Adrian Bowyer
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adrianbowyer.bsky.social
Adrian Bowyer
@adrianbowyer.bsky.social
No worthwhile human achievement has ever been instigated on the basis of demonstrable cost effectiveness.


https://adrianbowyer.com

📍Europe
Pinned
Most areas of human thought are wrong because they assume they're right. Science is mostly right because it assumes it is wrong.

Most ways of achieving things fail because they assume they'll work. Engineering mostly works because it assumes things will go wrong.
The architectural vocabulary and idiom of Saddam Hussein.
Look at what this garish, classless, tasteless fool has done to the People’s House.
November 11, 2025 at 1:48 PM
Reposted by Adrian Bowyer
Wow, I hadn't realised Nigel Franks didn't publish about this until 2015. He'd been talking about it as long as I'd been at Bath (since 2002), probably longer. Gives me hope for some of my own #cooperation work that's languishing.

IMO, #quorumSensing explains a LOT.

www.nature.com/articles/sre...
How ants use quorum sensing to estimate the average quality of a fluctuating resource - Scientific Reports
Scientific Reports - How ants use quorum sensing to estimate the average quality of a fluctuating resource
www.nature.com
November 11, 2025 at 8:14 AM
Reposted by Adrian Bowyer
Good morning to all those people who wasted the last decade saying, "there's no point tackling climate change in the UK, because China."

www.theguardian.com/world/2025/n...
China’s CO2 emissions have been flat or falling for past 18 months, analysis finds
World’s biggest polluter on track to hit peak emissions target early but miss goal for cutting carbon intensity
www.theguardian.com
November 11, 2025 at 7:08 AM
All the things at the top are made by, or done by, people.

All the things at the bottom are made by, or done by, robots.

Robots will move up the list.

We need a #UBI Universal Basic Income.
Pretty much all affordability discourse could benefit from just posting this chart.

If you're in the better off America, all the luxury goods you want in excess are for the most part much cheaper. If you're in the poorer America, most of the shit you need to live/grow is more expensive.
November 10, 2025 at 9:14 PM
If I was in charge of Five, or - much more globally important - Six and GCHQ, I would long ago have set up a silo for information with Canada, New Zealand and Australia that excluded the USA, and only allow a carefully considered trickle out of it to the FBI, CIA and NSA.
NYT - Kash Patel's inexperience, his dismissals of top FBI officials and his shift of resources from thwarting spies and terrorism have heightened concerns among the other Five Eyes nations that the bureau is adrift. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/10/wo...
F.B.I. Director Is Said to Have Made a Pledge to Head of MI5, Then Broken It
The episode has contributed to concerns among intelligence allies that Kash Patel, brash and partisan, is also unpredictable and even unreliable.
www.nytimes.com
November 10, 2025 at 6:43 PM
Reposted by Adrian Bowyer
The fact that the BBC has made serious culpable errors does not negate the point that there is a real and concerted right-wing media campaign to destroy it. Both points can be true at the same time and the campaign would not end even if the errors did.
November 10, 2025 at 1:08 PM
Reposted by Adrian Bowyer
Why buy stuff that you have to burn, then buy more again a week later when you can buy something once and it'll give you energy free for forty years?
The US is the world's largest oil and gas producer. Yet, "China is now making more money from exporting green technology than America makes from exporting fossil fuels."
China’s clean-energy revolution will reshape markets and politics
The world’s biggest manufacturer now has an interest in the world decarbonising
www.economist.com
November 7, 2025 at 1:50 PM
Reposted by Adrian Bowyer
Very, very few infrastructure investments have a payback as short as the two years for this one.
November 9, 2025 at 1:15 PM
Reposted by Adrian Bowyer
Re: Pluribus…I will never stop being salty about how careless biologists in TV/film apparently have to be to advance the plot.
November 10, 2025 at 12:07 AM
A palpable hit...
lol she got his ass and he knows it
November 9, 2025 at 5:32 PM
Reposted by Adrian Bowyer
I for one will welcome our Chinese overlords #Beerjacket #China #Tsingtao
November 9, 2025 at 1:01 PM
Very, very few infrastructure investments have a payback as short as the two years for this one.
November 9, 2025 at 1:15 PM
Reposted by Adrian Bowyer
November 8, 2025 at 8:27 PM
Fifth floor window time...
A top ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin said today that media reports about Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov falling out of favor “are completely untrue.”
Kremlin denies growing rumors of Sergey Lavrov’s ouster
“Completely untrue,” insists Vladimir Putin’s spokesperson, as chatter builds about the veteran foreign minister.
www.politico.eu
November 7, 2025 at 1:54 PM
Why buy stuff that you have to burn, then buy more again a week later when you can buy something once and it'll give you energy free for forty years?
The US is the world's largest oil and gas producer. Yet, "China is now making more money from exporting green technology than America makes from exporting fossil fuels."
China’s clean-energy revolution will reshape markets and politics
The world’s biggest manufacturer now has an interest in the world decarbonising
www.economist.com
November 7, 2025 at 1:50 PM
Financial Times here only 400 years late with the financial news...
November 7, 2025 at 1:24 PM
Changing grandson's nappy.

GS: What's this?
AB: That's your penis.

Five minutes later GS is running round the house yelling, "Penis! Penis! Penis!" at everyone in a way that he really wouldn't if I'd just told him what his elbow was called.

It's got to be innate...
November 6, 2025 at 11:59 PM
There's many a true word.

We were advised to label rooms when a relative got dementia...
Just occurred to me the sign on the Oval Office is so he can find it.
November 6, 2025 at 9:33 PM
I know nothing, but as far as I can tell Tesla as a whole is worth $1.5 trillion. So the proposal is to pay him two thirds of the entire value of the company.
November 6, 2025 at 8:00 PM
Reposted by Adrian Bowyer
Energy is quite literally* what allows people to do anything and everything. Free nonpolluting energy for everyone is a #UniversalBasicIncome.

---
* Real physics; not a metaphor.

electrek.co/2025/11/04/a...
Australia has so much solar that it's offering everyone free electricity
Australia's extensive solar power penetration makes so much energy that the government wants to offer free electricity at peak hours.
electrek.co
November 6, 2025 at 9:37 AM
Energy is quite literally* what allows people to do anything and everything. Free nonpolluting energy for everyone is a #UniversalBasicIncome.

---
* Real physics; not a metaphor.

electrek.co/2025/11/04/a...
Australia has so much solar that it's offering everyone free electricity
Australia's extensive solar power penetration makes so much energy that the government wants to offer free electricity at peak hours.
electrek.co
November 6, 2025 at 9:37 AM
Reposted by Adrian Bowyer
The Spectator are confused.

It's not going to be cost free.

Billionaires are going to pay more.

Join.greenparty.org.uk
November 6, 2025 at 8:57 AM
Reposted by Adrian Bowyer
"Here is the graph, which is so wild, the climate scientist had to call a colleague & check it"

It is true actually! In the Global Carbon Budget we do not usually show the LUC like this, because of interannual variability & uncertainty. But it is what the data says!

politiken.dk/klima/art106...
November 6, 2025 at 7:40 AM
Reposted by Adrian Bowyer
All the sacred rights of humanity are violated by insisting on blind obedience.

— Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
March 1, 2025 at 3:55 AM