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William Cullerne Bown

@williamcb.bsky.social
4.5K followers 1.8K following 5.3K posts

Research, technology and politics. Newsletter bit.ly/3AELZDu Foundations of AI bit.ly/3WiYJab Law bit.ly/40YL1fU

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Reposted by William Cullerne Bown
William Cullerne Bown @williamcb.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
Oh. Hallo @theresearchdesk.bsky.social
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William Cullerne Bown @williamcb.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
Oh. Hallo @theresearchdesk.bsky.social
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William Cullerne Bown @williamcb.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
Trying out the new and now settled in @theobserveruk.bsky.social this Sunday. “Vronsky redux, anyone?” is how the page of editorials (p3, before the news) concludes. I like re-reading Anna Karenina as much as anyone, but I have no idea what or who is intended by this.
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William Cullerne Bown @williamcb.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
Saw Sambizanga last night at the BFI. An unforgettable film that you watch as much for the verité as the drama. It’s an amazingly immersive dive into a particular place and time (Luanda 1972). It’s on again in the coming weeks so go if you can!
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Alexander Clarkson @aphclarkson.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
This is how the nuclear industry petred out in failure throughout many countries in the 1980s and 90s
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Dan Garisto @dangaristo.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
If I'm reading correctly, looks like the previous LZ search was 5.5kt and 60 days, so .9 tonne-years, or about 1/3 of the current search size.
arxiv.org
First Constraints on WIMP-Nucleon Effective Field Theory Couplings in an Extended Energy Region From LUX-ZEPLIN
Following the first science results of the LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) experiment, a dual-phase xenon time projection chamber operating from the Sanford Underground Research Facility in Lead, South Dakota, USA, w...
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scienceartnews.bsky.social @scienceartnews.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
An experiment has observed an energy flash comparable to that of the long-sought weakly interacting massive particle, or WIMP. Article: Davide Castelvecchi @nature.com 2/3
nature.com
Is this the first glimpse of dark matter? Data point excites physicists
An experiment spots an energy flash similar to that of the long-sought weakly interacting massive particle, or WIMP.
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William Cullerne Bown @williamcb.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
What I will say about the US-Canada trade spat is that time is on Carney’s side. Every day this goes on is a day that Americans are reminded that they don’t like Trump fucking with their longtime friends in Canada. And the midterms are coming.
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William Cullerne Bown @williamcb.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
We need a systematic mapping of what, for want of a better word, we could call Big Anti-Science.
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James Austin @jamesdaustin.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
I think one issue with hospo is theyre facing a pretty major shift in customer behaviour and want to govt to protect them from that. And the govt, rightly, isn't giving them the level of protection theyd like (which still some additional support)
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Tube Mapper- Luke Agbaimoni @tubemapper.bsky.social · 22/03/2024
Waiting in Moquette Fun photography of Andreya wearing a classic London Underground patterned moquette dress & socks whilst waiting for a train at Bank station. #photography
Bank London Underground station
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Tube Mapper- Luke Agbaimoni @tubemapper.bsky.social · 27/03/2025
Bakerloo Line Moquette Tattoo I'm a big fan of the moquette patterns that you can find on London Transport, especially underground trains. So it was an absolute pleasure meeting Liz who had a very detailed Bakerloo line Tattoo. #tattoo #photography #railway
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Tube Mapper- Luke Agbaimoni @tubemapper.bsky.social · 01/12/2024
Fun selfie in the Victoria Line PlayStation carriage! I couldn't resist wearing my Victoria line moquette Jacket.
Tube mapper
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Cule @cule.bsky.social · 22/01/2024
Un peu chelou l'hôtel ici mais là moquette est très classe.
Une moquette à motifs géométriques hexagonaux orange, noir et rouge.
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Mike @mikeyashworth.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
Emily's wonderful performance on Mastermind with specialist subject TfL moquettes - here's a 2009 pic with the top 3 designs in the international competition we at London Underground ran to re-start the process of commissioning designs. Seen against the PPP moquette that kicked it off!
Photo showing three printed moquette fabric designs, on a Piccadilly line train, that were the top three from the 2009/10 international competition for new seating fabrics held by London Underground seen against the PPP Tubelines moquette the off the shelf design that started the quest. The winner"Barman" as it was named and designed by Wallace/Sewell is in the middle seat.
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Sophie Nercessian @bettyparciparla.bsky.social · 17/10/2025
Dame Nature a changé la moquette! 🧡🍂
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Dorothy Bishop @deevybee.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
AI response: 'The phrase "McDonald's Omega" can refer to a physical McDonald's restaurant location in the Omega business park area of Warrington, UK, vintage corporate-branded Omega wristwatches given to franchise owners, or "McDonald's omega," a statistical measure used in psychological research'
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Garvan Walshe @garvanwalshe.org · 21/08/2026
Extremely thorough post on Cofnas case by Sunder here
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William Cullerne Bown @williamcb.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
My sleep is off because camomile tea is not what it used to be. First Sainsbury’s and now Waitrose bags have lost their punch. Does anyone else who uses this stuff to get through the night have any suggestions?
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Margot Finn @eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
“For years, governments have wasted money on useless degrees and ungrateful universities when the backbone of Britain, real Britain, the men and women who get up and go to work in the dark and come home in the dark have been ignored,” says a party document outlining the policy.' 2/3
assets.nationbuilder.com
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William Cullerne Bown @williamcb.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
I watched this all the way through.
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Joey Politano🏳️‍🌈 @josephpolitano.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
In possibly the fastest shift in public opinion I've ever seen, local data center approval went from -5 to -65 in less than a year heatmap.news/daily/data-c...
a graph of data center support rapidly falling
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Jared Huling @jaredhuling.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
I'm now at the point where I'm not even sure peer review is doing anything at all. I don't think people in our field understand how prevalent copy-pasting AI output into peer reviews is. It genuinely makes me question what we're all even trying to do anymore. Our field needs to decide what it values
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Paul Hünermund @p-hunermund.com · 21/08/2026
I think the gatekeeping function of peer review is still intact. People still form opinions about papers, even if there's a risk that they increasingly do so based on superficial readings. At the same time, AI can also flag issues that reviewers might previously have overlooked. 1/4
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Adam Brown @adamlbrown.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
It's basically what you'd expect, right? In the olden days it used to just be called 'doing your child's homework for them' and the results were the same
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William Cullerne Bown @williamcb.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
This result seems plausible to me.
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William Cullerne Bown @williamcb.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
40 years of failure
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William Cullerne Bown @williamcb.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
This should be keeping every scientist awake at night.
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William Cullerne Bown @williamcb.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
The AI companies seem more and more like a mechanical, real life version of that dark scifi fantasy where someone infects the entire world with a virus to which only they have the antidote. www.ft.com/content/a994...
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Marcus Chown @marcuschown.bsky.social · 02/08/2026
The “central magic of science” is that it is possible to write down a mathematical formula that predicts the existence of things previously unsuspected - black holes, antimatter, the Higgs boson… - that turn out to actually exist! AVAILABLE ON KINDLE FOR 99p www.amazon.co.uk/Magicians-Gr...
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Tom Freeman @tomfreeman.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
Oh no I accidentally listened directly to the eclipse for a few seconds and now I can't hear anything
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Sam Freedman @samfr.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
Weird watching the right-wing columnist cohort try to collectively pull the handbrake on ethnonationalism. Like the world's biggest hotdog man convention.
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William Cullerne Bown @williamcb.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
As I was saying
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Giles Wilkes @gilesyb.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
So I've had a go at this! open.substack.com/pub/gileswil... My beef is not with the FT. It's a precautionary warning to any bad faith policy wonks minded to misuse a number that's frankly more meaningless than meaningful
open.substack.com
No, the government didn't just splurge hundreds of billions in subsidy
handle numbers with care, particularly the big and surprising ones
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William Cullerne Bown @williamcb.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
A very interesting take on industrial strategy. Britain needs to redefine what it considers cutting-edge
giftarticle.ft.com
Britain needs to redefine what it considers cutting-edge
Burnham should promote a broader conception of advanced manufacturing that goes beyond frontier technologies
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Marcus Chown @marcuschown.bsky.social · 09/08/2026
John Bell dug a bit deeper. The violation of Bell’s inequality implies the world can’t be both local & realistic. Either entanglement allows instantaneous correlations between distant particles OR physical properties do not exist independently of measurement. A profound challenge to our intuition!
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William Cullerne Bown @williamcb.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
A very interesting take on industrial strategy. Britain needs to redefine what it considers cutting-edge
giftarticle.ft.com
Britain needs to redefine what it considers cutting-edge
Burnham should promote a broader conception of advanced manufacturing that goes beyond frontier technologies
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By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 08/08/2026
Despite many attempts at official sabotage by a string of increasingly shambolic UK governments, the GDS still exists, and it still does amazing work, even though it operates today with a fraction of the official support that it enjoyed at its inception. 15/
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William Cullerne Bown @williamcb.bsky.social · 08/08/2026
@marcuschown.bsky.social Have just read Ray Monk’s review of the new Buchwald/Gordin Einstein biography. The “Einstein method” it seems to me was to crystallise some aspect of reality in a provocatively odd example and then to hunt for the new concept that would reorganise and clarify. Eg …
lrb.co.uk
Ray Monk · Einstein’s Miracle Year
‘Why is it that nobody understands me and everybody likes me?’ Albert Einstein’s question acknowledges the great...
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William Cullerne Bown @williamcb.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
In a traditional Japanese garden, found objects provide a focus for contemplation.
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Giles Wilkes @gilesyb.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
As an aside, in my co-authored piece on HMT, I tended to look at the political masters for blame. This report by Diane et al shifts me somewhat Treasury ‘orthodoxy’ | Institute for Government share.google/hoJxsqWC3cc4...
share.google
Treasury ‘orthodoxy’ | Institute for Government
The Treasury wields too much influence across government and dominates strategic thinking at the centre.
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William Cullerne Bown @williamcb.bsky.social · 02/08/2026
16 months ago, when Rupert Lowe was generally treated as a a fantasist, I wrote this essay explaining how a three-cornered fight to lead the right was emerging. Now, with Badenoch struggling and Restore crippling Reform in Manchester, I am re-upping: williamcullernebown.substack.com/p/influencer...
williamcullernebown.substack.com
Influencer politics and the crisis in Reform
A new kind of technologically-enhanced activist will seal the fate of Nigel Farage, and perhaps the UK
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Sharon 🪳🌹 @sharonk.bsky.social · 01/08/2026
As stated before, most economists and analysts on the political Right assume that talent, technology, and globalization explain the one percent, but
that too is contradicted by the occupational data.
In the United States, detailed data on earnings by occupation show that
the largest occupational category for top earners is physicians and surgeons,
who comprise 14.5 percent of the top one percent. The probability of being
in the one percent is also highest for this group. Slightly over one out of every
five physicians or surgeons is in the top one percent (21.6 percent) compared
with one out of seven for CEOs (13.9 percent).
Under the techno-talent theory of the top one percent, this shouldn’t be
possible. It would be difficult to think of a professional occupational group
less affected by technological change and globalization than physicians. Physicians do not export their services and are so behind in their use of information technology that the U.S. government passed legislation in 2009 to fund and encourage more widespread IT adoption among doctors.
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William Cullerne Bown @williamcb.bsky.social · 01/08/2026
Honestly fraud team, have you met London? Our mobile signal disappears all the time.
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William Cullerne Bown @williamcb.bsky.social · 01/08/2026
Is bloc politics actually defined by an epistemological cleavage?
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David Klemperer @dmk1793.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
Like, this is what Starmer and McSweeney thought they were doing
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Dorothy Bishop @deevybee.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
they have a history of false balance on scientific issues; ksj.mit.edu/tracker-arch...
ksj.mit.edu
Report says BBC journalists mislead with false balance in climate change coverage - Knight Science Journalism @MIT
One of the most common complaints lodged against journalists these days is the notion of “false balance”. Journalists, so the critics say, too often present fringe scientists in a misguided […]
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William Cullerne Bown @williamcb.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
Morality aside, maybe Britain can do something about ever worse heatwaves - with geo engineering aria.org.uk/opportunity-...
aria.org.uk
Exploring Climate Cooling
Backed by £56.8m, this programme will explore whether approaches designed to delay, or avert, climate tipping points could be feasible, scalable, and safe.
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Diane Coyle @dianecoyle1859.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
“the FTSE is almost an anti-tech index”
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Dr Keith Wilson 💭 @keithwilson.eu · 29/07/2026
“Without additional funds, the risk is that [scientific and other research funding] is diverted to support more immediate economic goals. With university research already being squeezed by the loss of income from overseas students, that could be calamitous.” #HigherEducation #Research #UKRI
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