In context. This was a picture taken on St George's day, long before the present bout of flag shagging.
I'll always be a scientist. I used to be a forensic scientist and before that, a reproductive endocrinologist. Staffordshire, UK
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In context. This was a picture taken on St George's day, long before the present bout of flag shagging.
I should've spoken up, my companion had the same opinion: a solid 3 out of 10.
I'm watching The Thursday Murder Club, quietly so as not to annoy my companion who enjoys this kind of film. It's dreadful. Like something written by AI.
🧪 arstechnica.com/science/2025...
Smart scope users like me can image many galaxies, but I do think Andromeda is uniquely attractive because it looks like depictions of our own galaxy imprinted in our memories since we were kids. This is nice, but it ain't home
It's because it's like looking at a mirror reflection of our home galaxy.
Walter Scott wrote this on dogs, but it applies equally to cats:
Especially rowing😂
Contains a synthetic DNA marker.
I was a kid with a Saturday job washing up in a Greek family run café in the 70s. Son of the family made moussaka at the end of the day using potatoes. Now, I always make moussaka using waxy potatoes and aubergine. Slices like a lovely savoury cake
Just listened to Matthew Syed's BBC radio 4 programme "Sideways" exploring the interaction between language and thoughts ... incredibly without once (as I recall) mentioning the Sapir Whorf hypothesis.
Sunny Monday. #fungifriends
The Pacman nebula, captured last night through an open window. The first starry sky in weeks round here.
I've successfully run firesticks using the power provided by one of the TV's usb sockets. It's worked on a number of different TVs. Makes the cabling tidier and the firestick doesn't consume power when the TV is off. YMMV.
Underestimating the potential of artificial intelligence is a corollary of overestimating human intelligence.
@jasonhifi.com Sun Ra!!!
I used to listen to news for a couple of hrs in the morning - BBC R4, Times Radio. Bad for my mental health. Vinyl replaced that: lower the tone arm, listen to all of one side, flip it. A Zen ritual. I listen to CDs. Never liked streaming - I find myself jumping around to different tracks.
I'm worried my postie will be prosecuted for possession and distribution of material supporting a designated terrorist group when he delivers my next Private Eye.
Someone with "significant regulatory experience". I predict the regulatory tail will continue to wag the forensic dog, but with renewed vigour.
Appointing someone with apparently no experience as a forensic scientist to be the forensic science regulator! www.gov.uk/government/n...
Virgin is technically good. Fast, reliable, but their customer service is DIRE. I've repeatedly tried to drop my unused landline, but they pitch the level of inconvenience dealing with them (hours & days of online chat going nowhere) at precisely the point where I give up and keep the bloody thing.
That is very admirable.
Are you in a clinical trial?
If Boeing 787 fuel cutoff switches are not meant to be used in normal flight, why are they situated immediately below the thrust controls, which are used in normal flight? Looks like the designer took the simple approach of grouping controls according to the systems they control.
Shut down in certain areas: BBC NEWS | England | London | 7 July phone shutdown criticised share.google/vI86lLlb2yhX...
How does this qualify as local news? It's a free advertisement for vile cheap "entertainment".
Hoping for a dark cloudless sky tonight for real #astrophotography but the Moon in a clear blue sunlit evening sky is irresistible.
Man, 92, convicted of raping and murdering Bristol woman in 1967 www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...
Might also have been a good idea for Rod Stewart.
Should've just used actors to re-voice them 😂
youtu.be/wjZofJX0v4M?...
The forensic science market in England and Wales is a hostile environment, but some private forensic science businesses have found life difficult not only because of the weather they encountered but also because of the decisions they made. 3/3
The introduction of direct charging for police use of forensic science encouraged private providers to enter the market in competition with the Forensic Science Service. Their existence facilitated the Government policy decision to close the FSS. 2/3
"Reckless [policy] decisions" have put forensic science in a graveyard spiral. Who made those decisions? 1/3 www.theguardian.com/law/2025/jun...
This is a Seestar stacked ~5m20s taken last night near streetlights with constant thin clouds passing over the moon
Using a #seestar when the sky is cloudy
Select the raw option when you record the video. Click on the video file in the Seestar memory and you'll be offered an option to stack in the upper right corner.
Precious of MPs to be angry at Rantzen's suggestion that some opposed to assisted dying have "undeclared personal religious beliefs which mean no precautions would satisfy them” I want MPs to declare all "interests" that could potentially influence their votes. Nothing special about religion.
And, as I suspected, it's Y-STR. So not a really novel breakthrough.
Just on BBC news, the "modern techniques" became available in 2015.
Also useful to know what exactly these "modern techniques" are, and when they became available.
The CCRC "Alternative techniques ... could've been attempted but impossible to say whether they would have produced the result that the modern ones have. Using those techniques at the time might've reduced the opportunities to obtain results using modern techniques." A dog ate my homework excuse.
The commissioners appear to be the usual establishment types who end up in nicely paid part time government jobs. I wonder who their forensic science reviewers are?
That's a very lawyerly attitude: don't ask a question unless you know the answer. Do you know if any of the CCRC investigators have a background in forensic science (or science of any kind)? To me the CVs of the commissioners don't reveal any great expertise in scientific criminal investigation.
I also think they were specifically wary of DNA after the Hanratty debacle.
Yes. I quoted from the report. Without knowing the exact nature of the semen sample available, I can't comment on the potential for successful testing in 2008. But in 2008, I'd have been very sceptical of a "no" from the organisation whose failings in DNA profiling were revealed by Operation Cube.
Well, I don't think it completely exonerates the CCRC. They don't seem to be intelligent customers of forensic science. At the very least, you'd think they'd have a policy of repeatedly reviewing this type of case to see if the science has moved on. But then I guess resources are a limitation.
... Don't accept a "no" from one organisation (especially not a failing organisation) and keep asking.
"Mr Sullivan had previously applied to the CCRC in 2008 ... the Forensic Science Service (FSS) advised that any further testing would be very unlikely to produce a DNA profile" Many lawyers & investigators (such as the CCRC) are unintelligent customers of forensic science ...
"CCRC refused" isn't quite right: "Mr Sullivan had previously applied to the CCRC in 2008 questioning DNA evidence. Experts from the Forensic Science Service (FSS) advised that any further testing would be very unlikely to produce a DNA profile"
Did a SPAD use #AI to help draft the #Starmer #immigration speech? All the top #LLM s would have seen Enoch Powell's Rivers of Blood speech & identified #stranger as a core theme. From #Gemini: Powell presented anecdotes including...an elderly woman who...felt like a stranger in her own country
Worth reading just for the first paragraph of Secretary of Education Linda McMahon's "stream of consciousness rant" arstechnica.com/science/2025...
Why hasn't God sorted out Hawking's muscular dystrophy? Git.
Hang on. I'm retired and I'm not a twat.
I’ll be honest, I could’ve done without this news: I’m going on a stag do to Leeds on Friday, all 10 of us dressed as cardinals.
I think I spotted a Ring Ouzel in #Lichfield #BeaconPark this morning.
It should be a trivial task to set up a system whereby banks communicate with each other to identify that I was paying money into an ISA held with another UK bank, set up by me. Same as I did at this time last year ...
Annoying to have an obviously legitimate payment blocked & to spend 10 mins on the phone answering patronising questions put by the bank's fraud department This isn't to protect customers. It's to protect the banks, which have failed to put in adequate procedures to identify & rectify fraud
www.change.org/p/urge-tamwo...
When it comes to scientific and technical advances revolutionising forensic science, I'm an optimist. However, this ain't going to happen for at least a decade - if it happens at all.
Starmer better realise globalisation is more than goods on container ships. It's about the flow of ideas, development of international law, growth of tolerance & much more. Tech & human connections drive it. Futile to resist it, essential to shape it. It's humanity's shared "manifest destiny".
Simon Jenkins is an unrecognised genius of prophecy:
So pleased #MichaelFabricant is no longer my MP in #Lichfield I read this and thought it was his biography: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narciss...
“It’s embarrassing, yes. We’re going to get to the bottom of it,” Waltz said, adding that he was consulting with Elon Musk: “We’ve got the best technical minds looking at how this happened.” 😂😂😂
A neat exemplar of the mind numbing inertia and incompetence of our political system: Assisted dying law thrown into doubt as plans for rollout delayed by two years www.theguardian.com/society/2025...
It'd be great if #VirginMedia put an AI in charge of the whole of their customer service department. At least then there'd be a basic level of intelligence directing their operations.
It's Republican voters and their representatives that need to come to this realisation.
Jeanette Winterson is right:
These YouTube vids by #3Blue1Brown are very good as a primer on modern AIs youtube.com/playlist?lis...
The number of parameters in big LLMs is probably only 5-10 orders of magnitude less than the number of synaptic connections in a human brain AIs are growing faster than Moore's Law. It won't take many doublings to reach parity A greater than evens chance of human level AGI in less than 10 years?
Those who think AI will never be creative as humans are ignoring the rate of development of AI ... and perhaps don't understand the nature of human creativity. 'OpenAI’s metafictional short story about grief is beautiful and moving’ | Jeanette Winterson www.theguardian.com/books/2025/m...
The quote doesn't appear in the article cited and there's no sense of it in the article. Actually, the short story that Altman "commissioned" from his new AI does seem to me be "unexpected".
"vibrant" 😂
I've not measured it. They're only 240watt. It's possible to calculate an estimate given orientation, latitude etc. I asked Gemini, DeepSeek & ClaudeAI to do the calculation. ClaudeAI wrote a nice python script, estimating 150-200KwH/yr - £40-50 at the present price cap. The other AIs failed 🙂
I've got these on a south facing wall. I've already got 4Kw on the roof, but these came cheap so I thought worthwhile. The two larger ones feed to the mains thru a small grid tie inverter. The smaller one keeps a couple of leisure batteries charged for power cuts.
Trump and Vance 🤮
Lend your support to entrepreneurs in low-income countries through @lendwithcare.bsky.social Make your first loan for free with this link! lendwithcare.org/referral/EHH...
I think "good reason" would cover a Remembrance Sunday laying of a wreath.
Great. HMRC announce I need to go back into self assessment (been out of SA since 2019). I should've submitted a return last month to avoid a late filing fine. They tell me this in a letter dated "February" received today. 45 min wait on the phone to get the fine waived 😡
The new (failing) system for registration of deaths was introduced in response to recommendations of the Shipman enquiry Shipman was convicted in 2000 UK govs have taken 25 years to come up with a system that doesn't work Another example of the UK being a chronically failing state.
I can't rule out IT having some role in this car crash, but it seems to be a badly designed system in which no entity has control to make the various stages happen promptly. I also suspect it's been poorly communicated to care homes and GPs.
My mother in law died a month ago. We still don't have a medical certificate of cause of death (shouldn't be rocket science, she had untreated stage 4 cancer). Without the MCCD, no death certificate. No death certificate, no funeral. Her body lies deteriorating, unembalmed, in a fridge. 2/2
A new winter of discontent, when the dead are not buried. I campaigned hard to throw out the Tories. I wasn't expecting Labour to dazzle, but I did expect competence. In September 2024 the Labour government introduced a new system for registration of deaths. IT IS IN CHAOS. 1/2
If Brexit had never happened… …we’d be much wealthier, with more investment in public services, better trade - and with our parliament & govt having spent the last decade doing far more productive things. 🇬🇧🇪🇺🇬🇧🇪🇺🇬🇧🇪🇺🇬🇧🇪🇺
Well I've seen a great many dead people (including my mother in law) and in most cases it doesn't need a doctor to determine that someone is dead. The main role of doctors in this procedure (and the old procedure) is to determine the CAUSE of death.
An IT savvy child could design a better system. Put the Medical Examiners Office at the centre of the system. Report deaths directly to the MEO. Give the MEO access to computerised medical records to make a judgement. Only involve GPs if absolutely necessary.
The kicker is that this process IS all on-line (emails, phone calls etc.) My mother in law's death was confirmed by a nurse in a care home. Care home is supposed to provide info to her GP, GP fills in MCCD & emails it to Medical Examiners Office, who make a judgement and contact the next of kin.
The attending doctors practice didn't even begin to put together the information necessary to fill out the medical cause of death certificate until two weeks after the death ... and only at our prompting.
The earliest we'll be able to get a death certificate will be more than a month after she passed. Meanwhile her body deteriorates at the undertakers because the body can't be embalmed without a death certificate. There's a complete vacuum of communication.
This is a bureaucratic disaster. My mother in law died on 18th January. We've not been able to register the death, much less arrange a funeral. Yesterday we learned that the attending doctor has gone on holiday without signing cause of death certificate. www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/...
Thanks.
Many thanks. Do you know which would deal with a death in Burntwood (Lichfield), Staffordshire? Our relative had only been with a Burntwood GP for a couple of weeks, before that a GP in Stoke on Trent. The last hospital they were in was Stafford County.
You're suggesting the GP is responsible for the delay? Given that WE will have just five days to register the death once the ME office has ruled, don't you think all the professionals in the process should be acting more rapidly.
We've seen that list. We can't identify the relevant ME office. Our relative died in a care home in Burntwood, Staffordshire and had recently been treated at both Stafford County and Royal Stoke hospitals (neither of which have ME offices) ...
