Nick Brown

Nick Brown

@steamtraen.eu

English/Irish/EU in Spain. PhD in psychology. Not yet disabled. "All progress depends on the unreasonable man" — G.B.Shaw.

3.2K followers121 following4.9K posts

Nick Brown
@steamtraen.eu

More than ever, this week has shown us that election campaigns are (or should be) roughly 10% about persuading people to change their vote to you from the other lot, and 90% about persuading people who hate you less than the other lot to just get off their backsides and vote.

Nick Brown
@steamtraen.eu

Phew indeed Wordle 1,955 6/6 ⬜⬜🟩⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜🟩⬜⬜ ⬜🟩🟩⬜🟩 ⬜🟩🟩⬜🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Nick Brown
@steamtraen.eu

Is there any science to this ("sleep with one foot outside the bedclothes"), or is it just generic wellness bollocks?

Nick Brown
@steamtraen.eu

How do people get "brass tacks" wrong? Do they think it's a tax on brass? Or are they imagining several heaps of bras?

Merriam-Webster@merriam-webster.com

We acknowledge that no one has the bandwidth for this, but if it helps: -It’s ‘sleight of hand’ -It’s ‘bated breath’ -It’s ‘lo and behold’ -It's 'buck naked' -It’s ‘brass tacks’ -It’s ‘free rein’ -It’s ‘toe the line'

Nick Brown
@steamtraen.eu

I would love to use a backpack more when travelling, to keep my hands free. But the number of times I get swiped by other people's backpacks (or see other people getting hit) makes me wonder if it isn't just plain antisocial.

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Nick Brown
@steamtraen.eu

Obviously not all backpack users in public settings are assholes, but it does seem to be very easy to swing them into people without noticing. You have an idea of the space that you occupy, and it probably doesn't include 20cm behind you.

Nick Brown
@steamtraen.eu

I'd be interested in other people's stories, especially if you have found a way to maintain the nearly constant state of being mindful of your occupation of excess space that using a backpack in an urban or transport setting seems to need.

Nick Brown
@steamtraen.eu

I would love to use a backpack more when travelling, to keep my hands free. But the number of times I get swiped by other people's backpacks (or see other people getting hit) makes me wonder if it isn't just plain antisocial.

View full thread
Nick Brown
@steamtraen.eu

The mother was shocked, and I think didn't speak French. I said to the guy "You just smashed the girl in the face with your backpack" and he kind of shrugged and carried on filling up more space than he had paid for in the overhead lockers.

Nick Brown
@steamtraen.eu

Last week I was on a bus between towns and for 15 minutes I was regularly bashed on the arm by the backpack of a teenage girl who insisted on wearing just one strap, so that with every slight swing of the bus the other side swung around.

Nick Brown
@steamtraen.eu

I would love to use a backpack more when travelling, to keep my hands free. But the number of times I get swiped by other people's backpacks (or see other people getting hit) makes me wonder if it isn't just plain antisocial.

Nick Brown
@steamtraen.eu

A while back I was on a plane when a couple got on seated across the aisle from me. They each had a huge backpack, an overhead cabin bag, and an underseat bag (not sure how they managed that on EasyJet, but that's another story).

Nick Brown
@steamtraen.eu

As they unpacked the man's backpack hit a ~4 year old girl right in the face. He clearly didn't feel a thing. She fell to the ground screaming and he finally turned around and berated the girl's mother, in French, for not controlling her little girl's behaviour.

Nick Brown
@steamtraen.eu

No supper tonight. 😱 Wordle 1,953 X/6 ⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜ ⬜🟩⬜⬜⬜ ⬜🟩⬜⬜🟨 🟨🟩⬜🟩🟨 🟨🟩⬜🟩🟩 ⬜🟩🟩🟩🟩

Nick Brown
@steamtraen.eu

Honestly, I think I could make a pretty good living just steering the brand managers of corporations from non-anglophone cultures away from "English" versions of their slogans that sound completely fucked up to any native speaker.

Nick Brown@steamtraen.eu

"Live, work, play / You will be rewarded" is some full-on dystopia shit right there.

Nick Brown
@steamtraen.eu

You'll never guess who the owners in question were. 🙄

Emmet Fraizer@woolsox.bsky.social

Last summer, Scientific American's owners were stalking the site, making sure it wasn't being too critical of Trump. This summer, the magazine was sold and gutted. I wrote about it for The Nation www.thenation.com/article/soci...

thenation.comThe Fall of “Scientific American”When the beloved science publication got too political, its corporate owners stepped in. Now its future is uncertain.
Nick Brown
@steamtraen.eu

An amusing/ironic feature of Trumpworld is watching rich Western countries and their citizens trying to deal with the same kind of shit from the US that the rest of the world has had to put up since about 1950.

Nick Brown
@steamtraen.eu

It will be very interesting to see what effect this has on the number of submissions made to this journal. I suspect it might be quite substantially downwards, and that's very likely a good thing.

Daniel Lakens@lakens.bsky.social

The Journal of Sports Sciences will require open data from 2027: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.... All journals will move to this requirement (the higher quality and the better the editor, the sooner). Make sure you are ready for this change by learning best practices.

tandfonline.comBrowse all journalsBrowse all journals
Nick Brown
@steamtraen.eu

There must be a long German word for that feeling when you try to show somebody something cool (e.g., the fact that a water cooler tap has a switch that you can lock in the open position) and the one on which you're trying to demonstrate it is broken.

Nick Brown
@steamtraen.eu

I once took an American friend to see their first ever game of cricket. The side batting first were all out for 22 on a terrible pitch. The opposition won by 1 wicket. The entire game featured me saying "Ignore that, it never happens".

Nick Brown reposted

John Peters
@johnthejack.bsky.social

It's like some Gore Vidal novel and it all ends with Trump declaring himself Emperor and moving his 25-year-old male lover into the White House

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com

Trump: "I'm studying his body. I've never studied the body of a man before. It's not my thing. Nothing wrong with it, of course. But it's never been my thing. But I looked at his ass. I said, 'His ass, shit, it's like a pile of muscle.' Then I looked at his legs and I said, 'Man, his feet are big.'"

Nick Brown
@steamtraen.eu

Apologies to the OP, but: my first thought on seeing this picture was that someone had put a plastic sheet on top of a map of France and Spain, and was pouring milk on it from the top left.

Martin De Kauwe@mdekauwe.bsky.social

We're hiring a 3-year postdoc at the University of Bristol to improve our ability to predict vegetation responses to fire in a changing world 🌍🔥🌱. Details: mdekauwe.github.io/join_us Please share, thank you.

Nick Brown
@steamtraen.eu

Can't believe nobody mentioned Gary Glitter.

thepokeuk.bsky.social@thepokeuk.bsky.social

GB News’ upcoming ‘all-British music’ radio station had people trying to guess what their playlists will be – 21 favourite reactions www.thepoke.com/2026/10/20/g...

Nick Brown reposted

Kate Griffin
@griffinkate.bsky.social

eBay users! Don't ignore today's email, even though it looks like a boring standard update to the User Privacy Notice. They want to use your data to train AI models. If you click the link over the words "the right to object", it takes you to a page with a toggle button letting you opt out.

Nick Brown
@steamtraen.eu

This is a great way to push back. Of course, the university will come up with some weasel words about how that's up to the AI companies and it would be impractical to count their own AI energy footprint, so let's pretend it's zero, but it will be amusing to watch them squirm.

Andrew D Wilson@adw.bsky.social

One that's come up lately - AI has environmental costs, and the university has sustainability commitments. Does using AI impact those commitments, and if so, can the impact be mitigated?

Nick Brown
@steamtraen.eu

(And in the meantime the Vice-Chancellor will continue to fly business class, but we are of course continually monitoring developments in this area.)

Nick Brown
@steamtraen.eu

My undisputed #1 irrational, grumpy, out-of-all-proportion source of angry twitching is when people write APP or VISA in all caps.

Nick Brown
@steamtraen.eu

It's kind of weird to at least this European that the US elections seem to come down to one question, viz., which side is more likely to get gasoline back to 40% of the European price versus its current 55%. How much gas can anyone be using for this to be the biggest thing in their political sights?

Nick Brown
@steamtraen.eu

At SpringerNature, editors now express concern about a paper under investigation through an Editor's Note. What the heck is an Expression of Concern for?

Nick Brown
@steamtraen.eu

Interesting how the English version of this civil protection alert on my phone has been through some kind of filter that messes up 8-bit ANSI characters in the (sadly untranslated) Catalan all-uppercase title.