We had one of those moments this morning where some results that had been puzzling us (me, other faculty, and a graduate student) for about a year suddenly made a lot of sense. Rollercoaster of emotions.

I wonder how much of this kind of quiet change is happening? E.g., IT Services at my employer quietly removed their X feed and now have a BlueSky and Facebook link on their page - any organisation with a serious DEI policy may be doing the same without fanfare. www.itservices.manchester.ac.uk

New book klaxon: I finally piss EVERYONE off! What happens when you put health on platforms geared for shopping, PR & entertainment? What's medicine and what's marketing? And what impact is it having on health? (In public health lingo -it's commercial meets digital determinants of health)

I wonder how much of this kind of quiet change is happening? E.g., IT Services at my employer quietly removed their X feed and now have a BlueSky and Facebook link on their page - any organisation with a serious DEI policy may be doing the same without fanfare. www.itservices.manchester.ac.uk

The discussion around autism has all sorts of facets that can lead to misunderstanding. One important one is that although, given a broader conceptualisation of the condition there are now many who are diagnosed with it living happy, independent lives, there does remain an important number >

Some fun news: We're hiring! Lectureship (analogous to Assistant Prof.) in Statistical Science and AI, in the School of Mathematics, University of Bristol. Closing date 13 October 2025; link below! www.bristol.ac.uk/jobs/find/de...

I saw this via "National Theatre Live" and it really is very good, an absolute tour do force from Pike for whom it's almost a monologue.

Bear stress

This article by Ben Ansell is well worth a read; one issue that I often think about as well with the talk of "white British" is that there are millions of people who have "mixed-race" backgrounds - Stephen Graham recently raised eyebrows by mentioning his when he didn't "look" a certain way >

Nice post you got there, it'd be a shame if I deliberately missed your point so I could be tedious about it

It's not really a Gen X complaint (we were largely taught to bottle our feelings up and let them explode later in unhealthy ways) but I do note that most discussion of Generations does seem to jump straight from Boomers to Millennials.

British artists reclaim St George’s flag with a message of inclusivity

At the risk of discourse about discourse about discourse, all the nonsense with X happened immediately after Twitter had been unprecedentedly important because everyone was in lockdown and there wasn't much else to do. It's TikTok's world now, no microblogging site would have much impact anyway.

Our past selves can do unconscionably wicked things to our future selves. Case in point, much of last week my past self packed a Nakd bar for lunch when there were perfectly good KitKats to hand.

I think about this from time to time.

People familiar with drinking culture on Tyneside will not be surprised.

This is a good paper, but it's a shame that the response to Clarivate excluding Maths from its subject rankings is a load of soul-searching from mathematicians rather than "well your rankings can't be that good if a few dodgy papers bias them". arxiv.org/abs/2509.07257

What do baby parabolas drink? Quadratic formula!

We're advertising a PhD position! 😎 Modelling the epidemiological impact of HIV prophylaxis on a backdrop of social, cultural, and behavioural complexity www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

"Name a delicious food from each bit of this odd partition" seems more fun, e.g. A. Comte B. Pierogi C. Houmous D. Masala Dosa E. Injera F. Jollof Rice G. Mole H. Everything bagel

Proposal for how to fix family wise error rates. For every uncorrected p value you must add an extra letter to the claim. “Eating chocolate maaaaaaaaay be associated with lower rates of stroke”

Once it was suggested to me that you could have a 100m fall, where you start stood up wearing 100m high shoes and just tip yourself off balance so you fall over the finish line - Can you work out if this beats top-quality sprinters or not? (I think I know the answer.)

This is an important point - as the Overton window moves right, increasing objectively inhumane policies will be just what "nice, ordinary" people think. Meanwhile millions of British citizens are terrified of the fascist-led marches their neighbours are participating in.

Chris Whitty bringing a huge amount of scepticism and sense to 'misinformation' debate. He's not focusing on individuals but the behaviour of the likes tobacco, fossil fuel and drug companies @lshtm.bsky.social

Honestly, seeing all the Union Jack flags put up in Salford and the marchers on TV just makes me feel all the bad feelings: angry with the people doing it; worried for others including loved ones; like I don't belong where I live. But mainly scared. What does the future hold?

If only history had provided us with an example that everyone agreed they would definitely oppose if it happened again, where a Government influenced by street thugs first persecutes an ethnic minority like Mexicans, then a political trend like leftism, then ...

And the Labour government - *Kinnock voice* the LABOUR government - thinks that's all just a wonderful display of free speech, while they also go about arresting pensioners for wearing Palestine Action t-shirts. Because the parasite-king Morgan McSweeney decided he wants racist votes.

If only history had provided us with an example that everyone agreed they would definitely oppose if it happened again, where a Government influenced by street thugs first persecutes an ethnic minority like Mexicans, then a political trend like leftism, then ...

I don't agree with all of this article (which as we all know is no reason not to share it) but it makes clear just how ridiculous current UK immigration policy is in terms of cost and effort. Under the new proposal a UK citizen could marry another national and their kids be in high school before >

This equates to 0.5 micromorts for each person receiving a vaccination course (usually several vaccines) That is less than the mortality risk for a single day of skiing (0.7 micromorts)

I would see the appeal of 40K more if these were the vibes.

This group of UK-based LGBTQIA+ and allied members of the UK mathematics community is self-organising to support mathematicians, and have a pun in their name, so are likely of interest to many peeps I know here! bsky.app/profile/qedm...

Despite easily being the most British fighting vehicle ever developed, the mock-Tudor AT-AT programme was sadly cancelled due to budgetary concerns

This is roughly how things split in many European countries - about 1/5 each for: Left of Social Democracy; Social Democracy; Liberals; Conservative; Right of Conservative. What FPTP delivers of course is the wonderful outcome that similar total vote shares can yield either a majority or zero MPs.

Not Simon Jenkins for a change. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Does anyone know why English imported "Rendezvous" for a meeting place usually intended to include the speaker, so it should strictly be a "Rendons-nous"? (Removing the hyphen to anglicise seems fine but the lack of logic is upsetting.)

Just became aware of this, which highlights the issues with simplistic reduction of planning requirements - yes, we need to build and some of the restrictions on that don't get modern cost benefits right, but basic standards of housing are there for a reason. www.tcpa.org.uk/collection/c...

OTD in 1936, the last known thylacine—a wolf-like marsupial known as the Tasmanian tiger—died at the Hobart Zoo in Tasmania. The animal’s passing marked the extinction of its species & underscores the need to protect our planet’s wildlife. Photo: Tasmanian Archives, PD, Wikimedia Commons

All the people writing annoying opinion pieces about BlueSky don't seem to realise that it's where Michael Stipe is letting us know the lyrics to "It's the End of the World as we Know It". (Paging @kallmemeg.bsky.social in case you're missing this tremendous cultural event.)

"Horseshoe" and "fishhook" and whatever theory are nonsense, but it's often interesting to see where there are principled agreements across political divides, with a big one of those at the moment being immigration. It's something where readers or The Economist as well as The Guardian >

Theseus the Tank Engine

One of the greatest errors in K-12 education, in my opinion, is prioritizing trigonometry and calculus over statistics. Yes, trig and calc are important for many professions. Statistics are important for literacy.

Elena Zhang @ezhang77.bsky.social @tinywrenlit.bsky.social

Look I've said it before and I'll say it again: the way to stop all this wokery in the Universities is a massive cash injection, particularly a bit of a pay rise and our pensions back please. It's the only way to recruit lecturers who don't love Pol Pot and Ho Chi Minh.

Just one more -ome bro. I promise just one more -ome and we'll personalise medicine bro. It's just one more -ome bro please just one more. One more -ome and your doctor can measure them all and be certain which treatments will work for you bro. Oh bro cmon just a few £M more plus some AI bro ...

Where I live: "Our kid" Where I grew up: "Ey up"

Great opportunity for UK based early career researchers in fluid dynamics. Apply for funding for a short research visit to a collaborator. Deadline 4th Oct with a quick turnaround. Details at fluids.leeds.ac.uk/funding/

Arguments Yard, Whitby, photo c.1890.