I once pointed out to my dad that that duo of crows over there was technically a murder. Him: "Surely two isn't a murder. Maybe a manslaughter." 🤣👍🏽

That's "string" as in string theory, right? So this indicates the amount of string theory string (ie, in all the matter / energy) that exists in the solar system - outside of the planets / Pluto / putty 🤣

Guided our of London Wren churches! Do it, do it 🤩🤩🤩

Wow: Bravo the Royal Institution for having this on its webpage about jobs. I have never seen such a statement anywhere:

Holding space today for those for whom Mother’s Day is a difficult commemoration, for any reason. I acknowledge your pain and wish you peace.

Genius!

It's pi-day! (3-14 innit). Shout out to the social scientists who use pi as: - a variable(!! = a thing which varies) and/or - a coefficient (a number which you have to find out!) You may as well call your variable / coefficient "7"! 🤦😪 Also, pi-day is Einstein's birthday! - most excellent.

Today is the 30th anniversary of the Dunblane massacre: the deadliest mass shooting in British history. 💔 Remember where you were? I was in a BBC news room. Two children in the school that day who survived - by being shoved under a desk by the deputy head? - became Grand Slam champions & Olympians.

Is anyone else amazed that one can use the internet on the London Underground, ie, when you are *under the ground*? Seems to me to be magic.

Extraordinarily excellent piece of product design here by Rab: emergency instructions printed inside a rucksack for outdoor-y people 👏🏽👏🏽

@zabong69.bsky.social Thanks for the RT, hon.

Conditional formatting in Excel! Who knew? That may be the most useful thing that I've learnt in this entire Masters course 🤣🤣

@stileantico.co.uk Morning! R3 this morning played your lovely Never Weather Beaten Sail (which I thought must be your version before he said that, because I know that you love it so much!) Now it's stuck in my head... probably for the whole day :-)

Such a dismal tale about the UK govt: so obsessed w competing with far-right to keep out foreigners that it won’t let in the brightest & best from war-torn countries even when they’re hand-picked by the FCDO, lest they ask to stay. Soft power sacrificed, but how many Reform voters will it convert?

Does anyone use balanced replication weights & multiple matrix design in surveys in real life, outside of PISA / TIMSS? We are having to learn this stuff on my Masters course: am wondering how useful it is. Thanks.

President Macron making the case for renewables in light of the US-Israeli attack on Iran, "Everything we do to move towards transition is also about reducing our dependence and therefore our exposure to geopolitical risks"

Ladies: when you are negotiating pay, just remember what (some) men ask for, which some of them seem to get. Exhibit A:

Excellent! Much looking forward to seeing this talk! (though I did read it as you being a 'confounder' 🤣 Am I spending too much time doing stats? - Kinda seems like it 🫣)

Good Lord:

This is very important and a major pet peeve of mine. If you don’t know what you’re doing- and if you learned on the internet, then sorry, you don’t know what you’re doing- please leave old gravestones well enough alone.

Are you an early-career philosopher hoping to reach beyond academia with your writing? We’re thrilled to be introducing the Aeon Philosophy Prize – a unique opportunity to receive editorial mentorship and see your ideas reach global audiences. Open for applications today buff.ly/p47BrKe

Don't buy from Bezos! I haven't for years and - you know what? - life is just fine 😊

Fantastic. If you work at the Bayes Centre in U.Edinburgh & haven't provided a profile picture, you get shown to be a robot 👏👏

Oh look! According to our lecturer's slides for this week, there is some kind of *update on the nature of causation itself*!! Having studied epistemology, causation, meta-physics, non-locality (& physics), I'm agog!!

Funny how a US administration so opposed to renewable energy ends up making the case for them:

Today's random church has a 'weeping chancel' - ie, is wonky - in reference to Christ's head on the cross. Notre Dame de Paris has that too, but few English churches do. Also many 'hachette boards', amid Norman arches, "improved" by those great architectural vandals, the Victorians. Michelham...

Happy Int'l Women's Day to you all! To any guys who are not yet active allies: get in! - there remains much to do. A start is: - not interrupting women in mtgs - calling out men who do - pledging 'no all-male panels' owen.org/pledge/ #iwd

Linguistics question: You know how we say 'centi-millionaire' to mean 'person with 100 x £1m'? Seems wrong b/c 'centimetre' doesn't mean '100 metres'. A millimetre isn't 1000 metres. But centipedes (allegedly) have 100 feet & millipedes 1000 feet. So are the terms centimetre & millimetre wrong?

Oh. I'm doing a Masters now (age 472...): the reaction of every person I've told - bar one - has been really positive. It seems taken to indicate "s*** together" & self-improving & maybe also raging against the dying of one's brain's light. The one is the one who got me interested in this topic 🤣

These are the values of University College Hospital in London. Do you notice anything about this list? 🫣

For the first time, the Polish government has repatriated cultural property taken illegally from another country, returning sacred objects stolen from Greek Jews in Thessaloniki during the Nazi occupation. forward.com/fast-forward...

I'm going to Nepal next month! Was already super-excited but maybe the rapper-Prime-Minister will drop by!!

Evidence Reviewer role in my team. Part time 0.5 FTE

Woah:

📢 We are hiring a Postdoctoral Fellow in Sociology at SOFI, Stockholm University. Interested in research on the causes and consequences of social policy for individuals and society? Apply by 13 April 2026. More information and application: su.varbi.com/en/what:job/... #postdoc #sociology

In maths/physics, "unreasonableness" has a strong & vert positive resonance: abstract ("useless") maths has often turned out to be "unreasonably effective" at explaining & modelling natural phenomena, ie, physics 😊 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unr...

Hannah Ritchie has built a fun little tool where you can compare energy usage of various products and activities. This is super helpful imho, because it's so hard to develop intuitions even just about the scales involved here. hannahritchie.substack.com/p/does-that-...

Reminder that Spain's economy is outstripping most (all?) others in Europe, according to that rather good recent article in the NYT by its Prime Minister explaining & defending its open stance on immigration.

Don't complain about having to pay to enter St Paul's Cathedral! - it's been charging since 1709, before it was even finished (=1710). Maybe to deter the riffraff? 👇🏼🫣

Definitely a requirement for the Nobel Peace Prize 👍🏽

Bit surprised that Infosys runs an advert featuring (the legendary 🤩) Rafael Nadal who retired 18 months ago 🤔 {Tbc: I'm happy to see pictures of Rafa any time: IMHO those huge billboard ads he did for Calvin Klein could / should have been funded by the Arts Council 🤣 Just a bit not current now.}

I get the mark today for an essay for my UCL Master's, in which I lay out a mystery (why xyz paper is so crap), say that it's unclear why the paper is so crap, and that "my conjecture is that..." I thought that sounded dead erudite and science-y 🤣 Wish me luck, ha ha... 👍🏽

Quite the charity governance story here 👇🏼

@zabong69.bsky.social OH LOOK! I have finally bumped into your old friend 😜

Saw Tom Stoppard's play Arcadia y/day: it's odd, mainly fiction in which the characters sometimes talk about maths / physics. The play isn't about maths/ physics. By contrast, Copenhagen, which is back on soon(🙂: in Hampstead), really is about physics: and look how popular it is!

“If Kamala wins, only death and destruction await because she is the candidate of endless wars. I am the candidate of peace. I am peace.” - Trump, 11/1/24 “I’m not going to start a war, I’m going to stop wars.” - Trump, 11/5/24

Israel has closed all the crossings into Gaza and reimposed total siege.

BREAKING: Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has been killed and his body has been found, reports Reuters, citing Israeli media reports. 🔴 LIVE updates: aje.news/s9152d

Great news. Henrietta Lacks was Black & a "poor tobacco farmer": cells were taken from her, without her consent in 1951, reproduced into a huge industry for pharma research. She & her family never got a dime. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks recounts it: a fabulous book.

A trailblazer (which I did not appreciate enough when I sat in her lectures!). ras.ac.uk/news-and-pre...