Sign in

Gary Polhill

@garypolhill.bsky.social
160 followers 120 following 212 posts

Agent-based modeller in human-natural systems with background in AI and NN. (Very) occasional blog posts at ecocyborg-manifesto.blog All posts my own views at the time and not necessarily those of my employer or any societies to which I belong.

PostsRepliesMedia
Gary Polhill @garypolhill.bsky.social · 11/10/2026
When a Christian, the pragmatics of the religion were partly responsible for my subsequent atheism. Christians did things that made no sense when compared to the teachings. “I was a stranger and you invited me in,” being the case in point here. To misquote Satre: Hell is other Christians.
020
Gary Polhill @garypolhill.bsky.social · 10/10/2026
There’s a real ‘everyone should just pull their socks up and act normal’ thread to this discourse around growth in diagnoses of neurodivergence. As if it isn’t dystopian to expect all humans to think the same way.
110
Gary Polhill @garypolhill.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
Next time pretend you are writing music about fluffy baby bunnies playing in a meadow of pink flowers on a balmy summer evening.
000
Gary Polhill @garypolhill.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
The US are certainly not in the World’s best company with this proposal.
010
Gary Polhill @garypolhill.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
At least Shetland isn’t in a box…
010
Gary Polhill @garypolhill.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Nice to find someone else randomly who shares a concern that when discussed with some colleagues leads to the blank stare and fixed smile that suggests they think I’ve lost my mind.
021
Gary Polhill @garypolhill.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
This is a worry for me too. Even for mundane stuff like Word and PowerPoint (both of which I’ve now stopped using by default because I do not like my IP being locked up in a proprietary format). Some of my colleagues think I’m a sandwich short of a picnic, so thanks for raising the point!
100
Gary Polhill @garypolhill.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
‘Bare’ nails a cover for white supremacy!? Reading articles like this makes me wonder if ‘The Patriarchy’ isn’t just a discourse blaming men for the appalling ways women treat each other. In the ‘Health’ section: “How the bare nails trend became a class issue” www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
bbc.co.uk
Classy or classist? How bare nails became a hot issue
Bare nails - or nails that appear that way - are a growing trend. But is it as innocent as it seems?
000
Gary Polhill @garypolhill.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Not “attempted murder” then?
000
Gary Polhill @garypolhill.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
If AI just increases the volume of papers and proposals, I am wondering if anyone has thought through the implications of that for the free peer review service offered to academics. I am increasingly minded to refuse to review for journals and funders who allow AI generated contributions. 🧪
070
Reposted by Gary Polhill
Computational Social Science Society of the Americas @computationalsocialscience.org · 12/09/2026
Early registration discount ends soon! Presenters: confirm your attendance by registering before the rates go up! computationalsocialscience.org/conferences/... (computationalsocialscience.org/conferences/...)
011
Reposted by Gary Polhill
Computational Social Science Society of the Americas @computationalsocialscience.org · 07/09/2026
September Webinar! Leigh Tesfatsion (Iowa State University): Completely Agent-Based Modeling (c-ABM): A Right Mathematics for an Increasingly Agentic World? on Tuesday, September 22, at 11 am (ET). Click here to register for the webinar. (www.tickettailor.com/events/compu...)
022
Gary Polhill @garypolhill.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
I thought for a happy minute the USA had finally given up on Fahrenheit
000
Gary Polhill @garypolhill.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
Looking forward to this talk at the European Social Simulation Association’s annual conference! Love a rant!
Title screen of a presentation: “Is simulation still a way forward for the social sciences in the era of the polycrisis in the capitalocene? — a RANT from an action researcher”
020
Gary Polhill @garypolhill.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
Ooh can I snapshot this for use in my next talk…?
000
Gary Polhill @garypolhill.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
Cor that’s super exciting!!
000
Gary Polhill @garypolhill.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
They want what they want regardless of the truth, and will invent ‘facts’ to support what they want. This is why education, evidence and scientific research — often touted as the means to resolve disputes — are ineffective in resolving these fundamental divisions. Cohesion needs deradicalisation.
020
Gary Polhill @garypolhill.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
It is of course silly of me to hate _all_ the even numbers, so I have decided not to mind those with an odd factor. Except 6. And other even numbers with a 6 in.
010
Gary Polhill @garypolhill.bsky.social · 01/08/2026
If I wrote a computer program that hacked other companies and then said it was an AI straight up guv, and not my fault, I don’t think my defence would stand up in court.
020
Gary Polhill @garypolhill.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
Ooh, where’s the world’s smallest violin?
000
Gary Polhill @garypolhill.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
Society has indeed spent forty years or so with its head in the sand about sustainability matters.
020
Gary Polhill @garypolhill.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
FWIW reading through replies given to responses to his message, I think he already does quite a lot for the environment, but is just fed up of being told what to do. However right one may be, sometimes insights into sustainable living will rub some people up the wrong way.
000
Gary Polhill @garypolhill.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
People engage with sustainability in different ways and it is definitely off-putting for many to be told what (not) to do all the time. There is a neopuritan air about some of the behaviours and attitudes around living sustainably. Life does need to be fun.
110
Gary Polhill @garypolhill.bsky.social · 26/07/2026
Tell your bosses you’ve earned your supper. I just subscribed.
120
Gary Polhill @garypolhill.bsky.social · 26/07/2026
I think that trajectory ends up with DNA tests, cloning and incest in pursuit of ever greater white ‘purity’.
000
Gary Polhill @garypolhill.bsky.social · 26/07/2026
(70s and 80s, I meant to say)
010
Gary Polhill @garypolhill.bsky.social · 26/07/2026
Instead, laws, norms and mainstream opinions changed around reactionary Gen X, who self-censored. (Progressive Gen Xers were part of the movements for change, of course.) A resurgent right has now led to those views the reactionary Gen X had suppressed becoming something that could be said openly.
010
Gary Polhill @garypolhill.bsky.social · 26/07/2026
Personally, I am not convinced Gen X were ‘radicalised’ as such. Rather, I think we have forgotten how prevalent and mainstreamed racist, sexist and homophobic opinions and norms were during the formative years of Xers, in the 80s and 90s.
270
Gary Polhill @garypolhill.bsky.social · 19/07/2026
The last ten to fifteen or so years have been very strange politically. Leaders are humans not heroes, and I think we should _all_ be thinking what we can do to make things better rather than waiting for some magic personality to inspire us.
010
Gary Polhill @garypolhill.bsky.social · 11/07/2026
Criticising your successors after you’ve retired? Classy. Really classy. There was always that annoying sense he thought he could do better than anyone he interviewed when he presented Today.
070
Gary Polhill @garypolhill.bsky.social · 08/07/2026
It’s a fair question. But then again… How do people not know that climate change is being caused by human activity? Or that we are living through a major extinction crisis? Or that evolution is the best account we have of the emergence of life on our planet? Or that our planet is an oblate spheroid?
021
Gary Polhill @garypolhill.bsky.social · 02/07/2026
Today I am working from home, with the intention that I would have a concentrated space to make progress with my work. But instead I’ve spent two hours wrestling frustratedly with a recalcitrant PC, and now I’m too annoyed to concentrate on work.
020
Reposted by Gary Polhill
Computational Social Science Society of the Americas @computationalsocialscience.org · 29/06/2026
CSS 2026: Deadline Extended Now accepting both submissions and student fellowship award applications until July 15th! More info: computationalsocialscience.org/conferences/... (computationalsocialscience.org/conferences/...)
computationalsocialscience.org
CSS 2026 Santa Fe | The Computational Social Science Society of the Americas
CSSSA
011
Gary Polhill @garypolhill.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
If I have the belief that I need to get up to go to work, but the desire to stay in bed to get some more sleep, how am I to compute my intention?
010
Gary Polhill @garypolhill.bsky.social · 29/05/2026
I’m watching Stargate SG1 so it’s starting well…
010
Reposted by Gary Polhill
Bruce Edmonds @bruceedmonds.bsky.social · 29/05/2026
Upcoming workshop 24-26th June, Groningen, NL on "Power to the People: Participatory Modeling for Societal Resilience". www.rug.nl/rudolf-agric... #participatory #modeling #resilience #society
rug.nl
Power to the People: Participatory Modeling for Societal Resilience
When communities face their most pressing challenges—managing disaster risk, adapting to climate change, navigating energy transitions—solutions rarely...
111
Gary Polhill @garypolhill.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
It is for occasions like these that the word schadenfreude was invented.
000
Gary Polhill @garypolhill.bsky.social · 17/05/2026
Well, you can always check his publications for hallucinated references and contact retraction watch…
000
Gary Polhill @garypolhill.bsky.social · 16/05/2026
It’s basically an unimaginative amalgam of English Literature syllabuses. Of the handful I’ve read, the majority are because I was made to by a teacher or a girlfriend
020
Gary Polhill @garypolhill.bsky.social · 15/05/2026
And they must have decided that Snow Crash is in the top twenty then, since it is not in 21-100. Awesome!
110
Gary Polhill @garypolhill.bsky.social · 13/05/2026
Brend Parsons from Bristol, your country needs you.
000
Gary Polhill @garypolhill.bsky.social · 11/05/2026
Anyone know the secret of listening to the news and _not_ having an hour-long panic attack because of all the stupid?
010
Gary Polhill @garypolhill.bsky.social · 11/05/2026
I am having one of those days in which other people’s ‘systems’ have not been designed imagining that someone like me could exist.
020
Gary Polhill @garypolhill.bsky.social · 03/05/2026
It is indeed hard to imagine a parallel situation in which CofE schools and churches have to be surrounded by barbed wire, and commentators bringing Trump into any conversation following the attempted murder of some people wearing crucifixes.
110
Gary Polhill @garypolhill.bsky.social · 03/05/2026
How to shoehorn “sex” into a headline for a few extra clicks…
000
Gary Polhill @garypolhill.bsky.social · 18/04/2026
I’m still waiting for the paper claiming an AI can work out how long your job will run for before submitting it to a cluster…
010
Gary Polhill @garypolhill.bsky.social · 17/04/2026
Thing is though, they aren’t computer scientists.
210
Gary Polhill @garypolhill.bsky.social · 14/04/2026
I had one elderly individual of what I imagine to be a similar demographic respond to my (pathetic and negligible) efforts to ‘save the planet’ with, “Who are you saving it for?”
261
Gary Polhill @garypolhill.bsky.social · 10/04/2026
I hate DST.
010
Gary Polhill @garypolhill.bsky.social · 22/03/2026
Does anyone else find the music they are now playing over scenes of destruction in Iran on the news (e.g. Laura Kuenssberg) — what’s the word — trivializing? I’m reminded of scenes from B movies and video games, rather than being given pause to reflect on the suffering of real people.
000