excog
excog.bsky.social
excog
@excog.bsky.social

"I do not think therefore I am a moustache"

Sartre, La Nausée, 1938


Interests:

art, art history, culture, film/photography, history, music, science, sociology, comparative religion, technology, current affairs.

* adferoafferro.wordpress.com
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#BBC
#Panorama
#the_edit
#mediastudies

😼 A cunning plan might be for BBC N & CA beginning to 'apologise' to 47, formerly 45, by running the whole Jan 6 video in another programme or news segment, forensically comparing the edit with the totality, which is anyway widely accessible on the web.
November 10, 2025 at 7:19 PM
November 10, 2025 at 1:52 AM
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#Palantir
#NHS

"Following the lacklustre uptake, the Department of Health and Social Care last year gave consultancy giant KPMG an £8 million contract to "promote the adoption" of Palantir’s software across the NHS."

Why?

democracyforsale.substack.com/p/palantirs-...
Palantir's NHS data platform rejected by most hospitals
US spy tech firm's £330million software isn't much cop, experts say
democracyforsale.substack.com
November 9, 2025 at 6:22 PM
November 9, 2025 at 5:38 PM
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Ironically Rosalind Franklin hardly gets a look into this obit either. Since Watson (and Crick) are now dead surely someone is going to open up this story?

13 year old kids would find the whole thing fascinating. Guy peeks at some crystallography, spends weeks with molecular model kit.....
A Sharon Begley byline, almost 5 years after her death.

Upon hearing the news James Watson had died, a STAT reporter said in our Slack, "I wish I could read what Sharon would have written."

Incredible news: Sharon in fact did pre-write a Watson obit. And it is masterful and excoriating.
🧪🧬🧫
James Watson, dead at 97, was a scientific legend and a pariah among his peers
James Watson, the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA who died Thursday at 97, was a scientific legend and a pariah among his peers.
www.statnews.com
November 9, 2025 at 4:50 PM
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Or you work for ICE.
Sometimes when people ask me why I’m wearing a mask I say I’m traveling or have some important thing soon and can’t afford to get sick and miss it and that’s pretty much always true but I think it would be nice if it were more normalized to just say “I don’t want to get sick” and leave it at that
November 9, 2025 at 4:16 PM
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Is there a Lying Your Arse off Labour Lying School? An online MOOC course even?

We know the left you are is not very lefty is it? So we can see where your coming from. And we can see any story that conflicts with the Labour Party's current policy on Israel is not a big story.
Labour Minister Bridget Phillipson vs. Rosie Holt
[SOUND ON 🔊]
November 9, 2025 at 4:06 PM
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Now that Crick and Watson are dead, maybe time to consider a post-humous Nobel Prize for Rosalind Franklin.
We are also currently hiring a curatorial fellow to work with the papers of Rosalind Franklin and others in the History of Molecular Biology Collection!

This is a 2-year staff position in the archive with a salary of $55k/year and full benefits:

www.sciencehistory.org/research/fel...
For those with a scholarly interest in Franklin, Watson, and other pioneering researchers in molecular biology, @sciencehistory.org has just opened our new landmark collection of their papers, and applications for research fellowships are currently open:

www.sciencehistory.org/hmbc
November 9, 2025 at 2:26 PM
Reposted by excog
The EU is winding down freeports due to money laundering and tax evasion. Britain is expanding them.
Please read and share my latest article on Substack 'The Magic Money Tree: How Brexit Unlocked Britain's Corporate Welfare Bonanza. It is absolutely explosive.
open.substack.com/pub/european...
The Magic Money Tree: How Brexit Unlocked Britain’s Corporate Welfare Bonanza
Rachel Reeves’ budget rhetoric hides the biggest corporate giveaway in modern British history
open.substack.com
November 5, 2025 at 10:07 AM
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"Earlier today, I discovered fronted adverbials"
November 5, 2025 at 11:46 AM
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#WesStreeting

Who Is Wes Streeting and Why Is He the Way He Is?

open.spotify.com/episode/35gN...

⚪ Audio podcast 1 hr 38 mins
Who Is Wes Streeting and Why Is He Like That? w/ Ruth Pearce and Jonas Marvin
open.spotify.com
November 4, 2025 at 7:18 PM
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Biogs on #Farage for sure, but a simple question or two would get to the heart of the matter. One would be to ask if anyone who worked at the metals exchange when he did saw or heard any evidence of the cosplaying a Nazi that he exhibited at Dulwich College which had alarmed staff there.
November 3, 2025 at 2:32 PM
Reposted by excog
Violent mobs are intimidating communities across the region – waving flags, harassing women, and beating a man almost unconscious. Police, councils and government all look the other way. When did fear become policy?

@peterthurlow.bsky.social
Government, councils and police: all scared to act as far right run riot
Violent mobs try to intimidate with their flags, while we wonder what those in charge are doing about it
eastangliabylines.co.uk
November 1, 2025 at 6:33 PM
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#Art

Searching for a simple explanation of the title Damian Hurt's, The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, discovered 913,450 animals were killed (9000 butterflies) for his art, but thankfully found Luke White's essay on the sublime:

www.tate.org.uk/art/research...
Luke White, 'Damien Hirst's Shark: Nature, Capitalism and the Sublime' (The Art of the Sublime) | Tate
www.tate.org.uk
November 2, 2025 at 6:05 PM
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"As the movement grew, Sir Keir Starmer felt compelled to say that he is “a supporter of flags” and “very encouraging of flags”.
Great investigation of the Nazis, racists and criminals mobilising the flag-on-lamp-posts movement. This is the kind of journalism that the national media could and should have conducted:

manchestermill.co.uk/the-men-who-...
November 2, 2025 at 10:38 AM
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#Thomaspaine
#TheodoreRoosevelt

Filthy Little Atheist

www.huffpost.com/entry/filthy...

⚪ Short explanation of why 100 years after Paine Roosevelt felt the need to say & never retract the words.

Summary of The Age of Reason. All Paine's books on Gutenberg.

www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/3...
Filthy Little Atheist
Filthy Little Atheist
www.huffpost.com
November 2, 2025 at 9:09 AM
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#audiobooks

Unfortunately Amazon own Audible, but the catalogue is vast.

A superlative reader is the late Neville Jason with his magisterial unabridged Proust. He did a clutch of others including War & Peace. I'm on Jason's Primo Levi's The Periodic Table.

www.audible.co.uk/search?keywo...
Listen to neville jason Audiobooks | Audible.co.uk
Download neville jason Audiobooks to your device. Audible provides the highest quality audio and narration. Your first book is Free with trial!
www.audible.co.uk
November 1, 2025 at 6:05 PM
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#Cummings

"...we write about Cummings again. Not out of fascination, but out of memory."
October 31, 2025 at 12:50 PM
Reposted by excog
🔴Dominic Cummings Lobbied Officials to Hand ‘Test and Trace’ Contracts to Palantir After Secret Meeting With Peter Thiel

Exclusive: Boris Johnson’s advisor pushed for contracts to be handed to companies run by Trump-supporting tech billionaires Peter Thiel and Larry Ellison
Dominic Cummings Lobbied Officials to Hand 'Test and Trace' Contracts to Palantir After Secret Meeting With Peter Thiel
Exclusive: Boris Johnson's senior advisor pushed for Covid contracts to be handed to companies run by Trump-supporting tech billionaires Peter Thiel and Larry Ellison
bylinetimes.com
October 31, 2025 at 9:20 AM
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“Highways create traffic jams, welfare creates poverty, schools make people dumb and the NHS makes people sick”

~ Peter Thiel
October 31, 2025 at 10:51 AM
Reposted by excog
I remember when COVID first got going. Neil DeGrasse Tyson was on a late night show. When asked about it he said that now we will find out who believes in science and who prefers superstition.
October 30, 2025 at 4:32 AM
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What started off as a bottle of blue fluid claimed to cure arthritis and gout is being rebranded as an all-round miracle cure. No one wants it any more because people can see the elixir can't possibly suddenly cure all ills now but not before.
October 29, 2025 at 7:37 PM
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"What separates professional wrestling from philosophy? About 11 clicks."

Wikipedia vs Elon Musk

-- In a world of algorithms, the simple joy of aimlessly wandering through ideas is worth preserving

Jack Kessler, Lines To Take, Substack, 29 Oct 2025

www.linestotake.com/p/wikipedia-...
Wikipedia vs Elon Musk
In a world of algorithms, the simple joy of aimlessly wandering through ideas is worth preserving
www.linestotake.com
October 29, 2025 at 6:00 PM