I've seen the 50% cost unit spiral thing in action first-hand. What it inevitably produces, what it must produce in order to get to that magical 50%, is far smaller course teams (was less salary costs), and fewer courses on offer. It never, ever, goes the other way.

It's the caring labour of coding that is constantly rendered invisible. Real Men move fast and heroically break things, ripping the future into the present whether we like it or not. Caring whether it's fit for purpose and methodically examining what's being proposed to assess it is for pussies.

Time for our weekly reminder that there is only one ed tech investment that is proven to work, and it's hiring more teachers and paying them better.

hate when reverse centaur keeps happening

The next answer would be: then formalise the proof and check it with a computer. Our paper discusses autoformalisation a bit, and how the dangers are still present. For example, an LLM might formalise a proof to something true but trivial, rather than the intended theorem.

The situation of mathematicians checking the work of mathematicians isn't always great and many mistakes are not spotted. But LLMs are worse: they are software designed to sound right and authoritative, but can make mistakes in all kinds of ways, including mistakes that no human would make.

In that case, the mathematician becomes the reverse centaur i.e. a horse head making decisions and held aloft by puny human legs (worst of both a human and horse!). Humans are supposed to be keeping vigilant for mistakes and errors, but they are not particularly good at this.

New paper! Joint work with @asgeirberg.bsky.social "The Philosophical Prospects of Large Language Models in the Future of Mathematics" Online now in the Annals of Mathematics and Philosophy: mxphi.com/wp-content/u... Please share it with anyone interested in LLMs and Mathematics! 🧵

always here for a good Terry Tao Takedown

The Science Policy Research Unit at the University of Sussex appear to be spamming researchers demanding unpaid labour which they claim is "crucial" for their research project on "Metascience Novelty Indicators". I have a novelty indicator for them. It is digital, and highly expressive.

Got mine this morning. Told them I didn’t consent to being part of their study, to remove my personal data, and never contact me again. Don’t work for free, and especially don’t work for free for anything that seems to be scraping your free work for slopAI metric nonsense

From digital sovereignty to age verification and Online Safety, UK policy is facing serious problems. Policymakers are demanding irreconcilable technical features, leaving much of the implementation in the hands of big tech, and risking handing further power to big US firms

people are underselling the role of Misha Gromov as a fixer for Epstein, someone who helps him extend his network of influence by softening his reputation and making high profile introductions. Perhaps non-mathematicians won't know these names but this is not a small thing

⬇️ exactly this & where much of the investment is increasingly coming from, not public markets but private credit, pension and 🥁 insurance funds…

"A budget is a statement of our values..." Would be nice to hear this reflected in how we discuss financial modelling in UK HE. Currently, we seems to stuck at "number go up, number go down" rather than what kind of institution are we and why?

honestly one of my favourite features of living in the UK is how many strong bottom line political arguments here boil down to "NHS is Good"

So this is a very early (1954) attempt to illustrate what the fallout implications of high-yield nuclear weapons are for war — basically just putting the Castle BRAVO fallout pattern over possible US targets... ...and I can't stop thinking about how ridiculously, hilariously phallic they all look.

working at a wealthy uni that continues to rank highly and report a surplus and yet somehow is well into the items on tweet 3/4, thanks consultants

Nepworking, pass it on.

This came out two weeks ago ago but I missed it: The French Mathematical Society has announced that they will not attend the ICM in Philadelphia. Other national societies should follow suit until the ICM is relocated. (Translation in alt text.) 🧮 smf.emath.fr/actualites-s...

Academic publishing is currently experiencing a viral spread of “zombie citations.” I tried following one to see how these references are infecting academic knowledge systems codeactsineducation.wordpress.com/2026/01/30/t...

yet still further pondering

my dad didn’t go to university and he was extremely happy to pay taxes for his four children to do so; and, indeed, for the doctors who treated him at Addenbrookes to have gone to university as well.

Great work by @ucuedinburgh.bsky.social on UoE's latest financial report. Depressing that a university doing pretty damn well financially (no deficit) compared to most of the sector choosing to destroy itself, and staff are all just sitting helplessly in the backseat of a slow motion car crash.

New analysis from @ucuedinburgh.bsky.social & fellow Unions. Sizeable surplus @ Edinburgh Uni Financial pressure is from irresponsible capital spending & depreciation Management metrics mislead Redundancies hit financial strength & Uni’s academic mission www.ucuedinburgh.org.uk/blog/depreci...

The UK government is proposing radical and punitive changes to settlement rules. This is settlement, not citizenship. The consultation is open until 12 February; please respond to it and oppose these evil proposals. Amnesty have a good guide: www.amnesty.org.uk/resources/gu...

IASH offers many opportunities to do a research stay in Edinburgh, including the Edinburgh Environmental Humanities Fellowship. Take a look if that's ok interest.

the SMF also led a boycott (withdrawn) of the 1950 USA ICM over the issue of visas, plus ça change

The Mathematical Society of France will not be at the 2026 International Congress of Mathematicians, to be held in Philadelphia. This is great news. I hope other mathematical societies pull out as well. It would help if the @amermathsoc.bsky.social also declined to participate, in solidarity.

La SMF ne tiendra pas de stand au Congrès International des Mathématiciens (ICM) de Philadelphie en 2026. (1/3) (Motion du Conseil d'Administration du 16 janvier 2026) smf.emath.fr/actualites-s...

Here's the type of email response you get when you try to do anything at UoE now. Teams are struggling. Processes are gummed up, slow. External partners are frustrated. The reputation of the uni suffers. And it's so embarrassing. Everyone is doing their best, myself included.

Missing from the coverage of redundancies at Edinburgh: this was done in such a haphazard, uncoordinated way, there are now core teams who have gone from 5 people to 1 with no change in workload or pressure and huge loss in knowledge of institutional process. www.heraldscotland.com/news/2576321...

Three short paragraphs, and you've got the whole mind-bending mess that is #UKHE finance & governance neatly laid out. This is why it's all so exhausting: our managers declare there's only one static frame, while we know their framing is part of the issue. 💡 www.hepi.ac.uk/2026/01/10/w...

new year, new design for my website mbarany.com

I've heard through the grapevine about a few UK universities using research metrics to make redundancy or performance management decisions, and it's really troubling, but I think there is scope to push back and hold institutions to account. #AcademicSky

i'm glad i spent most of my life learning how to read unreliable texts.

Might be worth reminding any AMS officers or council members you see next week #disruptJMM

On 22 Feb 2022, shortly before the planned host of that year's International Congress of Mathematicians launched a "special military operation" in the territory of a sovereign neighbour, the American Mathematical Society released this statement: www.ams.org/news?news_id...

My Kingdom for a Dean of Actually To Be Honest Just Get On With Core Business

new year, new design for my website mbarany.com

ok ambitious niche university theatre directors, this is your moment

Oh and there's a gag as people are getting seated in the audience. Someone on stage keeps shouting "Do we have a quorum yet?" and a head keeps poking out from behind the curtain to say "only 62 more needed!" etc as it gets closer to showtime.

Anyway, the motion carries with no significant amendments (a serial comma is struck but then replaced). Justice is done. "This meeting is adjourned" is the triumphant closing number.

I had a dream about a musical called "Faculty Meeting" and weirdly it was good? The first number is about someone objecting to approving the minutes without unanimous consent but not offering a correction. This is how we meet The Parliamentarian, our narrator.

Second-hand book find of the week is this 1895 biography of the Russian mathematician (and author and nihilist), Sophie Kowalevski by friend, fellow author and Swedish feminist activist Carlotta Leffler. It’s a curious and significant book…

pay attention

Some initial thoughts on @samuelmoore.org's book eve.gd/2025/12/26/a...

and also younger students, as long as we're fantasizing