One of the (smaller) toxic legacies of Harold Shipman is that, in the UK, it now takes about one week longer to register expected deaths and make funeral arrangements, due to the involvement of Medical Examiners.

Understanding the appeal of the manosphere: Clinical Psychologist Dr Mandeep Bachu draws on his clinical practice… www.bps.org.uk/psychologist...

April 2026 was warm and very dry in Exeter. Cracked earth after the sousing winter. Now it's May bank holiday so of course the heavens open.

New preprint: Preregistration is supposed to make research more transparent. But if registry records aren't kept up to date, the transparency benefit erodes. We checked 1,137 psych meta-analyses on PROSPERO and found the records are systematically out of sync with reality osf.io/preprints/ps...

Feb UK unemployment: 4.9% (employment: 75.0%). Earnings growth: 3.8%/3.6% nominal, 0.4%/0.2% real (with/out bonuses, 3m/y).

Feb UK GDP: 0.5% m/m, 0.5% 3m/3m, 0.8% 3my/y. 2025 1.4% (1.1% per capita): q1 0.7% (0.6%), q2 0.2% (0.1%), q3 0.1% (0.0%), q4 0.1% (-0.1%).

Finding flow: Cultivating flow states as counterpoint to depressive rumination (review). psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/202...

Exeter City Council 2026 election prediction: Lab lose Alphington, Exwick, Pinhoe, Priory & Topsham to Reform; Lab lose Newtown & St Leonard's, Pennsylvania to Green; Lab lose St Thomas to LD. Lab lose overall control.

Five thoughts on future imagination www.bps.org.uk/psychologist...

The UK’s proposed study of social media reduction in kids doubles down on a failed experimental protocol & is likely to produce misleading results. It’s easy to tear apart a study post-hoc so I’m putting my marker down before the study begins: This is a bad study. open.substack.com/pub/grimoire...

Rudakubana bought knives and weapons online using strangers' driving licences. Were these sourced from the dark web?

In the inquiry, Joanne Hodson (headteacher) felt her concerns about AR were closed down after she was accused by Samantha Steed (CAMHS) of racial stereotyping.

Effort-based decision making in psychopathology: A transdiagnostic multilevel meta-analysis and systematic review of behavioral patterns and mechanisms underlying amotivational psychopathology. psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/202...

Are different desires (e.g., food, sleep, alcohol, cannabis) experienced and regulated the same way? We tested this question in a new preprint with Yang Liu, @minzlicht.bsky.social, @wilhelmhofmann.bsky.social, and @kevinmking.bsky.social: osf.io/preprints/ps...

Electric cars comprised 22.6% of UK new car sales in March (18% of EVs were BYD, 10% Tesla). Govt target is 33%. www.reuters.com/world/uk/uk-...

I'm not sure what it would mean to "decimate" every bridge in Iran. Destroy 10% of every bridge, perhaps?

Change from 'Department of Defense' to 'Department of War' hardly suggests an aversion to US involvement in foreign wars, as once claimed by Trump/Vance.

Civilisational obliteration is one thing, but unleaded petrol prices near me are up 15% since March 1.

Put me on Artemis II and on the freezing far side of the Moon there would now be craters named after Dead and Euronymous. 😁

Objections to phrases like "Whiteness pandemic" are blatant manifestations of White fragility. 🤪 psycnet.apa.org/record/2021-...

Feb UK CPI: 3.0%, CPIH: 3.2%, RPI: 3.6%. Dec HPI: 1.3%, mean £268K (Exeter: -1.2%, £282K, 8% below Oct '22 peak). #stagflation

I assume this song is about the woeful ruminations of West Ham fans. Anyway, one of the better 'recent' Enslaved albums. youtu.be/0DEI5dGw4us?...

Feb UK gov't borrowing: £14B (£126B in 25/26; £152B in 24/25 = 5.2% GDP). Budget deficit: £5B (£62B in 25/26; £76B in 24/25 = 2.6% GDP). Gov't debt: £2.88T = 93.1% of GDP (£3.09T). Oct UK debt interest: £13B (£94B in 25/26; £85B in 24/25).

Jan UK unemployment: 5.2% (employment: 75.1%). Earnings: 3.9%/3.8% nominal, 0.5%/0.4% real (with/out bonuses, 3m/y). Bank of England base rate held at 3.75%.

Has transparency improved in clinical psychology? New cross sectional study from us (Bianca Kotoulas, Justine Blackwell & me). Adoption of transparent research practices has increased between 2012, 2018, & 2024, but aside from coi and funding disclosures, they remain uncommon osf.io/preprints/ps...

Jan UK GDP: 0.0% m/m, 0.2% 3m/3m, 0.9% 3my/y. 2025 1.3% (1.0%): q1 0.7% (0.6%), q2 0.2% (0.1%), q3 0.1% (-0.1%), q4 0.1% (-0.1%). #stagflation

Venus-Saturn-Neptune triple conjunction in Pisces probably lost in the fog and murk tonight. 😕

Slim pickings in 2011 metal but 'The Beginning of Times' is another strong Amorphis album (big nod here to Ian Anderson!). youtu.be/by8-svmXG0A?...

Receiving 175% of mean rainfall, winter 2025/26 was very wet, and slightly mild, here in Exeter.

Deputy Leader of the Green Party, Mothin Ali, was at an extreme pro-Islamic Republic of Iran protest in London. He’s shown what the Green Party now represents: a regime that kills women for showing their hair and has killed thousands while declaring hostility to the West.

Poor PMQs performance from Badenoch this week, going on about "paedos" while Starmer hails a stagnant economy with rising unemployment.

As a West Ham FC fan, I hail The Hammers of Misfortune.

Punters suggest Greens have 62% chance of winning Gordon and Denton, Reform 22%, Labour 16% (Betfair exchange).

Perspective: Open-ended responses can improve ESM data by grounding it in real-world experiences and phenomena as they are experienced in everyday life. Handbooks and guidelines on ESM should include sections on collecting and analyzing open-ended text items. www.nature.com/articles/s44...

Stability, change, and long-term correlates of procrastination during young adulthood. psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?d...

If Putin intends the Oreshnik IRBM to intimidate Western Europe, Millennials and Gen Z need not fear. European Boomers/Gen Xers coped with the similarly threatening SS-20 Saber.

0.1 mm of rain fell on Met Office Exeter yesterday (felt it here) so continues to rain every day of 2026. check-for-flooding.service.gov.uk/rainfall-sta...

Jan UK gov't borrowing: -£30B (£112B in 25/26; £153B in 24/25 = 5.2% GDP). Budget deficit: -£41B (£56B in 25/26; £77B in 24/25 = 2.6% GDP). Gov't debt: £2.87T = 92.9% of GDP (£3.09T). UK debt interest: £2B (£81B in 25/26; £85B in 24/25).

The Jesus and Mo artist says he/she lost some subscribers when this post appeared six years ago. But it's now very timely, so more subscribers will leave! whyevolutionistrue.com/2026/02/20/j...

Tonight the Waxing Crescent Moon appears close to Saturn and Neptune. Neptune is a bit faint so binoculars required. Also Saturn won't be visible in the evenings for much longer. Conjunction with the Sun soon. All best seen around 7pm looking west. 🔭 🧪

Nature-mysticism is an important current in black metal but, ahem... Agriculture?

Jan UK CPI: 3.0%, CPIH: 3.2%, RPI: 3.8%. Dec HPI: 2.4%, mean £270K (Exeter: -1.7%, £283K, 8% below Oct '22 peak).

Oh dear, local democracy has been un-cancelled! Not so spound after all.

Dec UK unemployment: 5.2% (employment: 75.0%). Earnings growth: 4.2%/4.2% nominal, 0.5%/0.5% real (with/out bonuses, 3m/y).

Only 30 years... but an eternity for Lucifer, still dancing under the closed eyes of Paradise.

In standard scientific reports in psych 96% of first mentioned main hypotheses are supported. In Registered Reports, this is 46%. The 96% is clearly biased (given true H1 rate and power). Lack of transparency means we do not know the true baserate. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Repetitive negative thought in adolescence: a mixed methods study. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Dec UK GDP: 0.1% m/m, 1.0% qy/y (0.6% per capita). 2025 1.3% (1.0%): q1 0.7% (0.6%), q2 0.2% (0.1%), q3 0.1% (-0.1%), q4 0.1% (-0.1%). #stagflation

***Just Published** We tested whether purpose in life mediates the relation between #loneliness and future risk of death. Loneliness seems to set in motion the erosion of purpose in life, that has downstream consequences on length of life. Paper (open access) doi.org/10.1016/j.so...

41 consecutive days of rain in Exeter and no sign of it stopping. 😭