Sign in

John Buckeridge

@johnbuckeridge.bsky.social
310 followers 597 following 62 posts

I'm a materials physicist pretending to be a chemist and an engineer. I don't think anyone is convinced. Opinions mine. Corcaigh abú. (He/him)

PostsRepliesMedia
Reposted by John Buckeridge
Martijn Zwijnenburg @zwijcompchem.bsky.social · 5h
This week we were lucky to have Hardy Gross visiting and giving a masterclass on time-dependent density functional theory (TD-DFT) at the @thomasyoungcentre.bsky.social #compchem
A picture of Hardy Gross giving his masterclass
031
Reposted by John Buckeridge
Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 06/10/2026
From Physics Today (physicsworld.com/a/francis-ha...): ‘When asked what he will do for the rest of today, Halzen replied “I’m working on a proposal. I hope this prize will help get it approved.”’
540785
John Buckeridge @johnbuckeridge.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
Quite an impressive lab!
010
Reposted by John Buckeridge
The Onion @theonion.com · 05/10/2026
Toddler Scientists Finally Determine Number Of Peas That Fit Into Ear Canal theonion.com/toddler-scientists-fin…
Toddler Scientists Finally Determine Number Of Peas That Fit Into Ear Canal
181770141
John Buckeridge @johnbuckeridge.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
And Starmer's speech writer, so was he responsible for "island of strangers"
000
John Buckeridge @johnbuckeridge.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Wow, it's just amazing how utterly deluded these people are/were. And he used to seem to be one of the more thoughtful of the Labour right. Still crowing about defeating the left, without seeing what an own goal that was. Not any understanding of even what the left is...
111
John Buckeridge @johnbuckeridge.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
I remember it as green, white and gold in primary in Cork. Pretty sure it was the church's influence in schools. Couldn't be mentioning orange!
010
John Buckeridge @johnbuckeridge.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Excellent piece. I keep trying to get on LinkedIn more as it's where a lot of colleagues now are, but every time I do I feel completely alienated. "performative statements that were impossible for anyone to disagree with, or which made disagreement come to appear obstructive or taboo." 👈 This!
010
Reposted by John Buckeridge
Terence Tao @teorth.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
A group of 25 Fields Medalists, including myself, have made a joint declaration on Math and AI: mathandai.org . We welcome additional signatories. See also this article in the Economist announcing the declaration: www.economist.com/science-and-...
mathandai.org
Declaration — Math and AI
Read the declaration and add your name.
422073934
John Buckeridge @johnbuckeridge.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Maybe if there was a simpler application form it would be easier to get an LLM to write a full application from scratch without the applicant thinking at all? So just more enshittification
000
John Buckeridge @johnbuckeridge.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
decent concise description and plan. What is all this crap for?
100
John Buckeridge @johnbuckeridge.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Seems to be what the funders wanted? There was a section at the end to describe AI usage in the process. So the funders have ended up creating an extremely long but not very informative application form, geared towards AI usage. You end up spending as long completing it as you would writing a ...
100
John Buckeridge @johnbuckeridge.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
The only way to do it without going insane was to use the LLM. However, I don't feel like I saved any time. Instead, because there so many repetitive bits to fill in, describing my idea, workplan, outcomes etc as prompts then getting the LLM to put it into long winded crappily written segments ...
100
John Buckeridge @johnbuckeridge.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
So today spent the whole day writing prompts to an LLM to fill in a grant bid application form. Normally would not bother going with the LLM, but it seems the application form itself was designed specifically for LLM use. Lots of small, repetitive sections to fill in, all about 200-300 words...
100
John Buckeridge @johnbuckeridge.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
State of these lovers. Aw bless, did you and your pals play dress up because you're scared of the lickle boats full of brown people
020
John Buckeridge @johnbuckeridge.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
Was just thinking this earlier today!
000
Reposted by John Buckeridge
London Review of Books @lrb.co.uk · 01/09/2026
‘It is perhaps with these early expressions of intent that we might best understand the attitude to science that Anna Atkins absorbed: it was social, it was a means to understand the world and it was a way to expand the human heart.’ Gaby Wood on cyanotypes. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
lrb.co.uk
Gaby Wood · Translucency: Cyanotypes
I don’t​ remember when I first learned to make cyanotypes, but I had loved Anna Atkins’s prints for many years...
0142
Reposted by John Buckeridge
Adrian Tchaikovsky @aptshadow.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
Going to weigh in here with some personal stuff. My son is diagnosed autistic. It made a world of difference because his school had to make accommodations that allowed him to actually cope and learn there, rather than be categorised as "naughty" in an escalating round of attempted control that
352202395
Reposted by John Buckeridge
Tom Roberts @tpgroberts.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
Look, put simply, people should not be comfortable saying that in public and the way to fix society runs directly through making them afraid to say it again.
3742411099
Reposted by John Buckeridge
Glen O'Hara @gsoh31.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
Every academic outside of a small inner core of universities should consider themselves permanently at risk of redundancy. The sector will operate a rolling redundancy wave from about this point on. www.timeshighereducation.com/news/nuclear...
timeshighereducation.com
‘Nuclear’ restructure at London South Bank seen as ‘test bed’
University claims its changes will protect academic jobs and strengthen teaching but striking staff say reforms pose an ‘existential’ threat
24121
John Buckeridge @johnbuckeridge.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
Picturing this guy in a fedora
002
John Buckeridge @johnbuckeridge.bsky.social · 13/07/2026
Tedius men aged 45-54: count binface is like, so cringe
010
Reposted by John Buckeridge
Salvador Dalí @salvador-dali.bsky.social · 05/07/2026
Skull of Zurbaran botfrens.com/collections/63/content…
Skull of Zurbaran
114035
Reposted by John Buckeridge
Phil Burton-Cartledge @philbc3.bsky.social · 08/07/2026
131059301
Reposted by John Buckeridge
Richard Morris @ahistoryinart.bsky.social · 04/07/2026
'Evening Light, San Francisco.' Ken Howard was part of the postwar tradition of British painting whose giants include Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, and David Hockney and was sufficiently well-regarded for members of the Royal Academy to elect him to their establishment.
116330
Reposted by John Buckeridge
Randall Munroe @xkcd.com · 29/06/2026
720 Ollie xkcd.com/3264/
Comic. [Person with short hair and a skateboard talking to another person, with an image of Person 1 on a skateboard going over a bump with a line with two swirls behind him.] PERSON 1: Something weird I’ve noticed is that if I do a 360 ollie, I land backward. I have to do a 720 to land going forward. [caption] Tony Hawk discovers that he’s a spin-½ fermion.
172447290
Reposted by John Buckeridge
Lisa Rullsenberg @rullsenberg.bsky.social · 27/06/2026
I am someone whose study AND work career in education have encompassed WEA/Continuing Education programmes, FE colleges (Tile Hill, Hereward), distance learning (OU), post-92 (Wolverhampton), and two Russell Group universities (Leeds + Nottingham who've much less in common than either admits). 1/
42814
Reposted by John Buckeridge
Dónal Hassett @donalh.bsky.social · 27/06/2026
So much to love about Pico waving the Irish flag, not least that he, a proud Irishman of African heritage and as Dublin as can be, embodies the kind of Irishness that the far right can't abide but is a thriving feature in communities across the island.
5546139
Reposted by John Buckeridge
another morgan @mheslin.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
imagining a grizzled hardboiled detective saying this while gripping some guy's lapels at a shady bar
264137493530
Reposted by John Buckeridge
ProfAFinlayson @profafinlayson.bsky.social · 10/06/2026
UK Govt. is out of its depth in contemporary politics On the one side: an international movement, ruthlessly pursuing its interests, buying up the means of communication & mobilising street violence. On the other: just desiccated & outdated language: “It is right that we look seriously at…"
05120
Reposted by John Buckeridge
nohostages.bsky.social @nohostages.bsky.social · 10/06/2026
English commentators need to stop analysing Northern Ireland through an English lens! When you see anti-immigrant riots in Belfast, Ballymena or Larne and immediately reach for "Britain's far-right problem", you're missing half the story. This isn't just racism. It's loyalist terrorism. 1/
281323543
John Buckeridge @johnbuckeridge.bsky.social · 18/05/2026
🇬🇧 British Political Spectrum Quiz My result: Eco-Socialist Economic: strongly collectivist Social: strongly progressive Sovereignty: strongly cosmopolitan Military: leaning hawkish Authority: strongly libertarian Constitutional: reformist Take the quiz: quiz.jmoxley.co.uk
quiz.jmoxley.co.uk
British Political Spectrum Quiz
Find out where you sit on the British political map across six dimensions.
000
Reposted by John Buckeridge
anil oza @aniloza.bsky.social · 14/05/2026
wow — the preprint host, arxiv, is banning authors for a year if they submit papers with hallucinated citations 🤖
Twitter thread from Thomas Dietterich, reading "Attention 
@arxiv
 authors: Our Code of Conduct states that by signing your name as an author of a paper, each author takes full responsibility for all its contents, irrespective of how the contents were generated. 1/
3:03 PM · May 14, 2026
·
66.7K
 Views
Relevant
View quotes

Thomas G. Dietterich
@tdietterich
·
1h
If generative AI tools generate inappropriate language, plagiarized content, biased content, errors, mistakes, incorrect references, or misleading content, and that output is included in scientific works, it is the responsibility of the author(s). 2/
Thomas G. Dietterich
@tdietterich
·
1h
We have recently clarified our penalties for this. If a submission contains incontrovertible evidence that the authors did not check the results of LLM generation, this means we can't trust anything in the paper. 3/
Thomas G. Dietterich
@tdietterich
·
1h
The penalty is a 1-year ban from arXiv followed by the requirement that subsequent arXiv submissions must first be accepted at a reputable peer-reviewed venue. 4/
Thomas G. Dietterich
@tdietterich
·
1h
Examples of incontrovertible evidence: hallucinated references, meta-comments from the LLM ("here is a 200 word summary; would you like me to make any changes?"; "the data in this table is illustrative, fill it in with the real numbers from your experiments") end/"
9458111914
Reposted by John Buckeridge
Hetan Shah @hetanshah.bsky.social · 12/05/2026
Today’s Education Select Committee report on higher education is the best report on HE to come from Govt/Parliament in ages. It takes a rounded view of the whole system, moving away from the more atomistic or narrow accounts we’ve seen 🧵 committees.parliament.uk/committee/20...
committees.parliament.uk
“A very serious problem”: No clear government plan for universities risking insolvency, MPs find in new report - Committees - UK Parliament
Today MPs on the Education Committee warn that the government has no clear plan for universities facing insolvency and that protections for students are inadequate, as the Committee publishes a new re...
213080
Reposted by John Buckeridge
Alison @alisondennison.bsky.social · 10/05/2026
If you read them from the beginning they're the words of a dog who desperately wants you to come over because they've seen a frisbee
10972217
Reposted by John Buckeridge
Ursula K. Le Guin Bot @leguinbot.bsky.social · 06/05/2026
Those who build walls are their own prisoners. I'm going to go fulfil my proper function in the social organism. I'm going to go unbuild walls.
18626
Reposted by John Buckeridge
Glen O'Hara @gsoh31.bsky.social · 05/05/2026
NEW from me: many of our universities are now in a dying fall. A new global-national-regional-local split is opening up, which could choke off progress on almost all the Government's plans. Do they have a plan? Nope, nothing, not a clue. 👇 isrf.org/blog/whats-t...
isrf.org
What’s the future for our universities?
9280151
John Buckeridge @johnbuckeridge.bsky.social · 05/05/2026
"Be my stern father"
030
Reposted by John Buckeridge
Arun Chutia @achutia.bsky.social · 17/04/2026
I am pleased to share that our special issue on “Surfaces, Interfaces, and Heterogeneous Catalysis” is now live in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A. Issue link is here: royalsocietypublishing.org/rsta/issue/3... #Catalysis #Surfaces #Interfaces @royalsocietypublishing.org
021
Reposted by John Buckeridge
BOARDS OF CANADA @boardsofcanada.bsky.social · 16/04/2026
411174427
John Buckeridge @johnbuckeridge.bsky.social · 09/04/2026
Of course, once the smaller universities all go bust, watch this 'hoovering up' completely stop. We will end up with huge restrictions to access to higher level education for all but the most privileged. Sleepwalking into this scenario
000
Reposted by John Buckeridge
Claude Monet @monet.bsky.social · 01/04/2026
Jar Of Peaches - 1866 botfrens.com/collections/41/content…
0434
Reposted by John Buckeridge
Ellie Mae O'Hagan @elliemaeohagan.bsky.social · 31/03/2026
I forgot! It's trans day of visibility today. Most trans people probably wish they were a little less visible in the current climate; a little less endlessly debated. In recent years I've tried to donate directly to trans people's transition funds. Something worth considering if you can afford it ❤️
0154
John Buckeridge @johnbuckeridge.bsky.social · 27/03/2026
You'd be tripping over them walking around in the 90s
010
Reposted by John Buckeridge
Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani @mayor.nyc.gov · 17/03/2026
Happy St. Patrick's Day, New York.
1008389459563
John Buckeridge @johnbuckeridge.bsky.social · 16/03/2026
That metal soup bowl. I'm feeling like Proust with his madeleine
011
Reposted by John Buckeridge
Gwen @ionceposted.bsky.social · 16/03/2026
Still from RTE Canteen 1991.
264
Reposted by John Buckeridge
𝗘𝗩𝗜𝗟 𝗗𝗘𝗔𝗗 𝗩𝗘𝗥𝗡 @outlawvern.bsky.social · 08/03/2025
As I traditionally did on an abandoned platform I would like to point out that International Women's Day is Cynthia Rothrock's birthday. Happy both!
A badass picture of Cynthia Rothrock making fists
6596191
John Buckeridge @johnbuckeridge.bsky.social · 04/03/2026
And the strategy @profafinlayson.bsky.social suggests, which seems correct, is pretty much what Tim Waltz was doing in the Harris campaign, calling out the right as 'weird'. Unfortunately it turned out that many of the democratic party leaders were also very weird
010
John Buckeridge @johnbuckeridge.bsky.social · 04/03/2026
Excellent analysis as always. I was particularly amused that in the discussion on candidates, the labour one wasn't mentioned at all. Quite appropriate!
110