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Will Ellwood

@unleashtheginger.bsky.social
103 followers 111 following 653 posts

Mountain runner, lapsed climber, occasional writer, and sometimes engineer.

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Reposted by Will Ellwood
Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 12/02/2026
Let me recommend grabbing a cup of tea & reading this really thoughtful piece from the inimitable @hogg.bsky.social on moderating AI/LLM use in astrophysics. 🔭 "the real question we face is not ... how we do astrophysics. It is the question of why we do astrophysics." 📖: arxiv.org/pdf/2602.10181
A screenshot of text from a paper that reads:

One idea or rule of thumb is perhaps that we should or could interact with an LLM only in the same ways that we would interact with a non-coauthor colleague. You might ask your colleague for help finding something in the literature, but you wouldn’t ask your non-coauthor colleague to write the introduction of the paper you are writing. You might ask your colleague to help speed up your code, but you wouldn’t
ask your colleague to write your code. Another idea is that, given our respect for our readers, we shouldn’t ask them to engage with something that took way less time to write than to read. I like these ideas; maybe they could evolve into conventions or community-supported best practices.
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Will Ellwood @unleashtheginger.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
I badly need to catch up on Midnight Radio.
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Will Ellwood @unleashtheginger.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
I would be extremely grateful if my late-middle aged cat with the soul of a puppy, whom I love dearly, didn't have a habit of waking me with zoomies at 4am. It left me anxiously awake for 90 minutes this morning.
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Reposted by Will Ellwood
Charles Louis Richter @richterscale.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
you are invited to her gallery opening
A very tiny tabby kitten in a black post-surgery onesie that looks like a tight black shirt, very chic.
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Will Ellwood @unleashtheginger.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
One Can of Beans, Some Yogurt, and Chilli Crisp Last week the vegan cook Derek Sarno published a short video on YouTube with a simple dip recipe. I’m writing the rough details down here in case that video vanishes or I forget about it. Take one can of black beans (any kind of bean really), a few…
blog.will-ellwood.com
One Can of Beans, Some Yogurt, and Chilli Crisp
Last week the vegan cook Derek Sarno published a short video on YouTube with a simple dip recipe. I’m writing the rough details down here in case that video vanishes or I forget about it. Take one can of black beans (any kind of bean really), a few tablespoons of unsweetened plain vegan yogurt, and several spoons of chilli crisp. Mash the beans a little and mix in the yogurt then the chilli.
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Reposted by Will Ellwood
Jeff Sharlet @jeffsharlet.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
I give up. I’m moving into a cave.
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Reposted by Will Ellwood
Neil Reid @cairngormwanderer.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
What a day Saturday was! Braeriach the hard way (aren't they all?) and a stravaig across the plateau. cairngormwanderer.wordpress.com/2026/09/28/b...
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Reposted by Will Ellwood
Will Ellwood @unleashtheginger.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Traverse Each year the Cairngorm Club traverses across, though, or over the range of mountains that gives the club its name. This year, on the of 13th September, the club members attending the day meet were driven to the ski centre in the north and left to make their many ways back to the Linn of…
blog.will-ellwood.com
Traverse
Each year the Cairngorm Club traverses across, though, or over the range of mountains that gives the club its name. This year, on the of 13th September, the club members attending the day meet were driven to the ski centre in the north and left to make their many ways back to the Linn of Dee in the south. It was a warm autumn Sunday where the wind and rain had paused for a single day.
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Will Ellwood @unleashtheginger.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Traverse Each year the Cairngorm Club traverses across, though, or over the range of mountains that gives the club its name. This year, on the of 13th September, the club members attending the day meet were driven to the ski centre in the north and left to make their many ways back to the Linn of…
blog.will-ellwood.com
Traverse
Each year the Cairngorm Club traverses across, though, or over the range of mountains that gives the club its name. This year, on the of 13th September, the club members attending the day meet were driven to the ski centre in the north and left to make their many ways back to the Linn of Dee in the south. It was a warm autumn Sunday where the wind and rain had paused for a single day.
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Will Ellwood @unleashtheginger.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Belated
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Will Ellwood @unleashtheginger.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
I can't find one of my pairs of running shoes and this is really bothering me, because it's really disorienting to lose something so large in one's home and because they're the exact trainer that I need tonight.
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Reposted by Will Ellwood
Brendan C. Byrne @brendancbyrne.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
i missed this, absolute madness. if mike wins i'm going to burn down wherever the fuck i am
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Will Ellwood @unleashtheginger.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
It would have been John Coltrane's 100th birthday today. www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjRb...
youtube.com
John Coltrane - Blue Train
YouTube video by jazzhole13
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Will Ellwood @unleashtheginger.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
This is the awful spirit of the times.
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Reposted by Will Ellwood
Chris Townsend @christownsend.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
parkswatchscotland.co.uk/2026/09/18/t...
parkswatchscotland.co.uk
The Cairngorms Wildfire: Why We Need a Public Inquiry - parkswatchscotland
The following is a short summary of a draft report that I have prepared for my colleagues in Badenoch Climate Action to facilitate discussion about the origins of the Cairngorms wildfire in July/Augus...
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Will Ellwood @unleashtheginger.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
My concentration is absolutely gone this week after Sunday's jog over the Cairngorms. I've resorted to making granular todo lists and listening to the Disintegration Loops on repeat. I'd really like to be running or writing today, but alas.
The view of Sgor an Lochain Uaine from the Ben Macdui WW2 crash site memorial. Mostly blue skies above granite mountains. Fluffy white clouds lie in the distance.Lochain Uaine on the east side of Sron Riach. in a bowl half way up a mountain.The view down the Dee fro mthe side of Ben Macdui. Carn a Mhaim sites to the left of the Dee snaking its way through the glen.
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Dr Tess Machling @tessmachling.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
My mum wanted the details of her death heard. She strongly believed in the right to die & had a living will. We need to be honest about what death often looks like & that there is often *no* palliative care that can make someone like my mum's death any easier. TW: This thread is a difficult read.
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daryl "rupert pumpkin" b 🏳️‍⚧️ @hypercubexl.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
GDT's reddit AMA spitting fire www.reddit.com/r/movies/com...
reddit comment: 

Hello! Did you intend the ending of Pan’s labyrinth to be real or in Ofelia’s mind?

Guillermo Del Toro's reply: 

My interpretation, and it's exclusively mine, is that it's real.

Because there's two things. One is what people call “The Shining Question.” The Shining Question is, Who opens the door for Jack to get out of the fridge? And Ofelia is in an attic with a guard outside her door, and she draws the door with the magic chalk, and she shows up in the labyrinth. So, the only way she could have gone into the labyrinth is the magic chalk. And the flower is real at the end. The flower that blooms in the dead tree. And the reason I think it’s real is because—and this is why I'm in favor of the human factor in art—I think that art does transform the world. You know?

Think about it for a second. One of the goals, with all this movement, is to make you believe that art is vulgar. That art is nothing special, and anybody can do art. That is like me telling you that I'm faster at running than Usain Bolt but I “run” in my motorcycle. Well, that's not the same. That’s not the same at all.

Art is important, and they want you to believe it isn't. It's part of the idea of control. The goal is not to have artificial intelligence. The goal is to foster natural stupidity. The goal is to foster you not looking for answers, and to trust yourself entirely to an engine. Look at the way we are dipping our toes into these things. We are starting to ask the machine, Is this true? For now, there's a correlation between reality and what the answers of the machine are. For now. But soon, we won't even investigate further. We will be told it's true. And if the machine is in the hands of somebody who should not be trusted, then your reality has been completely and utterly fucked. Because your intelligence ends at the question. You don't seek the answer. It's given to you.Q: You recently mentioned that AI creates 'semi-compelling screensavers' and that you'd 'rather die' than use it. As a filmmaker who relies heavily on practical effects and creature design, what do you think is the biggest thing lost when a computer generates an image instead of a human hand?

GDT:

The three quarters of the process that gave you the chance to think of the idea that people don't think about without that process. Meaning, AI can get you to the middle really fast, but there's a dialectic with the process that gets you to that top 10%. I'll give you an example with the Pale Man.

We sculpted it as an old man, with a face. And then I said, Let's take out the face. This happened because I saw a photo of a manta ray and the poster for Don Coscarelli’s Phantasm. That combination, which happened at two different times during a week or a month, are not permutations that are chemically part of an equation. They are alchemy. And then I said, Take out the face, and then I said, Let's put the eyes on the hands. This triangulation happens because I spent a month or two months living with the idea of this creature. And it's not linear.

AI is like a super-fast engine that makes semi-sentient permutations of things that are already done. Creation is things that have never been done. Coming to exist.

And the second thing is the loss of the apprenticeship that one has as an artist. You're never a master; you're always an apprentice. This is a kinship I have with, for example, Chris Nolan. When he showed me The Odyssey, there’s a scene when Matt Damon is floating in the stormy ocean and I asked him—because we were talking about practical effects, and how great it is and that we both always use a maquette or a model—and I asked him, How did you do it? He said, “We put him in a storm in the ocean.”

And you're gonna find that 30% of a great image occurs accidentally. You know, either a drop of water hits the lens, or the camera shakes. I remember when in 1993, '94, Jim…
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Reposted by Will Ellwood
Chris Lintott @chrislintott.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
This is quietly big news for @esa. General chat around #EPSC2026 is a strong desire to reduce dependence on perfidious NASA, driving Europe to new capabilities and partners (see expanding partnership with JAXA for BepiColombo and beyond)
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Chris Addison @mrchrisaddison.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Somewhere in England, a tired man turns off Channel 4 news and wearily puts on a bin.
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Will Ellwood @unleashtheginger.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
The weird isn't an aesthetic one can adopt but a response to one's estrangement to the world. That's what most people can't grasp.
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#BruceSterling @bruces.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
*Intel no longer has any "scientists," just hustle-bros. #Agentic www.tomshardware.com/pc-component...
tomshardware.com
Intel scraps 44-year-old 'Fellow' title for top scientists, changes 'standard of technical leadership' — technical luminaries must now deliver measurable business results, combine deep expertise with ...
Different designation, different role.
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Will Ellwood @unleashtheginger.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
I don't like this fact at all. Not one bit.
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Will Ellwood @unleashtheginger.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
Last Friday night and Saturday morning. Camped beside the Dee. Just below freezing overnight. Frost on the outer flysheet. Condensation on the inside.
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Nothings Monstered @nothingsmonstrd.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
Untitled — Zdzisław Beksiński, 1978
Cleaning the street corner in a surreal City there are a couple of tall buildings that are honeycombed with openings that are not are not arranged in the in the orderly patterns that usually Mark human made structures instead there much more organic looking the building in the foreground has balconies as well as openings and a sculptured belief of a human face on a wall. Down in the street are a couple of tiny human figures
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Will Ellwood @unleashtheginger.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Expedition Edition
blog.will-ellwood.com
Expedition Edition
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Simon Spanton @simonguy.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
This and his piece "Titanic" are available on one CD (if CDs happen to be your thing) - both make for extraordinary, singular listening
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Will Ellwood @unleashtheginger.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
This might be why my recent purchase of an Ultimate Direction Fastpack has pleased me so much.
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Will Ellwood @unleashtheginger.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
Finished The Woman in the Dunes last night/this morning.
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Matt Bell @mdbell79.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
I do this too! My planning documents are full of me talking to myself. My marginal notes in my manuscripts are often collaborative: "What are we going to do about this chapter opening?" or "Let's see if we can cut this scene in half." The many selves needed to write a book are always kept talking.
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Ian Potter @ianzpotter.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
Oi, Folio Society, No! You do not buy The Wasp Factory in a beautifully-bound, £350, limited edition hardback with striking illustrations. You buy it in a cheap, black, Abacus paperback with rapidly browning paper stock and a litany of review quotes at the front telling you how vile it is.
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𝔾𝕆ℝ𝔸ℕ @gorangligovic.bsky.social · 24/10/2023
I don't know how well threads work on bsky but I'm gonna try and post all my fauxnimated Elric pieces in relatively high resolution in three connected posts. Here we have Elric, Elric's throne room, Prince Yyrkoon, and Princess Cymoril
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Will Ellwood @unleashtheginger.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
Ran a 25km long run with a fast finish included earlier today. I was looking forward to watching Return of the King, but can't.
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Ben Dolphin 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿❄️⛰🌲 @countrysideben.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
Really baffled by the Met Office pushing through the new interface in its current form. The old version gives me everything I need at a single glance. The new one requires extra clicks on 'detailed forecast', more clicks to ask for humidity %, and then all the info doesn't fit on screen. Poor 🙁
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Will Ellwood @unleashtheginger.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
I actually learned several things that were useful on Instagram today.
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James Reeves @jamesreeves.co · 14/08/2026
I made two songs. The title track comes from a dream I had about killing a digital crocodile by carving an ancient glyph into its eye. The B-side is dedicated to my fascination with Carthage, which is a heartbreak.
jamesreeves.bandcamp.com
Crocodile Eye, by James A. Reeves
2 track album
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Rowan Hooper @rowhoop.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
Rewilding WITH BEAVERS is especially good at preventing wildfires because the wetlands and dams create firebreaks. See: www.euronews.com/2026/07/29/h...
euronews.com
Why beavers could be a secret weapon against Europe’s wildfires
Beavers’ penchant for dam building has created natural fire breaks across Europe, which could help tackle deadly blazes.
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Will Ellwood @unleashtheginger.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
And if it is cloudy, as I expect it to be where I live, then it will still be sublimely spooky.
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Will Ellwood @unleashtheginger.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
This synth and drum machine setup now that I've managed to add some tasteful delay and reverb is bringing me so much joy.
A Roland TR-8S drum machine and a Erica Synths DB-01 Bassline synth on a coffee table with a pair of red headphones. The lights are on. This is a techno machine.
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S.J. Pearce @homophonous.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
One of my against-AI moves for this coming semester has been to go no-tech in my lecture class. Just finished my old-school course pack and sent it off to the bookstore. I had forgotten how long it takes to put these things together, but here’s a look at some of what we’ll be reading:
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J G Ballard bot @ballardbot.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
I never said that I think car crashes are sexually exciting.
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Karlo Yeager Rodríguez @kjy1066.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
If you're a writer aching to write a spirited defense of AI/slop. . . May I suggest: don't
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Chris Townsend @christownsend.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
parkswatchscotland.co.uk/2026/08/05/t...
parkswatchscotland.co.uk
The Cairngorms wildfire and pinewood recovery- PART 2 - parkswatchscotland
A previous article on this (see here) created a significant level of interest and useful feedback, including from BBC Rado Scotland Drivetime and Radio 4 researchers. The message from the post above w...
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Will Ellwood @unleashtheginger.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
Forgive me, I didn't read tonight, but instead played with a new synthesiser.
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Will Ellwood @unleashtheginger.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
On the last day of my vacation I'm rewatching Michael Clayton.
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Will Ellwood @unleashtheginger.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
I started reading The Woman in the Dunes yesterday. My copy is from 1987 and has a cover that's accurate for the novel's contents, but wouldn't be used today.
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Will Ellwood @unleashtheginger.bsky.social · 02/08/2026
www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsgH...
youtube.com
Will a Science Fiction novel ever win the Booker Prize? #literaryfiction #bookerprize #sf
YouTube video by Outlaw Bookseller
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Will Ellwood @unleashtheginger.bsky.social · 01/08/2026
We saw The Odyssey on Thursday night and followed it up with cocktails then by watching In the Mood for Love last night.
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Chris #ChangeEverything #VoteGreen @chrisl86.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
#ReformUK #DanHarrison and #RupertMatthew 's #Leicestershire 🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️ www.leicestermercury.co.uk/news/wildfir...
leicestermercury.co.uk
Dramatic footage captures large wildfire as crews battle blaze
Multiple crews were dispatched and a warning was issued for nearby residents
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Will Ellwood @unleashtheginger.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
I entered middle age over the weekend in my prefered style.
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