Cambridge University is recruiting for a new faculty position in the area of Algorithms and Complexity: www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/univers...

AI companionship From the new Private Eye, out now.

Imagine doing all this and then finding out on Wikipedia that the travelling salesman problem is NP-hard and thus nobody believes that it can actually be efficiently solved on a quantum computer.

Sand batteries are literally just silos of sand that retain heat exceptionally well -- so well that they can be tied to heat exchange systems to serve as proxy *electrical* batteries. Finland's new model can store enough power (100 MWh) to heat an entire town for a week. newatlas.com/energy/large...

Job advert, #hiring : 1-year postdoc research position, CS Dept, Oxford University Keywords: game theory, optimisation, machine learning Project details and further links: www.cs.ox.ac.uk/people/paul....

Talking to young people about pensions, especially state pensions, is like trying to explain to your dog that planet Earth revolves around the sun

The Wikipedia page on supply-side economics is about 10 times as long as the Wikipedia page on demand-side economics. I'm not sure whether to conclude that the former is a more mainstream and reputable concept, or whether this is a case of "when you're explaining, you're losing".

Best clickbait I've ever seen! (seen when opening a new tab in Firefox)

D. Carlos Akkar Optimally Dictatorial Committees https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.21699

💥New: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says all those pleases and thank yous to #ChatGPT cost OpenAI tens of millions in electricity. But Moritz Sahlender argues we should still speak to #AI with courtesy. The way we talk to machines shapes how we relate to each other, and civility is worth practicing 🤝

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Fake rooms: Pinterest boards may be a fantasy, but AI is spoiling the fun https://on.ft.com/4mbBLfU | opinion

NIH to Limit AI Use, Cap P.I. Grant Applications at 6 per Year www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty...

I get tempted to fix the punctuation on these signs, which should really say "Cyclists: Dismount!"

amusing New Yorker cartoon from 50 years ago

Reminder that the submission deadline for WINE 2025 is getting close! WINE 2025: The 21st Conference on Web and Internet Economics, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, USA, December 8–11, 2025 wine2025.cs.rutgers.edu#call-for-pap...

Yet another paper about fair division! We give a Ptime algorithm for sharing between 2 agents having "weakly well-layered" valuation functions (a class that contains "cancelable" valuations, missing from the diagram). doi.org/10.1016/j.tc...

This video is an excellent introduction to new or recently-built places that pose a challenge to so-called "traffic modernism", and which aim to be beautiful and sustainable. Maybe it's over-optimistic? I still see way too many soulless high-rise blocks and sprawling suburbs under construction.

PhD thesis (noun): 1.) The research report submitted by a PhD candidate 2.) (informal) An unusually long exam script

It has been brought to my attention that the shirt I was wearing at jecco2025.gitlab.io bears a slight resemblance to the Bananas' pajamas (photo credit: Nicholas Teh)

Came across the word "panchreston" in one of the comments, and now feel like my day has not been wasted

trying to update my details on my @timeshighered.bsky.social account, they know how to make me feel at home...

or as I sometimes tell myself, the first step towards getting this paper reviewed is to _print_ it, which I will now proceed to do.

I just tried searching for the phrase "yes-instance" and I see a notable lack of consensus as to whether the phrase should be hyphenated, or whether "yes" should be capitalised, italicised, or placed in quotes. Does anyone have any strong recommendations on this matter?

50 years ago today, Britain voted to stay in the Common Market. Lord Steel reflects on the 1975 referendum, its legacy, and why closer ties with Europe still matter today. Watch his story now. www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1Js...

Having to share a train carriage with a bunch of people all talking loudly in a foreign language is a damn good cure for wokeness

It is tempting to lament that people in the democratic world often fail to vote responsibly. But on reflection, a problem with the idea of "voting responsibly" is that it feels like an accepting an invitation to reapply for one's own job.

A regrettable observation: even if Europe quit importing Russian oil/gas directly, our other oil/gas imports would still help Russia indirectly via driving up the prices of oil/gas. In the long term, dependence on imported energy is a horrible position to be in.

So far I've had 4 PhD students who got married while under my supervision, and I hereby promote this fact as some sort of badge of academic prowess. Unless you all tell me your corresponding number is higher, in which case forget about it

Nice to see ranked choice voting in New York www.nycvotes.org/rcv

Quanta article on Ryan's space vs time result www.quantamagazine.o...

My cartoon for this week’s @theguardian.com Books

If, like me, your paper was not accepted to ACM EC, please consider submitting it to ACM TEAC or other journals. Why bother with journals? Some thoughts dl.acm.org/journal/teac

If, like me, your paper was not accepted to ACM EC, please consider submitting it to ACM TEAC or other journals. Why bother with journals? Some thoughts dl.acm.org/journal/teac

Call for papers: WINE 2025: The 21st Conference on Web and Internet Economics wine2025.cs.rutgers.edu#call-for-pap...

Happy Europe Day, folks. Here is an insightful article in The Economist from a few weeks ago, that helps explain the slow pace of recovery of the UK's relationship with Europe.

Here is a Charles Addams cartoon from 50 years ago. I'm afraid its message seems to have aged badly

Pro tip: when writing support letters for younger colleagues' promotion cases, never read the descriptors of what they're supposed to be achieving. You end up concluding you'd never get the promotion if you were the one applying for it.

2025 Symposium on Algorithmic Game Theory, abstract submission by 20 May 2025 www.bath.ac.uk/events/the-i...

Advice for academics who send spammy emails to journal editors with Special Issue proposals: Stop using ChatGPT to compose the email. The emails all acquire a saminess that make my eyes glaze over and I decline the proposition without even reading it. Oh, and never use the word "esteemed".

I recently heard the phrase "epistemic balkanisation" and now intend to use it whenever I get the chance

The 1st UK Workshop for Junior Researchers in Economics and Computation (JECCO UK 2025) will take place on June 15 – 16, 2025, at the University of Edinburgh, UK. jecco2025.gitlab.io

In the context of government spending, overseas aid is politically-easy to cut. Its presence in a national budget represents fiscal headroom. For that reason, spending on overseas aid is a sign of strength, and cuts in overseas aid are a sign of weakness.

I support Europe's efforts to spend more on defence, but let us recall this warning from 50 years ago

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Your occasional reminder that AI is going to put us all out of work

I love the smell of coauthors-beavering-away-at-joint-work in the morning 😍