news from PySAL world: we have a new package in the ecosystem(!) As of today, `gwlearn` is available in package managers. It provides a suite of tools for geographically weighted machine learning using a sklearn API. pysal.org/gwlearn/v0.1... great work by lead author @martinfleischmann.net

We extracted (parts of) 12 books in experiments with 4 frontier-lab, production LLMs. We prompted the LLMs with a short prefix of a book and asked them to complete the rest. For Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, we extracted 95.8% of the book from jailbroken Claude 3.7 Sonnet.

Since Jan 1 2025, which feels like four trillion years ago, research has been shared on here 5 million whole-ass times. Bluesky recently passed 2 billion posts IN TOTAL. So 0.25% of the entire site's traffic was citations to research. That is actually massively high. Is it? Yes. Here's why.

The Geography of the Labour Force Composition in the Netherlands by Ate Poorthuis (doi.org/10.1111/tesg...). One of the best uses of the centered ternary balance scheme (www.demographic-research.org/articles/vol...) I've seen so far. Build with tricolore github.com/jschoeley/tr... @ikashnitsky.phd

'Despite all their difficulties, universities remain an enormous and irreplaceable national asset. As well as educating millions of people, they generate about £24bn in export earnings, which is about 1% of GDP – more than aircraft manufacturing and legal services combined'. 1/2

'The white paper places the responsibility to fix the sector’s challenges on individual providers rather than on offering... policy support. The autumn budget illustrated this lack of joined-up thinking, introducing an international student levy that will negate the uplift in tuition fees. 1/3

Struck by how useful I have found GPT for working through #quarto and #LaTeX issues on a project, but also how many times it took me down dead ends that we only got out of because I had sufficient context/knowledge to reframe. I just don’t know how we get our students to that point.

Fully-funded UCL-EPSRC studentships 🌍 Applications now open for the 2026–27 Landscape Award four year studentships, including within BSSC, BSEER & CASA. 🔗 Apply by 05 January: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/epsrc-doctoral-training/prospective-students/ucl-epsrc-landscape-award-uela-studentships

The R&R benefits of the festive season and some quality time in the Highlands have not survived past the first five minutes of contact with my MS to do list. But here’s a nice photo of a Scots pine from that period.

Allocate research funding by sortition. Then you can do the work of submitting a plan for what you'll do with the money, once you know you've got the money. And put the research office resources into post-award support. Oh, and increase base funding for research activities in HEIs.

« Pour maintenir le taux d’encadrement actuel des étudiants, il conviendrait au total de recruter à un rythme multiplié par 1,28 par rapport à la période 2018-2024, calcule la note. » www.lemonde.fr/campus/artic...

2025 has been a rotten year for most early career postdoctoral researchers, especially in Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences. For a better 2026, check out (or repost) this short thread on a free resource for UK-based SHAPE PhDs within 10 years (excluding career breaks) of the doctorate. 1/3

Quick visit to see the extended family’s new neighbours before getting started on the festive cooking. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🦫

My favourite example of this in geography is Cairncross’ _Death of Distance_. It may be wrong about quite a few things, but does not really say (IMO) the one thing most people accuse it of being wrong about. Easy but incorrect signalling.

Peak middle age: my garden makes a brief appearance on Gardeners’ Question Time! www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/... (beware if I gift you an elder)

Closing out my year with a journal editor shocker 🧵 Checking new manuscripts today I reviewed a paper attributing 2 papers to me I did not write. A daft thing for an author to do of course. But intrigued I web searched up one of the titles and that's when it got real weird...

did you see this?

Just published in Nature Cities, a study led by recent CASA PhD graduate Andrew Renninger advances our understanding of urban inequality by focusing on experienced socioeconomic segregation, or daily encounters between individuals of differing socio-economic groups. www.nature.com/articles/s44...

Likewise with university marking and the legal principal of academic judgement. Sacrifice the exercise of academic judgement and expect your marking decisions to be contestable in English courts.

@casaucl.bsky.social @ the #V&A Storehouse before stepping it up a bit with classic arcade games for an end of term 🎉

CASA staff Philyoung Jeong and Dr Duncan Smith have published a new working paper on accessibility to cycle routes in London, examining new cycling indicators for tracking cycle network development, gaps in the network and challenges faced by vulnerable cyclists. discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10...

Most US cities have rings of isolation in suburban areas and segregated pockets of near the urban core, shaped by race, wealth, and proximity to downtown, finds a new study of 383 American cities, led by Andrew Renninger @casaucl.bsky.social @thebartlettucl.bsky.social

🚨NEW PUBLICATION!🛥 64% of vessels operating within Scotland’s Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are not broadcasting AIS, meaning the majority of vessel activity within MPAs is invisible to the most frequently used monitoring and management systems.

A twofold plight: for researchers and for Library staff (some of whom are also researchers). Past time for DCMS to take note.

I find it so depressing that stuff in my area in need of complete gutting is selling for the low, low price of £400k. www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/1...

Can live data streams from sensors - ‘digital twins’ - cut energy use & carbon emissions in university buildings? A new study by CASA doctoral student William Markiewicz & Prof Duncan Wilson focuses on UCL & Yale buildings, finding major efficiency issues at both sites. doi.org/10.3389/fene...

'the thing that’s been really nagging at me since October is the cheek of proposing to fundamentally restructure quality assessment without looking at whether the National Student Survey (NSS) – which sits at its heart – is fit for the purpose OfS wants it to serve.'

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre... ooooh, i might know the answer to this one!

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025... — also missed a few classes the next day.

wow.. where did lets-plot.org come from? ...undeniably impressive, especially the the geo-support.

There’s quite a lot to like in here: wonkhe.com/blogs/high-q... However, there’s also a fair bit of optimism about the challenges that I find… optimistic. 1/6

Over 100 PhD and postdoc positions in pure maths funded at 7 English and Scottish universities by philanthropist who critiques government for failing to invest ('dereliction of duty') in a strategically vital field.

Dr Ollie Ballinger has contributed to the British Library’s latest exhibition, 'Secret Maps'. It includes his work with investigative journalism organisation Bellingcat on “dark ships", which disable their public tracking systems to hide their identity and activity. www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/new...

This highlights some of the obvious implications of densification and living small - no living room/lounge, no room for socialising, the end of the house party etc etc. @nospacelikehome.bsky.social www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...

CASA research in @nytimes.com: Ollie Ballinger built software to track naval vessels via open-source satellite data, revealing patterns in Caribbean maritime activity. Read the full story: www.nytimes.com/2025/11/21/w...

6/ Having a Community Right to Buy in England will be amazing, but it needs to be expansive, & apply to all land & property that communities value - for social, economic & environmental reasons. Doing so would allow communities to dream bigger: www.powertochange.org.uk/evidence-and...

Right, just going to sit down to do some exam marking and… oh god, is that the state of the house, well we can’t let that go on. So first it’s a deep clean and then… my word, the back garden really is in a state but then… my bike chain is simply…

By 2030, all Plan 2 graduates working full time will have to make some repayments on their loan because the threshold for repayment will be about the same as the minimum wage. At that point we can properly call it a graduate tax. www.ft.com/content/13a0...

For personal and professional reasons I find this a deeply problematic take on 'the liberal arts' for multiple reasons: www.theguardian.com/education/20.... 1/n

Anyone using #podman on a #Mac know how to deal with permission issues for writing to the host system? On some can only write after chmod’ing to 0777 / 0666 as appropriate. Obviously to do with mapping user/group from container to host but can’t seem to find magic params to address this.

States of precarity in UK Higher Education Geography – report I am late to highlighting the publication of the important RGS-IBG report States of precarity in UK Higher Education geography. I encourage anyone in academia but especially those of us in geography as a discipline to read and think…

🥳 Brilliant news that the government are consulting on giving mayors the power to implement a levy on overnight stays. 📈 More power and resources in places means that communities can take charge of their own destiny. www.gov.uk/government/n...

OCTOBER UPDATE Who Owns Scotland now published with total of 4850 landholdings (76.55% rural Scotland). The project is financed solely by subscription income which is not rising as fast as expansion expenditure so may have to slow the project down. Subscriptions start at £5 whoownsscotland.org.uk

'The economic impact of international students in the UK surged from £31.3 billion in 2018/19 to £41.9 billion by 2021/22. On average, every parliamentary constituency in Britain benefits by £58 million.' 1/3

@alexsingleton.bsky.social Not loving link rot. Do you happen have the 2001 #OAC classifications handy? I’ve found the boundaries but no one seems to have the data including GeoDS.

Worth noting: • Upward revision applies to entire 2021-2024 series — the *trend* in emigration is *roughly* flat • As infuriating as big revisions are, they mean data is getting better • BUT wild that we ever used a survey to gauge movements into and out of the country instead of counting people!

I’ve written a piece on the curious lack of media and political interest in the issues faced by our national @britishlibrary.bsky.social. This is strange given we live in a world where ideas, knowledge and research are a long-term source of innovation and insight www.cityam.com/the-british-...

I’m darkly amused that the rationale of “we can’t spook the bond markets” has, in fact, just spooked the bond markets. + lot of regressive tinkering that undermines decent ideas on climate while intensely annoying lots of people over one thing far more than ‘all in it together’ income tax rises.

Or, hear me out, you could look at how energy is priced: www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Get ready to apply for The Bartlett Promise Sub-Saharan Africa Master’s Scholarship 🎓 Secure your master's place in order to apply! 🔗 More info: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/study/scholarships-and-funding/bartlett-promise-scholarship/bartlett-promise-sub-saharan-africa-masters-scholarship