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Leon Black

@drleonblack.bsky.social

1.1K followers 1.5K following 1K posts

Professor of Infrastructure Materials at the University of Leeds. Posting about materials, resilience, circular economy, green stuff, and whatever else I stumble on that I find interesting. No DMs, unless they're size 12 cherry reds.

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Leon Black @drleonblack.bsky.social · Nov 15

It's that odd time, a few weeks after setting up a new social media account, when I ponder whether to post political rants, stupid jokes or thoughts around decarbonisation of infrastructure.

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Dan Sohege @danielsohege.bsky.social · 12h

"Surge"? Oh sort yourself out BBC.
A frankly tiny number of people, in the grand scheme of things, with every right to do so coming to UK is hardly a "surge", but such language automatically frames them as a negative and is guaranteed to be used to stoke more division.
www.bbc.com/news/article...

Surge in Chagos arrivals prompts row over housing costs

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Leon Black @drleonblack.bsky.social · 12h

But all pensioners have worked all their lives and paid taxes while everyone else on benefits is there because of their laziness and life choices.

/s

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Roland Smith @rolandmcs.bsky.social · 23h

This strikes me as a pretty major Brexit shift from Starmer.

Perhaps the beginning of 'Brexit is sh1t and has caused real economic damage'.

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Leon Black @drleonblack.bsky.social · 22h

Watching Deidre Barlow singing backing vocals for Glenn Campbell

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Emily Ann Gregson @splashofgenz.bsky.social · 1d

Americans don’t get free healthcare but they think illegal immigrants are getting free healthcare lmao

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Leon Black @drleonblack.bsky.social · 1d

Friday

Collage of before and after faces. The ravages of cocaine, booze and speed are clear. The final pair of pictures shows two faces: glum and smiling - before and after a chippy tea.

Reposted by Leon Black

God @thegodpodcast.com · 1d

Thou shalt not shoot priests in the head. I shouldn’t have to say this.

Thou Shalt Not Shoot Priests in the Head

I shouldn’t have to say these things.

www.thegodpodcast.com

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David Roberts @volts.wtf · 2d

It really can't be said enough: the goal of the "anti-woke" movement was always to destroy social norms against bigotry. And it worked. And there's a whole lot of purportedly "left" thinkers & commentators who helped it -- indeed, it couldn't have been done without them.

They should feel bad.

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Rob Ford @robfordmancs.bsky.social · 1d

Reform narrowly hold a ward where their previous councillor had to resign due to toxic racism allegations, assisted by a split on the left between Labour and the Greens (who have over 50% of the vote here between them).

Election Maps UK @electionmaps.uk · 1d

Lloyds & Corby Village (North Northamptonshire) Council By-Election Result:

➡️ RFM: 38.5% (+2.1)
🌹 LAB: 32.4% (-11.8)
🌍 GRN: 18.9% (+9.7)
🔶 LDM: 5.8% (+1.5)
🌳 CON: 4.4% (-1.5)

Reform HOLD.
Changes w/ 2025.

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Yell In a War @jelenawoehr.bsky.social · 2d

new thing to have to worry about: actual employees you called at a company’s actual number transferring you to a scammer because they trusted search engine AI instead of looking things up through internal resources

Nothing Beats An Epcot Holiday @epcot.bsky.social · 2d

Heck one situation happened where an actual United employee agent transferred a customer to a scammer’s phone number in exactly this manner (Search engine AI showed scam number) and the person handed over their credit card because who would expect that as a fraud vector! Many reasons this can happen

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Prof Christina Pagel @chrischirp.bsky.social · 2d

🧵🚨

The UK’s independent scientific bodies are highly vulnerable to politicisation - over the past 5 months I've been working with @martinmckee.bsky.social to map out their vulnerabilities and it's not good news.

Today our report is published!
www.ucl.ac.uk/policy-lab/n...

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UK’s arm’s length public bodies are highly vulnerable to politicisation

Seven in ten Britons say it is important for top scientific institutions to be independent in exclusive new polling.

www.ucl.ac.uk

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Prof Christina Pagel @chrischirp.bsky.social · 2d

This is a vulnerability map for 8 key bodies: ONS, OBR, Food Standards Agency, MHRA, Met Office, UKRI, Natural England, & UKHSA.

ONS has the most independence. All but ONS have ministerially appointed leadership. 3 could be abolished with no oversight as they have no statutory basis.
6/11

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Prof Christina Pagel @chrischirp.bsky.social · 2d

E.g. The Met Office is the nation’s weather service AND a global climate change research centre. It is highly vulnerable.

Ministers fund its research, influence its priorities, and appoint its leaders. With no statutory basis, its priorities and funding could be changed with little oversight. 5/11

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Leon Black @drleonblack.bsky.social · 2d

This is neither how "doing studies" nor "proof" works.

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 2d

RFK Jr on Tylenol and autism: "It is not proof. We're doing the studies to make the proof."

Leon Black @drleonblack.bsky.social · 2d

The prevalence of autism in Israel is 75% that in the USA

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Alejandra Caraballo @esqueer.net · 2d

Alt text:
A collage of four tweets from Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) discussing concerns about artificial intelligence.

Top left tweet: Walsh warns that within a year or two, people will be able to create indistinguishable fake videos for defamation, and that nothing is being done to prevent this.
Bottom left tweet: He says AI will destroy jobs, art, reality, and civilization, yet no action is being taken to stop it.
Top right tweet: He criticizes AI-generated films as soulless and meaningless, saying art requires human expression and that AI will be the “death of art.”
Bottom right tweet: Walsh argues that if a robot paints a picture, the robot is the artist, not the person prompting it, because the robot lacks consciousness and meaning.

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Juno Rylee Schultz @junoryleejournalism.com · 2d

David Simon, creator of ‘The Wire’, being interviewed by Ari Shapiro (NPR)

SHAPIRO: OK, so you've spent your career creating television without Al, and I could imagine today you thinking, boy, I wish I had had that tool to solve those thorny problems...
SIMON: What?
SHAPIRO: ...Or saying...
SIMON: You imagine that?
SHAPIRO: ...Boy, if that had existed, it would have screwed me over.
SIMON: I don't think Al can remotely challenge what writers do at a fundamentally creative level.
SHAPIRO: But if you're trying to transition from scene five to scene six, and you're stuck with that transition, you could imagine plugging that portion of the script into an Al and say, give me 10 ideas for how to transition this.
SIMON: I'd rather put a gun in my mouth.

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Leon Black @drleonblack.bsky.social · 2d

Exporting our waste plastic is wasting a valuable resource and immoral.

www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Britain missing out on potential £2bn recycling industry by exporting plastic waste

Exclusive: Government failure to close loophole allows 600,000 tonnes to be shipped elsewhere each year

www.theguardian.com

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Leon Black @drleonblack.bsky.social · 2d

Presumably for the benefit of those who can't read axis labels.

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Joe Uchill @joeuchill.bsky.social · 2d

For the record…

Truth social TOS says dms are not encrypted.

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Laura Phillips @lauraphillips.bsky.social · 2d

Via Danny Shaw: ‘NEW Religious hate crime in England/Wales increased by 3% to record 7,164 offences, 2024/25.
Police data from @ukhomeoffice shows 19% rise in anti-Muslim crime.
Muslims+Jews are targets of 74% of religious hate.
Jews are targeted more than any other religious group, per head.’ 1/

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Otto English @ottoenglish.bsky.social · 2d

Twelve Jobs Nigel has earned over £1 million in additional income since the general election.

To understand the scale of it, since the July 2024 election he's earned roughly £100k more as a brand ambassador for Direct Bullion than Starmer gets as PM.

www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news...

Nigel Farage earns over £1m from 12 'second jobs' - check how much your MP earns

The Reform UK leader's most lucrative second jobs include hosting on GB News, serving as a brand ambassador for Direct Bullion and recording videos for Cameo

www.mirror.co.uk

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Leon Black @drleonblack.bsky.social · 2d

Accompany it with this one.

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Stephen Bush @stephenkb.bsky.social · 2d

I really don't know what to do about a situation where a plurality of the group that (rightly!) takes up most government spending thinks that it is unrepresented in politics.

Rachel Cunliffe @rmcunliffe.bsky.social · 2d

Hollow laughter

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Stephen Bush @stephenkb.bsky.social · 2d

Much that I love about this chart, but my favourite is the teeny tiny bit of tax revenue we get from child actors, models and the like showing up in '0-9'.

Peter Allen @peterallen.bsky.social · 2d

Print and send this chart (from your newsletter on Tuesday) to every household in the country.

A graph from the FT showing government spending by age cohort. Over-70s have more spent on them than any other age cohort.

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