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Tim Skellett Profile picture
Tim Skellett
@Gurdur
Me: interests: #scicomm, books, gardening, philosophy, science journalism, photography, #nature, #travel, #DiscWorld, and so on.
Sep 28, 2018 • 8 tweets • 5 min read
But now, onto my own personal summation of this all. The @Guardian, it is THE paper and site that gives most national (UK) and international (USA, Australia, the damned world) to coverage of issues like poverty, class. It has worldclass investigative #journalism. But..... ... but I admit to being more than fully cheesed off with the Guardian myself. I was a loyal funder, around 60 quid a month, I stopped completely, because the Guardian's new policies were so idiotic and off-putting, not to mention counter-productive.
But! ....
Sep 28, 2018 • 22 tweets • 10 min read
The #BoycottTheGuardian is because of ... the Jews. Who woulda thunk it? What a surprise, so shocking.
Such a surprise, so shocking, it's coz of the Jews, innit
Sep 28, 2018 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
Oh, and let's discuss that bit of trivia, that went trending on Twitter for a short while, only in the UK, naturally. The #BoycottTheGuardian garbage. Because maybe the UK could benefit from dosing up the tapwater with lithium and haloperidol too. For those who don't know it: the @guardian is a broadsheet, i.e. a respectable newspaper, not a scandal-mongering tabloid, based in the UK, though its web-presence is heavy in the USA and Australia. It is the smallest of national broadsheets in the UK, and the best one.
May 20, 2018 • 15 tweets • 4 min read
There is an excellent Spanish movie, Alatriste, which opens with a map, and the caption, "When Spain ruled the world". And it's quite amazing; for a period of around 40 years, it really looked like Spain ruled the world. And for longer, it looked like Spain might rule forever And somewhere around 1600 A.D., it looked like Spain would come to rule the world. It had THE best infantry in the world, the truly feared Spanish tercios. It had a huge, world-spanning empire. It had incredible wealth. And then it all went south, quickly, much by 1650 A.D.
May 5, 2018 • 15 tweets • 5 min read
There are people who need cheering up. So I am going to do some cheering up, but in a novel, mixed way. Meaning, I am going to tweet random butterfly photos of mine, and also tell y'all a true story.
cc.@US_Vote, @ElectionBabe Some of you, may think us blokes have it easy, at least when we're young, energetic, & brain-deficient. Nothing is further from the truth for many of us blokes. Now y'all will hear The Truth. An embarrassing saga of the truth, but a funny one. Very.
My photo again.
May 5, 2018 • 19 tweets • 4 min read
1/ OK. Let's stop talking about the embarrassing time I blew myself up and lost half a head of hair, because embarrassing. Let's talk instead about a colleague of mine on another job, who blew himself up dramatically, and I mean drama 2/ You think I'm silly? This other poor bugger, lemme tell you, he blew himself up, was stark bollocks naked as a result, and only just missed being lethally impaled by a jackhammer into the roof of the tunnel, like some weird kind of Industrial Mineworking Pinned Butterfly.
Mar 12, 2018 • 14 tweets • 6 min read
Now we get to strand b/ of criticism of Steven Pinker's "Enlightenment Now". That is, "Inequality! [& often then] Therefore Pinker is a racist, sexist, transphobe scumbag who should be scorned".
As @salonium pointed out, most of that criticism is easy to dismiss. And yet... Here are @salonium's own words (in quillette.com/2018/03/11/ste…) on dismissing some such criticisms; and let's face it, she's right. Except, arrghh whoops, this means an entire system of "#humanism" values being adopted *as well as* techno yada, and things really aren't that simple.
Mar 12, 2018 • 18 tweets • 6 min read
Human progress! What does it *really* mean? And the human condition, why do so many leave that out? @salonium starts off in fine fettle, with a good defence of @sapinker's ideas:
quillette.com/2018/03/11/ste… But @sullydish lays his thumb on the crux of one vital problem with @sapinker's ideas, and almost gets to the root of why Steven Pinker makes such errors:
nymag.com/daily/intellig…
(via @CathyYoung63)
Mar 3, 2018 • 25 tweets • 12 min read
Steven Pinker (@sapinker) comes out with an essay titled, no less, "The Stupidity of Dignity" (2008). This is how you get Trump elected & re-elected, this is how you get Brexit, this is how you get really bad blowback. Utterly, stupidly, unnecessarily.
newrepublic.com/article/64674/… Having started off in fine fashion by trolling the opposition *without actually achieving much thru the trolling*, Pinker then gets into what we could call #AcademicStrut, the Declaration Of Ego, dressed up over-intellectually. Let's examine this part:
Dec 4, 2017 • 20 tweets • 10 min read
Let's do some #Narnia #travel. Because, really, why not?
Thread. #CSLewis Appreciation Day, by (my) decree.
cc. @artnmuzic, @julietyler12, @RobertaWedge, @BrentonDana, @JenniferNeyhart, @nursemaiden I took this photo in #HurstbourneTarrant, England. It reminded me extremely powerfully of the door into Archenland, "The Horse And His Boy". And it's great in its own right.
cc.@layanglicana
Nov 21, 2017 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
1/ Just a few words on what's happening in #Zimbabwe. Mugabe is out, & Grace Mugabe is out. That may not mean all that much. 2/ Mugabe was venerated (wrongly) by his faction; that explains the #Zimbabwe army's reticence about deposing him. Grace Mugabe was OTOH widely despised, because of her own actions.
Nov 19, 2017 • 14 tweets • 6 min read
OK, now we get onto what I wanted to do for y'all this late evening.
Namely, hoodoos! If you do, hoodoo.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoodoo_(g…
a.k.a. tent rock, fairy chimney or earth pyramid. All these photos are mine or with my camera by someone else, 2013, remote area of #Tanzania. No hoodoo, but in which you see me, following the local guide, to go see hoodoos. Remote area of #Tanzania, 2013. I was the only foreigner there. A couple of Tanzanian tourists too, but srsly infrequented.
Oct 31, 2017 • 19 tweets • 4 min read
New thread, continuation from here:

One big point is, he wasn't re-creating, he was creating, from his ideas. Every beginner at anthropology, every amateur at paleontology, imagines you can predict prehistoric life from say Kalahari Bushmen.
FALSE.
Oct 31, 2017 • 37 tweets • 7 min read
So that the threads don't get too long, new thread! Starting here.
Continuation from here:
In fairness to me, although I passed on the offer of a spliff of elephant dung, I did try chewing a bit of psychoactive bark he recommended
Oct 31, 2017 • 19 tweets • 5 min read
Today is #Reformation500! Which makes a really great intro to talk about revolution, millenarianism, body-parts magic & elephants. First, this is interesting, & directly leads to elephants (see my later tweets). By @spulliam; #ProsperityGospel
washingtonpost.com/local/social-i…