iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Oxford Clarion @oxfordclarion.bsky.social · 10h

Reposted by Kat Steiner

Oxford University Hospitals are recruiting pregnant women and birthing people in Oxfordshire to join a world-first clinical trial testing a new vaccine which could prevent infant deaths and stillbirths from Group B streptococcus, a common bacteria that 1 in 5 adults carry.

hands on a pregnant bump (no head) person is wearing a purple stripy long sleeve garment. free stocks, unsplash.com

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Kat Steiner @kastrel.bsky.social · 16h

Once again, all the corporate responses also read like AI.

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We are back in cosy Autumn season, and I am thinking approximately 6 times per day about how we are all one pair of coloured tights away from looking like we teach art at the gnome school.

A tweet from 6 September 2018 from user Georgia Wagstaff @georgia_wags: Wearing black opaque tights: I am a sleek and sexy puma of a woman. Wearing any other colour of opaque tights: I teach art at the gnome school.

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Really stress tested my cycling waterproofs for the first time in a while, and sadly the Proviz overtrousers are no longer quite doing the job (but not disastrous). They've lasted nearly 4 years though, so I consider that pretty good going!

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Absolutely, just checking I understood!

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It's just that your post says "books that are NOT ai generated.."

Do you mean ARE AI generated?

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I remember the "we have done those things which we ought not to have done and there is no health in us" bit of what I recently heard referred to by a priest as "the humble mumbles", because I once mournfully intoned it after eating an entire sharing bag of prawn crackers in one go.

I have had an interesting exchange with the hospital's e-referral team, who have been very helpful. Ultimately, it seems like the date provided is the date the referral should have been "processed" but actually patients aren't informed when that has been completed. So it's not a very helpful date.

Kat Steiner @kastrel.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Wow, a Gavin De Becker jumpscare! I keep hoping The Gift of Fear will feature on @ifbookspod.bsky.social but didn't know he was an AIDS denier.

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Kat Steiner @kastrel.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Yamaha clavinovas are what my pianists friends all had as students, and I now have one and like it (but I'm not a pianist so probably can't tell how good it is) - they do a wide range.

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Reposted by Kat Steiner

Eric Pazdziora @ericpazdziora.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

"Opera doesn't make money. Opera’s what you spend money *on*.” “But . . what do you get out of it?” “You get opera. You put money in, you see, and opera comes out,” said Salzella wearily. --Terry Pratchett, 'Maskerade'

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Kat Steiner @kastrel.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

I have a habit of copying a shared calendar item into my own calendar, but the shared one just uses names (so we know which slot we're staffing), so occasionally my calendar just has an event titled [My Name]. Not informative!

Kat Steiner @kastrel.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

In year 5, at school, we watched a truly horrifying film or tv miniseries about the Black Death, which I think directly contributed to my phobia of epidemic/pandemic content in media.

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Kat Steiner @kastrel.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

That's a good idea! Unfortunately my Garmin doesn't do NFC payments, but finding that out did remind me that I can actually use it for swimming, which is excellent.

Kat Steiner @kastrel.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

No, actually I have running leggings and shorts that have pockets. But never had a swimming costume with them.

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Kat Steiner @kastrel.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Can you even submerge bank cards in water for long periods without damage? A question I have never considered, given that I've never had a swimsuit with pockets!

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Kat Steiner @kastrel.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Newest annoyance: the pool I just tried had the most complicated lockers I've ever encountered. It took 3 of us 10mins to figure out the sequence to set a code and lock it. A guy also told me "oh you can also tap a card". Lucky for those of you who have secure pockets in their swimwear (men).

Dr Danny Bate @dannybate.com · 02/10/2026

Reposted by Kat Steiner

And why 'ut'? Why any of the syllables in 'do re mi'? In the case of 'ut', it's originally the Latin word meaning 'so that'. It came first in the hymn to John the Baptist 'Ut queant laxis', while the rest were the first syllables of each half-line – the technique of Guido of Arezzo in the C11th.

Modern arrangement of Ut queant laxis, from Wikimedia

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It's also probably pure millennial cringe, but I additionally enjoy reading it out loud to students as "talk to a librarian, brackets me" in the style of "one brackets one shovel".

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This remains my favourite ever induction slide, and if I could get away with replacing all my presentations with it, I would.

Slide that just says Talk to a librarian (me) and a space to add an email address.

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I think it comes down to "how alone do I feel if something goes wrong?" whether that's a bike issue, accident, or attack. Roads feel less isolated even if statistically you're more likely to be hit by a driver.

One thing that would make a big difference for me is being able to see the route for planning. If I am going somewhere new, if it's on roads, I can use Google Streetview and see exactly what I'm dealing with. With these paths, I don't know how wide it is, how bumpy, how overgrown, how lit.

My friend from SF says "you're so good" fairly often.

And in the meantime, you're wasting: staff time answering unnecessary phone calls, patients' time making them, patients' goodwill and patience from being messed around, paper and ink and postage costs sending pointless/incorrect letters!

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Jen Hillyard @mininglibrarian.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

I know the govt is always like "the NHS is inefficient" in order to cut jobs (making it LESS efficient), but this nonsense is exactly the kind of inefficiency that you need one of those business process mapping consultants to do, because surely no one has ever actually looked at the whole process.

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Reposted by Kat Steiner

today's fun is the cabinet outside our building is hanging open and both VirginMedia and BT OpenReach deny all knowledge of it on their system. I'm sorry but this looks like a phone related cabinet to me?

open doors with thousands of small connected cables inside

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It's a minefield! But I have a very high tolerance for bureaucracy and a drive to fix things so this seems like something worth a bit of my time trying to unpick.

Thank you! It's not a complaint, as such, but that's a good idea for someone who might be able to pass it on to somewhere useful.

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I mean, it's annoying for me (and potentially extremely distressing to other patients), but also the staff member I spoke to says they get these phone calls daily, so it's also wasting lots of NHS staff time for no good reason.

There is no address or information on the letter itself, other than the NHS logo. It mentions my GP practice and the hospital dept I was referred to, but the dept says they don't send it, and I don't think my GP practice would necessarily have the information included in it. Any ideas?

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and unfortunately the waiting list is much (much, much, much) longer than the date implied. Now, I am an annoying busybody kind of person, so I would like to contact whoever is responsible for sending these letters out, to politely suggest that they change their system. But who sends them?

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Prof. Eliot Jacobson @climatecasino.net · 01/10/2026

An infuriating bureaucratic conundrum. Following a referral by my GP, I received a letter in the post confirming it and saying I could expect to hear by a date. If I didn't hear, I could ring the hospital dept to ask. I did that today, and they said that these letters are sent out by another dept

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Reposted by Kat Steiner

Records come and records go. But this is one for the ages. The preliminary Nino 3.4 sea-surface temperature anomaly is now at a record 3.23°C above the 1991-2020 baseline. This crushes the previous daily record set in 1982 by over 1.14°C. The Climate 8-ball is looking up.

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Reposted by Kat Steiner

c0nc0rdance @c0nc0rdance.bsky.social · 14/02/2026

Franzi Schimmer captured this Grizzly bear in Brooks Falls, Alaska just floating along, tippy-tapping down the river, browsing the salmon. Prior to hibernation, up to 40% of a bear's body mass is fat, which is less dense than water (~0.9 g/cm^2), so the murder-monster is also a floaty-boaty.

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Reposted by Kat Steiner

Adam Roberts @adamroberts.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Our Norman betters Taught English letters To bathe in the fresh Warm springs of the south. So turn your backs on Anglo-Saxon; The þ in the flesh, The æ in the mouth ANTHONY BURGESS

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Kat Steiner @kastrel.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

"So, that appt you had which was cancelled, that was for completely the wrong thing and you've been on the wrong pathway, and the person who did it has left, so we don't know why it happened (or seemingly care, really), and oh by the way it's still a year to get an assessment, kthxbai." Lovely.

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Kat Steiner @kastrel.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Classic NHS this week. 6 weeks ago an appt was cancelled and they said they'd contact me to rearrange. They didn't so I emailed to check they still had my referral. Got an immediate reply asking for some additional information with no explanation. I responded. Got a phone call the same day:

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Kat Steiner @kastrel.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Esports doesn't mean non-human players, though. It's humans playing each other at video games.

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Kat Steiner @kastrel.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Anyone in #libsky recognise the library in Ted Lasso series 4? Is it Senate House?

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Kat Steiner @kastrel.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Interesting, and I didn't know that. However, I don't think that the library in the Radcliffe Camera was ever called the Radcliffe Science Library. I think that name only started when the science books were moved OUT of the camera. And certainly not in 2011. web.archive.org/web/20201019...

web.archive.org

History of the Radcliffe Science Library and Collections

The Radcliffe Science Library provides services to support the teaching and learning needs of the science community at Oxford University.

Kat Steiner @kastrel.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

How annoying! I think I just booked through www.boots.com/online/pharm... and at some point it asked for the voucher details.

boots.com

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Apparently the US English way is different but still not the same as French!

Brits, I've just learned that apparently we say the word reveille, "rih-VAL-ee"? Seriously? Not ruh-VAY? This is some next level leftenant nonsense.

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Every bin day I get to see which house forgot to put a brick on their food waste bin this week.

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I'm enjoying the immersive experience of reading a book mentioning @bodleian.ox.ac.uk which I have borrowed from @bodleian.ox.ac.uk! But the Radcliffe Science Library was definitely not in the Rad Cam in 2011 (or at any other time, to my knowledge).

Book cover of Moon over Soho by Ben Aaronovitch. The cover is a map of London made out of words describing the places. The majority of the map is in black on a blue background and the river, Soho, and the title are in hot pink.

Page from a book. Circled in red is a reference to a Bibliotheca Bodleiana stamp.

The copyright page of the book showing a Bodleian Library stamp with the date 3 Nov 2011.

A page from the book. Circled in red is a section saying "The Radcliffe Science Library is housed in a circular domed building that looks like St Paul's with the extraneous religious bits cut off."

!!! I recognised that door immediately.