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The Oikofuge

@oikofuge.bsky.social
68 followers 27 following 1.1K posts

Very slightly irascible blogger about Scottish mountains, word origins, plastic model kits, spaceflight, physics, science fiction, aviation, travel ... and some other stuff, too. oikofuge.com

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The Oikofuge @oikofuge.bsky.social · 4h
One for @bcdreyer.social, perhaps: “He’s never really given us fulsome briefings,” said Sen. Thom Tillis ..." thehill.com/homenews/sen...
thehill.com
GOP senators, blindsided by Hegseth, demand notice, transparency
Key Republican senators say they were blindsided by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s announced 20 percent reduction of the U.S. military’s general and admirals, and they’re voicing concerns a…
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Paul McAuley @unlikelyworlds.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Just been tinkering with the proofed MS of a story* I sold to Asimov's SF a little while back. Should be out early next year. *a new instance in the Jackaroo series, for those who may be interested
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The Oikofuge @oikofuge.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
If you're wondering what's really going on in this statue, he's holding the frame of a Watt Steam Indicator. Although the thing in his left hand is often described as a piece of paper, it's actually a piece of paper mounted on a metal plate. collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co51...
collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk
Watt's steam engine indicator | Science Museum Group Collection
Watt's steam engine indicator, with box and 2 line diagrams
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The Oikofuge @oikofuge.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
How did miss this? Person inexplicably spends £50 on horrible, antique, badly mounted fox head. Resells it at auction three months later. Bidding war ensues. It eventually goes for £62,000. It's actually a horrible, antique, badly mounted thylacine head. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
bbc.co.uk
Head of extinct thylacine sells for £60,000 at auction in Bristol
Originally thought to be a fox, it was later identified as a rare animal that died out in the 1930s.
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The Oikofuge @oikofuge.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
This is excellent. The idea of LLMs as "plot extenders" is a useful addition to the mental toolbox of metaphors, I think.
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New-Cleckit Dominie @ncdominie.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Great moments in Scottish engineering history: James Watt tries to work out how his phone attaches to his selfie stick.
Statue of James Watt. In his right hand he holds a telescopic stick with a frame at the top; in his left he holds a flat object about the size of a large smartphone. He is scowling at the possibly-not-a-smartphone as if he is tempted to yeet it into the sea. On that basis, it probably _is_ a phone.
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By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 24/07/2026
As *tech*, AI isn't exceptional. It's not exceptionally wicked. It's not exceptionally good. Take away the accompanying, galactic-scale stock-swindle, and we'd call AI's apps "plug-ins" and we'd use them and abuse them in the same way that we've used every other technology: www.normaltech.ai 1/
A carny barker waving his top-hat and selling tickets from a roll; his head has been replaced with the hostile red eye of HAL9000 from Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey.' The background is a magnified, halftoned detail from a US$100 bill.


Image:
Cryteria (modified)
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en
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The Oikofuge @oikofuge.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Caption competition fodder if ever I saw it. [This bronze, in the Copenhagen Botanical Gardens, represents Athena and the satyr Marsyas. They are not, in fact, staring at Marsyas' genitalia, but at a flute Athena has just thrown to the ground between them.]
A bronze statue of a woman wearing a Greek helmet and raising one thumb, while a man reels backwards with one arm raised. Both are staring at what appears to be the man's genitalia.
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The Oikofuge @oikofuge.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
South London grammar from the BBC: "...a specialist ICU, init?" 🤣 "By now Riley's condition had become so bad, he was transferred to London's King's College Hospital which has a specialist ICU init." www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
bbc.co.uk
Paracetamol overdose Newport student makes miraculous recovery
Riley Lubas took two over-the counter medicines without realising they both contained paracetamol.
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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
NASA picture of the day today is a real 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿beauty! This is a composite image of the ~5000yo Callanish Stones on the Isle of Lewis. The amazing Giuseppe Petricca has only gone and photographed the Sun at noon there, every few days, for a whole year. #Dedication 🔭🧪👌 ℹ️: science.nasa.gov/image-articl...
The imposing Callanish Stones stand talk with their shadows spanning out across the glass.  It's a super clear sky, but looks cold. Above the central stone is a strange figure-of-8 shape of dots.  This is the location of the Sun, at noon, on various different days across the year.
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Steven (with a PH) @sjksalisbury.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Christening a baby is nothing like christening a ship. I know that now. Once again I can only apologise.
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Boo'dbeard 👻 @badbeard.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Make Armorica Great Again
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The Oikofuge @oikofuge.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
I built an orrery! Build log here: oikofuge.com/eaglemoss-or... m.youtube.com/watch?v=g1vn...
m.youtube.com
Eaglemoss orrery in action (2)
YouTube video by The Oikofuge
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Brick's House 🍁 @brickmahoney.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
[Giovanni Paolo Paninni meeting the Earl of Sandwich] both: (eyes narrow)
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The Oikofuge @oikofuge.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
Christ, as Philip Ball so rightly says, almighty. Read his whole thread.
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The Oikofuge @oikofuge.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
First rule of owning a castle in Scotland: Never paint your castle white. Because if you do, you and your descendants will be repainting it white for centuries to come.
Blair Castle. A very large white-painted building.
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The Oikofuge @oikofuge.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Worried about AI apocalypse? 👇 '... none of the reported incidents actually involved loss of control at any time, or arguably even “rogue agents,” or any kind of humanlike agency on the part of AI models. Instead, the blame lies with the humans who failed at engineering safe testing conditions...'
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The Oikofuge @oikofuge.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
So we hear they've chosen a new James Bond just as Monty Don announces he's leaving Gardeners' World? Now THAT'S a proper franchise reboot.
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The Oikofuge @oikofuge.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
For more about the pole stars of other planets, you'll find plenty more sky maps in my blog post: oikofuge.com/pole-stars-o...
oikofuge.com
Pole Stars Of Other Planets?
When I wrote about Philip Latham’s juvenile science-fiction novel Missing Men Of Saturn (1953) recently, I pointed out that Latham had made an astronomically well-informed guess about a possible pole ...
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The Oikofuge @oikofuge.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Mars does not have a north pole star. It does, however, have a north pole absence-of-stars. In a dark sky, its north pole is marked by a dark rift in the Milky Way, between Cepheus and Cygnus, called Le Gentil 3, or the Funnel Cloud Nebula.
A star map showing the Milky Way in the region between Cepheus and Cygnus. A dark "rift" in the Milky Way between these two constellations is marked "Mars North Pole"
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The Oikofuge @oikofuge.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
"I was on a plane when the Queen of England died." Remarkable. Presumably some sort of astral plane, since the last Queen of England died in 1714, and hadn't actually had that title since 1707.
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The Oikofuge @oikofuge.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
Oh dear. Another threatening email from a self-described hacker who has gained access to the non-existent camera and microphone of my PC. But my day is brightened by: "Trust me, I am very careful, calculative and never make mistakes." You just made two in one sentence there, chum.
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The Oikofuge @oikofuge.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
An extremely unusual sight in Scotland, these days. Highland cattle grazing in peace, instead of being surrounded by posing TokTokkers flirting with being gored and/or trampled.
A black Highland bull grazes in the foreground. In the distance, we can see another Highland cow in another field, also grazing.
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The Oikofuge @oikofuge.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
Thistledown and barley —Beauly, Scotland.
A row of thistles on the edge of a yellow field of barley, with green trees in the distance. The thistles are covered in white fluffy thistledown.
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MꙬse Allain @mooseallain.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
Fibonacci Sequins - clusters of sequins forming a fibonacci sequence.
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The Oikofuge @oikofuge.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
Oooh. A particularly marvellous, timely, informative and entertaining post from Mike Loades. @loadesofhistory.bsky.social (And I'm going to treasure the word "equanauts".) loadesofhistory.substack.com/p/the-trojan...
loadesofhistory.substack.com
THE TROJAN HORSE RE-IMAGINED
Exploring the Bronze Age technologies that would be necessary to build the wooden horse of Troy, as a viable stealth troop carrier and an attractive votive offering.
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The Oikofuge @oikofuge.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
I've just had one of those "You're kidding me!" moments. Apparently most people can't read in a dream. I have dreams that consist entirely of reading. I have nightmares about proofreading—last night's involved an author who spelled colonize "colon/ize" three times. www.wikihow.com/Can-You-Read...
wikihow.com
Can You Read in a Dream? What Science Says
Why it's so rare to be able to read in dreams (and what it means when you can)In dreams, you can fly, you can shapeshift, you can travel through space and time, you can do pretty much anything…well, e...
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The Oikofuge @oikofuge.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
This post, which I previously trailed, is now live. oikofuge.com/eclipse-ligh...
oikofuge.com
Some Solar Eclipse Light Curves
How dark does it get during a total eclipse, a deep partial eclipse, and a very minor partial eclipse? Here are the answers.
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The Oikofuge @oikofuge.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
Puns that work really well in an English person's head, but fail miserably when written down and given to a Scottish person. Number 35: "What's a dog's favourite composer?" "Bach."
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The Oikofuge @oikofuge.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
The blog post below has undergone a degree of expansion, adding more detail, background and explanation. It'll soon have a companion piece, featuring this graph of the change in illumination associated with various solar eclipses: total, 95% (as recently in the UK), and 56% (Isandlwana, 1879). 1/
A graph plots illuminance on a logarithmic scale, from 100000 lux (full daylight) to 0.1 lux, (full moon). Also shown are typical values for light and heavy overcast, very dense thunder clouds, and the range of civil twilight.
Illuminance during a total eclipse falls very rapidly in the minutes before totality, entering levels equivalent to deep twilight. A 95% eclipse dips down into the "overcast" zone, but doesn't reach dense overcast. The 56% eclipse at Isandlwana doesn't dim as far as even the light overcast level, and stays well within the four-fold range for which pupillary dilation readily compensates.
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The Oikofuge @oikofuge.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
When people feel tempted to post something along the lines of "If you don't like [band x] you don't understand music!", they should consider posting "I'm a big fan of [band x]!" instead. Saves a lot of embarrassment.
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The Oikofuge @oikofuge.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
The upcoming partial solar eclipse in the UK moved me to write about another, historical partial eclipse, which took place during the Battle of Isandlwana in 1879. oikofuge.com/partial-ecli...
A sequence of views of the progress of a partial solar eclipse, magnitude 56%, as seen from Isandlwana in 1879
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The Oikofuge @oikofuge.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
Sigh, BBC. The new prime minister has a tattoo on his BICEPS, not his "bicep". The singular muscle ends in "s" because the name means "two heads", from its two points of attachment at the shoulder. Write "biceps muscle" if you're worrIed about ambiguity. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
bbc.co.uk
Could your tattoo stop you from getting a job?
A quarter of the UK population – including the new prime minister – have at least one tattoo, but they still divide opinion in the workplace.
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The Oikofuge @oikofuge.bsky.social · 08/08/2026
Vinyl, flares, now this. I'm having a Groundhog Life. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
bbc.co.uk
Digital cameras and wired earphones are back - and 'a bit more real'
We're surrounded by more advanced tech in 2026, so why are young people going back to basics?
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The Oikofuge @oikofuge.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
Are the big white birds that steal your chips gulls or seagulls? I've just discovered that more people than I'd imagined call them "seagulls". A look at the Google Ngram English corpus suggests that the "seagull" usage mysteriously took off, from a relatively low baseline, back around 1990.
A graph of the usage of "gull", "seagull" and "sea gull" from the Ngram English corpus. "Gull" is the most common, and has remained steady since 1960. "Seagull" was relatively rare in 1960, but has take off dramatically starting in the 80s and 90s. "Sea gull" has always been rare, and is becoming rarer.
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The Oikofuge @oikofuge.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
Einstein crater on the moon is having a moment of fame, thanks to a SpaceX misadventure. It's difficult to see (and sometimes invisible) from Earth, needing favourable libration conditions to bring it into view. Coincidentally, I wrote a bit about it last month. oikofuge.com/lunar-librat...
Photograph, sketch and rectified sketch of crater Caramuel / Einstein, by David A. Allen, 8 November 1965.
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Philip Ball @philipcball.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
These stories are often being presented as "cunning AI escapes its test room". I can't see why. It's simply the case that the sandbox was not well isolated by the testing companies. Put the agency and responsibility where it belongs. cyberscoop.com/anthropic-cl...
cyberscoop.com
Anthropic says its AI accidentally hacked three companies during safety tests
Anthropic revealed its Claude AI models accidentally breached three real companies during safety testing after a vendor configuration error exposed live systems.
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👻👹 boo-rit 👹👻 @britculpsapp.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
christ if that’s not a metaphor for our times
reuters: 

Sunken Nazi warships resurface as water levels drop
Scuttled German WW2 warships have reemerged from the Danube in drought-hit Europe.
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The Oikofuge @oikofuge.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
US State Department being well-served by AI, I see. Even if you didn't know where any of these countries are, you might suspect something was wrong from the fact that the map indicators don't join up properly.
A mislabelled map of Africa from the US state department, presented at an AIDS conference in Rio de Janeiro
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The Oikofuge @oikofuge.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
41% of the lunar surface is always visible from Earth. 41% is always invisible. The remaining 18% is intermittently visible, because of a phenomenon called lunar libration. Here's something I wrote about that interesting region (Part 2 of a projected 3-parter). oikofuge.com/lunar-librat...
A Lambert equal-area photomosaic of the Moon, showing the six-year track of the sub-Earth point in the centre, and the region of the lunar surface only intermittently visible from Earth around the edge.
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Robert Stribley @stribs.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
These viral AI tell moments apparently sponsored by Folks Who Failed Freshman English.
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The Oikofuge @oikofuge.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
"An amateur cricket match has made global headlines after a fielder was accused of cheating by clicking his fingers to get a wicket." www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricke... Surely I'm not the only person to be immediately reminded of the Wolf of Kabul's servant Chung, and his mighty clicky ba?
A comic strip depiction of Chung from The Wolf of Kabul, wielding the cricket bat he calls "clicky ba" and saying, "Ha! Clicky ba had cracked your wretched skull!"
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The Oikofuge @oikofuge.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
Navigation by hallucination. Folks getting lost in the Pyrenees because they used "AI" to plan a non-existent route: www.midilibre.fr/2026/07/25/r...
midilibre.fr
"Rien n’allait sur leur carte, tout était faux" : deux randonneuses se perdent dans les Pyrénées après avoir suivi l’itinéraire de ChatGPT
Mieux vaut ne pas se fier aveuglément à une intelligence artificielle pour préparer une randonnée. Deux jeunes randonneuses se sont retrouvées perdues et épuisées mardi sur les hauteurs de Cauterets (...
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Pat Savage @patrickesavage.bsky.social · 26/07/2026
I completely re-wrote the AI section of my guide to academic reading/writing to be much stricter and more negative (now titled "AI-generated fabrications as academic misconduct"). Please use/share with your students, and let me know if you have any more changes to suggest! doi.org/10.31234/osf...
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The Oikofuge @oikofuge.bsky.social · 26/07/2026
The NYT crossword is themed around the Mario games today, of which I know nothing. But I'm impressed by the comments section, in which people report that they've never played the games but have absorbed names and gameplay from social interactions. Dear god, that's no social interaction I ever had.
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The Oikofuge @oikofuge.bsky.social · 25/07/2026
Sad to see that wildfire has broken out among the Caring Orms. Such gentle creatures.
BBC News report about wildfires in Scotland, in which the word Cairngorms has been misspelled.
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The Oikofuge @oikofuge.bsky.social · 25/07/2026
Here's a tip that worked well for me and my family—skip the graduation ceremony entirely. It's a peculiarly liberating decision. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
bbc.co.uk
Graduation outfits: Students tell us how to impress on a budget
Four newly graduated students tell us how they kept the cost of their dresses and suits down.
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The Oikofuge @oikofuge.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
Visited the 5000-yr-old Fortingall yew today. In Scottish Gaelic, "the sacred tree" is "a' bhile" (uh-VEEL-uh). Which explains the un-Scottish-sounding name of the nearby village of Coshieville—it's from "cois a' bhile", "beside the sacred tree". en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forting...
en.wikipedia.org
Fortingall Yew - Wikipedia
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The Oikofuge @oikofuge.bsky.social · 19/07/2026
My timeline just filled up with people going OOOOOOOH and YESSSSS and SRSLY? Is something happening in the world?
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The Oikofuge @oikofuge.bsky.social · 19/07/2026
Bad news: wasps' nest in the attic. Good news: it was this lovely, tiny, abandoned thing.
A fragile spherical wasps' nest, made from chewed wood pulp, showing the entrance hole.The interior of a fragile, spherical wasps' nest, showing that it contains fewer than twenty hexagonal cells.
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