#Uni of Aberdeen

[uniofaberdeen]

Study reveals new insights into the origins of Scotland's mysterious Picts

Scotland's Picts have long been viewed as a mysterious people with their enigmatic symbols and inscriptions, accentuated by representations of them as wild barbarians with exotic origins.

But a newly published study by an international team led by researchers at the University of Aberdeen and Liverpool John Moores University is helping to shed new light on the origins of the Picts.

The Picts were first mentioned in the late 3rd century CE as resisting the Romans and went on to form a powerful kingdom that ruled over a large part of northern Britain, in present-day north-east Scotland.

In the medieval period, the Picts were considered immigrants from Thrace (north of the Aegean Sea), Scythia (eastern Europe), or isles north of Britain but as they left few written sources of their own little is known of their origins or relations with other cultural groups living in Britain.

Archaeologists have conducted the first extensive analysis of Pictish genomes and their results have been published today (27/04/2023) in the open access journal PLOS Genetics.

The results reveal a long-standing genetic continuity in some regions of the British Isles, helping to build a picture of where the Picts came from and providing new understanding of how present-day genetic diversity formed. The findings also confirm descriptions by the great English historian Bede of the far-flung eastern origins of the Picts as one of myth and fantasy.

The researchers used Identity-By-Descent (IBD) methods to compare two high-quality Pictish genomes sequenced from individuals excavated from Pictish-era cemeteries at Lundin Links in Fife (Southern Pictland) and Balintore in Easter Ross (Northern Pictland) to those of previously published ancient genomes as well as the modern population.

Dr Linus Girdland Flink of the University of Aberdeen, senior corresponding author of the study, said: “Among the peoples present during the first millennium CE in Britain, the Picts are one of the most enigmatic.

“Their unique cultural features such as Pictish symbols and the scarcity of contemporary literary and archaeological sources resulted in many diverse hypotheses about their origin, lifestyle and culture, part of the so-called ‘Pictish problem’.

“We aimed to determine the genetic relationships between the Picts and neighbouring modern-day and ancient populations.

“Using DNA analysis, we have been able to fill a gap in an understudied area of Scotland’s past.

“Our results show that individuals from western Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, and Northumbria display a higher degree of Identity-By-Descent (IBD) sharing with the Pictish genomes, meaning they are genetically most similar among modern populations.”

This genetic make-up was distinct from areas of southern England where there is a greater relative degree of Anglo-Saxon heritage.

Dr Adeline Morez from Liverpool John Moores University, lead corresponding author of the study, adds: “Our findings also support the idea of regional continuity between the Late Iron Age and early medieval periods and indicates that the Picts were local to the British Isles in their origin, as their gene pool is drawn from the older Iron Age, and not from large-scale migration, from exotic locations far to the east.

“However, by comparing the samples between southern and northern Pictland we can also see that they were not one homogenous group and that there are some distinct differences, which point to patterns of migration and life-time mobility that require further study.”

The analysis of mitochondrial genomes from Lundin Links has also provided an insight into another Pictish myth – that they practised a form of matriliny, with succession and perhaps inheritance going to the sister’s son rather than directly through the male line.

“In a matrilocal system we would expect to find females staying in their birthplace after their marriage and throughout their life.

“At Lundin Links, diversity in the maternally inherited mitochondrial DNA suggests this was not the case. This finding challenges the older hypotheses that Pictish succession was passed along the mother’s side and raise further questions about our understanding of Pictish society and its organisation.”

[philzokman]

SOBBING SO HARD RN im so bad at french but i need all a's to get into the uni course i want and i havent been studying french bc iwas like 'mhmhmhmm!!! 4 days is eniogh time to become fUKCING FLUENT IN A LANGUAGE' WHY AM I SO STUPUD MY EXAMS ON MIONDAY IM GOING TO EAT CONCRETE also why does the tangled soundtrack go so hard like actually im alternating between the duolingo french podcast, the tangled soundtrack, pulps discography and prayign HFJKDSHF

[driftwoodcalliope]

Nothing funnier to me than looking back at my teenage years, a self-appointed intellectual deciding that I thought sports were stupid and useless because ✨art✨ and ✨literature✨ were so much more fulfilling and cultured and now going on ten years later I follow football and rugby religiously as I study music in uni.

Funny how things work out.

[crit20art]

[ID: a traditional sketch of Jonathan Sims and Martin Blackwood from The Magnus Archives as they might appear as a woman and as a non-binary butch, respectively. Jon is a small, thin British-Pakistani woman with short curly hair. She wears a large cardigan with a cami and business casual capris. Martin is a tall, fat Vietnamese-Polish person with glasses, many freckles, and short hair with an undercut. They wear a tank top, leather jacket, and jeans with a carabiner clipped to their belt loop. Martin stands with one hand in their pocket and one hand on Jon’s shoulder, smiling fondly at her. Jon rests her hand on Martin’s at her shoulder and cuts her eyes back at them with a loving expression. End ID]

uhhh @tdogkarate said the words “butch lesbian Martin” and i blacked out and this happened. it’s v messy and i won’t vouch for the proportions but im sharing cause it made me happy and also filled me w So Much Gender

honestly this would change very little about them (including names i love them being girlies named Jon n Martin…) but here are some lil headcanons:

they/them lesbian Martin (yeah we’re openly projecting now what of it!!!!!)

Jon n Georgie started transitioning at the same time at uni and when Jon felt like she had to change her name, it was Georgie who assured her that it was ok to remain Jon

HRT did not affect The Voice much for Jon but she owns it and it’s sooooo sexy it’s fucking insane bonkers gorgeous. Martin has written no less than four poems about it (finding one of these in s2 may or may not have greatly softened Jon’s opinion of Martin)

Jon is hit a bit harder by concerns about her appearance after the coma, bc her head got shaved (goodbye beautiful gender-affirming hair) and she’s lost a lot of the weight that defined her figure. She gets angry at herself for even caring and it snowballs into her snapping at Martin at some point, but Martin, who’s Been There w body issues, reassures her as much as they can and takes her on a very nice trip down to Aberdeen to get some clothes other than Basira’s old athleisure wear. and after several hours of Jon being stared at starry-eyed by Martin and being told with soft awe “yeah you look incredible in that” like 500 times, she feels a lot better

anyway jonmartin rights in every universe forever i love them sm. also i love you women i love you butches i’m frankly feeling a bit insane abt it all right now

[recreationaldivorce]

[ID:

Map of Britain titled "37 TOTAL BRITISH UNI ENCAMPMENTS" and subtitled "WHERE ARE THEY NOW?". The graphic is marked "LONDON STUDENT ACTION FOR PALESTINE" with the LSAP logo in the bottom-left. An asterisked small print reads "*LOCATION PINS ARE NOT 100% ACCURATE. AS OF 12/8/24"

On the map, the location of each university where there was a pro-Palestine encampment is represented by a small tent symbol. The names of the universities are written on the map, with colour-coded backgrounds. The colours of the backgrounds of the uni names represent what happened with the encampment. By category, the universities are:

Ongoing: 2x

Bangor University

University of Cambridge

Ongoing after Eviction: 1x

SOAS

Decamped with Ongoing Negotiations: 15x

University of Aberdeen

Aston University

Cardiff University

University of Edinburgh

GS

ICL

University of Kent

University of Leicester

University of Manchester

Newcastle University

University of Portsmouth

University of Sussex

University of Swansea

University of Warwick

University of York

Decamped: 7x

Aberystwyth Uni

Durham University

University of Exeter

Falmouth University

University of Leeds

University of Lincoln

UAL

Decamped with Legal Threat + Police: 5x

University of Bristol

Lancaster University

University of Liverpool + Liverpool John Moores

University of Nottingham

University of Oxford

Evicted: 7x

University of Birmingham

KCL

LSE

QM

University of Reading

University of Sheffield

UCL

/End ID]

[duchessofostergotlands]

Buckle up for a long, rambling personal story. So many of you will know I’m hoping to move back to Scotland soon. And I’ve been thinking about who I still know in Scotland, who I might want to reach out to and catch up with, which led me down a rabbit hole of people I knew at school. There is one guy who is in the area I want to live in who is hot as fuck. Like unreal levels of hot. At school his friends looked like potatoes and he was like Henry Cavill. And he was always much quieter than his friends who were total twats, I don’t know why I was friends with them. Anyway he’s a successful architect now and even hotter, somehow. To the point I can’t understand how he would still be single but there’s no obvious partner on his social media. But I have only actually spoken to him once. At a party, 12 years ago. We were in a corner and he asked me how far away St Andrews (my uni at the time) is from Aberdeen and I was nervous - he was so beautiful - and don’t know anything about distances so I said I don’t know and the conversation just ended. I only remember it so clearly because it was also the night I lost my virginity to a friend of his in a not fantastic way (I told you this was rambling). I think we were briefly friends on Facebook after that conversation but we were never friend friends. So with that context… how creepy is it to be stalking him after 12 years? And how creepy would it be to hypothetically go for a stroll near his office some day in the hopes he pops up on a dating app? I will remind you he is movie star hot. Discuss.

[theinconvenientlifestyle]

Fossil fuel companies have ploughed more than £147m into British universities in seven years and been given “horrifying” influence over academic degree courses.

An investigation by openDemocracy today reveals that BP, Shell and Equinor are among the firms routinely invited to private meetings with university officials, with some institutions taking direct advice on how to run engineering and geoscience degrees.

One university even had discussions with an oil company about how to push back against “anti-oil rhetoric”.

The influence extends to Freedom of Information (FOI) laws, with corporations telling universities how to respond to questions from students and journalists.

In many cases, these cosy relationships have grown as fossil fuel giants pump huge sums of money into university campuses, including donations and research funding.

Records obtained by openDemocracy show 60 institutions have received donations since 2016/17, with Oxford, Cambridge and Imperial College London accounting for two thirds of the total figure.

The funding is part of an international trend that has seen fossil fuel companies also channelling at least £74m into universities in the EU.

Responding to openDemocracy’s investigation, Green Party MP Caroline Lucas called on universities to cut financial and academic times with fossil fuel companies immediately.

“Students will be horrified to learn of the shady and manipulative influence of fossil fuel companies happening on their own campuses,” she said.

“Fossil fuel giants seeking to youthwash their own reputation by handing over dirty money to universities, and even attempting to influence academic programmes, can’t hide the fact that their climate-wrecking pollution is putting young people’s futures in jeopardy.”

Countering ‘anti-oil rhetoric’

More than a dozen universities admitted taking advice on degree courses from fossil fuel companies, including inviting them to sit on advisory boards. They include Oxford, Edinburgh and University College London.

The University of Aberdeen has recently taken advice from at least 11 oil and gas companies and invited their officials to board meetings. At the same time, it has also accepted close to £4m from the industry, including BP, Shell and Equinor.

The university boasts that its Master’s course in “integrated petroleum geoscience” has a track record of getting graduates into “leading positions across the international oil and gas industry”, adding that more exploration in the future will make this a “vibrant industry to enter”.

But when student numbers started to fall – from 23 in 2020 to just eight in 2022 – officials discussed how to reverse the trend.

Minutes of a meeting that took place last year reveal an advisory board member suggested that a “significant publicity drive” could help boost student numbers in the face of “anti-oil rhetoric”.

When discussing the 50th anniversary of the Masters course, a member of the advisory board said it would be best to keep any celebrations “under the radar to avoid the negative press”.

A spokesperson for Aberdeen University admitted when asked by openDemocracy that the comment had related to concerns about the risk of negative commentary from “opponents of oil and gas” – but said the view did not reflect the university’s position.

The university has refused to disclose who made the remark, but officials from Shell, Equinor, Harbour Energy, Tantalus Oil and Spirit Energy were all in attendance, alongside university staff.

Equinor had enjoyed even closer access to Aberdeen’s courses after one of its officials was invited to become an external examiner, before stepping down last year. It has also given away tens of thousands of pounds’ worth of student scholarships.

A spokesperson said Equinor was currently sponsoring the integrated petroleum geosciences Master’s course, and confirmed that the company had provided more than £6m in funding for UK universities between 2019 and 2023.

“We are proud to collaborate with universities in developing talented young people who will become the energy leaders of tomorrow,” said a spokesperson.

The company also sponsors the GeoNetZero Centre for Doctoral Training, a programme of PhD research and training in geoscience involving 12 universities.

In 2021, the university announced plans to divest from all fossil fuel companies. But it said this would not extend to cutting ties with the industry altogether, as it would “continue to work with the energy sector to train the next generation”.

A spokesperson said the university’s “long-standing relationship with industry” made students more employable. They claimed Aberdeen was committed to reducing emissions and that industry partnerships were “vital” for meeting global targets around energy transition.

‘Confidential conduit of information’

At Imperial College London, more than £67m in funding has been taken from fossil fuel giants since 2016, including huge amounts from Shell.

The money is part of a cosy relationship. For the last ten years, an advisory board for its Department for Chemical Engineering has included a Shell senior director called Edward Daniels.

The executive left Shell last month after more than two decades, during which time he helped defend the company’s reputation “where Shell’s positions could be controversial”, according to his Linkedin profile.

Daniels took up the role at Imperial College London in 2013 – the same year that he personally lobbied government officials to help protect the company’s oil interests in the Niger Delta, despite having a terrible environmental and human rights record.

More recently, he has spoken in support of the controversial undeveloped Cambo oil field off the coast of the Shetland Islands, claiming that the environmental impact of the project would be “tiny” – despite warnings from the International Energy Agency that no new oil fields should be approved if the world is going to meet its climate targets.

Meanwhile, his university role involves him providing a “confidential conduit of information” to students, researchers and uni staff.

He has previously told students that Shell “sincerely believes” in sustainable energy. But he added: “For a company like ours we need to do that in a way that is profitable. We have to meet the needs of our shareholders.”

Daniels went on to refer to the “climate change debate”.

A spokesperson for Imperial told openDemocracy that, since 2020, it had committed to engaging in research partnerships with fossil fuel companies only where the research “forms part of their plans for decarbonisation, and only if the company demonstrates a credible strategic commitment to achieving net-zero by 2050”.

Analysis suggests Shell and a number of companies it wholly or partly owns have between them given more money to British universities than any other fossil fuel company since 2016/17, amounting to at least £54m. In some cases, officials for the oil giant have even been invited to take teaching positions.

They include Owain Tucker, who has lectured students at Edinburgh’s Heriot-Watt University since 2020 on a course the university says will prepare students for a career in the traditional oil and gas sector, among others. Shell has given more than £2.1m to the university since 2016/17.

In 2021, Tucker was invited by the University of Manchester to speak at a climate event. The university has accepted at least £1.6m from Shell in recent years.

Emails seen by openDemocracy reveal that Tucker insisted the discussion focused on technical challenges, instead of “philosophical debates” about “what society might choose to do” about climate change.  

A spokesperson for Shell said its “long and valued relationships” with British universities have “driven research supporting the energy transition and UK energy security”. They added that Shell “aims to become a net-zero emissions energy business by 2050”.

‘Commercial interests’

When openDemocracy sent requests under the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act, several universities refused to disclose documents relating to these companies, claiming it would “prejudice” commercial interests.

Nottingham University received money from mining companies that have “very specific non-disclosure agreements” attached, which include a ban on releasing the names of the projects being funded.

Glasgow University said confidentiality was essential to attract industry employees to advisory boards who might otherwise be “hesitant to engage due to concerns about the potential public exposure”. 

Heriot-Watt University has taken £7m from fossil fuel companies in recent years. Internal guidelines state that “no minutes are taken” during advisory board meetings, meaning there is no record of the advice given by a representative of the petrol firm TotalEnergies, which sits on the advisory board for the university’s Institute of Geoengineering.

A spokesperson later claimed that minute-taking was now being promoted as “best practice” at the meetings, adding that advisory boards don’t have authority to make decisions.

Meanwhile, Oxford University – which has taken nearly £1m from BP since 2016/17 – refused to disclose correspondence with a company official responsible for BP’s relationships with British universities. Oxford claimed that disclosure would breach data protection laws.

But records seen by openDemocracy show that some universities have given fossil fuel firms direct influence over how they respond to FOI requests.

They include Bristol University, which was the UK’s first university to declare a “climate emergency” in 2019, pledging to play a “key role in fighting climate change”.

Yet it signed research contracts in 2018, 2019 and 2020 with the likes of Shell and BP, which say that Bristol University must “immediately notify” the companies and give them “an opportunity to oppose” disclosures under the Freedom of Information Act. According to openDemocracy analysis, the university has benefited from more than £200,000 of funding from Shell and BP.

The University of Bath also had similar agreements with the two companies.

Meanwhile, two contracts with the mining company BHP Billiton say Bristol University will give it “all reasonable legal rights and avenues… to avoid or minimise the impact” of any disclosures made under the FOI Act. The university has taken at least £2.3m of funding from BHP Billiton.

These legal promises have been upheld by the university. In one case, internal emails show that Equinor was consulted over an FOI request about the funding it has provided, having signed a similar contract with the university.

The university's FOI team asked Equinor whether it believed the information should be withheld. Equinor replied: “Could you please advise whom the FOI request is coming from?” The university told openDemocracy it did not give the person’s name, which would have been a breach of data protection laws.

A spokesperson for Bristol University said that these contract stipulations were “standard”. It admitted that funders’ views are taken into consideration but that the university has “ultimate responsibility for deciding what information is disclosed”.

Oxford University also regularly consults fossil fuel companies about FOI requests, having taken between £10.8m and £20m in funding from them since 2016/17.

When openDemocracy started this investigation last year, records show Oxford informed Shell and Equinor that we had requested information about their relationships. Oxford also flagged requests – but did not reveal names – from students and student journalists to Shell and BP

And emails reveal that it followed BP’s wishes that it should be vague about the amount of money it had donated to finance university projects, and to redact the titles of research projects it was funding.

Elsewhere, the University of Aberdeen was unable to give details about a research project with the Spanish petrochemical firm Repsol, saying that it was tied up in a three-year confidentiality clause. In another instance, an FOI response to openDemocracy was delayed after Aberdeen consulted BP about its response.

Funding across Europe

openDemocracy’s investigation follows hundreds of requests to universities asking for details on donations, grants and other funding from oil, gas and mining companies. They were also asked to provide details on funding from firms connected to oil exploration in the North Sea.

But the true scale of fossil fuel funding is likely to be far higher, as some universities didn’t respond and others refused to provide exact figures.

Our analysis comes as Investigate Europe – the investigative co-operative which openDemocracy worked alongside – reveals that universities in the EU have taken millions from fossil fuel companies.

According to the research, Norwegian universities received the most, while those in Ireland, Sweden and Spain also accepted funding.

BP and the University of Oxford did not respond to openDemocracy’s requests for comment.

*This investigation was developed with support of Journalismfund Europe.

[povlnfour]

AHH A BABY BOYYY!!!

it’s so cool that your partner is korean! your son is gonna be the most multicultural kid ever, especially if you raise him to speak or understand the languages you know (and i thought my mix was interesting haha)

speaking of, i remember you saying you were learning arabic! how’s that going?

- 🪐

I KNOW RIGHT AHHHH i cannot wait to meet him i hate that i have to wait so long😭

yes!! he’s still learning korean himself as he actually grew up in aberdeen in scotland (we met at uni in manchester haha!), but i think we really want to teach baby it eventually as i know it’s my partners dream to visit korea for some time and i’d love to take him there with our baby one day🥹 such a random logistic i never even considered about until i found out i was pregnant like … its a lot of languages between us what are we gonna choose

OH YES!! i’m still trying my best, it’s definitelyyy the hardest i’ve had to learn but it’s such a beautiful language. i’m starting to be able to form simple sentences. i need to get back on it tbh as id love to be able to communicate with my best friend in her language🥹🤍

[nothingfromnowherenooneatall]

Americans are wild tbh. Like, there’s a certain subset of (white) americans who, upon discovering The Truth of their country’s history, that will desperately flock to shite like 23&Me to scrounge up any form of identity they can that isn’t American, and then proceed to be so violently cringe inducing about it. Had this happen with a guy I knew while I spent a year at an American Uni; dude took an ancestry kit, found out that he had one (1) Scottish ancestor like 200 years ago, and has proceeded to be an absolute melter about it, I mean proper glaikit cunt behaviour. Fuckin started putting his ‘clan’ name in his Social Media bios, started cuttin about wae a kilt anywhere and everywhere, shite like that. Also decided he’s Irish Pagan too? No fuckin idea where that came from tbh.

My point being, this cunt got so defensive when I spoke to him to say “Hey, I appreciate that you’re doing this with the best intentions, but some of this is a little inappropriate/not the best way to go about it” and holy fucking shit this man? Tried to tell me? That I can’t tell him off? for wearing a kilt? despite him not being Scottish? Because I? Skateboard? Even though I’m not American?

Trust me when I say, this shit was in the top 5 most enraged I’ve ever been in my life, I was ready to kill this man.

And the thing is, its so emblematic of so, so many Styrofoam Scots to not only completely misunderstand Scottish culture and identity, but also to ignore when an actual Scottish person is telling them it’s inappropriate.

To add additional context; He has never been to Scotland, no one in his family speaks the Gàidhlig, no one has passed this culture onto him, he’s just taken it. I am the only Scottish person he had ever met by this point, and he didn’t want to hear the opinion of someone who’s actually from the culture he’s appropriating.

Like, its so, so American, to feel so ashamed of your history of genocide and racism, so run to be anything else, and still fuckin take someone else’s culture, rather than do the work to make your own culture something to be proud of.

And even then, so many of these Styrofoam Scots completely ignore our own history of participating in… *checks notes*

Oh yeah, The British Empire

Scotland isn’t fuckin outlander, it hasn’t been for a long time, and it probably never was. What it is, is a neo colonial hellhole that’s under the thumb of a dying and outmoded political alliance that’s drunk on the nostalgia of a genocidal Empire, wracked with poverty, unable to enact our own democracy, and plundered for its natural resources by capitalist interests (Quite a few of them American; Aberdeen has never recovered), and still trying to shake off the bullshit tourism and gentrification of an entire culture brought on by Walter Scott and his cunt friends. We’re still trying to restore the Gàidhlig to where it used to be before the clearances, and we will NEVER get back the history that we lost in those years, so its not the place of some limp liberal, LARPing as a culture he isn’t to take a language for his own that was taken from us.

Scotland, and by extension, Scottish Identity, or any other identity for that matter, is not something that white american liberals (because its usually them) can use to shield themselves from the uncomfortable truths of their history and excuse themselves from doing the work to make their culture something to actually be proud of.

(And if that one guy is reading this;

Get my language out your fucking mouth, maorach.)

Anyway thanks for coming to my TEDTalk.

Trans Liberation Now, Free Palestine, Sudan and Congo, Stop using Fossil Fuels, Abortion Rights for All, Fuck the Police and End Imperialism.

[vyrmu]

Went to use my laptop and noticed no stylus... Have torn up the flat for it only to find that there is a find a pen function on the surface pro.... The location shows the general area of the Aberdeen uni library and it was last registered a month ago. (ADHD brain be damned) WAH. I hope they have a lost and found box and its just chilling there 😩 please....

[lovedthestars-toofondly]

OP you are so right on all counts

unfortunately this is also acutely topical to me because my uni is in the process of sacrificing its entire modern languages department on the altar of budgetary constraints

there is a petition protesting this here:

staff are at risk of losing their jobs. students are faced with the prospect of not being able to finish their degrees. the Gaelic programme, vital for keeping an already endangered language alive, is included in this

signing and sharing are hugely appreciated.

Please help us save our language programmes!

I love you people going into "useless" fields I love you classics majors I love you cultural studies majors I love you comparative literature majors I love you film studies majors I love you near eastern religions majors I love you Greek, Latin, and Hebrew majors I love you ethnic studies I love you people going into any and all small field that isn't considered lucrative in our rotting capitalist society please never stop keeping the sacred flame of knowledge for the sake of knowledge and understanding humanity and not merely for the sake of money alive

[mitmama]

Vancouver Food

Vancouver Food | Whistler | Travel Tips

This is our second time skiing at Whistler with the kids. We love flying into Vancouver because of the yummy Asian food. We flew in at night and stayed in Richmond, just across the bridge from the Airport.

We are happy to finally go to Yue Restaurant for dimsum, having called to make a reservation this time around. Turned out it might not be necessary this time. Check out their heated teapot, unique shrimp rolls with shrimp on top, and perfect shrimp dumplings.

We checked out both fancy Asian Malls like Aberdeen Center with a fun Japanese home goods store...

... and more traditional Supermarket 2000 that felt to Mike and myself like the Asian grocery stores that we grew up with. There's even a store that only sells ginsengs.

There's even a boba row with boba tea shops right next to each other:

Our favorite restaurant in Vancouver, Kingyo, is a Japanese izakaya place with Kobe Beef you cook on a hot rock. They also have yummy sushi, and delicious Tan Tan noodle. And if they have the corn on the cob, be sure to get that!

On the way back from skiing, we ate at Guu Original, which my husband's gone to 15 years ago along with Kingyo. Amazing they kept up the quality of food for so many years. We loved the seafood salad, the perfect uni, and a unique stir-fried udon.

Our last meal we had at Richmond just before we got on the airplane was at Tin Tin Seafood Harbor, which opens at 9am. Besides excellent shrimp dumplings, we enjoyed.

They also have the perfect lava buns.

Next, on to Whistler for skiing.

Vancouver Food | Whistler | Travel Tips

[mllebleue]

What would I do to read that thesis. It's not accessible through my uni library's access to U of Aberdeen's library. Darn it.

Update on fanbinding dissertation: binding the dissertation itself!

After many days and nights of writing and wrangling footnotes and proofreading (where I couldn't convince my laptop that yes, I meant textualisation, not sexualisation), 'twas time to bind the beasts! In three copies, no less! Which I approached with way too much confidence from my one fanbind experience, and came with many fun little surprises due to the format guidelines I had to follow 🤡

This is going to be a long one, so here's my happy unfocused mug to confirm that it all ends well:

First pickle: The typesetting. I absolutely loved typesetting fanfic, but the dissertation had to be A4 (way less fun, boo-hoo), one-sided, with every page numbered. Did you know that LibreOffice won't let you add blank pages and only number the non-blank ones, without skipping numbers? In order to print signatures I could fold into one-sided pages, only numbered on the right-hand pages, I ended up switching to landscape orientation and including the equivalent of a blank page in the left margin.

Second pickle: The imposing, which I couldn't figure out using the amazing bookbinder with my weird landscape 2-page layout. I finally gave in and rearranged all the pages manually, which looked like p. 1 on the recto / p. 10 on the verso, then p2/p9, p3/p8, p4/p7, p5/p8, p6/p7. And because there was no way I was paying print-in-colour prices for all of this, I further split the manually imposed pages into two files, one for the greyscale printer (cheaper) and one for the colour printer (highway robbery). Still came up to ~£70, just for printing.

Very glad I went in chunks of 10 for the signatures, it made both the math and the folding using sheets from two different piles much easier, highly recommend (if for some absurd reason you also want to bind one-sided numbered pages in folded signatures).

Third pickle: Linear time. Had planned on having so much time to print and bind this thing, but kept writing and rewriting and proofing and oops! It was due in less than 24 hours and it was still not out of the laptop. So.

22/09/24, 6pm: Got to the library, started printing.

6.45pm: Found another printer where all the paper was the same shade of white, started printing again 🤦‍♂️ (kept the the misprints to use as scrap paper when glueing)

7.30pm: Started folding the 150 sheets of paper (3 x 100-page dissertation, 2 pages per sheet). Went from the last episode of The Magnus Protocol, to an episode of Welcome to Night Vale, to deciding restart The Magnus Archive, which felt almost poetic.

9pm: Headed back home, trimmed the edges (with a borrowed guillotine), folded the endpapers, stabbed everything. Lack of pictures to be blamed on my inability to mess with linear time, and the eventual sleep deprivation.

10.30pm, I think? Started sewing the signatures together, again with Supernatural (which I started rewatching when I submitted my first dissertation assignment in mid-May, and finished 2 days after submitting the dissertation itself, again, such poetry).

2am, probably? Tipped the endpapers and glued cheesecloth over the spines. Somehow figured out where to set the three textblocks to dry (I don't have a press). Sadly gave up on sewing on (or glueing) headbands, because time.

3am-ish: Cut the missing cover pieces out of millboard (had already cut 4 of 6 covers, since I knew it had to be A4), measured the spines of the three textblocks and cut those as well.

???am: Did some math, because sure, that's the right time for that. Cut the bookcloth to size, glued the cover pieces on the bookcloth. Remarkably only messed up the measurements on one of them! That means one of the copies has a millimetre of millboard showing in the inside corners of the back cover, but not enough time/bookcloth/millboard to redo it, onward we go!

Way past dawn: Took a break for food while the covers somewhat dried. Cased the three textblocks in the three covers, with the endpapers bubbling, which took me by surprise since it was the same paper and same glue I had used for the fanbind without any problem. I'm now thinking that bigger book = more time needed to apply the glue = endpapers getting warped, but I was so exhausted by this point that who knows. Again, no time to redo it!

9.30am: Stacked the dissertations under the heavy reference books I used to write the dissertation. Toute est dans toute hein. Went to bed while they (mostly) dried.

2.30pm: Woken up by my neighbour's dj set. Eventually put all that hard work in a tote and walked to school to hand it in at 4.30pm.

Fourth and last pickle: The titling. Couldn't find paper long enough to do a half-dust jacket like I did last time. Had big cutout plans, ran out of time and couldn't finish testing those. Also had some thicker textured paper I thought of cutting and glueing to the cover as a title card, but it turned out too thin and was warping. Finally resigned myself to submitting it with a blank cover, but one of my teachers asked if I would mind adding the title on with metallic markers to make it easier to identify (one copy will eventually be on the shelf at the Institute), and I'm SO HAPPY with how it turned out. Metallic markers. Why didn't I think of that. (I did, however, think about dressing appropriately for the occasion.)

So, is it possible to print and bind 3 books in less than 24 hours? Yes! Am I glad I did it? Also yes, very satisfying, love being extra! Would I do it again? God no, I've been sleeping for two weeks and I still haven't recovered. Can't wait to start binding something else though, so I guess it wasn't that bad.

That's it! That's over! Aaaaaah! Now waiting for the grade and comments, and hopefully soon I'll be able to share the content as well.

I'll also try to post some more about the research/writing process itself, somewhere between the late nights reading international treaties on income tax and the early mornings spent figuring out how to apply for a phd next.

Thank you so much to everyone who followed along, this was way more fun than I ever could have hoped!

[mood-of-collapse]

We had a cracking day of bestiary inspired fun for Art Club with a visit to @peacockandtheworm to see the current work from their new bestiary by Delaine Le Bas with a brilliant talk from @enxhiladas_ followed by a fun workshop at @arkade_gallery the results of which can be found on Schoolhill, the Green and next to the Worm on Castlegate. Eagle eyes might spot a few extra beasts around town with kite popping up between Arkade and Aberdeen Uni in the coming weeks 🙈 It was lovely to share space with everyone and to enjoy so many generous conversations 💚🐍 https://www.instagram.com/p/CpHyKyhIvmT/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=