Horrendous interview with @zackpolanski.bsky.social. Justin Webb — and his condescending tone — should be ashamed. No time left for any substantive discussion of Green economic policies with the majority spent with Justin trying to gotcha Zack over antisemitism. #r4today

Starmer's conference speech had a tone was a lot more left wing & progressive than I had expected—maybe he finally figured courting right wing is counterproductive. It didn't take long for ghoulish Starmer to come back with rowing back on asylum rights! #r4today

Happy that I have finally published this work at @epljournal.bsky.social which calculates the distribution of pandemic extinction times using only NPIs (yes lockdowns) & predicts that the covid pandemic could have been eliminated in a time of order months! iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1... ⚛️🧪

Labour's fiscal rule is austerity in all but name, but it does allow borrow to invest on long term projects, so why this dithering on rail & biotech investment?? I suspect they're still worried about total borrowing & so botching otherwise good investment policy. Utter incompetence! #r4today

My just published work with Frank Uhlmann at the Crick, which measures the shape changes of human chromosomes during mitosis. Our polymer simulations suggest that the loop capture mechanism of chromatin compaction can explain the out-of-eqm nature of longest arms & observed shape changes over time.

Nice to know that the sort of abuse I got growing up on the streets of London are now tacitly supported by the current Labour government by continuing to post on the platform X which allows this racial hatred to go unchecked.

The 1st half of #Romans @almeida.co.uk is intense with perfectly judged acting particularly from Kyle Soller. It ends with tantalising prospect of saying something profound about effect of toxic masculinity on society. Sadly, 2nd half loses that intensity & turns into a pastiche of cliches. Shame.

You're looking at a Morelet's Tree Frog (Agalychnis moreletii), and more importantly, she's looking at you. 🐸 They're also known as "Black-eyed Tree Frogs", for obvious reasons. Those big eyes collect light without acting like reflectors, allowing them to hunt at night.

Borrowing is up: good! It means there is net flow of money into economy to stimulate economic activity. And again why do we only have corporate economists invited by #r4today to comment on gov borrowing & as they have clear vested interest to speak on behalf of capital & not working people.

Some personal news: I've been fired from the Washington Post in the aftermath of the Charlie Kirk shooting. Thread incoming. substack.com/@karenattiah...

I wonder where is Emma Barnett's outrage of disproportionate mass arrests of grandmas holding a sign!! #r4today

#bbclaurak is woefully inadequate to hold sociopath Farage to account! Completely fluffed the question on his tax affairs.

Labour don't understand psychology of electorate: people vote Labour because—after 14 years of Tory austerity—they expect them to improve their lives—even those that now support Reform. They see Labour's ghoulish aping of Reform on immigration & think why not go for the genuine thing! #bbclaurak

Just listened to this & it was really exasperating, like having to argue to death with someone that 1+1=2! (Not factorial!)

Since this is apparently a resigning matter, I’ll just leave this here… www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

What makes this even more frustrating is the Tories did exactly the same thing, and it was one of things that destroyed them at the expense of Reform. The mechanism is so obvious.

Amol's introduction is inaccurate imo as currently AIs and LLMs are not thinking or acting independently, they produce output on prompt and it is based on statistical associations. #r4today

Ridiculous analysis by El-Erian relying on v slow supply side changes for growth. Economies are complex systems, which need gov spending as engine of activity with it's multiplier effect. Fiscal discipline will not lead to growth. #r4today

View from Circo de Soasa looking along Ordesa valley in the Spanish Pyrenees. This is one of my favourite landscapes, along with Yosemite valley and unlike Yosemite valley you can't just rock up in your car and get a spectacular view—it needs a semi-arduous hike to get there!! #landscapephotogtaphy

That "Hmm" was saying a lot there! #r4today

"it's not linear"—hallelujah! Almost everything is nonlinear like climate & effect of wild fires, as well as economics. Everyone at school should be taught (qualitatively) about nonlinearity & maybe we wouldn't have leaders that make bad decision based on belief everything is linear!! #r4today

Geometry and shade: "there is beauty everywhere, you just need to look" #lightandshade #industrialmetal #blackandwhite #geometric #geometry

This is very cool. It is thought that having a moon sufficiently large that causes tides could have been key to the evolution of life in Earth. So a large habitable moon orbiting a gas giant a Goldilocks distance from its sun would have a great chance of having complex life.. #r4today

I'm very pleased to share this work, which discovers a new material property of DNA—the bending friction— in essence how "sticky or viscous" DNA is as it bends & loops due to all the complex molecular interactions within itself & water @imperialcollegeldn.bsky.social @crick.ac.uk @ucl.ac.uk ⚛️🧪

It was great to see that rumoured plans to cut the tax-free threshold for Cash ISAs (but tellingly not Stocks and Shares ISAs) were absent from the Chancellor's Mansion House speech yesterday. But the fight isn't over yet 👇 positivemoney.org/uk/update/a-...

Researchers have found that inactivity is not the main cause of obesity. A new study published this week offers the best ways, in the long run, to avoid and treat obesity.

How did *trying* to get public spending under control work out for the Tories when in gov? Not so well. Govs don't exist to balance books and you can't run a country on the cheap. #bbclaurak

We need a mix of battery electric and hydrogen fuel cell cars, where the latter make far more sense for people living in flats or town houses.. instead, despite so few of them, hydrogen filling stations are closing, and the cars themselves remain very expensive ! #bbclaurak

We need to be hiring the best with competitive salaries and developing these systems in house — and importantly — outside the hype about AI that these companies generate to maintain investment. This should be treated as capital spending as it is investing in the technology infrastructure of the UK.

“pessimism of intellect, optimism of will” is like Feynman's warning after Challenger disaster:"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." Or Scotty: "you cannae break the laws of physics" no matter how much you might will it!🧪⚛️

Clearly we need a socialist alternative—when you offer real alternative to improve people's lives like Zohran Mamdani in NY it can be an antidote to Trump & nativism. But I worry that progressive vote will get fragmented unless without real coordination: new socialist, Greens & Lib Dems #r4today

Apparently they are AI generated. #r4today

It's absolutely ridiculous that the gov cost of borrowing is determined by soap opera. #r4today

Why are we only hearing one side of the story: bond markets are only interested in short term profits. What about long term cost of not spending on people, whether benefits, education, etc.. Also bad economics since people on lower incomes are more likely to spend money into economy #r4today

Wes Streeting kept saying that PIP payments are unsustainable: what does that mean? Financially unsustainable? So people who deserve payment won't get it because a finite budget. Unsustainable because people are getting payment because they shouldn't: where is evidence for this? #bbclaurak

Yes, but Streeting, why are we heading to authoritarianism by proscribing a non physically violent protest group Palestine Action? Again Derbyshire should have asked this. #bbclaurak

I think Derbyshire is much better than Kuenssberg, but she has missed the underlying driver of this PIP policy, which is a Labour gov that has a neoliberal economic mindset, that govs can't borrow or tax, as needed. This policy is completely unnecessary from a financial viewpoint. #bbclaurak

Where East Meets West Join us for a compelling evening as Ash Sarkar sits down with acclaimed historian and author William Dalrymple for a wide-ranging conversation at the crossroads of empire, resistance, and the long shadows of colonialism. Get tickets! dice.fm/event/92dq5d...

If you're listening only to #r4today you may not have heard that an Indian-American Muslim socialist is likely to become the next mayor of New York City!! A lesson perhaps that offering the chance of real change is an antidote to authoritarianism and nativism. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

This is very, very good news. ♥️🇺🇸

One thing to emphasize strongly is that funding to science is like oxygen to the brain. Temporarily restricting oxygen flow for ten minutes (while you figure your shit out) is going to have the same outcome as shutting oxygen off permanently. We are close to the ten minute mark.

Let's have years of debate about "Brejoining" 🤦‍♂️ FWIW I don't think we should join EU again, for single reason it would mean joining Eurozone, which is economically stupid & enforces neoliberal debt constraints on countries. But yes to Single Market and Customs Union. #EU #brexit

I am one of 108 Labour MPs who have signed this Reasoned Amendment to decline a Second Reading of the UC and PIP Bill. I do so particularly because disabled people have not been consulted and because it will drive thousands into poverty. commonsbusiness.parliament.uk/Document/957...

All because Mossadegh had the audacity to want Iranian oil wealth to be kept in Iran.. BTW Anglo-Iranian Oil Company later came known to be BP en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-P... #r4today

Just to reminder: we have theocratic authoritarian regime in Iran, because of corrupt & also authoritarian Shah before—but friendly to US & west so that's ok—which replaced moderate socialist democratically elected leader Mossadegh who was assassinated through a CIA & UK engineered coup! #BBClaurak

Twilight zone moment when Pierce Morgan and Zarah Sultana are on the same side!! #bbclaurak

We ask an expert scientist on ME to talk about ME. The BBC finally learnt lesson on climate change you don't ask people with unscientific opinions. But why when on gov debt & infrastructure spending do they almost always ask an economist from an investment bank! I wonder why? #r4today