iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Simon Waldman @simon-on-energy.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

"The prevalence of depressive symptoms [in ECRs] was approximately 2 to 3 times higher and anxiety symptoms 3 to 5 times higher than in age-matched general-population samples." Also double the rate of suicidal ideation, if I understand right. Wow. www.nature.com/articles/s41... #AcademicSky

nature.com

Prevalence and severity of mental health problems in early-career researchers: a systematic review and meta-analysis - Nature Human Behaviour

Mental health concerns among early-career researchers are increasingly gaining attention. This preregistered systematic review and multilevel meta-analysis quantifies psychological distress among earl...

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Simon Waldman @simon-on-energy.bsky.social · 02/06/2026

Today my #MusicToMarkBy is Linkin Park. What do others choose? #AcademicSky (#MusicToGradeBy for Americans)

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Simon Waldman @simon-on-energy.bsky.social · 12/05/2026

That's our @heriotwattuni.bsky.social stand set up in the "Energy of Orkney" area for the All Energy exhibition tomorrow and Thursday. Come find us to learn about our MSc programmes, or just to have a chat!

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Simon Waldman @simon-on-energy.bsky.social · 19/03/2026

AI produced fake vox pops. Lovely. Actually I agree, the UK should produce its own energy, and is getting a long way towards that through renewables. Probably the UK should avoid buses driving on pavements and mowing down pedestrians, though.

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Simon Waldman @simon-on-energy.bsky.social · 17/03/2026

Strikes at four Scottish universities today.

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HWUCU @hwucu.bsky.social · 17/03/2026

Staff at Strathclyde think threats to jobs are FLAMINGOutrageous🦩 The Dons of Aberdeen are DOG tired with cuts🐕 And Dundee are MEGA DONE with redundancies @ducuuo.bsky.social (they don't have a mascot just a 📣) Heriot-Watt think threats of compulsory redundancy are BANANAS🍌

3 inflatable picket flamingos parade the streets of Glasgow

A group made up equally of human picketers and dog picketers in sunny Aberdeen

A picket line at Heriot-Watt with a banana man

Dundee UCU Co Pres addresses assembled Pickets with a megaphone

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Anthony Painter @anthonypainter.bsky.social · 14/03/2026

This is the default configuration of Samsung TV. GB News has bought prime spot. What this meant was that racist chat entered my front room yesterday ("foreign NHS workers can't speak English").at 6.30pm with my six year old listening. How can Ofcom just sit back and let this happen?

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Simon Waldman @simon-on-energy.bsky.social · 09/03/2026

Have you wondered "If all of the North Sea nations built as much offshore wind as their govs have announced, what would the Sea look like"? Do you need a plausible scenario for farm and turbine locations in 2050, based on that premise? If so, read this new paper! www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/19...

Map of the North Sea showing projected wind farm locations occupying quite a lot of its area.

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Simon Waldman @simon-on-energy.bsky.social · 24/02/2026

Producing an imperfect, but useful, set of data that people can work with (rather than waiting in hope of €millions to do it properly) is useful to science and industry, but hard to publish with peer review. "You haven't done x rigorously" "We weren't trying to! We explained that!" #academicSky

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MdDoogie3 @mddoogie3.bsky.social · 11/02/2026

I don’t really know what I expect in posting this, but maybe some people see it and can learn from it. I’ll call it “lessons from an unwilling immigration attorney.” 1/

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Times Higher Education (THE) @timeshighered.bsky.social · 06/02/2026

University of York latest to decline offer from publisher Elsevier, with several more expected to walk away after previous agreements expired #highered #AcademicSky ow.ly/zUjv50Y9maa

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Simon Waldman @simon-on-energy.bsky.social · 22/12/2025

US pauses leases for five offshore wind projects over radar concerns www.reuters.com/business/ene... Anybody know if these are the same wind farms that a court recently ruled Trump couldn't stop on other grounds?

reuters.com

US pauses leases for five offshore wind projects over radar concerns

The Trump administration suspended leases for five large-scale under-construction offshore wind projects over national security concerns, the Department of the Interior said on Monday.

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Simon Waldman @simon-on-energy.bsky.social · 17/12/2025

Interesting #PhD opportunity that I have minor role in, for people who want to get into the detail of modelling individual #tidal turbines. Funded for home students only (NB if you've lived here a while you may count), deadline 18th Jan. www.findaphd.com/phds/project... #energySky #renewables

findaphd.com

Enhanced Open-Source Modelling of a Floating Tidal Turbine Reference Model at Heriot-Watt University on FindAPhD.com

PhD Project - Enhanced Open-Source Modelling of a Floating Tidal Turbine Reference Model at Heriot-Watt University, listed on FindAPhD.com

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Simon Waldman @simon-on-energy.bsky.social · 16/12/2025

I see this as a sort of validation that I am not slacking when I avoid working evenings/weekends and fail to get much research done. Unfortunately that choice of not working the majority of evenings/weekends may mean I don't have a longer term career in academia.

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Simon Waldman @simon-on-energy.bsky.social · 16/12/2025

"GPT-5 could mimic the structure of a peer-review report and use polished language, but that it failed to produce constructive feedback and made factual errors." Yep, that matches the recent review I had, on the basis of which my manuscript was rejected. #AcademicSky

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Gerhard Kristandl @drkristandl.bsky.social · 15/12/2025

Students: 'Have a lovely Christmas, see you in January!' Me, staring at the 150 coursework submissions they just uploaded: #AcademicSky #MarkingSeason #StrangerThings

A mashup image rendered in a sickly green, "Stranger Things" style, showing a Vecna-like Grinch figure with tentacles and a gnarled staff. He stands in a ruined, stormy Christmas landscape filled with broken presents, decaying wreaths, and a corrupted tree, with green lightning flashing in the sky. The title "STRANGER GRINCH" appears in a glowing green, neon font at the bottom. Generated with Nano Banano Pro.

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Dr. Kellie D. Brown @kelliedbrown1.bsky.social · 12/12/2025

I can grade. I can do hard things. I can grade. I can do hard things. I can grade. I can do hard things. I can grade. I can do hard things. I can grade. I can do hard things. #academicsky

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CarrieLynn D. Reinhard, PhD @doctorcarrie.bsky.social · 13/12/2025

Look, I've been teaching in some way for two decades now. So I know that there are always going to be students who don't care, don't understand, and some combination thereof. But each term, dealing with them, makes me less and less inclined to teach. Death by paper cuts.

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Simon Waldman @simon-on-energy.bsky.social · 10/12/2025

What experiences can people share about sharing PhD interview questions with the candidates in advance? Apparently starting to be considered best EDI practice. Pros/cons? I'm concerned about wasting interview time on pre-planned / scripted responses. Thanks #academicSky

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Ryan Boyd @ryanboyd.bsky.social · 02/12/2025

They should invent a university that prioritizes teaching and research

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Dave Levitan @davelevitan.bsky.social · 02/12/2025

NEW: I heard from a bunch of NREL employees after the announcement of a name change yesterday. They're not thrilled. "Morale is bad. Funding is tenuous.... I've been through two W administrations, many R congresses, and [the first] Trump admin. This is the worst."

gravityisgone.com

'A Collective WTF': National Renewable Energy Laboratory Gets a Trumpian Name Change

NREL employees, many of whom joined the lab specifically to work toward its clean energy mission, are not happy about the oil-soaked leadership's moves.

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Ria Cheyne @riacheyne.bsky.social · 02/12/2025

Crylaughing at the replies to this post #AcademicSky

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Simon Waldman @simon-on-energy.bsky.social · 02/12/2025

...until you try to submit to an Elsevier journal and encounter things like "all files must be in the root directory, as our system is unable to follow links into other directories". And thus replace all your worries about formatting with worries about fitting into a system from maybe 1987.

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QM_UCU @qmucu.bsky.social · 01/12/2025

What exactly do we pay those senior managers all those six-figure salaries for? They claim it’s for their big strategic thinking, but all they do is hand a bunch of money to external consultants to get the exact same PowerPoint as elsewhere.

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Simon Waldman @simon-on-energy.bsky.social · 02/12/2025

Everybody has their hot take re the #UCU ballot. Everybody who is posting apparently expected it to fail. But that perhaps isn't surprising, when it followed a consultative ballot that clearly said it would... Personally, I voted (because screw the Tory threshold) but voted No. That was because...

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Simon Waldman @simon-on-energy.bsky.social · 02/12/2025

And they should have been asking that when the indicative ballot that they ran *told* them that most members didn't want this. Before they spent £250k and a lot of crediblity to ask anyway.

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New-Cleckit Dominie @ncdominie.bsky.social · 02/12/2025

I'm not sure that core activists appreciate how badly UCU damaged its reputation with the MAB debacle. Ordinary members don't see it as "ooh, that bad faction made bad decisions"; they see it as a union which is addicted to starting fights that it has no idea how to finish.

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New-Cleckit Dominie @ncdominie.bsky.social · 02/12/2025

Going to chuck this into UCU's "period of reflection". Nobody I spoke to in the corridors believed that we had achievable goals or a plan to deliver them; nobody trusts national decision-making; lots of people wanted to save our resources for local disputes. Like it or not, that's where we are.

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Simon Waldman @simon-on-energy.bsky.social · 01/12/2025

Something which feels relevant here: The grad student is a trans woman. Not that this affected her conduct - the essay should obviously have failed, and the feedback given was really generous - but it may give some necessary context for the university's response...

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Times Higher Education (THE) @timeshighered.bsky.social · 01/12/2025

The vast majority of academics do not want artificial intelligence used to assess the next Research Excellence Framework, according to a new report. Patrick Jack reports #REF #academicsky ow.ly/mobv50Xz6AF

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Simon Waldman @simon-on-energy.bsky.social · 30/11/2025

Well this is a problem! I'm very dubious about the amount of hydrogen use that the fossil industry pushes, and that the UK government currently plans, but we *are* gonna need CCS. I wish this article didn't conflate the two, which screams "blue hydrogen" to me.

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Ketan Joshi @ketanjoshi.co · 28/11/2025

Close to 1 full goddamn gigawatt of gas (open-cycle, so the most inefficient kind) for the "Project Jupiter" site in New Mexico. This whole article is a stunning illustration of how data centres are incentivising new fossil infrastructure: eastdaley.com/daley-note/p...

Project Jupiter Reflects New Reality of Permian Development
Energy Transfer, Kinder Morgan, Natural Gas, Permian, San Juan, The Daley Note
Posted by:

East Daley Analytics
A massive data center planned by OpenAI and Oracle in southern New Mexico shows the new dynamic influencing pipeline investments in the Permian Basin.

The two technology companies are partnering in Project Jupiter, a four-building data center campus located in Santa Teresa, NM. The facility in Doña Ana County will be developed and operated by BorderPlex Digital Assets and Stack Infrastructure, which plan to construct an onsite natural gas–powered microgrid capable of supplying 700–900 MW of generation directly to the campus.

The companies intend to invest more than $165B over 30 years, making Project Jupiter one of the largest private technology investments proposed in the Southwest. In the Data Center Demand Tracker, East Daley Analytics expects the full campus to be in service by October 2029 and to consume 110–140 MMcf/d of gas once fully operational.

Kinder Morgan’s (KMI) El Paso Natural Gas (EPNG) system could benefit from this new demand. EPNG’s South Mainline runs through Doña Ana County and transports Permian gas across southern New Mexico (see basin and regional pipeline map from Energy Data Studio). However, East Daley’s West Coast Supply & Demand model shows the South Mainline is fully utilized seasonally. A second option is Energy Transfer’s (ET) new Desert Southwest expansion on Transwestern Pipeline, which is expected to add at least 1.5 Bcf/d of takeaway capacity from the Permian toward Arizona and Southern California.

ET has been light on details for its latest pipeline, including the planned route. But in a project update on its website, ET lists Doña Ana County as a delivery point for Desert Southwest. Assuming the new pipeline traverses southern New Mexico, it could provide additional volumes to the county and support Project Jupiter’s demand. ET plans to start Desert Southw…

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Simon Waldman @simon-on-energy.bsky.social · 27/11/2025

Happy thanksgiving to them as celebrate it.

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Simon Waldman @simon-on-energy.bsky.social · 26/11/2025

www.ft.com/content/23e5... "The latest two deals add an extra four gigawatts of compute power to OpenAI’s requirements, bringing the contracted amount to 36 gigawatts." Can anybody think of any company, in the history of the world, that has needed 36 GW for anything?

ft.com

OpenAI needs to raise at least $207bn by 2030 so it can continue to lose money, HSBC estimates

A burning platform

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Chris Baraniuk @chrisbaraniuk.com · 19/11/2025

NEW from me: A recent study finds that fully electrified homes in Handsworth, built to adhere to a draft version of the Future Homes standard, put less pressure on the grid than researchers expected. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

theguardian.com

Heat-pump homes put less strain on grid than expected, study shows

Analysis of new-builds in Birmingham suggests all-electric homes not only use less energy but vary in peak usage

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Ballot Box Scotland @ballotbox.scot · 20/11/2025

How many older journalists and papers look back at their role whipping up hatred against gay people like me in the 80's and 90's with pride and a sense they did right? Very few. So what do *you*, today's journos and papers, think your prospects are after re-running same campaign against trans folk?

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Simon Waldman @simon-on-energy.bsky.social · 19/11/2025

Seriously, MS? seems you can't update an Outlook appointment that has a Teams meeting associated without an Internet connection. Other gripes aside, Outlook used to be pretty good at letting you work offline and then syncing up. But with recent features they seem to have given up on this.

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Simon Waldman @simon-on-energy.bsky.social · 19/11/2025

Q for those who understand elec markets. This is pitched as encouraging data centres to be built in places with constrained generation. But shouldn't PPA market do that anyway? Is gov intervention needed? #energysky

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Simon Waldman @simon-on-energy.bsky.social · 19/11/2025

Reminder about this #PhD project with me on #tidal #renewable #energy! Applications close on 28th November.

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