Peter Hewitt
@petehewitt.bsky.social
Opinionated medicinal chemist. Prize-winning photographer. Extremely moderate.
Forego streaming services & build a music collection around a few thousand ripped CDs for the following benefits: no ongoing subscription costs; discovery driven by curiosity rather than algorithm; no creepy digital footprint of your listening habits; no annoying annual summary for social media.
December 3, 2025 at 2:11 PM
Forego streaming services & build a music collection around a few thousand ripped CDs for the following benefits: no ongoing subscription costs; discovery driven by curiosity rather than algorithm; no creepy digital footprint of your listening habits; no annoying annual summary for social media.
You can sense the rank desperation in this headline really start to come through at the "critics ask broader questions" bit.
A former junior champion said Reeves did not hold the official British girls’ under-14 title, and critics ask broader questions about her CV and career claims ⬇️
Rachel Reeves accused of overstating junior chess title
A former junior champion said Reeves did not hold the official British girls’ under-14 title, and critics ask broader questions about her CV and career claims
www.thetimes.com
December 2, 2025 at 10:20 PM
You can sense the rank desperation in this headline really start to come through at the "critics ask broader questions" bit.
Subscribe now to The Economist, so as not to miss the most penetrating insights and the best writing.
There are three possibilities for the Middle East in 2026. That things go well, or badly. The most likely scenario, however, is somewhere between the two
The Middle East will not be all progress or all disaster in 2026
In Gaza, Israel and beyond things could go well, or badly, but are most likely to be somewhere in the middle. Here are three scenarios for the coming year
econ.st
December 1, 2025 at 10:01 PM
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Corny phone snap from everybody's favourite bit of the Lagan Meadows towpath, early afternoon today (yes, this is about as high as the sun gets this time of year, welcome to Belfast).
November 30, 2025 at 9:32 PM
Corny phone snap from everybody's favourite bit of the Lagan Meadows towpath, early afternoon today (yes, this is about as high as the sun gets this time of year, welcome to Belfast).
Fun exercise for the reader: calculating the proportion of higher education spending that goes into funding the lifestyle of this one guy.
Interesting investigation into a dodgy Elsevier journal -- with the additional nugget that the CEO of Elsevier's parent company made more than €15 million in total compensation last year.
english.elpais.com/science-tech...
english.elpais.com/science-tech...
The fall of a prolific science journal exposes the billion-dollar profits of scientific publishing
One of the 15 publications that put out the most studies globally has been expelled from the indexing system for irregularities. Its publisher, Elsevier, has a 38% profit margin that reached $1.5 bill...
english.elpais.com
November 30, 2025 at 7:54 PM
Fun exercise for the reader: calculating the proportion of higher education spending that goes into funding the lifestyle of this one guy.
100% agree. In my experience, streaming music services in particular are just unbearably banal in what they try to serve you. Consult *individual* flesh and blood critics - not the "critical consensus", whatever that even means WRT art - and just try stuff yourself.
The death of browsing is part of the reason art is the way it is now. Our opinions are largely fed to us by algorithms. Spending a spare 15 minutes wandering around a bookstore or comic shop or video rental place was how you found stuff you wouldn't ordinarily pick up and thereby expanded your taste
Bookselling is like the most "people go to the store and buy what looks cool to them without a particular agenda" type business left, and your purchases have a huge influence on what is ordered, what is displayed, and what is recommended.
November 30, 2025 at 9:01 AM
100% agree. In my experience, streaming music services in particular are just unbearably banal in what they try to serve you. Consult *individual* flesh and blood critics - not the "critical consensus", whatever that even means WRT art - and just try stuff yourself.
The right-wing commentariat literally has no idea what the housing situation in the UK is like for normal people under 35.
Even so, "six-bedroom North Kensington home" must surely - surely! - have been written as deliberate ragebait.
Even so, "six-bedroom North Kensington home" must surely - surely! - have been written as deliberate ragebait.
November 29, 2025 at 4:05 PM
The right-wing commentariat literally has no idea what the housing situation in the UK is like for normal people under 35.
Even so, "six-bedroom North Kensington home" must surely - surely! - have been written as deliberate ragebait.
Even so, "six-bedroom North Kensington home" must surely - surely! - have been written as deliberate ragebait.
(complimentary)
So, happy 50th anniversary to Melody Maker’s review of Bohemian Rhapsody: “Queen, with a suitably baroque vocal orchestration, contrive to approximate the demented fury of the Balham Amateur Operatic Society performing The Pirates of Penzance”
November 29, 2025 at 11:59 AM
(complimentary)
Magnificent. An actual photo, albeit with extremely contrived custom lighting for theatrical effect. Looks like a creation from Hollow Knight - which is about as high praise as I can offer. www.digitalcameraworld.com/photography/...
Shot with a Canon EOS R5 and custom lighting, this magical, otherworldly photo captures a moth's glowing eyes
Ivo Niermann reveals how he built custom lighting to photograph the tapetum lucidum effect in nocturnal insects
www.digitalcameraworld.com
November 26, 2025 at 8:24 PM
Magnificent. An actual photo, albeit with extremely contrived custom lighting for theatrical effect. Looks like a creation from Hollow Knight - which is about as high praise as I can offer. www.digitalcameraworld.com/photography/...
I strongly believe O-rings constitute an affront to logic, to language, and to life itself.
November 21, 2025 at 7:50 PM
I strongly believe O-rings constitute an affront to logic, to language, and to life itself.
Well, I've fixed one peak and made the other slightly worse, and tbh that's not bad for an evening's worth of amateur plumbing.
November 20, 2025 at 10:36 PM
Well, I've fixed one peak and made the other slightly worse, and tbh that's not bad for an evening's worth of amateur plumbing.
This weekend's drink: St Clement's French 75 (3:1:1:0.5:5 gin:simple syrup:orange juice:lemon juice:sparkling wine). Excellent: zingy, fragrant, beautifully balanced, properly grown-up. I think this will be my festive season go-to this year. 8/10
November 16, 2025 at 10:18 AM
This weekend's drink: St Clement's French 75 (3:1:1:0.5:5 gin:simple syrup:orange juice:lemon juice:sparkling wine). Excellent: zingy, fragrant, beautifully balanced, properly grown-up. I think this will be my festive season go-to this year. 8/10
FILM REVIEW: Frankenstein (Guillermo del Toro, Netflix, 2025). Extraordinarily beautiful realisation, with great casting, marred by the occasional Garth Marenghi moments in the script - "YOU are the monster, Victor, YOU" - and the absurd am-dram saccharine staginess of the final quarter.
November 15, 2025 at 11:24 PM
FILM REVIEW: Frankenstein (Guillermo del Toro, Netflix, 2025). Extraordinarily beautiful realisation, with great casting, marred by the occasional Garth Marenghi moments in the script - "YOU are the monster, Victor, YOU" - and the absurd am-dram saccharine staginess of the final quarter.
Reposted by Peter Hewitt
(walks into a room, sees a blonde man called Brexit frantically stabbing for four years a twitching near-corpse called British Productivity)
"Well, the Resolution Foundation has a *lot* of explaining to do"
"Well, the Resolution Foundation has a *lot* of explaining to do"
The Resolution Foundation should take this as a sign of support from the editor of the Times that they haven't chosen to send out one of their credible, economically rated writers, but someone who's actually run a similarly-redistribution minded think tank, and former Tory candidate to boot
At last, a fearless @thetimes.com enquiry into the Institute of Economic Affairs’ economically disastrous effects and Policy Exchange’s pernicious legacy of division? No, just an attack one of the few think tanks that did not shape Labour’s toxic inheritance.
www.thetimes.com/comment/colu...
www.thetimes.com/comment/colu...
November 15, 2025 at 1:24 PM
(walks into a room, sees a blonde man called Brexit frantically stabbing for four years a twitching near-corpse called British Productivity)
"Well, the Resolution Foundation has a *lot* of explaining to do"
"Well, the Resolution Foundation has a *lot* of explaining to do"
Lads the mint is a bit overgrown I think it might be mojitos tonight
November 14, 2025 at 7:26 PM
Lads the mint is a bit overgrown I think it might be mojitos tonight
The continued presence of the forces that gave us Brexit in the first place - the electoral interests of the Conservative Party in a media/social media environment dominated by the hard right, along with the dynamics of FPTP - have also given us the ever-more-extreme purity drive ever since.
Forgive me if I'm wrong, I can't think of a single politician who campaigned hard for Brexit who has since come out and said that they think it was a mistake. Surely, in their heart of hearts, literally one or two of them must know that. So is it that they can't admit it to themselves or just to us?
Read 'em and weep. (www.nber.org/system/files...)
November 14, 2025 at 7:01 PM
The continued presence of the forces that gave us Brexit in the first place - the electoral interests of the Conservative Party in a media/social media environment dominated by the hard right, along with the dynamics of FPTP - have also given us the ever-more-extreme purity drive ever since.
"As of 2020, 75% of American teachers are using three-cueing". This whole topic is... pretty mindblowing, to be honest. Do read the long APM article just down the thread.
ever since I learned about three-cueing I've developed infinitely more patience for replies on social media. mfers literally do not know how to read. people are walking around conjuring random meanings into words they don't know, and they don't know a lot of words. it's crazy
November 11, 2025 at 10:18 PM
"As of 2020, 75% of American teachers are using three-cueing". This whole topic is... pretty mindblowing, to be honest. Do read the long APM article just down the thread.
Counterpoint: no it didn't, you credulous muppets.
November 9, 2025 at 8:39 PM
Counterpoint: no it didn't, you credulous muppets.
I'm not even sorry.
November 8, 2025 at 10:16 PM
I'm not even sorry.
With all due respect to Sam Freedman, it is a serious problem if the governing party is getting its information from Substack (it is of course even worse if they're not even doing that).
Huge numbers of Labour policy spads read @samfr.bsky.social’s Substack, where the exact scale of the repair job was written in black and white. What actually happened is those people were cowed into silence by a set-up that valued polling over policy.
November 8, 2025 at 8:34 PM
With all due respect to Sam Freedman, it is a serious problem if the governing party is getting its information from Substack (it is of course even worse if they're not even doing that).
The greatest accomplishment of American marketing is surely turning a really mediocre oversweet gypsy cream into the world's best-selling biscuit.
November 3, 2025 at 8:46 PM
The greatest accomplishment of American marketing is surely turning a really mediocre oversweet gypsy cream into the world's best-selling biscuit.
Tonight's drinks: French Pearl (2:0.75:0.5:0.25 gin:lime juice:sugar syrup:pastis, shaken with mint leaves). Delicious, fragrant, zingy, lethal; a truly great drink, lacking only the last degree of alchemy that distinguishes the very best. 9/10
October 31, 2025 at 10:40 PM
Tonight's drinks: French Pearl (2:0.75:0.5:0.25 gin:lime juice:sugar syrup:pastis, shaken with mint leaves). Delicious, fragrant, zingy, lethal; a truly great drink, lacking only the last degree of alchemy that distinguishes the very best. 9/10
When forced to choose, the BBC in particular prioritises impartiality over accuracy. This was the crucial insight of Vote Leave, and explains quite a lot of the last decade of British politics.
Also the broadcasters (wrongly) interpret impartiality regulations through the lens of partisan balance. If the governing party just shrugs at insane shit opposition parties say they don't feel they have to include any pushback, it just becomes content fodder.
October 28, 2025 at 8:20 PM
When forced to choose, the BBC in particular prioritises impartiality over accuracy. This was the crucial insight of Vote Leave, and explains quite a lot of the last decade of British politics.
Ah, the "perpetual darkness" half of the year again, marvellous.
October 26, 2025 at 6:31 PM
Ah, the "perpetual darkness" half of the year again, marvellous.