For a Caribbean cruise he has to put his orders in three weeks in advance; ships travelling to Europe require ten weeks’ notice. Americans want burgers and fries; Europeans want pasta and a wider variety of vegetables. More children means even more burgers and fries.

Over 24 years, Louise Cocker has captured almost half a million Norfolk Gravestones. ‘As a result, she has produced a remarkable dataset… which experts consider one of the most comprehensive photographic records of gravestones and memorials in England.’ www.theguardian.com/education/20...

‘Oral hearings were established as a safeguard of fairness, not an efficiency-driving mechanism. The normalization of remote hearings risks recasting this right as a matter of administrative convenience.’ Bit of research we funded on remote parole oral hearings academic.oup.com/bjc/advance-...

Over 24 years, Louise Cocker has captured almost half a million Norfolk Gravestones. ‘As a result, she has produced a remarkable dataset… which experts consider one of the most comprehensive photographic records of gravestones and memorials in England.’ www.theguardian.com/education/20...

Relieved that I don’t need to understand ‘skibidi’ as @economist.com tells me it won’t last and didn’t mean anything anyway. From a good piece on slang economist.com/interactive/...

My present to you all is introducing you to this lovely compliment generator. Always cheers up the timeline. Merry Christmas!

Also expecting a run on frankincense and myrrh

If you feel pressure from cooking Christmas dinner take comfort that you aren’t in charge of catering a cruise ship which may serve 100,000 meals a day. I’m particularly in awe of the ingredient planning as they can’t just pop to Tesco economist.com/interactive/...

Same procedure as every year (fireworks edition) economist.com/europe/2025/...

Xmas Eve at Kew

And how did you get your cherry production to go up so fast? Yeah we just put the trees in cold storage to replicate the sense of winter that helps the tree become dormant www.ft.com/content/e020...

I often think that’s the fundamental political difference. Progressives think tomorrow should be made better than yesterday. Conservatives are trying to limit the extent to which tomorrow is worse.

www.bbc.com/future/artic... Why the world is running out of frankincense

Chuffed to be invited to join Melvyn Bragg and Martin Rees on Christmas Eve’s Today Programme to reflect on the future…

Also expecting a run on frankincense and myrrh

If you are a Londoner or are interested in it this is a lovely updated @londonist.com map of Anglo Saxon London to browse londonist.substack.com/p/mapping-an...

So how did you become the world’s biggest exporter of caviar? Well Xi Jinping’s anti corruption campaign meant it was harder to serve at government banquets and so we had to do something with all that stock www.ft.com/content/e020...

Good to hear @britishacademy.bsky.social President @sjs1869.bsky.social on Radio 4 Today this morning talking about the importance of the humanities and social sciences for human ingenuity to shape a better future. Plus references to Habermas on technology & deliberative democracy, and Bell Hooks

Lots of interesting material in this piece by @hollieberman.bsky.social on how magicians are adapting to a TikTok age including that other magicians thought Houdini was a bit rubbish, and that he once managed to copyright a trick having claimed it was a ‘play’ economist.com/interactive/...

‘Now, after 4 years… that scheme was this week delayed by at least 3 years. Trams will not run in Leeds or Bradford before the late 2030s. We are promised that this remains a delay and not a cancellation, but we have heard that many times before.’ @tomforth.co.uk www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Am on standby to do my duty and help stabilise the market

Lots of interesting material in this piece by @hollieberman.bsky.social on how magicians are adapting to a TikTok age including that other magicians thought Houdini was a bit rubbish, and that he once managed to copyright a trick having claimed it was a ‘play’ economist.com/interactive/...

I had no idea that India has been running a job guarantee scheme for rural workers for the last twenty years. It reaches around 126 million people and on average boosts beneficiary household incomes by 14% www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

The Council for Science & Technology which advises the PM is looking for a new member ‘with social & behavioural science expertise’. Great opportunity to bring a social science perspective to the heart of policymaking. Apply by 19 Jan apply-for-public-appointment.service.gov.uk/roles/9075

Whilst we are doing life lessons this is gratifying from @jemima.bsky.social on what she’s learned from meeting the super rich: ‘very rich people tend to have very poor taste’ www.ft.com/content/06eb...

Santa’s been and I’ve been given a sub to London Centric! I even received a hand written card from @jim.londoncentric.media. Although Royal Mail’s last posting day has gone he’ll apparently hand deliver by Xmas in London zones 1-3 if you give one by tomorrow www.londoncentric.media/p/give-the-g...

The Council for Science & Technology which advises the PM is looking for a new member ‘with social & behavioural science expertise’. Great opportunity to bring a social science perspective to the heart of policymaking. Apply by 19 Jan apply-for-public-appointment.service.gov.uk/roles/9075

Thanks for supporting the work of @ourworldindata.org. It’s especially helpful to get a general support grant which helps a charity focus on what needs doing rather than bending to funder priorities. Other philanthropic bodies take note!

The last time an octopus bloom of the size observed in 2025 was recorded was 1950, with records showing the last bloom recorded prior to that was in 1900 www.theguardian.com/environment/...

‘Bombs were stock codes that could be purchased, financed, shipped.’ More great investigative reporting from @miles-johnson.bsky.social helping us understand the arms trade, which sadly in current times is probably something we should have a handle on www.ft.com/content/d7f9...

Fascinating research we have supported on the recruitment strategies employed by non violent extremist (far right, Islamist & eco-radical) groups which can include baking contests, film nights & video gaming www.thetimes.com/article/98da... The full paper is here www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Recent research said one in four teenagers have used an AI chatbot for mental health support in the last year. In that context it’s worth reading @henrymance.ft.com’s assessment which I would abbreviate as: LLMs are too obsequious to be therapeutic. But read the piece! www.ft.com/content/8b6e...

Recent research said one in four teenagers have used an AI chatbot for mental health support in the last year. In that context it’s worth reading @henrymance.ft.com’s assessment which I would abbreviate as: LLMs are too obsequious to be therapeutic. But read the piece! www.ft.com/content/8b6e...

Status: wrapping presents to the best of the Xmas carols tidal.com/track/398931...

Contrast this about progress on frontier models with how AI is playing out in practice as @sarahoconnorft.ft.com and @jburnmurdoch.ft.com explore in their brilliant AI Shift newsletter- this week about how much AI is changing law firms. TL:DR not as much as is hyped or hoped by management or clients

it is all part of his Effective Altruism 4 dimensional chess plan to get out of jail, make fresh billions and give it all back to humanity.

Sam Bankman-Fried is positioning himself for a pardon by saying he too is a victim of a politicised Dept of Justice www.ft.com/content/ef6e...

This could be messy. The state owned UK Atomic Energy Authority is in a joint venture with the organisation merging with Trump Media & Technology Group www.ft.com/content/1e05... @pickardje.bsky.social @oilsheppard.bsky.social

‘There is a clear conflict of interest in asking existing councils to decide how long it will be before they are answerable to voters’ says the chief executive of the Electoral Commission www.ft.com/content/03ca...

AOL is the best example, it bought the largest media company in the world for nothing (shares of its own stock).

This non-existent, AI-hallucinated papers has more REAL citations than any of my actual peer-reviewed publications. How can we possible compete with this? How can we assess and track real scholarship?

Okay, I've read the AISI paper now and it's interesting www.aisi.gov.uk/frontier-ai-... but I do think it could have been much more interesting if they had applied some sociotechnical thinking (and recruited a sociologist to do the social analysis)

Ageing does not have the same policy discussion or responses as climate change, AI or defence says Lord Wood www.ft.com/content/788e...? www.ft.com/content/788e...

Helpful research from @cassiarowland.bsky.social @instituteforgovernment.org.uk suggesting scrapping of jury trials would save 1.5-2.5% of time currently spent in courts www.ft.com/content/8a9f...

Some pretty crazy staff in the AI Security Institute AI trends report. For Chemistry & Biology it says frontier models now outperform PhD-level experts on open-ended questions, protocol generation, and lab-based troubleshooting

‘Don’t expect to be a genius; you get better by working hard. Don’t rip up your work in a fury if it’s going badly. Set it aside, sit in the garden, drink tea’ David Gentleman has a new book ‘Lessons for Young Artists’ www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...

Good piece on the human fallout if you become an internet meme www.thetimes.com/article/12a1...

Some pretty crazy staff in the AI Security Institute AI trends report. For Chemistry & Biology it says frontier models now outperform PhD-level experts on open-ended questions, protocol generation, and lab-based troubleshooting

Lots of wisdom about how to do good dataviz in this piece by @scientificdiscovery.dev substack.com/inbox/post/1...

Auditors and new officials have been turning over stones at the body in charge of Teesworks. Turns out the Tees Valley Combined Authority has been lending hundreds of millions of £ to connected orgs, without loan agreements, and those orgs are now struggling to repay as.ft.com/r/ac457745-4...