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Eric Glover

@dolichon.bsky.social
97 followers 83 following 258 posts

Astronomy, classics, London. My book on Hipparchus now published.

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Reposted by Eric Glover
Chris Lintott @chrislintott.bsky.social · 5h
As expected, the Prime Minister's promise to sort out the mess of funding for Jodrell actually meant nothing - it seems the government would like it to be some sort of heritage theme park when you can go and see where we used to do science. 🔭
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Eric Glover @dolichon.bsky.social · 19h
A boon for estate agents, a much maligned group so deserving of government support.
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Eric Glover @dolichon.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
I guess pluggers, nutters and wankers will appear for nothing.
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cara giaimo @cjgiaimo.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
i was fortunate enough to profile Margaret Hamilton in 2019. A really kind and curious person. This was my favorite story she told me:
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Eric Glover @dolichon.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Well, who'd've thunk it?
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Eric Glover @dolichon.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Melian Dialogue, surely?
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Eric Glover @dolichon.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
I thought they were talking about Iain Duncan Smith.
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Thony Christie @rmathematicus.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Christen Sørensen, better known as Longomontanus, Tycho Brahe's longest serving and leading observatory assistant, was born 4 October 1562 #histsci thonyc.wordpress.com/2018/08/08/t...
thonyc.wordpress.com
Tycho’s last bastion
In the history of science, scholars who end up on the wrong side of history tend to get either forgotten and/or vilified. What do I mean by ‘end up on the wrong side of history’? This refers to sch…
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Michael Spicer @michaelspicer.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Most TV is just this now.
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Eric Glover @dolichon.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
If you accept artificial consciousness, you probably won't accept a kill switch.
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Ele Willoughby @minouette.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
For #spacetober_challenge day 2: galaxy - astronomer Vera Rubin (neé Cooper, ‘28-‘16) & her discovery that angular motion of galaxies deviates from predictions, 1st evidence for dark matter, now known as 5x as common as matter & the stuff which dictates dynamics of galaxies & 🧪🐡👩🏼‍🔬🔭 #histsci
My linocut portrait of astronomer Vera Rubin with short hair, glasses and resting her face in her hand in burgundy on a background of outer space with stars and galaxies in black with blue and pink splotches to mimic how dust bends light in space. At the base of the print is a large spiral galaxy with a plot of orbital velocity versus distance going out from its centre (so the distance axis is indeed distance from centre). There are two lines labelled “observed” which goes up from the origin and then is a pretty flat wavy line all the way across. This line marks the bottom of Rubin. Below it is a wide empty gap of visible white paper down to the second line labelled “predicted”. The Predicted line goes up from the origin to a peak where it diverges from the observed and falls smoothly back down in a gentle curve.
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Eric Glover @dolichon.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
HR 8799 in Pegasus.
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Eric Glover @dolichon.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Well, fancy that!
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Eric Glover @dolichon.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
The WASPIs will be outraged when they hear about this 20 years from now.
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Eric Glover @dolichon.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
And I suspect her "Burnham is taking Britain back to the 1970s" isn't the killer critique she thinks it is.
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Eric Glover @dolichon.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Name a film with a female director: Le Bonheur by Agnès Varda. A beautiful but shocking suburban idyll.
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Dan Neidle @danneidle.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Luxury retailers want taxpayers to fund a 20% tax break for foreign tourists. They paid consultancy Cebr to claim this will raise £2.6bn for the UK. That convinced Sadiq Khan and Kemi Badenoch. But it's false: a free lunch. Four basic errors mask a £600m loss. Thread:
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Eric Glover @dolichon.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
It's already been done. It's called The Daily Telegraph.
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Tyron @tyron.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Just seen it's Wikipedia's 25th birthday. The greatest website online, and possibly the internet's greatest fruit
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Rachel Cunliffe @rmcunliffe.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Very normal day
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Eric Glover @dolichon.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
It would be very funny if AI killed the Internet because 99.9% of all traffic was bots doing stuff.
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Rachel Cunliffe @rmcunliffe.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
"I have nothing against cyclists. I just don’t think it’s OK for some to decide rules are for other people. And I find it baffling that so many cyclists who purport to be law-abiding want to make that argument." Now recorded for posterity in the New Statesman www.newstatesman.com/politics/fut...
newstatesman.com
A lesson in empathy from arguing with cyclists on the internet
The logic seems to be that because some drivers don’t care about their safety, they shouldn’t care about anyone else’s
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Chairman Moët @chairmanmoet.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
I have eaten the moon that was in near orbit and which you were probably saving for night time Forgive me it was delicious so sweet and so cold
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Eric Glover @dolichon.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
My parents failed to realise this, despite my pleas. It ruined my childhood.
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Eric Glover @dolichon.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
In a hotel bar on a Scottish island. Intrigued by a jolly group of German and Swedish men, all speaking in accented but fluent English, and all drinking Guinness. Quite the European mix.
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Eric Glover @dolichon.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Well, it's around £500 per adult. A sad lack of ambition.
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Transpontine @transpontine.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
My new book 'New Cross, New Cross: a cultural history of London SE14' (2026) is now out in the wild, 300+ pages, £15. Available from The Word bookshop (314 New Cross Road) and Crofton Books (315 Brockley Road). Pubs, music, radical politics, sport and much, much more. (More stockists to come)
Cover of book showing stylised map of New Cross area
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Eric Glover @dolichon.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
An easily locatable munitions dump in the American capital you say?
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Eric Glover @dolichon.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Actual size - Spinal Tap style.
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Eric Glover @dolichon.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Analemma and Equation of Time in one image.
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Eric Glover @dolichon.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
They need to keep up with the hype.
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Sunder Katwala (sundersays) @sundersays.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Somebody in Nato, Denmark or Greenland seems to have spotted that telling Trump he can have an enormous victory + then offering him the status quo of the last 25-50-75 years is an off-ramp
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Chris Dillow @chrisdillow.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
If the govt doesn't call this (& higher gilt yields) the Trump tax, then it is simply failing. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
bbc.co.uk
UK inflation pushed up by petrol and diesel price rises
Summer holidays and disruption to global oil supplies by the Middle East conflict stoked price growth.
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Eric Glover @dolichon.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
That difficulty seems an advantage to me.
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Hassinator @hassinator.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
a great letter in the times today. perhaps worth sharing in these troubled times. #RNLI #heroes
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Eric Glover @dolichon.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Bit tangential, but I recently asked Copilot to summarise a paper of mine on Herodotus. It correctly picked out a number of key points, but, amusingly, got the basic conclusion completely wrong.
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New-Cleckit Dominie @ncdominie.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Maybe unpopular view: the Igs have run their course, have now become too famous (Igbait papers are definitely a thing), and should be quietly retired. Otherwise there's a risk they'll hang about like a famous comedian whose shtick seemed hilarious when you were in your teens and has not aged well.
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Eric Glover @dolichon.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Indeed, we fall for language every time (cf. Stroop effect). Weizenbaum demonstrated this in the 60s with ELIZA, even though its capabilities were tiny compared with LLMs.
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Eric Glover @dolichon.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
It's the modern version of the front garden sale, minus the chat.
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Eric Glover @dolichon.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Well ok, but can you expect universities to employ people who understand numbers and evidence?
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Eric Glover @dolichon.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
It's never the technology, it's always the humans.
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Guildhall Library @guildhalllibrary.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
If you think sticky notes are a modern era invention.... this one dates from the 1560s! Found today in a Worshipful Company of Vintners accounts book. The Vintners received its first Royal Charter in 1363 and managed the import, regulation & sale of wine. Today it supports many causes.
Image shows a small oblong piece of paper attached at the centrefold of a handwritten accounts book. 1560s.
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Eric Glover @dolichon.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
The police need to look for someone with incredibly bad taste.
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Helen Day @lbflyawayhome.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
On this day 7th Sept 1838 Grace Darling and her father rescued sailors from from the shipwrecked Forfarshire Artist: John Berry
Grace and her father handle their small boat as it’s tossed in rough seas while we see the wrecked ship in the background, beneath stormy skies 
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Sam Freedman @samfr.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
Good Qs and worth reading but the answers can be broadly summed up as: "Me? A Conservative? You must have me confused with someone else."
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Eric Glover @dolichon.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
They'll spin it: terrible scenes, but this is what happens if you don't support our sensible policies.
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Odd This Day @oddthisday.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
It’s the 49th anniversary of the launch of Voyager 1 today, so here’s a pedantic but mercifully short thread about a famous quote attached to the event
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Eric Glover @dolichon.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Guess it will depend on who the Labour Party candidate is, and crucially, who the Binface Party candidate is.
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Angry People in Local Newspapers @apiln.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
No.
The Times: Could Martian moon be an alien spaceship? This scientist will find out.
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Eric Glover @dolichon.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
www.theguardian.com/science/2026...
theguardian.com
Forbidden planet: was Pluto’s 2006 demotion a big mistake?
Since it was stripped of planetary status, Pluto’s defenders have been fighting the decision – and they’re only getting more passionate
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