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Shane McHugh

@shanemchugh.bsky.social
374 followers 1.6K following 117 posts

Talking about engineering, technology, research security and systems thinking. Fan of cats, Arsenal, weird lit, and both kinds of music.

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Shane McHugh @shanemchugh.bsky.social · 30/08/2025
Kill list. Thought it was a gangster flick, was rooting for the main character and his family, and the turn towards horror deeply unsettled me. Felt grubby and ill at ease for days afterwards
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Shane McHugh @shanemchugh.bsky.social · 30/08/2025
Bread lobby in cahoots with the strawberry mafia
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Shane McHugh @shanemchugh.bsky.social · 30/07/2025
The always interesting @bioengineergm.bsky.social on how our use of the word technology frames it as an elemental force and elides notions of agency and moral responsibility.
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Shane McHugh @shanemchugh.bsky.social · 24/07/2025
Haven’t seen it mentioned yet, and of course not U.K. but I have a very very soft spot for the first few Horslips albums and especially the Táin
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Shane McHugh @shanemchugh.bsky.social · 12/07/2025
What a fantastic resource!
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Royal Academy of Engineering @raeng.org.uk · 09/07/2025
"Engineering has the power and potential to transform the world for the better, and tonight’s awards will honour those who make it possible" 🏆 Congratulations to all our winners, and huge thanks to everyone who attended yesterday. Find out more about our winners: raeng.org.uk/programmes-a...
2025 MacRobert award winners, OrganOx, alongside Academy CEO, Hayaatun Sillem, Academy President, Sir John Lazar, and presenter of the award, Lord Patrick Vallance.
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Hetan Shah @hetanshah.bsky.social · 02/07/2025
Some people say the biggest gap in research funding is at mid career level. So here is our new call for our mid career fellowship programme which provides buyout for 6 to 12 months to devote to the completion of a major piece of research. Spread the word! www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/funding/mid-...
thebritishacademy.ac.uk
Mid-Career Fellowships
The Mid-Career Fellowships are designed both to support outstanding individual researchers with excellent research proposals, and to promote public understanding and engagement with humanities and soc...
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Royal Academy of Engineering @raeng.org.uk · 27/06/2025
Are you ready to lead one of the UK’s most influential organisations at a time of global change? We are seeking a visionary, values-led Chief Executive Officer to drive the delivery of our bold Strategy 2030: Engineering Better Lives. Apply by 20 July 2025: www.russellreynolds.com/en/executive...
We are hiring a Chief Executive Officer. Apply by 20 July 2025. Are you ready to lead one of the UK’s most influential organisations at a time of global change? This is a defining moment for engineering in the UK and globally. As CEO, you will shape policy, inspire innovation, and help ensure that engineering serves society — sustainably, inclusively, and ambitiously.
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Shane McHugh @shanemchugh.bsky.social · 27/06/2025
See also: Bernard Hill and Bernard Cribbins
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John Herrman @jwherrman.bsky.social · 26/06/2025
The real AI arms race is between one another 🥰 nymag.com/intelligence...
Stories about Al deployment tend to fall into a few categories. You've got productivity stories, where workers — most visibly at tech companies — talk about how Al tools are making parts of their jobs easier or harder, increasing their workload or simply making them redundant and taking their jobs. You've got top-down management stories, where Al use is suggested or mandated by leaders demanding more efficiency, who are either betting that a great deal of automation is possible within their firms, or who are just worried about getting left behind.
Then you've got the stories in which people are more clearly using new Al tools against one another in an escalatory way.
Job hunters, now able to generate custom applications instantly, flood employers, so employers turn to Al to manage the glut. Spammers and other bad-faith actors flood social media with near-infinite material, pushing the platforms to double down on automated moderation.
Rapidly generated presentations lead to rapidly scheduled meetings recorded and automatically transcribed by AI assistants for machine summarization and analysis. Dating-app users generate chats with Al only to be filtered and then responded to by someone else using AI. The starkest and most consequential such story is what's happening in education: Teachers dealing with students who generate entire essays and assignments are turning to Al-powered plagiarism detectors, or getting pitched on ed-tech software that solves cheating with surveillance - with, of course, the help of AI.These are stories about AI, but they're also stories about broken systems. Students flocking to ChatGPT in the classroom suggests that they see school in terms of arbitrary tasks and attainment rather than education. The widespread use of Al in job hunting drives home the extent to which platforms like LinkedIn, which promises to connect job seekers with employers, have instead installed themselves between them, pushing both sides to either pay up or dishonestly game their systems. A dating app where users see opportunity in automated flirting must already be a pretty grim space. If Facebook can be so quickly and thoroughly overwhelmed by Al-generated imagery and bots, it probably wasn't much of a social network anymore — a low-trust platform better at monetizing users than connecting them. Smaller-scale AI arms races like these don't take hold unless users (or workers, or students) have already been pitted against one another by systems they don't respect. In an uncomfortably large portion of modern life - especially online - that's exactly what's happened.
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The Royal Society @royalsociety.org · 24/06/2025
We're happy to announce @markmiodownik.bsky.social as our new Professor for Public Engagement in Science! His mission will be to transform our understanding of how we make, use, reuse & recycle products, & explore how we can live more sustainably. Watch this space! royalsociety.org/news/2025/06...
royalsociety.org
Living sustainably to be theme for new Royal Society Professor for Public Engagement in Science, Mark Miodownik | Royal Society
Material scientist, engineer, broadcaster and award-winning author, Professor Miodownik will use his expertise to explore how we can live more sustainably, both as individuals and as a society.
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John Steele @jfcsteele.bsky.social · 23/06/2025
Always exciting when research from the lab is disseminated for the public! @theguardian.com have reported on @swallacelab.bsky.social paper turning plastic into paracetamol using engineered bacteria tinyurl.com/32hxnwsd (original publication rdcu.be/esYfF)
theguardian.com
Scientists use bacteria to turn plastic waste into paracetamol
Genetically modified E coli used to create painkillers from material produced from plastic bottles
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Science|Business @sciencebusiness.net · 19/06/2025
🔁Horizon Europe looks set to continue beyond 2027 — in name as well as scope. At a Brussels event, EU research commissioner Ekaterina Zaharieva said #FP10 will retain the #HorizonEurope brand. @ec.europa.eu‬ hasn’t confirmed this officially, but multiple attendees backed the comment.
buff.ly
Horizon Europe forever: EU research programme brand set to roll over in 2028
The next Framework Programme for research and innovation, informally known as FP10, looks set to keep the name Horizon Europe, according to comments by research commissioner Ekaterina Zaharieva after…
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Shane McHugh @shanemchugh.bsky.social · 18/06/2025
My mistake: a valuable learning opportunity, I’m honoured to contribute this lesson to humankind Your mistake: an abomination which must be eradicated from the Internet, my followers will be happy to perform this favour, fly my pretties, fly
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Shane McHugh @shanemchugh.bsky.social · 17/06/2025
Such a clever idea. You could imagine its application to all sorts of wicked problems…
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Shane McHugh @shanemchugh.bsky.social · 11/06/2025
It’s like pure bottled generosity
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Shane McHugh @shanemchugh.bsky.social · 11/06/2025
There’s no day that can’t be improved by this album. Minnie Riperton and her heavenly raindrop noises on the title track. And Lean on Me digging down and then soaring up so high you never want it to stop.
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Shane McHugh @shanemchugh.bsky.social · 11/06/2025
Conscious of time
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Richard Jones @richardaljones.bsky.social · 08/06/2025
I very much welcome the announcement of the Local Innovation Partnerships fund, with ~ £30m funding for industry facing, translational research in each of 7 English city-regions, + places in Wales, Scotland & NI, allocated towards locally determined priorities. www.gov.uk/government/n...
gov.uk
Transformative £86 billion boost to science and tech to turbocharge economy, with regions backed to take cutting-edge research into own hands
Funding package worth more than £22.5 billion a year in 2029 will boost Britain's world-leading status in research and innovation.
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Shane McHugh @shanemchugh.bsky.social · 07/06/2025
Yes… ha ha ha… YES!
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Shane McHugh @shanemchugh.bsky.social · 07/06/2025
The alt text on these ridiculous pictures always makes my day
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The British Academy @britishacademy.bsky.social · 03/06/2025
"In a geopolitically uncertain world and after more than a decade of low productivity growth, the UK needs to rethink its economic strategy." Today, we're publishing a collection of expert policy insights ahead of the multi-year Spending Review conclusion: buff.ly/DAlcNo5
buff.ly
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Colin Smith @colinsmith.bsky.social · 01/06/2025
Summer 1974 and the ferry from Burtonport Co. Donegal to Bran Island has made room for a “precariously perched car”. According to photographer Frank Bodson, the whole caboodle “excited no interest” among those on-board. (Observer magazine, 1/9/74.)
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Shane McHugh @shanemchugh.bsky.social · 31/05/2025
I’ve been baffled by Ridley Scott’s Napoleon ever since I watched it, but have just realised that if you think of it not as a historical epic, but as a reimagining of Raging Bull then it all makes perfect sense
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Hetan Shah @hetanshah.bsky.social · 29/05/2025
UK must toughen regulation of facial recognition, says @adalovelaceinst.bsky.social on.ft.com/43lnQNL
on.ft.com
UK must toughen regulation of facial recognition, say AI experts
Campaigners call on Keir Starmer’s government to create clear laws to tackle growing use of the technology
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Shane McHugh @shanemchugh.bsky.social · 29/05/2025
With a poster that is magnificent
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Simon Willison @simon.fedi.simonwillison.net.ap.brid.gy · 25/05/2025
I started reading the 120 page Claude 4 System Card and found myself unable to put it down. If you're in the mood for some excellent science fiction (or you miss Person of Interest on CBS) I cannot recommend it enough. I made detailed notes on my highlights here […]
fedi.simonwillison.net
Original post on fedi.simonwillison.net
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Shane McHugh @shanemchugh.bsky.social · 24/05/2025
Potentially great impact on hospital safety from an @raeng.org.uk Industrial Fellowship grant
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Jochen Brandt @jochenbrandt.bsky.social · 30/04/2025
The Department of Chemistry at Queen Mary University of London is looking to support applicants for the Royal Academy of Engineering (RAEng) Fellowship. For people <4 years post PhD at the deadline (17th September). #ChemSky See www.seresearch.qmul.ac.uk/ccr/news/496...
seresearch.qmul.ac.uk
Expression of Interest for Royal Academy of Engineering (RAEng) Fellowship
The Department of Chemistry at Queen Mary University of London is looking to support applicants for the Royal Academy of Engineering (RAEng) Fellowship. These fellowships are for people who are less t...
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Dan Goodman @neural-reckoning.org · 17/03/2025
If you've finished your PhD in the last 4 years and your research could be considered as engineering, you might be interested in the RAEng research fellowship scheme which provides 5 years of funding to work in the UK. raeng.org.uk/research-fel...
raeng.org.uk
Research Fellowships
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Hetan Shah @hetanshah.bsky.social · 10/05/2025
Intriguing report of the thinking of the Universities Minister www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/05...
telegraph.co.uk
Universities have ‘lost sight of responsibility over public money’
Baroness Smith says institutions failing to rein in spending despite demanding financial support from government
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Shane McHugh @shanemchugh.bsky.social · 10/05/2025
This extract is insane. Every paragraph starts off Tom Clancy and ends up Don DeLillo
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Alberto Comoretto @albertocomoretto.bsky.social · 08/05/2025
Autonomous locomotion simply with tubes as limbs, and no brain? 🎈🤖 Yes, through physical synchronization! Our article is out today in Science (@science.org) Article: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... Authors: @albertocomoretto.bsky.social, H.A.H. Schomaker, J.T.B. Overvelde More below 🧪 ⚛️ (1/6)
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Alexander Doria @dorialexander.bsky.social · 08/05/2025
New blogpost: "Training as we know it might end". It was originally a panorama of the new methods of synthetic generation but the stakes are now much higher and I openly wonder if model training is not soon going to change forever. vintagedata.org/blog/posts/t...
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Shane McHugh @shanemchugh.bsky.social · 01/05/2025
Scrolled through this whole darn thread and not a single mention of Low, so going to add Double Negative and Hey What to the list
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Shane McHugh @shanemchugh.bsky.social · 01/05/2025
Sugaring Season by Beth Orton is her best album and came out 16 years after Trailer Park
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Shane McHugh @shanemchugh.bsky.social · 01/05/2025
Very clear overview of repositioned U.K. government S&T framework by @sciencecampaign.bsky.social
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Shane McHugh @shanemchugh.bsky.social · 30/04/2025
There’s also that line in The Mayor of Casterbridge about the wheat that tasted so strongly of mice you could almost tell the breed
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Shane McHugh @shanemchugh.bsky.social · 26/04/2025
Grotesque is a good call!
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Shane McHugh @shanemchugh.bsky.social · 26/04/2025
Yeah that’s how I felt. If I had been prepared going in, I would have appreciated it more- but then I wondered was the wrong footing part of the intended affect? Is it a book that doesn’t want to be enjoyed? But wants to take you very quickly through a very bad time
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Shane McHugh @shanemchugh.bsky.social · 26/04/2025
Yes! I feel like there’s a missing word in our vocabulary to describe when something is both horrific and preposterous, and people reach for darkly comic, which is something completely different
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Shane McHugh @shanemchugh.bsky.social · 25/04/2025
I lived there as a student and my abiding memory is of a mohicaned punk with anarchy written on his jacket standing on the corner of a deserted road at 2am, waiting for the green man to appear
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Sam Halpert @samhalpert.bsky.social · 15/04/2025
Even accepting the premise that AI produces useful writing (which no one should), using AI in education is like using a forklift at the gym. The weights do not actually need to be moved from place to place. That is not the work. The work is what happens within you.
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Gina C. Pieters, PhD @ginapieters.bsky.social · 09/04/2025
Since there's a lot of discussion about #treasuries, bonds, and yields, I'm going to give a quick thread on what they are. ##EconSky
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Rob Nelson @ailogblog.bsky.social · 06/04/2025
The endless back and forth over AGI is getting stale. We need better ways to talk about what people should do when they use large AI models. @alisongopnik.bsky.social @himself.bsky.social @dsquareddigest.bsky.social offer that and more. On Beyond AGI! www.ailog.blog/p/on-beyond-...
ailog.blog
On Beyond AGI!
We need new language for talking about large AI models. Alison Gopnik, Henry Farrell, James Evans, Cosma Shalizi, and Dan Davies provide one.
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Shane McHugh @shanemchugh.bsky.social · 27/03/2025
Carl Bruner, the villain from Ghost
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Shane McHugh @shanemchugh.bsky.social · 27/03/2025
Exile on coldharbour lane by Alabama 3 (of Woke Up This Morning fame)
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Simon Evans @drsimevans.carbonbrief.org · 12/03/2025
📢ANALYSIS: UK emissions fell 3.6% in 2024 to lowest since 1872 🏭Coal lowest since 1666, when Great Fire ravaged London 🚗EVs pushed oil down despite more traffic, saving £1.7bn 🌇Gas down on "cleanest ever" power 📈📉Since 1990, CO2 -54% / GDP +84% www.carbonbrief.org/... 1/9
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Shane McHugh @shanemchugh.bsky.social · 01/03/2025
As someone who has disliked everything else I’ve seen or read by Garland, I found Ex Machina surprisingly good- a talky slippery three hander that gets the balance right between characters, ideas and plot
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Shane McHugh @shanemchugh.bsky.social · 16/02/2025
My first copy of loveless was on a cassette tape that was slowly warping, so before it finally chewed every listen was off in a slightly different way
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