 13/01/2024
perhaps i'm being a little too anthropomorphic here, perhaps not: but i think that we are the ghosts in our machines... from: www.helpnetsecurity.com/2024/01/10/b...
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Eoghan Daltun 🌍 @irishrainforest.bsky.social · 05/01/2024
"Birds of prey in Africa experiencing population collapse, study finds." Listen. Can you hear that popping, louder and louder? It's the sound of the very rivets that hold our living planet together, bursting under human pressure. 🌍 www.theguardian.com/environment/...
theguardian.com
Birds of prey in Africa experiencing population collapse, study finds
Several species have vanished across swathes of the continent – and scientists say their disappearance holds unknown risks for humans
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George Monbiot @georgemonbiot.bsky.social · 01/01/2024
A Happy New Year to you all. It’s going to be a challenging one. The ongoing massacre in Gaza Accelerating environmental breakdown Trump’s bid for the White House …. Those of us who want a better world will have to work even harder than before. 🧵 1/9
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Mark Ferguson @aumnishambles.bsky.social · 31/12/2023
a guid New Year too you, and ... www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzgB...
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Mark Ferguson @aumnishambles.bsky.social · 30/12/2023
www.theguardian.com/education/20... This man changed my life with a single word. It was c.1996 in a big pink house nigh Findhorn Bay, and I had asked him a heartfelt question about my spiritual quest in this life. Eyes of diamond and obsidian held me for a moment, in love and joy. Listen to Satish👃
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Mark Ferguson @aumnishambles.bsky.social · 30/12/2023
So-called 'AI' doesn't worry me at all - to me, it's a beautiful new technology... what does worry me however, is humans behaving badly. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
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