As ill health prevented me from attending the Aster launch on 12th October 2026, I decided to provide attendees with something they can take back to their colleagues about how the increasing number of scientists on Bluesky can be turned into "win-wins" for scientific institutions and the scientists working within them.Bluesky accounts are in fact …

"It turns out that drawing the line AI shouldn't cross in my reading/thinking/writing stack and exploring the meaning behind "Verified Human" are two sides of the same coin."A newsletter somehow managing to link my tentative experiments with vibecoding my reading/writing/publishing stack with Monday's@aster.idlaunch and a demo later this month of …

I contributed to the launch of Aster in October 2026 (both the actual website and the thinking behind it, and the launch event at IOSP 2026: "An account and hosting for researchers on the open web: a place where you build and own your identity, website, data and connections. Independent, not-for-profit, and built by researchers, for researchers."

"The Aster PDS is live and the invite phase is open. The hard part comes next" - a post I contributed to the Aster launch, covering the hard questions we'll need to answer regarding verificiation: "Who counts as a "researcher or and academic"? ... What exactly are we identifying" by giving someone an Aster ID and PDS, and "How do we indicate any …