iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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"Daphne said that the pair she and her partner lost to in the mixed doubles were the world champions." @uniofleicester.bsky.social #HigherEducationPostcard

An old monochrome picture postcard showing an architect's drawing of college buildings. Printed at the foot of the card is "University College Leicester: Main Building, natural sciences wing and proposed refectory"

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Jake Kanter @jakekanter.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Revealed: Royal Mail used an AI voiceover in a Christmas ad about human connection. We only know this because a startled viewer thought she heard the voice of her dead Dad: Paul Vaughan, the mellifluous BBC host and Paddington narrator. A cautionary tale. deadline.com/2026/10/paul...

deadline.com

Did Royal Mail Revive BBC & 'Paddington' Voiceover Star With AI?

Daughter of Paul Vaughan, an acclaimed BBC and 'Paddington' voiceover artist, accuses Royal Mail Christmas ad of resurrecting her father using AI.

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History of Geology @historyofgeology.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

October 2, 1902, Beatrix Potter's "The Tale of Peter Rabbit" is published by Frederick Warne & Co. in London. Potter illustrated the adventures of a rabbit child herself, but she was also a self-taught naturalist (especially an expert on mushrooms) and interested in minerals & fossils...

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Melissa Terras @melissaterras.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

I haven’t said anything about the strikes yet (I am so ANGRY but despite all my rage I’m still just a rat in a cage etc etc). So it can’t be me the carefully worded HR email is about, telling us all to be nice to everyone (implying SMT?) including on socials, on threat of disciplinary action?

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Ele Willoughby @minouette.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Julienite is just blue. Halite (comes in different colours) is necessary to human life, used as art material: it’s carved, watercolour effects, salt prints, glazes, installations & more. As a marine geophysicist who does marine electromagnetic surveys depending on salinity: vote halite! #MinCup26

“Japanese Artist Motoi Yamamoto’s incredible, labyrinthine installations are the result of 45 hours of meticulously piled grains of salt, strewn inside a medieval castle in the South of France” via booooooom.com

The photo shows a stone chamber with vaulted ceiling in which Yamamoto has installed salt so it looks like tiny mountains and a large blood red floor surface covered with a salt labyrinth like a Turing pattern.

A carved medieval scene in halite with a kneeling man and crowned woman and armoured knights in the background in Wieliczka, Poland’s salt mine via Wieliczka Salt Mine Tours

“Spiral Jetty is a work of land art constructed in April 1970 that is considered to be the most important work by American sculptor Robert Smithson. Smithson documented the construction of the sculpture in a 32-minute color film also titled Spiral Jetty. Built on the northeastern shore of the Great Salt Lake near Rozel Point in Utah entirely of mud, salt crystals, and basalt rocks, Spiral Jetty forms a 1,500-foot-long (460 m), 15-foot-wide (4.6 m) counterclockwise coil jutting from the shore of the lake.” Via Wikipedia

This aerial photo (Dia Art Foundation / Nancy Holt / Holt/Smithson Foundation) shows the burgundy reddish lake, the spiral earthwork whitish with salt and arid shoreline.

19th century salt print (early photographic method) of a bearded man in jacket facing left. The area outside of a rectangle with his face is much more faded sepia toned. Below in pencil is written “Charles Louis Wallace”

“The materials required for salt printmaking, the oldest negative-to-positive photographic technique, are simple: silver nitrate, cotton or rag paper, water, sodium thiosulfate, sunlight, and table salt” via The Harvard Gazette

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Vicky Veritas @vickyveritas.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

In the dark and silent deep, Where the ancient oceans sleep, Crystalline and fiercely bright, Wakes the cubic form of light. #Halite, born of sun and sea, Bound in perfect symmetry. The Salt of the Earth #MinCup26 ⚒️ sci-fi 🧪 🖖🏼 scifi Geosciences #WomenInSTEM geology #geosky #GIS 🍎 🪐 🔭 🌋 📚 🌿

White cubic halite stalactites. From Mindat: https://www.mindat.org/photo-427956.html

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Dr. Rebecca Barnes (she/her) @waterbarnes.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Past me (i.e. ribbons & beads in my hair crystal wearing high school aged me) means I will be #TeamQuartz forever

static.klipy.com

Sparkling Crystal Gems Collection

Alt: Sparkling Crystal Gems Collection

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Gawen Jenkin @gawenjenkin.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Got to wonder how many people haven’t read the alt text and realised it is sphalerite (more beautifully formed) on the left. #teamsphalerite

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Ele Willoughby @minouette.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Lots of art materials made it to the #MinCup26 quarterfinals though these 2 beat some greats. Zinc & copper have been a part of brass & bronze since antiquity. Zinc makes etching plates, zinc white & zinc yellow paint. Cuprite is used as a red pigment in glass, artificial gems, enamels, & ceramics.

Vase

Hugh Cornwall Robertson
Chelsea Keramic Art Works, Chelsea, Massachusetts, United States
Stoneware; Oxblood glaze
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston: Gift of Edward W. Hooper

This elegant vase is an oxblood colour with swirling iridescence thanks to cuprite

Title: Woman with Figs
Series/Portfolio: Published in the album, Germinal, in 1899
Artist: Paul Gauguin (French, Paris 1848–1903 Atuona, Hiva Oa, Marquesas Islands)
Printer: Printed by Armand Séguin (French, Paris 1869–1903 Finistère, Brittany)
Former Attribution: Formerly attributed to Armand Séguin (French, Paris 1869–1903 Finistère, Brittany)
Date: 1894
Medium: Etching, lavis, and soft-ground etching on zinc, printed in green ink
Dimensions: 10 1/2 x 17 7/16 in. (26.7 x 44.3 cm)
Classification: Prints
Credit Line: The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1967
Object Number: 67.753.6
Curatorial Department: Drawings and Prints

Via The Met. In this etching of a woman at a table with figs and a landscape out a window behind her.

Vincent van Gogh, A Wheatfield With Cypresses
1889

Medium: Oil
Support: Canvas
Size: 72.1 x 90.9
Art period: Post-Impressionism
National Gallery London
NG 3861

Via ColourLex
Van Gogh painted this wheat field with cypress and shrubs with rolling hills and roiling skies in the background using zinc white amongst other pigments.

Title: Portrait medal of Antoine Perrenot Granvelle (obverse); Don Juan of Austria Receiving the Standard from Granvelle (reverse)
Artist: Giovanni V. Melon (Italian, active ca. 1570–90)
Date: 1571
Medium: Bronze (Copper alloy with orange-brown,
mottled cuprite patina).
Dimensions: Diam. 4.4 cm, wt. 32.71 g.
Classification: Medals
Credit Line: Robert Lehman Collection, 1975
Object Number: 1975.1.1289
Curatorial Department: The Robert Lehman Collection

Via The Met

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Gawen Jenkin @gawenjenkin.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

I’m thinking about including a section at the end of my lectures ‘AI shite of the week’ and get students to critique the image. Good idea? ⚒️ #geoscience

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John Stott @jpsastro.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Had a UKRI funded grant proposal rejected at the "AI triage stage". "This AI-based triage was used only to identify approximately 50% of the strongest proposals to take forward to full human review." 🧪 #academicsky

I am writing to let you know that, unfortunately, your application was not successful.

Review process

As part of the initial triage of the 179 proposals submitted to this call, each was assessed using an AI-based review. Every proposal was read independently by several different AI models against the same seven criteria used to shape this call (including cyber security relevance, research quality and novelty, importance of the problem addressed, feasibility of the project plan, likely outputs and impact, value for money, and responsible research practice), with each model asked to give a score and a written justification with supporting quotations from the text. To guard against any one model's idiosyncrasies, we also ran a second, independent process in which different AI models debated the merits and weaknesses of each proposal before reaching a judgement, again against the same criteria. Scores from both processes were combined to produce an overall ranking.

This AI-based triage was used only to identify approximately 50% of the strongest proposals to take forward to full human review. Projects selected for funding were drawn from those that progressed to the full human review stage. We recognise that AI-assisted assessment is a new and evolving part of the review process, and we are continuing to evaluate how well it aligns with the judgements of human reviewers on this call. We will soon produce a document detailing our method, so that others can build upon it and improve it.

Feedback on your application

Your application was not selected to progress beyond the AI triage stage. To provide transparency on the outcome of this assessment, we are sharing below the scores (out of 5) from each of the two AI review processes described above, together with the mean score across the two processes.

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Gawen Jenkin @gawenjenkin.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

I’m old enough to remember when you could walk into a lab, throw a schedule and a few handouts around and start lecturing. Now it is a major software engineering project every year to create the #blackboard VLE. #scaffolding #UKHE

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Gawen Jenkin @gawenjenkin.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Universities: ‘No, no, we want bland corporate messaging that is the same as everywhere else. God forbid the public hear from most of our awful staff’

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Margot Finn @eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Students inside UK universities overwhelmingly have positive things to say about HE. Addressing the disconnect between these perceptions and reported public perceptions is just the sort of problem university staff should be adept at tackling. It's a series of research questions, amenable to answers.

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Emma Yeomans @yeomans.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Worrying scenes in the Channel today, for all interested in asylum policy and maritime tactics. A small boat from Normandy spent more than 30 hours at sea. Those on board now on their 2nd rescue vessel as Border Force forced to play cat and mouse with far-right activists who have their own boat.

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Magsmanston @magsmanston.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Yep. One of our biggest outputs and a real strategic strength of the country in terms of money, soft power, etc. See also unis - 5,000 redundancies announced this year. ~13,000 the year before, about 30,000 since 2022. They just need to cope and change.

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Gawen Jenkin @gawenjenkin.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Fantastic! Never knew this - used Crank-Nicolson in some of my diffusion modelling work in rocks.

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Prof Ian Hall @ianhall.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

🌊 Ocean acidification has now joined the list of exceeded planetary boundaries. That makes 7 of 9. These are interconnected Earth-system pressures, collectively eroding resilience and shrinking humanity’s safe operating space. www.pik-potsdam.de/en/news/late...

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Gawen Jenkin @gawenjenkin.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Just updating lecture notes and I see that since last year (right) NASA have changed the temperature baseline from pre-industrial to 1951-1980 (left)… #climatechange

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Vicky Veritas @vickyveritas.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

#MinCup26 ⚒️ sci-fi 🧪 🖖🏼 scifi Geosciences #WomenInSTEM geology #geosky #GIS 🍎 🪐 🔭 🌋 📚 🌿

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Gawen Jenkin @gawenjenkin.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Does anyone use 80 g of pasta per person?! We aren’t sparrows! (Me and 2 kids have just eaten a 500 g packet)

Pasta cooking instructions - 80g per person (if you are on a diet)

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Ele Willoughby @minouette.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Andalusite gets arts points as gem & physics points for pleochroism & as index mineral. But Cuprite wins art vote as a red pigment in glass, enamels, bronze patinas & ceramics. Colours range from blood red to purple/brown in a reducing atmosphere & change to green in an oxidizing kiln. #MinCup26

An oval cut honey brown Andalusite gem via gemstones.com

Title: Ritual Tripod Cauldron with Cover (Ding)
Period: Eastern Zhou (770–256 BCE) to Western Han dynasty (206 BCE–9 CE)
Date: 3rd–2nd century BCE
Culture: China
Medium: Bronze [red patina due to Cuprite]
Dimensions: H. 7 7/8 in. (20 cm); Diam. 8 3/4 in. (22.2 cm)
Classification: Metalwork
Credit Line: John Stewart Kennedy Fund, 1913
Object Number: 13.220.41a, b
Curatorial Department: Asian Art

Via The Met

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Gawen Jenkin @gawenjenkin.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

RNLI I went to school in Penzance with teenagers from Mousehole. My grandfather grew up there. I remember the exact place and time I heard the news. I still shed a tear every year. If anyone goes for the RNLI they are going to have go through me and a million others.

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Gawen Jenkin @gawenjenkin.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

And don’t we bloody know it! But at least we have some nice shiny buildings to be poorly paid in.

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Susie Leopold @blastylavagrrrl.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

#Vesuvianite has an impossible (for me) to memorize formula, but a charming name that evokes volcanoes, and an almost overwhelming number and combination of colors. #MinCup26

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Dr Katie Strang @palaeokatie.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

I love rocks so much, my excitement is unberylable

Portrait photo of Katie standing looking super stoked while holding a large crystal of blue-green beryl like it’s a wain. She’s dressed all in black, wearing sunglasses with green and black hair and lots of tattoos. Beryl from norway held in the Hunterian collections

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N. M. (they/she)⚒️ 🇩🇪 🇳🇱 🇪🇺🏳️‍⚧️🌈 @yirara-bah.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

WOW! If anyone is still looking for arguments for sphalerite, then this is the killer argument!

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Fossillocator @fossillocator.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Two faceted sphalerites from my collections. It's hard to document dispersion on camera, but these things have 3 times the fire of diamonds #MinCup26

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authodizer @doktrock.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Sphalerite (var schalenblende) from the Pomorzany Mine, Olkusz, Poland. A favorite desk specimen, given to me by a mine geologist there. Exhibits typical concentric brown to yellow fine grained mineral layers, along with galena, pyrite. #MinCup26 #MineralMonday ⚒️

Polished slab about 8 cm across with complex layered minerals.

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MineralExpert.org @mexporg.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

#Spahlerite may look boring, but its surprising range of colors and can even be faceted as a gem! And it is important ore of zinc and indium. Learn more in our detailed overview: #MinCup26 #MinCup #mineral #crystal #ore #sulfide #mineralogy mineralexpert.org/article/spha...

mineralexpert.org

Sphalerite - The Zinc Blende — Mineral Expert

Sphalerite (zinc blende) is the most common zinc ore and popular collectors mineral.

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Aurelien Mondon @aurelmondon.com · 17/09/2026

It was confirmed yesterday that the centre left coalition won the election in Sweden As predicted, with the far right performing poorly, coverage has almost entirely vanished from international media

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Vicky Veritas @vickyveritas.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

‘Sphalerite, when found in gem-quality crystals exhibits a dispersion three times higher than that of diamond. This high dispersion means that light entering the stone is split into a rainbow of colors.” 👀 ALT #MinCup26 ⚒️ sci-fi 🧪 🖖🏼 scifi Geosciences #WomenInSTEM geology #geosky #GIS 🍎 🪐 🔭 🌋 📚 🌿

Rainbow Sphalerite From: From: https://gemheaven.org/article/sphalerite/

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Lars Fischer @fischblog.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

This is a tough choice. Two amazing and important minerals in today's #mincup26 match. But the #Graphite people have mobilized their armies, so I feel compelled to call uponn all of you to vote #Cassiterite! www.mineralcup.org/2026/vote-re...

mineralcup.org

Vote in Round 1 Match 16 — Mineral Cup & Ore Cup

Vote in Cassiterite vs Graphite Credit: Domenico Preite / M. Castello and Carles Millan

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Gawen Jenkin @gawenjenkin.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Geo-colleagues in US and worldwide - I need a couple of examples of major national science festivals where geoscientists might go with an outreach display. I’m doing final edits on a short guide “planning and executing an outreach event using geological collections” and need 1-2 international eg

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Adam McKay @ghostpanther.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Friendly reminder that Corps use news, social media & elected officials to push their agendas so they enter ur social circles and become “world view” and “culture.” Which is how most ppl don’t know this is coming: www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

theguardian.com

The incoming ‘super’ El Niño will create chaos around the world. And we are far from ready for it | Bill McGuire

One of the biggest upheavals in a millennium is on its way, strengthened by the climate crisis. We need leaders who make things better not worse, says climate professor Bill McGuire

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MineralExpert.org @mexporg.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Perfect crystal of #Cassiterite on matrix from Krásno, Czech Republic. FOV 3 cm #MinCup26 #MinCup #mineral #crystal #mineralogy #mineralexpert #tin #ore

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Bob Morris, MD, PhD @rdmorris.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Misinformation Kills: In the past month alone there have been four deaths attributable to these two men. And this is a pattern. arstechnica.com/health/2026/...

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Ele Willoughby @minouette.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Chocolate is great but I have to vote for #Chrysocolla, which has appeared in art since antiquity as a gem, as a “glue” as solder for goldsmithing and as a pigment. Here we have ancient Buddhist murals in China, Medieval mural in Italy & ancient Peruvian art. #MinCup26 #artHist #SciComm

Wall painting, cave of musician, Kizil, 600-650 AD. Intense blues in the Kizil Caves in China have been shown to use Chrysocolla as a pigment. The Buddhist murals shows a Bodhisattva in blue skirt and with blue hair holding a sword on his neck, with draped green scarf, next to a woman in blue kneeling holding a child. There’s a shrub with white blossoms behind them.

“ scene of the wall paintings ( Deposition from the cross , on the southern wall). The faux marble dado with geometric motifs is seen in the lower part. The image shows the appearance of the paintings before the current restoration. ” This mural at the medieval Sienna Cathedral uses Chrysocolla as a pigment via: Thirteenth century wall paintings under the Siena Cathedral (Italy). Mineralogical and petrographic study of materials, painting techniques and state of conservation July 2006Journal of Cultural Heritage 7(3):171-185 DOI:10.1016/j.culher.2006.04.002

Chrysocolla and Shell Breastplate Cupisnique (1250-1 BCE). Larco Museum, Lima The ancient Peruvian breastplate is shot on a black background

Octopus Frontlet, 300–600, Moche culture; gold, chrysocolla, shells. Museo de la Nación, Lima, Peru, MN-14602. Ministerio de Cultura del Perú The wonderful gold stylized octopus has a face with shell teeth and Chrysocolla eyes with radiating curled octopus arms, shot on a black background via The Getty Museum.

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Owen Missen @scimissionowen.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Xocolatlite is a tellurium mineral with a great name, and features in the 10th edition of Mineral Cup, five years after the most unlikely of champions, quetzalcoatlite! Xocolatlite also has the distinction of being described by my phd supervisor Joel Brugger and team!

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Leonie V. Hicks @lvhicks.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Today my heart is with all colleagues facing redundancy (some for the umpteenth time), who were made redundant over the summer or who have simply had enough and left. Our sector is having its guts ripped out.

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Jane @localnotail.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Feel like this should have more than 142K signatures by now - it's a simple thing but seems important in the face of the inhumanity of the far-right.

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Elizabeth V @geolizzy.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

I’m going with #arsenopyrite today over the salty one because its formula is FeAsS (I always remember it because it’s “iron ass”) and because of its association with gold deposits. Gold likes to sneak into the crystal structure of arsenopyrite and arsenian pyrite in amounts you can mine

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Bantshire University @bantshireuni.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Our AI-powered timetabling system has become self-aware and resigned from its position with immediate effect.

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Gawen Jenkin @gawenjenkin.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

THIS! ‘I fear we will lose something far more significant than funding, structures, or organisational capacity. We risk losing the very communities that make academic life meaningful. And that is a loss from which the sector may struggle to recover.’

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Ele Willoughby @minouette.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Julienite is blue, but Calcite? No contest for my art/physics voting scheme. Pigments, chalk, sculpture… all of art history! Calcite has brought us all of marble art and limestone sculpture, chalk drawing, pigment and extender. Also fossils! Trilobite eyes! Birefringence. VOTE CALCITE! #MinCup26

Rembrandt, A Young Lady Smiling 1633 Medium: Oil Support: Oak panel Size: 52.4 x 44 cm Art period: Baroque Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden – Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister (State Art Gallery Dresden) Gallery Nr 1556 Image credit: The Rembrandt Database, normal light studies: photograph, overall (front), 2005, (record number 15550); Rembrandt Bust of a young woman smiling possibly Saskia van Uylenburgh, dated 1633, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden – Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden, inv./cat. no. 1556 The sitter was most probably Rembrandt’s wife Saskia van Uylenburgh. Via ColourLex. This dramatically lit paint shows a smiling red haired woman in blue dress and red hat with blue plume looking over her left shoulder to smile at the viewer. Couldn’t have been painted without calcite.

My Linocut print of Mary Anning in green in large coat and bonnet with geological hammer and basket in front of blue lias cliff in silver with fossils she found

The Winged Victory of Samothrace, or the Niké of Samothrace, is a votive monument originally discovered on the island of Samothrace, north of the Aegean Sea. It is a masterpiece of Greek sculpture from the Hellenistic era, dating from the beginning of the 2nd century BC (190 BC). It is composed of a statue representing the goddess Niké (Victory), whose head and arms are missing and its base is in the shape of a ship's bow. The photo shows the now headless winged woman statue in white marble at the Louvre (via Wikipedia)

This is one of a series of my prints of one of the ubiquitous and wildly successful trilobites, prehistoric creatures which lived for hundreds of millions of years, carved by hand in linoleum, printed onto lovely Japanese washi papers and collaged with papers in different colours. This trilobite was a Cheirurus ingricus which lived during the Late Cambrian through the Early Devonian era. This print is on charcoal coloured paper with imbedded fibres, with the trilobite headed down towards the right corner with front and back on sand coloured paper. Each of many segments is on varied washi in pinks, yellows, blues, turquoise, purples, orange, red and more, predominately pale, pastel colours.

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MineralExpert.org @mexporg.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Monster size faceted #Calcite from Brazil - 1800 ct!!! Calcite is very difficult to facet due to its perfect cleavage and very low hardness. #MinCup26 #MinCup #mineral #crystal #mineralogy #carbonate #mineralexpert

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Henning @geohenning.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

If you need any more reasons to vote for #Calcite, just watch this video. #MinCup26 #TeamCalcite ⚒️ bsky.app/profile/spah...

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