Mathew Nicolson
Recovering from a PhD in the history of Scottish island political & constitutional history. Shetlander.
Can be found doing things at:
@EuropeElects.bsky.social
@ShetlandElects.bsky.social
@HistoryofElections.bsky.social
@ScotHistNetwork.bsky.social
- Reposted by Mathew Nicolson[Not loaded yet]
- Reposted by Mathew Nicolson[Not loaded yet]
- Reposted by Mathew Nicolson[Not loaded yet]
- Reposted by Mathew Nicolson[Not loaded yet]
- American presidential net approval at this stage of their presidency: Kennedy: +68.8 Bush Sr: +67.9 Bush Jr: +67.0 Eisenhower: +52.1 Johnson: +51.0 Nixon: +40.3 Carter: +24.0 Clinton: +22.7 Truman: +15.3 Ford: +6.3 Reagan: +5.6 Obama: +4.2 Biden: -11.2 Trump I: -13.5 **Trump II: -14.3**
- "No study to date has explored health anxiety in autistic adults" That was published in *2023*. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
- Huh, STV chose a photo that features my childhood house and village
- Reposted by Mathew NicolsonI know many things are happening but please take a minute to read this: we are in full blackout in Kyiv, metro stopped, for the 1st time like this, power outages for the whole Ukraine and even in neighbouring Moldova now too. all because of Russia bombing our power stations , while it’s -19 outside
- Reposted by Mathew Nicolson[Not loaded yet]
- So sad to read this. A huge loss to Scotland and Orkney, and he'll be mourned in Shetland as well.
- Reposted by Mathew Nicolson[Not loaded yet]
- Reposted by Mathew NicolsonAuschwitz was at the end of a process. We must remember that it did not start from gas chambers. This hatred gradually developed: from ideas, words, stereotypes & prejudice through legal exclusion, dehumanization & escalating violence... to systematic and industrial murder. Auschwitz took time.
- Oh, looks like my theory about the title was maybe correct!
- Reposted by Mathew Nicolson[Not loaded yet]
- Looking forward to seeing how this progresses.
- Reposted by Mathew Nicolson[Not loaded yet]
- I'm extremely glad I got married last year...
- Reposted by Mathew Nicolson"People in Tehran, including officials, say the real death toll may approach 20,000. In 1989 China’s leaders survived mass protests by killing thousands near Tiananmen Square. Iran appears to have followed that script." www.economist.com/middle-east-...
- University libraries to postgraduate alumni, who need to keep publishing if they want to remain employable-
- Reposted by Mathew NicolsonBREAKING - Iran update As some Iranians have been able to use messaging apps, confirmed fatalities, arrests, etc have skyrocketed. Currently 22,490 fatalities have been confirmed and are under investigation.
- I really need to watch Andor
- Reposted by Mathew Nicolson[Not loaded yet]
- Reposted by Mathew NicolsonICE just shot another one of my neighbors. They had the person on the ground, being beaten by several agents, and then fired multiple shots. In front of the donut shop where we like to get donuts for our kids.
- Reposted by Mathew Nicolson[Not loaded yet]
- Reposted by Mathew Nicolson🎙️ Looking for Scottish Gaelic voice actors for paid work on a small indie horror game set in the Highlands. 1 female role (~12 lines) 2 male roles (~5 & ~50 lines) Remote recording OK. DMs open or share if you know someone! Tapadh leibh #gamedev #horrorgame store.steampowered.com/app/4224960/...
- Reposted by Mathew Nicolson[Not loaded yet]
- "In this way, CBT becomes a diversion, re-directing our attention inwards and away from the collective forces that create distress in the first place. It keeps us isolated, internalising the idea that the problem lies within us, not the system." www.nsun.org.uk/you-cannot-c...
- Oh, and to run in the election, each electoral list had to pay a deposit worth about £320k
- Meanwhile, people on X seem preoccupied about the Bank of England hiding evidence of alien life to prevent a market collapse
- Today I learned Benin has a 20% electoral threshold, which must be reached in *every constituency* for a party to win parliamentary representation.
- Reposted by Mathew NicolsonNew report from doctors shows the Iranian regime slaughtered 16,500 protesters during the communications shutdown.
- 2000s film tie-in games were really something
- Reposted by Mathew Nicolson[Not loaded yet]
- US presidential approval on this day of their presidency: Kennedy: +68.8 Bush Jr: +68.7 Bush Sr: +67.9 Johnson: +59.0 Eisenhower: +53.4 Nixon: +37.6 Carter: +28.0 Clinton: +21.9 Truman: +15.3 Reagan: +8.9 Obama: +6.5 Ford: +6.4 Biden: -12.0 **Trump II: -12.9** Trump I: -16.4
- Can't quite pin it down but I'm not a fan of the (BookTok?) trend of reducing books to their tropes. I don't mean genres, but trying to sell books by pushing the trope of, e.g. "winter setting," "love triangle." Think it overly simplifies and categorises fiction and discourages trying new things.
- I was reading earlier about how the rise of podcasts and YouTube creators is killing off traditional broadcast documentaries, especially for history. Unrelatedly, Kurzgesagt announced today that it's branching out into historical videos www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0WQ...
- Reposted by Mathew Nicolson[Not loaded yet]
- Reposted by Mathew NicolsonIf the figures we're getting out of Iran are in the right league, this weekend was, I think, one of the bloodiest state crackdowns of all time. People are talking 12,000-20,000 dead; for comparison Hungary in 1956 was about 2,500, Tiananmen - across country, in multiple cities - probably 1000+
- Reposted by Mathew Nicolson[Not loaded yet]
- Reposted by Mathew Nicolson[Not loaded yet]
- Reposted by Mathew Nicolson“Why one small American town won’t stop stoning its residents to death,” an AO3 fic in which Isaac Chotiner interviews the guy who runs the lottery in Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery”, is astounding. archiveofourown.org/works/73396436
- There can be a perfectly enjoyable, poetic Bob Dylan song and then, sigh, here comes the harmonica part
- Starter pack for polling aggregators and election coverage accounts go.bsky.app/NS1fKvtat://did:plc:f52qulc567ltgomlysqeqijh/app.bsky.graph.starterpack/3lb5x7qb7jj2z
- Reposted by Mathew Nicolson[Not loaded yet]
- Reposted by Mathew Nicolson[Not loaded yet]
- Reposted by Mathew Nicolson[Not loaded yet]
- Reposted by Mathew NicolsonCommon Sense, published 250 years ago today.
- Reposted by Mathew NicolsonAnd despite it all, this is Tehran 🇮🇷
- There's a lot of focus on Nvidia, but check out the companies that make RAM
- I would not have guessed that Reddit's UK userbase nearly doubled between 2023 to 2025
- Reposted by Mathew Nicolson[Not loaded yet]
- Reposted by Mathew Nicolson[Not loaded yet]
- Reposted by Mathew Nicolson[Not loaded yet]
- Reposted by Mathew Nicolson[Not loaded yet]
- I didn't know that Victorian/Edwardian writers projected almost as many ideas onto Jupiter as Mars and Venus, imagining it to be a vision of primordial Earth slowly condensing into a solid planet. www.andrewliptak.com/jupiter-hist...
- Not sure whether it's a coincidence or something about me specifically but the Facebook algorithm seems to have been giving me a lot more promoted political content lately. Even more interestingly, it's all pretty mainstream: official party accounts, party leaders, etc.
- Reposted by Mathew Nicolson[Not loaded yet]
- Reposted by Mathew NicolsonA reminder of the stunning rate of scientific progress: it’s only been 101 years that we’ve known the Universe is larger than the Milky Way. Now we know that it’s at least *1 million* times larger in linear size than the Milky Way (and probably 50 or more times larger than that, even).
- Reposted by Mathew Nicolson🤷🏻♂️
- If only the Picts had left written records, we would know all about the operating margins of their food and drink sector
- Reposted by Mathew NicolsonGrok's new "feature" that allows users to undress women in photos posted to X is a new low for the platform. If you're somehow still active over there, I urge you to let this be your final straw.
- Reposted by Mathew NicolsonWelcome to the Public Domain, ARCTIC ANTICS (1930) ❄️ 🐧 Another 10 Silly Symphony shorts join the public domain. No rattling bones like last year's THE SKELETON DANCE, but we do get up to some Arctic Antics 🐻❄️ Learn more ➡️ blog.archive.org/public-domai... #PublicDomainDay #PublicDomain
- Reposted by Mathew Nicolson[Not loaded yet]
- Fascinating gender split here - e.g. American men are twice as likely to read history books than women, though there's no difference at all for historical fiction.
- Latest frustrating trend I've noticed: YouTube accounts uploading videos with dramatic titles, only to tone them down 24 hours later once there's less need for clicks. So, "Dark Energy Is Getting Weaker, and It Changes Everything" becomes "Scientists Measured Dark Energy Doing Something Strange"...
- Really enjoying this Goodreads chart of all the books I've read in my life. Particularly: (1) the way it creeps upwards over time as I read new books, and (2) you can really tell when I took two years of English literature modules at university/
- Reposted by Mathew Nicolson[Not loaded yet]
- Reposted by Mathew Nicolson[Not loaded yet]
