It has become increasingly clear that X - a platform now actively producing explicit and abusive material against women and children - is not an appropriate platform to be using for our comms. I will keep pushing for action from the govt & relevant authorities in this area.

This year's best student comment from the student evaluation for the stat mech class goes to : "a very enjoyable experience learning from Eugene and watching him cover himself in chalk every lecture."

New Interview: www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a...

If there is an argument then this is the argument. But lol I can’t find where this obviously false stat is coming from. And if the government does believe more than half the families in the UK are using it as their primary news source then woah maybe time to up the scrutiny of it!

Good article this. Racism really is the reverse of a performance-enhancing drug, the mad, stupid shit it leads people to believe in and to do:

There is, to my mind, no justification for the continued use by the UK Government of X as a platform for official comms. There hasn't been for some time, in fact, but if the latest developments around AI-generated image abuse and CSAM don't change the policy I really don't know what will.

Excellent post by @pollymackenzie.bsky.social on the trouble with stakeholder statism and all that:

Amazingly, reaction times using screens while driving are worse than being drunk or high—no wonder 90 percent of drivers hate using touchscreens in cars. Finally the auto industry is coming to its senses.

Just watched the new Knives Out and I think it's really important you know that the scene in the Seminary's Gym is filmed in the same place Rick Astley filmed the music video for Never Gonna Give You Up. I saw the window tracery and immediately made my friends pause the film so I could tell them.

I already agree with this in principle - citizenship is an untouchable status or it is nothing - but also for reasons of prudence. “The Home Sec can revoke citizenship when he/she deems someone’s online output sufficiently offensive” is a v dangerous precedent to set with Reform leading all polls.

Took the holidays to finally played Horizon Forbidden West. Thought that voice acting for Regalla was absolutely great. Finished game last night and saw the credits rolled and fucking hell it was Angela Fucking Bassett.

I miss Calvin and Hobbes. Probably shows me to be of a certain age but I suspect its humour had aged more than well.

Journal editors, sending review requests on Xmas eve just makes me want to do review work for you even less. (I understand the Xmas crush of submitted papers but come on.)

I love this country and its traditions, perhaps none more so than how Smithfield butchers are treated like rock stars on Xmas Eve

I couldn't find the quote on a quick browse of Goodreads (I don't have my copy with me), but I did find this, which I think sums up what is so repellent and arid about Blue Labour and this government's view on class and aspiration more broadly.

Given that all the progressives have been driven out of Labour by the morons that is Blue Labour, is that even a surprise? The voting intention of Labour is ~20% ! (Also! Excellent illustration of Bayesian inference if I may say so.)

YouGov have Reform on 25% in both their first poll of 2025 and their final poll before Christmas. The only significan sustained gain across 2025 was Green Party +7, at expense of Labour Reform 25% tp 25% (-) Labour 26% to 20% (-6) Cons 22% to 19% (-3) LibDems 14% to 15% (+1) Greens 8% to 15% (+7)

A free Xmas day dinner put on by my local Belfast Bengali restaurant for people by themselves during the holidays #EverydayMulticulturalism

🚨 Postdoctoral Opportunity for Female Scientists🚨 The University of Vienna is awarding at least 20 fully funded 4 year postdoctoral positions to outstanding female scientists Interested? Get in touch via direct message careers.univie.ac.at/en/postdoc/e... #MicroSky 🧪 #PostDoc @univie.ac.at

The UK will celebrate net emigration and depopulation come 2027. And by 2028 it will start to realise, with an ageing society and low growth, what a really silly thing it has done. The right will go "pro-natalist", the centre-left will be completely stuck.

NEW: Labour just announced the biggest change in planning policy in 80 years. My breakdown of the key measures and whether they will succeed. www.samdumitriu.com/p/labour-are...

I was once given a 2 page “AI summary” of comments by students which totalled…2 pages

New postdoc position advertised in geometric analysis (and/or math-GR) with me in the frozen wastelands of the north (Luleå, Sweden) web103.reachmee.com/ext/I003/583...

7News Australia reports that the hero who jumped and disarmed one of the terrorist shooters His name is Ahmed el-Ahmed A 43 year old married father of two He owns a fruit shop in Sutherland No experience with guns He was walking past He has two bullets in his arm

"If you won't support our sisters, we won't run your units"

Robin Ince reveals to last night’s audience at a recording of Infinite Monkey Cage that the BBC has forced him to resign over his support of trans people

Labour strikes aren’t new! The first recorded strike in history took place in Egypt some 3,200 years ago! The ‘Strike Papyrus’ records that tomb workers of King Ramesses III downed tools over pay and conditions circa 1157 BC! Museo Egizio, Turin 📷 by me #Archaeology

As a theoretical physicist and former spacecraft engineer, I endorse this .

This annoyed me so much I had to write a thing. www.physicsmatt.com/blog/2025/12...

Ongoing decimation of British universities part 252: Apx. 1000 academic staff at University of Essex just received formal ‘risk of redundancy’ letters via email. Please share @ucuessex.bsky.social @ucu.org.uk

The basic truth of all claims about immigrants is that immigrants are just, you know, people, and therefore what is true for any human in the UK working in one field is also true of an immigrant in that one: www.ft.com/content/10da...

arXiv is making some additional changes to stem the flow of generative AI slop and related problematic submissions blog.arxiv.org/2025/12/10/u...

Tighter visa rules will cost UK up to £10.8bn giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

This is absolutely crazy from start to finish: that researchers think it is OK to use such a data set and that springer nature accepted for publications >40 papers based on it (and who knows how many more submitted to other journals.)!

How the fuck did Nigel Farage, with this behavior, not only wasnt expelled, but actually became a *school prefect* at Dulwich College?

For subscribers: I wrote a long read about belts as talismans but also how to buy a good one, and how to look very, very expensive if that’s your thing www.patreon.com/posts/how-to...

Where might we go instead to think through GenAI and bias against human researchers? Perhaps those fuddy-duddy and yet "woke" Humanities types? Actually, no. I'd go to the Physicists. IOP is a class act, and they're already thinking critically this space. 5/6

If you’re searching for a gift for someone who loves real science — not the click-bait shortcuts — Battle of the Big Bang might be the cosmic spark you’re looking for. (1/3)

A government with no overarching plan. Only individual metrics to hit among departments which do not talk to each other.

Rightly lots of debates about growth this weekend - rightly because it was low productivity growth that saw wages entirely flatline during the 2010s.

Fucking idiots

A microcosm of our sick media culture prioritising outrage instead of actual policy discourse

And yet only ~30% of voters support this with >50% opposed.

Kinnock voice - "I’ll tell you what happens with impossible promises. You start with far-fetched resolutions....and you end up in the grotesque chaos of a Labour government, a *Labour* government, rejecting visas for homeless 8 yr olds trying to joing their parents"

Requiring two reference letters for MSc applications while needing them before their final year project has finished (or even started) is stupid. Why do colleges even need 2 letters. It generates useless work for everyone.

Liverpool’s current travails remind me of a certain German manager last season at BVB: making lots of chances but unable to finish them, while being too easy to play through. I heard that manager got hired by some pretty good club later.

Dutch public broadcaster NOS quits X over disinformation reut.rs/3KpybRU

All the supposedly progressive people saying 'Nigel Farage's racism doesn't matter. His fans love it'. It matters whether the leader of the party leading all the opinion polls is an outright racist. It matters if he called black people 'wogs' and said 'gas them' to Jews. Not everything is a game