I don't know why anyone bothers trying to be cool because it's literally impossible to be cooler than these women on the stairs of the Bauhaus from the back of a book I'm reading.

Outlook for Android offers an "AI summary" of a document it won't let you open the original version of without downloading another App. What could possibly go wrong?

Why can't we have the 1977 Christmas Schedule 2.00 Top Of The Pops 3.00 The Queen Responds To The Sex Pistols On Top Of The Pops 3.15 Film: Star Wars recreated in the studio with Morecambe&Wise 5.30 The Archbishop of Canterbury and A.J.Ayer debate the existence of God 6.00 Cartoons 6.30 Closedown

1/n 2 NEW epic images of Phobos over Mars just released by @esa.int Mars Express This view is especially striking, with Phobos between the Tharsis volcanoes and Noctis Labyrinthus–Valles Marineris Full resolution 300MP(!) & info on: flic.kr/p/2rMW4so Credit: ESA/DLR/FUBerlin/AndreaLuck CC BY 🧪🔭

I enjoyed this podcast, which combines a bit of myth busting about Medieval Europe with some sociology of infectious diseases. youtu.be/nECpdIs_9Cg?...

Not to be that nerd who can't just sensibly chuckle along with a joke but almost all the modern technology that makes our lives longer and healthier is using Pythagorean and other results all the time.

In Bayesian inference we "buy information with assumptions" - preparing teaching for next year, we see how three different Gaussian process priors let us fill in some missing monthly temperature data for Bradford differently.

Call each other out, even if someone tells you it's not polite or respectful.

Clearly some in Labour have convinced themselves that comparing the Greens to Reform will make the scales fall from left-wing voters' eyes and they'll return to the fold, but really it just sounds like trivialising Farage's plans for mass forced deportation and (possibly ongoing) Nazi sympathies.

For context: savethevetschool.co.uk

Letter in yesterday’s Times that several of us @cambup-lifesci.cambridge.org medical professors signed www.thetimes.com/article/3171...

Very true. And while on coffee gripes, it's actually true that many places don't run their filter machines or have retired them so you really can't get "just a coffee" - by which people mean filter they just don't know the terminology - any more.

Long overdue - around the time Manchester's modern tram network was first being built the A to Z for Leeds had its proposed trams on because they seemed so likely but they never appeared to everyone's detriment.

Nobody at Microsoft works harder than the team whose job is to convince you to not install Google Chrome.

Two more fully funded PhDs in real-time infectious disease modelling & forecasting — developing methods for operational use by @ukhsa.bsky.social and others in outbreak response. UK home students, starting April or September 2026. www.lshtm.ac.uk/study/fees-a...

I never think too much soul searching about BlueSky is needed: (1) It's left leaning and from that perspective we're in the worst place for a century (2) It's all about TikTok anyway (3) You can combine shitposting and being serious in a moderately functional way and isn't that all we want?

Is there a package like tqdm, but which can take over the favicon if you're using Jupyter so that the sand in the hourglass falls into the bottom half at the right rate for the job you're running?

Just a shocking missed opportunity that this paper (a) develops a Bayesian approach to network community detection, tested on (b) Sampson’s Monastery Data—which is about conflict amongst a group of monks—but (c) is somehow *not* titled “Updating Your Prior”. www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~teh/researc...

Generative AI is amazing at tasks where I am not qualified to judge the output.

Lots of PhD positions on @iddjobs.org with Jan deadlines:

WATCH: Bystander disarms active shooter at Bondi Beach in Sydney

It’s astounding how broken the modern internet is. Nobody tests their apps or websites against slow or patchy internet connections any longer. Even large, popular apps & social media break so so easily. Wait until you travel internationally to see what I mean.

It crops up every Xmas and I always post it, because I love it. Ian Curtis at his office Xmas party.

Some thoughts on the situation with influenza: (1) It is serious every year; (2) It may be more serious this year, or just earlier, we don't know (I predict a little of both); (3) Even with community interventions like vaccination, we need more hospital capacity. www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZgF...

Seems sensible - the Barbican and Leeds Uni are wonderful at their best. The Barbican refurbishment should take heed of Leeds | Letter www.theguardian.com/artanddesign...

I guess it's fitting that it's a reimagined, worse version of someone else's artwork

Re-posting with alt text because the post accompanying this is obviously wrong, it's clearly a picture of a woman on a Crosscountry train having found a place to sit on the floor and read, her coffee cup beside her, folks queuing for the loo behind her

Mounting debt crisis means global South governments are spending on average 15% of their revenue servicing external debt. This figure has doubled since 2010. More than 3.4 billion people now live in countries that spend more on interest payments than on health or education.

What's interesting about this is these questions are easily answered in many countries of the world. But they are asked in the same tone here about keeping faeces out of the water ("Nice idea, but who would pay for it?") and in other countries about other things, as a way of undermining perfectly >

Life expectancy in the UK has recovered to pre-pandemic levels. Yesterday, ONS released the latest National Life Tables and analysis of life expectancy in the UK. This is so called "period life expectancy", an objective but necessarily backwards-looking calculation. www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopula...

For some reason I saw this again in my notifications, and it's a very fun calculation and paper.

This Calibri story is wild when you consider the US Government designed and open sourced a far better looking sans serif font, Public Sans (public-sans.digital.gov) www.theguardian.com/artanddesign...

This is actually a very important act because it serves to remind everyone that you too can participate in democracy and get laws you want passed if you rock up with a big enough pile of money.

🙋‍♀️Is it "stop being mean to researchers and their families getting visas and citizenship"?

I was awarded the Leslie Nielsen trophy at school. What's that? Well it's a big building full of kids, but that's not important now.

How many "shots" didn't make the cut were worse than the woman getting off a tram then floating in the air?

So, some people here are concerned with the sentence in this document that, "it will not be possible to halt the spread of a new pandemic virus, and it would be a waste of public health resources and capacity to attempt to do so" - what does it this mean? 🧵/1 www.england.nhs.uk/long-read/fr...

I saw discussion of loneliness picking up elsewhere here - it's a huge problem, and a shame it's become gendered as "the male loneliness epidemic" when it seems like quite a general phenomenon across all demographics.

If you see this, repost with your model of positive masculinity.

My dad abhors any negative comments about immigrants. Asked him recently why he’s so strong on it: ‘Because we’re always happy to take the rich and clever ones. Which means it’s not about disliking immigrants. It’s about disliking the poor and vulnerable. And that’s a bad human instinct.’

This article is always worth reading in the context of any vaccine safety discussion. Nothing is 100% safe, and if several hundred million people do almost anything then there will be deaths - but vaccines are much *safer* than the infections they work against. theconversation.com/andrew-bridg...

Taiwanese ambassador to Finland performs with his metal band at Taiwan-Finland cultural event! 🤘✊️ That's what I call great ambassador

Interesting — & sad — obituary… “The image, titled “Burst of Joy,” won the Pulitzer Prize for feature photography in 1974. But the familial joy in that homecoming image belied a harsher reality.” www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/arti...

Although very distinguished, the Wykeham Professor is required to fight Mike Tyson, a fact that is strangely omitted in the job description. #philsky philjobs.org/job/show/30445

Maybe this is why I'll never be a political commentator, but I just don't see how naming someone with a postgraduate degree in Economics and former financier who runs a popular economics YouTube channel (Polanski) is comparable to wanting to deport a city's worth of foreigners and having >

Go tell someone that their work is cool today Isn’t that what those corresponding author emails are for?

This is interesting from OpenSAFELY. A thorough analysis of associations between COVID and gastrointestinal diseases. I suspect there are similar with other viruses called "respiratory" like RSV but it's harder to do the studies.

Yes this does have great fun potential. You ask a chatbot how you would ruin the next generation. Here's mine.