I approve of this plan to pedestrianise the road in front of the BM, partly because I like that sort of thing and also because I was once nearly run over there, and would prefer not to be. Have never seen a teacher in a bin there: a blue plaque would’ve told me about it.

Introduce yourself with 5 animals you've seen in your back garden Garden snail, Cornu aspersum Banded snail, Cepaea spp Grey garden slug, Deroceras reticulatum Common black ant, Lasius niger Flea beetle, Phyllotreta and Psylliodes spp

Well done everyone, you've all done really well this week. Blimey it's been a tough one in many ways. But you have made it through and been as brilliant as you always are. Well done and all the best for the weekend.

He’s here! The internet’s favourite famously flammable festive feature, the one and only* Gävlebocken, a giant Yule goat of straw, is up in the castle square of Gävle and final adjustments are streaming online. www.visitgavle.se/sv/gavlebocken Good luck, @gavlebocken.bsky.social!

“I am asking everyone to make a contribution” sounds like Reeves is conducting a voluntary whip-round. The Chancellor doesn’t need political advice from me but it may be inexpedient to draw attention to the fact that there is a degree to which the tax system is partly voluntary at the top end.

“Synthetic wonder before the beauty of God’s creation” is something we can now get in quantity from LLMs. It probably doesn’t work as a tagline for them, but it might for an electronic post-punk band, or it might serve as an Iain M Banks Culture ship name.

Went to a school production of a musical last night and it’s given me a real lift. In general musicals are not my thing but seeing all those talented young people putting on a great show and loving it was genuinely heartwarming. Not the best ever technically, but pretty good, and so much hwyl.

Presumably this budget leak is just a ghastly mistake not a deliberate strategy as all other leaks were, but this has to be far and away the leakiest budget ever, and that used to be a really big deal and probably should still be.

Crisis in higher education? What crisis? The minister is correct that "you don’t wake up one day in insolvency" but a looming insolvency typically becomes *apparent* over a very short space of time - as we saw with Dundee University.

Last Friday, waiting in a GP surgery, I thought I’d lost Whamageddon super early. But I have realised it didn’t count: (a) it was a cover, not the original Wham version, and (b) it only starts on 1 December, or Advent if you’re being liturgical about it, so it was Too Soon. Not even Stir Up Sunday.

New favourite way of conveying millions vs billions vs trillions: a million minutes is about 2 years ago, 1 billion minutes is early Roman Empire, and 1 trillion minutes takes you well before the emergence of anatomically modern humans and nearer the origins of the genus Homo.

This is a real challenge of a job: Director General for Digital, Data and Technology at the ONS. Hope they can get someone excellent - with the profound challenges at the ONS this is going to be a very difficult gig. www.civilservicejobs.service.gov.uk/csr/jobs.cgi...

Well done everyone, you've all done really well this week! It has been a tough old week yet again in so many ways for so many of us ... and you've made it through anyway, because you're awesome. Well done, and all the best for the weekend.

Topical reminder of important historical events in relation to today’s opening day at the Ashes: the Emu War. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emu_War (I thought this used to have the standard Wikipedia war infoboxes enumerating belligerents, commanders, losses, etc, but alas not, and it’s semi-protected.)

We have a load of bad problems in higher and further education. It would be extraordinary if the dire cost pressures were *not* affecting quality.

Can't tell whether I'm at that stage of life where new things often seem outlandish or whether it is actually bizarre that a significant new public policy concern is safeguards on artificial intelligence being thwarted by "adversarial poetry".

Actually laughed out loud at discovering that all professors at Oxford (unless individually exempted) must accept headship of their department or faculty if asked. Yeah they’ve had problems with getting people to do it before, haven’t they?

Survey research has been in a downward spiral for decades: LLMs are administering the coup de grâce. As someone who’s spent much of their working life using surveys … Gulp. As I keep saying, many bad things happen when the price of custom plausible bullshit falls through the floor.

Haven’t seen Rice Krispies for years. I remember Snap having a chef’s hat; Pop has sensibly shifted to a baseball cap. But why has Crackle switched to a Phrygian cap from a sleeping cap? Realising I also didn’t ask as a kid about Smurfs and Phyrgian caps.

It is astonishing that the British Library is in such disarray and it’s not a bigger deal. Major catalogues still unavailable two years after the cyberattack, bitter strikes, and the new chief executive leaving abruptly.

"Many things have been omitted, and my ovals have" Ellipses ellipsis "Charlie did well by focusing everything on one point, like this curved mirror" Parabola parable (I cannot for the life of me pronounce hyperbole correctly now.)

Drinking loads of mead was, it seems, more of a heroic myth than a daily reality in Viking times … which is essentially how modern Viking-inspired mead-drinking works. That’s actually pretty cool if you ask me.

Oh this is fantastic news. Ian Linkletter has been fighting a ridiculous battle to be able to be critical of Proctorio for years and years. So glad it’s over.

Warren Buffett famously enjoys the same Coca-Cola as everyone else. Although his ownership relationship to the business probably makes it taste sweeter.

What a time to be alive. New DNA evidence is consistent with Hitler having right-sided cryptorchidism. A testicle missing from the scrotal sac can be in the abdomen or even the thigh, undeveloped, or absent completely. However, there is no anatomical basis for the location being the Albert Hall.

The internet's favourite flammable festive goat is on its way! The long run average is ~70% destruction, mostly burning, but the last five years have been much better: survived, burned, survived, eaten by birds, survived. Fingers crossed it'll make it again this year.

This is interesting - sticking with your usual coffee after cardioversion from atrial fibrillation seems to reduce recurrence compared to coming off it. I note, though, that caffeine withdrawal is pretty heavy stuff, and also the 100 coffee drinkers had two myocardial infarctions compared to none.

“LUCA was a prokaryote-grade anaerobic acetogen” kind of sounds like they’re insulting our mutual great^grandparent by insinuating they were like bacteria, not even mouth breathers, and faintly smelling of vinegar.

As I have remarked many times since ChatGPT burst on the scenes, a lot of bad things happen when the price of custom plausible bullshit falls through the floor. This example is the planning system but there are so, so many more.

Making undeliverable promises that will let voters down, is it? I guess the the current PM’s chief secretary would know about the problems that can cause, given the preparatory noises about tax and the upcoming budget, but one might expect a degree of “learn from our fail” humility about it.

Gulp. Yes, indeed, the British have sent expeditionary forces to support our friends, the plucky Belgians, more than once before. Amusing but also very much not.

This story of the bungling surveillance state wrongly cutting people off from child benefit and then giving them the full bureaucratic treatment to restore it has really bothered me. We could do so much better than this with data and the government is choosing not to.

If you've missed your GP's flu clinic but are eligible for a free flu jab you can get them free at Boots too! (Probably also other pharmacies).

This is a nice thread. Jocelyn Bell Burnell was also lovely to me when she had no idea who I was (and was obviously nobody important). Back even further, Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkinson was also brilliant - as clever as you would expect, and generous and inspiring with her conversation.

Struck once again at how much of getting good at stuff is failing/struggling and then doing better. If you're not failing at all you're not learning. You see it at climbing walls: the newbies scamper up every problem, the actually good climbers are trying things that take multiple attempts. 1/

I absolutely love this. I do optimistic, central, and pessimistic forecasts for a living. Sometimes you can draw the spread nice and tight, sometimes uncertainty means it needs to be wide. This is … quite wide.

Book launch! (Blood launch / brick launch) A fistful of urban horrors! My story's about the hope that art will save us, and says: what if it doesn't? What if you get stuck in a horrible mews, with a horrible muse? Massive thanks to Neil for making it happen, and my co-contributors, who I fear.

Well done everyone, you've all done really well this week! Despite all the challenges and difficulties, you've made it through to another Friday evening, because you're brilliant. Well done, and all the best for the weekend.

My cat just staged an intervention. He miaowed outside my door until I let him in. He jumped up on my desk, examined my diary and emails, and decided I urgently needed a wellbeing break with a purring cat on my lap. So that's what I did. Good work by the Manager, Enhancement Of Wellbeing.

Degree algorithms! In a previous life I cared a lot about this. There are some very divergent philosophies and there’s a lot of often-hidden complexity. Looks like OfS pushing the boundaries of institutional autonomy yet further.

This is an amazing piece of tax reform work. The areas I know well enough to have an informed view look like big improvements (I don’t know corporate taxation in enough detail to be sure but I expect they’re right). Alas, I don’t expect many, if any, of these proposals to happen any time soon.

Flu’s early. Not good. Fingers crossed it comes and goes quickly rather than this being the start of a terrible season. I’m not confident the NHS is in great shape to handle it; we could easily have a 22/23 style collapse of urgent care if it gets bad.

Extraordinary stuff here on the detail revealed by tracking data, all available for a fee, gathered via dark consent patterns and blatant flouting of GDPR.

Some woolly thinking here by the producers, but the replies have you covered for some actual knitting puns.

That paper that was reported as saying you should stop taking short walks vs fewer long ones has been bothering me and the excellent Kevin McConway has written up a fair and thorough explanation of why: www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-react... tl;dr really hard to get causal out of observational

Oh no. Oh no no no. We could have eliminated cervical cancer in this generation! This was one of my go-to examples of the triumphs of modern medicine. The chances of that are ebbing away, thanks to vaccine hesitancy and our collapsed public health infrastructure. Genuinely upset about this.

There’s bacon and hotdogs in the replies as further zoom levels but you don’t make those (mostly) out of a pig’s nose. I like the version that goes: 🐖 🐷 🐽 ⚫️

Well done everyone, you’ve all done e really well this week! You have made it through everything to another weekend. Go you! Hope you have a good one.

Birds but they get spookier each time. 🎃👻 Enter if you dare...🚪