I thought the most interesting thing about the interview Stokes gave today was that it is the first time I've heard him or McCullum admit that something in their approach isn't working. #TheAshes

I got home from work today to find my kids writing out Christmas cards for all their school friends. The 7-year-old has been signing them off "Yours sincerely"

It is nice to see this - and I hope it is reflected in UK Space Agency budgets and long term stability of funding here too!

Timetable discussions for next term with my (lovely) colleagues are sadly bringing home the reality that my five-year research fellowship ends on Dec 31st and I'm going to have to start a new phase of my academic life ... 🧪🔭

the thing that scares me about Labour HE policy is that because I work in the sector I can see how absolutely insane it is, which makes me wonder just how terrible their policies are in all the other sectors I’m in less of a position to engage with critically out of lack of knowledge.

England are determined to keep batting like it's a T20 I see ... #theashes

Apropos of nothing in particular, two cosmology questions for my followers: - in the first figure, are the black or blue contours in better agreement with the pink ones? - in the second figure, are the black or blue contours in better agreement with (w0,wa)=(-1,0)? 🔭🧪☄️

Two very interesting papers about dark energy on the arXiv today, both very relevant to the ongoing interest in possibly evolving DE as suggested by the DESI results 🔭🧪 Here's the first and potentially more explosive one: arxiv.org/abs/2511.07517

This morning was an epic sunrise in the New Forest. Really nice to get out there with some gorgeous conditions. When there is a low lying mist my favourite place is an old train line which was closed 60 years ago. #EastCoastKin #Scape #Treescape #Horse #Photography #mist

despite not having vocals, 'kind of blue' is actually the first kind

There are three types of jazz: smoky voiced female vocalist sings song that sounds like it’s about sex but is actually about racism; 9 woodwork teachers on a stage shout “chase that tiger” while somebody hammers a piano; man has a heart attack whilst trumpet playing and falls downstairs.

Aren't languages wonderful? Here's an example of Deutsche Bahn not only borrowing from English but also "verbing" a noun in a way that Calvin and Hobbes would respect!

I went for a long morning swim in the sea today, on the day the clocks went back. The sea was the Sea of Crete rather than the Solent, which made it less of an achievement but much more pleasurable!

Cosmologists! We have a faculty job going here in Oxford - happy to answer questions. Brief version is that this remains a great & collaborative place to do science and the students are superb. 🔭 www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DOP628/a...

The Nobel Prize, widely considered the ultimate indicator of important science, has often gone off in weird directions due to politics & personalities. Like that year when an obsolete form of color photography beat out quantum physics for the physics Nobel. 🧪 physicsworld.com/a/nobel-priz...

By the way, although it is a bit late, if you know a cosmologist who would like to use our cosmology chains and other data, they can now get them following the instructions here: www.desi.lbl.gov/2025/10/06/d...

A special issue splash in Physical Review today on our DESI results: promo.aps.org/desi_dr2 Which also contains a Featured in Physics viewpoint on the status of cosmology following DESI, by Matteo Viel: physics.aps.org/articles/v18...

An actual quote from the Secretary of State for Business and Trade Too often people go to university to ‘explore research and knowledge’ Look forward to Wes S saying 'too often people go to hospital to have operations' or Heidi Alexander saying 'too often people go to the station to catch a train'

Lecturer A had amazingly found a way to use AI that would take even longer and be more work than just doing things without it.

Today would have been the 100th birthday of the great BB King. I was reminded of this and so also remembered this lovely short film of him in London in 1972 (which you can watch on the iPlayer if you're in the UK: www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0023jmg)

Regardless of everything else, Oblique Seville is one of the very best names. #TheAthletics

My wife is out with friends, so I'm watching season 3 of The Test - and my word that episode about the first Ashes test in 2023 is just amazing TV. Absolutely brilliant.

All illusions that russia wants only Ukraine — or that it would stop after getting the Donetsk region — should be gone after this blatant attack on Poland. russia seeks to restore its borderless empire. Ukraine's security is Europe's security. Time to choose to defeat russia.

I will be on The Sky at Night on BBC4 tonight, talking about dark energy and the expanding universe. Here's a little clip from the conversation: www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p...

"Sweeteners can harm cognitive health equivalent to 1.6 years of ageing, study finds" Or does it? Let's take a look at this "study"... www.theguardian.com/food/2025/se...

A little piece of free career advice for any astronomers: do not enter a scientific collaboration with anyone from the University of Florida astro department.

Great news that as a collaboration we in DESI have been awarded the Lancelot M. Berkeley-New York Community Trust prize for meritorious work in astronomy for 2026! The citation specifically references our two BAO cosmology papers, which are very close to my heart 💜

What a great little documentary, that I was totally unaware of until today

In her first race in over a year since winning Olympic gold, 🇬🇧Keely Hodgkinson sets a new 800m world lead by almost TWO SECONDS in 1:54.74!! 😳#SilesiaDL Just .13s away from her PB and the 9th fastest time in WORLD HISTORY! #trackandfield

I tried using an LLM to help with a tedious but not too complicated coding task today, and was genuinely surprised how poorly it worked. In the end I realised it was wasting rather than saving time, so I wrote the code myself. Brief description to follow in the thread below. 1/

Fourth location is the Kobayashi Maskawa Institute at Nagoya University, where I will give a seminar that is also part of an HSC medium band workshop. Nagoya is nice but also very hot and humid, 40C yesterday 🥵

Third conference location is Saitama in Japan, at the RIKEN institute where I gave a talk today (this photo is from dinner afterwards). I also learned that the special long-flowering sakura varieties growing near here were genetically modified at the particle accelerator in the lab at RIKEN 🤔

No one is ever allowed to say test cricket is boring ever again

We had a good discussion session yesterday in Benasque about the DESI data and evidence for evolving dark energy, ending with asking people if they agreed with John Peacock's quote in the Guardian saying he would bet £1000 on it. More even split than I expected, but a plurality disagreed.

Second conference location of the week is Benasque in the Spanish Pyrenees. I had a nice chat about cosmology with Oliver Philcox and Antony Lewis while hiking up a small hill above the town this morning.

I'm in Durham today, having just given a talk at the PASCOS 2025 conference. This kicks off a crazy three weeks of travel for me, covering 4 separate conferences...

Sorry but personally if a miniature horse woke me up from anesthesia by banging out nonsense on a miniature keyboard it would send me into a liminal space between life and death from which I would never return

At first glance this is very, very good news for NASA and other agencies. I think that many missions zeroed out by the White House decree are reversed here. Still a long way to go but this is an excellent sign. I'm sure many others will chime in on this.

I love observing how phonics teaching works on the brain of a 5-year-old - she's got the building blocks to go and be creative, and the end result isn't really any stranger than standard English spelling.

The NSF and DOE have cancelled the CMB-S4 programme, which was the highest priority recommendation of the Particle Physics Project Prioritisation Panel (P5), recommended for construction even in the worst budget scenario. www.science.org/content/arti...

So good to see him back, just great for cricket. There's nothing quite like watching a really fast bowler

Oh Jofra ❤️

You know, sharing screenshots of antisemitic garbage being churned out by an actor/by a shitty chatbot/whoever does not improve this place at all. Sharing garbage to dunk on it is still sharing garbage, and I'm going to suggest that our Jewish chums really don't want to see your RTs of it.

We took the kids to the Vitality Blast game today where they got to actually meet Ellyse Perry! As well as go out on the pitch for the toss and be interviewed "on TV". Big shout out to Rhianna Southby for being very nice to them at the start, and for batting well to get Hampshire the win.

This is the reason why England produce some very memorable Test results, and also always finish in the bottom half of the WTC rankings.

I think this astro analogy sums up something important for me. I've been trying to use social media *without* building this radio telescope, and Twitter insisted on building one for me regardless. Things are more manageable on Bluesky, but you have to be on guard on any social media.

India's selection decisions make no sense to me. I'm going to predict they get hammered in this game. #ENGvIND

School cancelled today because of safety concerns with the heat 🥵 It is 23C outside though, and there's a lovely breeze. Hmmm.

My kids' school wants us to send them in tomorrow dressed in outfits "inspired by" the 1960s and 1980s respectively. How is that not just homework for parents? And also, I have no direct experience of 1960s outfits in general and even less of what children wore in the 1960s! Very cross about this 😡

Whoa... With the new software (so pretty soon) the #arxiv order will be randomized. No more race to rhe first to submit on a given day! #Astrodon #eas2025