Does engaging with the arts help to slow the aging process? According to this new paper from Fancourt et al the answer is yes! Alas, the paper is actually unsuitable for such claims. Let’s examine by discussing how you'd establish whether arts engagement actually caused future health! 1/18 🧵

Scientists should be judged not just on their research, but the claims they make. Quitting smoking is one of the most powerful ways you can improve your health. Visiting a museum can never come close. Such a claim should require extraordinary evidence. This study is anything but. 18/18 🧵

Why does this matter? Because science in the public eye influence behaviours and trust in science. And that demands extra scrutiny. Particularly when studies make strong claims. And in their press release, Fancourt et al compare the effect of arts engagement to the effects of smoking! 17/18 🧵

Whenever I see a weak or cynical project get funded, I think of the other great projects that miss out. And the great people on those great projects who might now lose their job or leave academia. The funding system must focus on supporting people who do rigorous science, not who chase headlines.

Fundamentally, a lot of the problems in British politics comes from a political generation being forced to do something they think is a bad idea, to appease voters they think are wrong with beliefs they don't really understand.

The NHS overwhelmingly manages budgets rather than cash and value, and that trips it up every day. I give you £2m to spend for a discrete piece of work, I want to see that £2m's value rather than just that you've spent it. And if you waste it then that'll be an object lesson for others. 3/3

1/14 Trump’s latest Truth Social post on Iran is revealing not because it exaggerates success, but because it reveals how he appears to define military victory itself. I know it is Trump - and is probably nonsense - but it does deserve analysis. #Iran #Geopolitics #MilitaryStrategy

12/14 The single most dangerous phrase in the post may actually be “virtual TREASON.” Once strategic analysis becomes framed as loyalty or disloyalty, complexity itself becomes politically threatening. #Politics #Media

Yes.

One of the things Starmer's defenders on here get so wrong is to insist it's all about media froth. In fact, as that Jess Philips letter demonstrates, the most damning criticism of Starmer comes from those concerned about the policy and delivery process.

Remember the "Trump Mobile" golden smartphone? Over a half million people paid a collective $59M+ in deposits to get one — and a year later not a single phone has shipped. Yet another Trump grift. https://popular.info/p/we-were-promised-a-gold-plated-trump

Netanyahu will bravely fight to the last American.

Make it stop FFS

The quid pro quo of a Starmer leadership was that - fine - we weren't getting a storyteller or a charisma powerhouse, but we'd at least get serious, competent leadership committed to delivery. In fact we got neither.

Well this aged terribly

Ian Hislop on the impossibility of nuance. The Eye has been critical of Israel's actions in Gaza while also covering antisemitism. Holding both positions at once leaves you unpopular on all fronts. ➡️ Watch Page 94, the Private Eye podcast: youtu.be/dKRLlzAFgso

This (very old) idea would be an interesting improvement in modern elections.

The Burnham hype continues to feel slightly off-kilter to me. Yes he is adored in Manchester, yes he has genuine charisma, not knocking the guy at all! But it's must easier to be popular as a mayor than as cabinet secretary associated with an unpopular Westminster government. Just ask Andy Street

If Wes Streeting was serious about fixing emergency care performance, he should have rejected NHSE's decade long failing strategy: www.hsj.co.uk/daily-insigh...

This sums up Labour's failure pretty well: giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/... "What so many at the heart of the Starmer project never seem to understand is that governments are not re-elected because of their words and poses: they are re-elected because of their actions."

Frustrated with the election pundits talking as if votes only 'swing' from one party to another. I did some analysis of the results, and my modelling (based on votes only, not polls) suggests that the largest movement since 2024 local elections (by a long way) is from 'Did Not Vote' -> Reform

This also strongly shows up in canvassing data, where most Reform voters are not on the regular "votes in local elections" lists

This post is utter, utter bullshit. The establishment of a single patient record had been something government has rightly been trying to do for nearly 30 years. If Palantir is given access to NHS data, the existence of a single patient record will, at worst, make it marginally easier for them.

Many areas of science, such as genetics, have found that causation is often multi-factorial: there’s no single gene for intelligence for example, but many different genes have an influence. We are yet to learn this lesson in politics, still looking for the one weird trick other parties don’t know.

Things I got very wrong: I didn’t think Labour would govern that well - I thought it would be driven by the producer interest, among other things - but I did think they would at least drag British politics away from the “governing: an annoying distraction from elections” mode it entered 2017-9.

Commiserations to Sir David Attenborough on his 100th birthday, as he is now too old to be allowed to play with LEGO.

The Trump regime’s war diplomacy looks like something put together by real estate guys, because it is.

still thinking about that Goldman Sachs “analysis” that predicted we would be at 120% of normal traffic in the strait of Hormuz by now

Another good line from this talk: "We can live with imperfection. We shouldn't have to live with dysfunction that can be avoided."

The long term history of arrival to departure 12hr waits in English A&Es:

WATCH: Rubio admits “the goal” is now just to go “back to the way it was” before Trump’s costly, deadly, pointless war Great job guys! 😕🙃

Same columnist, March 2025 and two days ago

Breaking News: The FDA has blocked publication of research that found widely used Covid-19 and shingles vaccines were safe.

Just heard self-centred hypocrite Nigel Farage on BBC News say that no British politician has been physically attacked more than him. An insult to the memory of Jo Cox and David Amess, both murdered.

In just over a month, the duration of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine will match that of the entire World War I. And the entire might of Russia and its totalitarian allies, as well as of the Kremlin's corrupt useful morons in the West, still can't defeat Ukraine.

This is now what passes for “science” from the BBC. Hackneyed cliches, faux mystery, factually incorrect statements. 1. Archaeologists are, once again, “baffled” www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

arguing about how the NHS is funded is a huge distraction for the more important debate: how it is managed: www.hsj.co.uk/daily-insigh...

How infuriating to hear the chairman(?) of Asda on the Today programme implying that land use for solar farms might significantly hurt UK food production. It's nonsense. Golf courses use more than solar ever will & beef/lamb production is huge yet provides a tiny fraction of our protein & calories.

A week following the Trump administration's assault on truth youtube.com/shorts/-BUHs...

You can apply lots of normalizing frameworks or you can just make a timeline of his calls with Putin. We don’t have a sovereign foreign policy. We have superpower suicide.

The number trump haters should be posting is 1080...

Traders on Wall Street are calling Donald Trump “NACHO?” Because there’s “Not A Chance Hormuz Opens?” Love this nickname for him. 🤣

Russia’s economy is in a bad way, its army is struggling to advance, and Ukraine’s drone are regularly attacking targets inside Russia. Is Putin running out of options? My latest post looks at his predicament (£/free trial), open.substack.com/pub/samf/p/i...?

Popular opinion: "the NHS has been starved of doctors and nurses and overwhelmed by managers." The reality:

Congratulations to Elon Musk FRS and the @royalsociety.org

Supreme Court Overturns ‘Right v. Wrong’ https://theonion.com/supreme-court-overturns-right-v-wrong-1819573211/

He's an abomination.

"When asked by a reporter last year whom the arch would be for, Trump said, “Me”. It seems unlikely that Donald Trump has ever read Ozymandias, but if he did, he clearly didn’t understand it." This week's New World column is on dictators and monuments.