2023-11-28: 📚 Finished reading Upgrade by Blake Crouch. I read and enjoyed “Recursion” by the same …
2023-11-28: "The Extended Mind" teaches us how to improve our thinking in some counterintuitive ways
2023-11-27: 🎶 Listening to GUTS by Olivia Rodrigo. Everyone’s favourite childhood High School Musical …
2023-11-27: Everyone was right, The Three-Body Problem is great
2023-11-26: In 2019 OpenAI was too scared to open GPT-2 to the world
2023-11-25: “The Data Warehouse Toolkit” teaches us dimensional modelling and the Kimball method of data warehouse design
2023-11-23: The Conservative party appears to hate law and order
2023-11-21: Humans will go to considerable effort to get obviously useless information
2023-11-20: Facebook permanently disabled my account, no right of appeal
2023-11-17: Sam Altman, the famed head of OpenAI seems to have been fired. Mr. Altman’s departure follows …
2023-11-17: The Sherlock & Co. podcast updates the Sherlock Holmes stories for the Facebook era
2023-11-17: There's now a dangerous black market in anti-obesity drugs
2023-11-15: Crime and Punishment - the original psychological thriller
2023-11-15: We Are Bellingcat: Bellingcat's origin story and how they do what they do
2023-11-14: Is Britain on the verge of introducing an age limit on baking?
2023-11-13: Meta-owned WhatsApp confirms (once again) that adverts are coming to its app. Code to enable this …
2023-11-13: Arcade claw machines are even more scammy than I thought
2023-11-12: The deleterious effects of bad business models, incentives and AI on music streaming services
2023-11-10: This interactive visualisation is a great way of explaining or visualising what a given …
2023-11-10: Expect lots of fun new pun-ridden URLs to show up soon. Starting December 5th everyone can purchase …
2023-11-08: Braverman thinks homelessness is a "lifestyle choice"
2023-11-08: Ooh, after the success of the Super Mario Bros Movie they’re making a live-action Legend of …
2023-11-07: TIL: The collective noun for a group of ferrets is a “business” of ferrets. So now you …
2023-11-07: Jennifer Daniel shares what we can expect for official new emojis in 2025. Just seven this time, …
2023-11-05: The UK does not need to widen the definition of extremism even further
2023-11-02: I often wondered what happened if you accidentally tick the “Yes I have committed …
2023-11-02: Verso Books is the largest independent, radical publishing house in the English-speaking world, …
2023-10-29: 🎙️ Listening to ‘Breaking News Consumer’s Handbook: Israel/Gaza Edition’ from the …
2023-10-28: The impact of the Hamas Israel war on hate-crime in Britain
2023-10-28: 🎶 Listening to The More Red Chapter by Taylor Swift. Whilst these differently compiled re-releases …
2023-10-26: 🎶 Listening to The Jaws of Life by Pierce The Veil. This is their first album in a 7 years. Emo pop …
2023-10-24: 🎶 Listening to Just a Christmas Dirtbag by Wheatus. There’s something a bit tragic about bands …
2023-10-23: I’m sure no-one needs reminding, but today is National Mole Day. . Nothing to do with small …
2023-10-23: Unsurprisingly, the 'eat 2000 calories a day' recommendation isn't very scientific
2023-10-22: In a recent paper, researchers compared the trends in Google searches that suggest people are …
2023-10-21: Can’t believe its taken me 7 years to learn of the outrageous decline of everyone’s favourite …
2023-10-21: The real AI alignment problem
2023-10-18: IPleak.net looks to be a pretty comprehensive website that allows you to check what IP address …
2023-10-12: Newspaper in trouble for publishing Braverman's lie about child grooming gangs
2023-10-12: 📚 Finished reading Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. Rich young partygirl Noemi - more used to …
2023-10-11: Walmart finds that people who start taking the GLP-1 anti-obesity medications go on to buy …
2023-10-08: 📺 Watched Jury Duty. Caved into the show that almost every American I know seems to be talking …
2023-10-08: 🎶 Listening to Re: This Is Why. Ever wondered what it’d be like if the recent Paramore album …
2023-10-04: A wet fish, outside Sheffield station.
2023-09-30: I was curious to know what age the oldest person to have ever lived got to. According to the …
2023-09-27: Amazon now charges third-party sellers almost half of their revenue
2023-09-22: The WorldWideWeb (W3) is a wide-area hypermedia information retrieval initiative aiming to give …
2023-09-21: What causes the Overton Paradox?
2023-09-19: 🎮 Currently playing The Battle of Polytopia. It’s a world-domination strategy game vaguely …
2023-09-19: My Microsoft Surface laptop decided not to recognise that anything was plugged into its USB ports …
2023-09-17: 🎙️ Listening to The Studies Show podcast. A couple of science writers I’ve followed for a …
2023-09-16: Last week, while checking the device of an individual employed by a Washington DC-based civil …
2023-09-15: Liz Truss is writing a new book 😟
2023-09-15: Over here I wrote about some research from Pew comparing what Twitter users say they do vs what they …
2023-09-10: 🎶 Listening to Hell Is A Teenage Girl by Nessa Barrett. Nessa is a Tiktok star. Perhaps a true …
2023-09-10: This looks like a handy comparison guide to free and open source photo libraries for anyone …
2023-09-08: The corporate jargon being most forcibly injected into my ears in recent days: HMW: how might we …
2023-09-06: MusicBrainz Picard fixes your musical MP3 tagging woes
2023-09-05: More data leaks
2023-09-04: Q by Christine Dalcher reminds us of the dangers of taking meritocracy too far
2023-08-28: TIL: There’s a version of chess you play on a hexagon shaped board made up of hexagons. It …
2023-08-28: Experiencing the Dream Machine
2023-08-27: The trials and tribulations of installing Linux Mint alongside Windows 10
2023-08-26: Treating obesity can save lives
2023-08-23: When some of your personalities go blind
2023-08-22: Russia's moon-landing attempt fails, but there's plenty more coming up soon
2023-08-21: Twitter's habit of deleting or undeleting your posts at will
2023-08-18: Getting real SimCity vibes from the view today.
2023-08-17: We’re up to 91 felonies now in terms of how many criminal charges have been brought against …
2023-08-17: When only one of your personalities has allergies
2023-08-14: Maus: The Pulitzer-prize winning graphic novel that portrays the horrors of the Second World War
2023-08-13: 📽 Watched Interstate 60. Fun coming-of-age-roadtrip type movie about a young man who is torn between …
2023-08-12: Please let's not fight the next election on who can damage the environment the most
2023-08-09: From PC Magazine: For 16 years, Jeremy Vaught had control of the @music account on Twitter. But no …
2023-08-08: Turns out the UK’s Electoral Commission has been hacked for the past couple of years. At the …
2023-08-08: 🎙️ Listening to Brad & Will Made A Tech Pod. The name is pretty self-explanatory. Lots of tech …
2023-08-07: The call of Linux
2023-08-01: TIL: There’s an estimated 3 million shipwrecks dotted across the ocean floors of our planet. …
2023-07-31: A new paper re-affirms that plant-based diets are far less damaging to the environment
2023-07-31: Many of us have seen those adverts for smartphone games, often embedded inside other annoying phone …
2023-07-30: Paper notes: How much food tracking during a digital weight management program is enough...?
2023-07-30: Should one have the need to mass-download their Kindle books from Amazon without a ton of clicking …
2023-07-26: 🎶 Listening to Endless Summer Vacation by Miley Cyrus. Came to it via the ultra-viral hit Flowers …
2023-07-25: Somehow only today did I realise that you can use if statements directly within R’s dplyr …
2023-07-24: WormGPT is an AI chatbot designed to help commit crime
2023-07-24: Very unexpectedly, something about the apparent inanity / insanity of its plot makes me actually …
2023-07-24: Mary Pilon reveals the real story behind the monopolising of Monopoly
2023-07-20: Is it worth trying to increase your physical activity if you only have time to even think about it …
2023-07-20: Terrible AI-written books hit the Kindle Unlimited best-seller lists
2023-07-19: The new New Conservatives faction has no new ideas
2023-07-18: Following some big companies such as Samsung banning or putting limits on their employees' use of …
2023-07-15: From the i: Nigel Farage has criticised the Home Office’s decision to paint over murals of cartoon …
2023-07-14: The latest deranged volley in the Conservative Government’s extremely inhumane and extremely …
2023-07-14: I’ve been looking at options for Network Attached Storage recently, to help me be more …
2023-07-14: Conservatives only like law and order when it suits their interests
2023-07-14: The US Federal Trade Commission is investigating OpenAI, creators of ChatGPT et al, in order to …
2023-07-12: Learned that you can work in two branches of the same local git repo at once without problems via …
2023-07-12: PC Part Picker seems to be a good site for seeing a summary of what, surprise surprise, parts of PCs …
2023-07-11: It’s increasingly apparent that relying on the ability to reliably access or even link to …
2023-07-11: The 'Redact' app lets you delete all those social media posts that you regret writing
2023-07-08: In “I wanted to be a teacher but they made me a cop” Adam Mastroianni makes the case …
2023-07-08: Twitter’s whims can break other sites too
2023-07-06: Australia becomes the first country to legalise the use of certain psychedelics in controlled …
2023-07-06: TIL: The US isn’t the only country to officially celebrate American independence on July 4th. …
2023-07-05: 📚 Finished reading 11.22.63 by Stephen King. Jake Epping, a down-on-his-luck teacher, is recruited …
2023-07-04: 📚 Finished reading Red Team Blues by Cory Doctorow. In this novel, Martin Hench is an almost-retired …
2023-07-03: This week is London Data Week - ‘Data in the public, for the public’. Join us at London …
2023-06-30: Providing the greatest educational resources to people who do well on tests isn't the only option
2023-06-30: Absolutely obsessed with The Password Game. All the fun of trying to pick a computer password …
2023-06-29: A trip to the Van Gogh Immersive Experience
2023-06-27: Mya Gosling provides what turns out to be a handy guide to the 7 Shakespeare plays that might …
2023-06-26: Huge shock to the system today when I saw what appeared from a distance to be a dead human body on …
2023-06-25: Living in the dumbest timeline as we do, the president of the Ultimate Fighting Championship has …
2023-06-25: A day of musical fun in the sun, perhaps to be banned in the US
2023-06-20: Intrigued to learn that the RStudio folks are actively working on an integration with the GitHub …
2023-06-19: US residents can join class actions against Google and Facebook's abuse of their data
2023-06-18: Jenara Nerenberg asks us to consider a different type of diversity in "Divergent Mind"
2023-06-16: The Partygate report is here
2023-06-15: The UK is once again experiencing a heatwave, a situation likely to become ever more common whilst …
2023-06-14: Boris Johnson has stepped down as a Tory MP after claiming he was “forced out of …
2023-06-13: The bronze elephants of Spitalfields
2023-06-12: TIL: Last year scientists discovered a bacteria of such relatively huge size that it’s easily …
2023-06-09: A further 7 federal charges have been laid against Trump, some related to his having illegally …
2023-06-08: Learned that the built-in fc command is a quick way to check if 2 files have the same contents using …
2023-06-08: Leutner et al. provide evidence of a link between having obesity and later developing a diagnosed …
2023-06-07: On another AI note, Google is going to introduce adverts to its generative AI search/chat feature. …
2023-06-07: Noticed a couple of newish ChatGPT features. Firstly there’s an official iOS app, available …
2023-06-07: 🎙 Listened to Tech Won’t Save Us podcast. I came to it for an antidote to the recent AI …
2023-06-07: 📺 Watched season 8 of Brooklyn 99. Released in 2021, the final season of the surprisingly funny …
2023-06-05: Cannabis is now legal for recreational use in 22 US states
2023-06-04: Chanced upon a panel from another infinitely evergreen marvel published by The Nib, RIP once again. …
2023-06-04: Rclone looks to be a super useful utility for anyone who works a lot with cloud storage providers. …
2023-05-31: Over here, I wrote about whether Artificial Intelligences really are developing scary new emergent …
2023-05-31: 📺 Watched Star Trek: Picard season 2 and 3. Dwelling here only on season 3: if you grew up in the …
2023-05-29: ChatGPT enters the courtroom
2023-05-29: 🎶 Listening to This Is Why by Paramore. A pretty different sound to some of their past albums, …
2023-05-26: From Ars Technica: 96% of US users opt out of app tracking in iOS 14.5, analytics find When …
2023-05-26: Since Elon Musk acquired Twitter in a tumultuous $44 billion deal completed last October, the social …
2023-05-25: I was sad to hear that The Nib, the “publisher of political cartoons and nonfiction comics …
2023-05-25: Naomi Kritzer, author of Cat Pictures Please et al, produces an annual list of recommended gifts to …
2023-05-25: Meta has received the largest fine for a GDPR breach ever seen - £1 billion - for the way it’s …
2023-05-24: 📺 Watched Chernobyl. The catastrophic disaster that followed after the Chernobyl nuclear power …
2023-05-23: 📚 Finished reading Cat Pictures Please and Better Living Through Algorithms by Naomi Kritzer. These …
2023-05-23: 📺 Watched Shadow and Bone season 2. Given at the end of the last season our heroes were under the …
2023-05-22: The rise of private GP practices in the UK
2023-05-19: A few sites that offer blog hosting
2023-05-18: Somewhat astonishing that what Popular Mechanics is talking about in its article headlined …
2023-05-17: Did GPT-4 develop artificial general intelligence?
2023-05-16: ChatGPT gets access to the Internet
2023-05-14: The forthcoming changes to England's student loan repayments are highly regressive
2023-05-13: Anyone who’s ever wanted to experience the often under-paid and over-stressful job of …
2023-05-12: Golems as Artificial Intelligences
2023-05-10: Ofsted school inspections appear to be dangerous and ineffective
2023-05-09: Updating Visual Studio Code with winget
2023-05-06: The crowning of King Charles III
2023-05-05: Yesterday much of the UK saw local elections taking place. Counting is still in progress but so far …
2023-05-04: They’ve made King Charles' coronation interactive. Presumably in an effort to promote …
2023-05-04: Will generative AI in forthcoming office software be a world-changing development or the next Clippy?
2023-05-03: A fiery tulip 🌱.
2023-05-01: 🎶 Listening to Trustfall, by P!nk. This was one of those occasions where I was curious what one of …
2023-04-30: Nate Silver implores us to adopt Bayesian thinking in order to distinguish signal from noise
2023-04-29: Knitted crowns aplenty outside the shops today, no doubt in anticipation of the forthcoming …
2023-04-28: The fragility of the computer chip production infrastructure
2023-04-26: A day with a huge personal revelation: adding some ground black pepper to a cup of standard black …
2023-04-25: Less than 30 years ago most Americans disapproved of interracial marriages
2023-04-24: 📺 Watched The Last Of Us. I’m not normally a big fan of zombie shows, but this one was getting …
2023-04-23: An AI sings a song
2023-04-22: The makers of Stable Diffusion release an open-source AI chatbot, StableLM
2023-04-21: Unlawful Killings: Insights into the life of a Crown Court judge from Wendy Joseph
2023-04-20: Last year an AI-generated picture won an art competition. The technology has of course only got …
2023-04-18: 📺 Watched season 12 of Death in Paradise. Everyone’s favourite vacation paradise / murder …
2023-04-17: 📺 Watched season 12 of Death in Paradise. Everyone’s favourite vacation paradise / murder …
2023-04-17: Rome et al analyse the costs of newly-launched pharmaceuticals in the US. They discover that the …
2023-04-16: The arguments for prison abolition: thoughts from "We Do This 'Til We Free Us"
2023-04-14: Viewers Can Watch Prince Harry Talk to a Trauma Expert for $33.09 The ‘Give me privacy’ …
2023-04-13: Might AI chatbots exacerbate suicidal tendencies?
2023-04-13: 📺 Watched Wednesday. The Addams family daughter is back in this TV series following …
2023-04-13: With their new advert, the Labour Party have managed to do the unthinkable and almost make me feel …
2023-04-13: 🎥 Watched The Batman. Despite fairly glowing reviews I found this a little disappointing, with the …
2023-04-11: Britons rejoice: The official King Charles coronation emoji is here
2023-04-09: Cobb et al. find that almost 10% of citations found within papers published in top psychology …
2023-04-09: Donald Trump as Easter Jesus: the latest unhinged metaphor
2023-04-08: Tomorrow’s celebrations may be expensive (along with everything else). From The Guardian: The …
2023-04-07: Anodal transcranial direct current stimulation of MPFC enhances humor processing. Or in simpler …
2023-04-06: Google contractors say they don’t have enough time to verify correct answers from the …
2023-04-06: A few years ago, a group of researchers spent their time looking for the world’s oldest …
2023-04-04: Sitting through 3 hours and 12 minutes of impeccably rendered splashy-splashy water scenes is …
2023-04-03: From ConscienHealth: Using Mendelian randomization they found evidence for a causal relationship …
2023-04-02: Meat cultivation food company Vow has created a meatball out of wooly mammoth meat. Sure, wooly …
2023-03-31: With the recent release of iOS 16.4, both Android and iOS users have access to the latest greatest …
2023-03-31: Donald Trump becomes the first ever US president to be charged with a crime. We don’t know the …
2023-03-30: Public support for strikes remains high, despite what it looks like on social media
2023-03-29: 📚 Finished reading Statistical Rethinking by Richard McElreath. This textbook that teaches the use …
2023-03-28: From a recent visit to Doddington Hall - which had surprisingly few flowers given the event was …
2023-03-28: I recently got access to Bard, Google’s chatGPT-esque language language model chatbot. Curious …
2023-03-27: Fans of the TV comedy show “Ghosts” might know that there’s considerable overlap …
2023-03-27: This life expectancy chart from from Peterson-KFF’s Health System Tracker is quite shocking …
2023-03-26: 📺 Finished watching seasons 1-4 of Ghosts. Funny, harmless, British sitcom wherein Alison and Mike …
2023-03-25: OpenChatKit is an open-source LLM chatbot (whilst chatGPT is ever more closed-source)
2023-03-25: There was a moment where chatGPT was accidentally leaking the title of people’s chats to other …
2023-03-24: Started taking a course provided by the Analytics Engineers Club. Looking forward to developing some …
2023-03-23: The 20th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq
2023-03-21: AI image generator Midjourney recently released its version 5 and apparently not-too-disturbing …
2023-03-21: The release of GPT-4 has led to a flurry of mind-bendingly impressive tricks that I mean to create a …
2023-03-20: All About Love, by bell hooks
2023-03-19: A couple of years ago, Dow Chemicals, who make some of the materials that go into sports shoes, …
2023-03-16: Duolingo looks to be the latest app to jump on the “find some way to integrate generative …
2023-03-16: (Chat) GPT-4 is here
2023-03-11: Last month, Facebook announced its competitor to chatGPT, a large language model AI called LLaMA. At …
2023-03-06: Women tend to suffer from motion sickness more than men when using virtual reality headsets. This …
2023-03-06: This one might be legal, but it’s disgusting. Children who have been sexually exploited and …
2023-03-06: It’s not been a great couple of days for our Government in terms of managing to respect the …
2023-03-05: King Charles' vegan chrism oil
2023-03-03: Despite the wild hype, I can’t pretend that chatGPT isn’t already useful. My favourite …
2023-03-03: It should be noted that whilst Snapchat might be the first major social network to let you directly …
2023-03-03: So that didn’t take long. Snapchat is (I think?) the first of the major social networks to add …
2023-03-01: Prove that you exist
2023-03-01: Troubles in paradise for the real life Squid Game
2023-02-26: Decided to move the more lengthy and rambling notes I’ve made on a few books I’ve read …
2023-02-24: Empire of Pain: the Sackler family's role in creating a deadly opioid epidemic
2023-02-20: The Body Keeps the Score: how and why traumatic events impact us
2023-02-17: Some very grim nadirs of reality TV
2023-02-10: The inherent unpredictability of earthquakes
2023-02-10: 🎙 This week’s Hard Fork podcast had an interesting section on the origin story of OpenAI, …
2023-02-04: 📺 Watched The Traitors (US version). Well it was hard to resist watching it after getting more …
2023-02-03: Living the provisional life
2023-02-02: 📚 Finished reading: Recursion by Blake Crouch. A gripping tale set in the world of approximately …
2023-02-02: 📺 Watched season 3 of Emily in Paris. The fluffy feel-good story of the fashionista who always comes …
2023-01-31: 📚 Finished reading Hood Feminism by Mikki Kendall. This is a searing critique of modern day …
2023-01-30: Welcome to Super Nintendo World, the closest thing you can get to diving head-first inside a video …
2023-01-27: Cory Doctorow's theory of "platform enshittification"
2023-01-26: Cognitive biases as visual illusions
2023-01-23: Over here I wrote about 3 papers that investigate the effectiveness of rainforest carbon credit …
2023-01-20: Slightly astonished to learn that there’s a 2022 series of UK Beauty and the Geek. It’s …
2023-01-18: The FT has a fascinating look into life as a high-ranking female spy now that for the first time …
2023-01-17: Human Rights Watch is concerned that the UK is increasingly turning into an abuser, rather than …
2023-01-16: In “products I’m really not sure need to exist” news, a company called Reviver …
2023-01-15: Played Into the Breach 🎮. This is a turn-based strategy game in which you control mech pilots to …
2023-01-14: Happy 10th anniversary to what unfortunately turned out to be the most evergreen meme of all time, …
2023-01-13: Microsoft has created a language model called “Vall-E” that can simulate a …
2023-01-12: A few of us just started the Statistical Rethinking online course in order to learn more about using …
2023-01-12: I’m unduly nerd-excited to have received a tote bag from the Office of National Statistics.
2023-01-11: Last year Europe had its hottest ever summer. Almost half of its countries broke their previous …
2023-01-11: Just realised that the Obsidian text editor supports MathJax. So for the mathematically inclined, …
2023-01-10: Coming soon: the first mainstream UK TV show based on deepfakes
2023-01-09: Watched season 1 of The Traitors 📺. A reality show where by day a group of strangers complete …
2023-01-08: It’s getting on for four months since Mahsa Amini, who had been arrested in Iran for not …
2023-01-08: Today’s Observer reports that: NHS trusts with record waiting lists are promoting “quick and …
2023-01-07: 15th time lucky - the US elects a speaker of the House
2023-01-06: Finished reading The It Girl by Ruth Ware 📚. A thriller set in the grounds of Oxford University, the …
2023-01-05: Watched season 5 of The Crown 📺. Starting to get into the years I actually remember something about …
2023-01-05: From the NYT: Without a speaker, the United States House of Representatives essentially becomes a …
2023-01-04: The Financial Times looks into why the UK’s NHS is in such a disastrous condition at present. …
2023-01-02: Unlike previous generations, UK and US millennials are not becoming more conservative over time
2022-12-31: Played The Pharaoh’s Tomb from Exit: The Game 🎲. The Exit advent calendar was so good we …
2022-12-30: Played the The Mysterious Ice Cave advent calendar from Exit: The Game 🎲. This is an advent calendar …
2022-12-29: Just remembered the time when The Beano comic issued a cease-and-desist letter to MP Jacob Rees-Mogg …
2022-12-29: Disappointing TIL: Drag queen superstar Ru Paul and his partner George LeBar own a ranch upon which …
2022-12-28: Covid-19 mRNA vaccines are weakly associated with Myopericarditis - but not nearly as much as having Covid-19 is
2022-12-28: Incoming disillusionment for anyone who somehow managed to convince themselves that when the US, UK …
2022-12-27: 📽 Watched The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause. Naughty Jack Frost tricks nice Santa into giving up …
2022-12-27: Behold the Lego piano! An incredibly clever piece, taking me the best part of a year to build. I …
2022-12-27: An aspect of the eternal insufficient UK housing supply crisis that I hadn’t been aware of …
2022-12-23: The independent Pay Review Boards are not very independent
2022-12-22: 📽 Watched The Santa Clause 2. Shamefully I’m not a great fan of Christmas movies as a genre, …
2022-12-22: Listening to Love Sux by Avril Lavigne 🎶. Astonishingly, it’s the 20 year anniversary of …
2022-12-21: The moral disaster of the Qatar 2022 World Cup
2022-12-21: Health chiefs made the remarkable intervention of asking people to avoid getting drunk during the …
2022-12-20: Enjoyed seeing the pretty Christmas lights on a recent visit to Lincoln. Probably could have …
2022-12-20: Mental illness as a 'sane response to an insane world'
2022-12-16: Finished playing Danganronpa : Trigger Happy Havoc 🎮. Monokuma, from the Danganronpa wiki. A visual …
2022-12-13: Frosty webs 🕸️. Hadn’t realised quite how many spiders resided on the fence before now.
2022-12-12: The UK Statistics Authority has once again been forced to reprimand the Conservative party for …
2022-12-12: Cookie paywalls: would you pay money to not be tracked on the web?
2022-12-10: The iOS Kindle app has finally made it easy to send an article from your iDevice to your hardware …
2022-12-09: Remember the good old days when you could waste office time playing the secret flight simulator game …
2022-12-09: Listening to Fear Of The Dawn by Jack White 🎶. Jack White, of White Stripes fame, with mega guitar …
2022-12-08: Listening to Wet Leg by Wet Leg 🎶. Hard to describe this one, although you’ve probably already …
2022-12-07: StackOverflow bans "fluent bullshit" chatGPT answers
2022-12-07: Listening to Dawn FM by The Weeknd 🎶. The conceit here is that you’re listening to a radio …
2022-12-06: Listening to Mainstream Sellout by Machine Gun Kelly 🎶. At some point in my youth it felt like there …
2022-12-05: An understandable epidemic of strikes in the UK
2022-12-04: Finished reading The Prestige by Christopher Priest 📚. I really enjoyed this part science-fiction, …
2022-12-04: Finished reading Principles and Practice of Structural Equation Modeling by Rex Kline 📚. A good …
2022-12-03: Over here I wrote about a Microsoft Excel / Google Sheets function I only just discovered - …
2022-12-03: The Economist’s model of the recent US midterms, where the Republicans did a lot worse than …
2022-12-02: Paper notes: Self-Monitoring via Digital Health in Weight Loss Interventions - A Systematic Review
2022-12-02: Watched My Cousin Rachel📽. Fairly captivated by this tale of doubt and obsession and its tense …
2022-12-01: Exciting news about the next version of R’s dplyr library! v1.1 will introduce non-equi joins, …
2022-11-30: This is a great reference, giving guidance and citations around common statistical myths. For …
2022-11-30: The 2021 census reveals a sizeable shift from people identifying as Christian to instead having no religion
2022-11-29: Some Elon Musk Twitter takeover miscellany
2022-11-28: Nerd accomplishment: made my first R package today. Super rough around the edges but it works. So …
2022-11-27: Finished playing The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild 🎮. This game created something of a …
2022-11-25: Listening to Hold The Girl by Rina Sawayama 🎶. Whilst the album’s approach was purportedly …
2022-11-25: What happens on your iPhone no longer stays on your iPhone
2022-11-24: Anyone who occasionally has to reference journal papers etc. may find the DOI Citation Formatter a …
2022-11-23: I learned a lot about eating poo this week. Apparently it’s well-known that rabbits eat their …
2022-11-21: The relationship between dog years and human years isn't linear
2022-11-20: Finished reading All Our Relations by Tanya Talaga 📚. Starting out by focussing on a suicide …
2022-11-19: Unflatpacked some garden furniture today, just in time for it to be far too cold outside to actually …
2022-11-18: The Conservative Autumn Statement seems short term...progressive?
2022-11-18: Watched season 12 - the final season - of The Big Bang Theory 📺. It’s mostly more of the same, …
2022-11-17: Listening to the If Books Could Kill podcast 🎙️. Peter Shamshiri (of 5-4 cohost fame) and Michael …
2022-11-13: The British Museum, London, inside and out.
2022-11-13: The wellbeing agenda, with its focus on milder problems, can lead to great statistics in a way that …
2022-11-13: Some context as Hunt prepares to unleash horrendous spending cuts and tax increases on us: Liz …
2022-11-11: The regressive nature of rewards credit cards
2022-11-10: Listening to Midnights, by Taylor Swift 🎶. In possibly the coldest take available on the internet …
2022-11-07: For anyone thinking to join the relative masses in signing up to Mastodon in protest to Elon …
2022-11-06: Immigration to meet unfilled medical staff needs is a popular policy
2022-11-05: Witnessing the Lincoln Chorale, accompanied by the Lindum Baroque Orchestra, honouring the king with …
2022-11-05: Recently learned that I’m just one degree of separation from one of those accidental Bitcoin …
2022-11-04: Finished reading: One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez 📚. This one is a real …
2022-11-03: Watched The Power of the Doctor Doctor Who special 📺. So I liked it, but I love Daleks and Cybermen …
2022-11-01: Matt Hancock, the former Conservative Health Secretary who previously had to resign that position …
2022-10-31: The Exorcist is a true story (maybe)
2022-10-29: The most overdue library book ever
2022-10-29: Elsewhere I’ve recently written about Dries Depoorter’s creepy art project “The …
2022-10-28: Llandudno's lockdown goats are back
2022-10-26: Another probable first: our new Prime Minister is substantially richer than the King. The Sunak …
2022-10-26: The Information Commissioner has warned companies to avoid using AI-based emotion detection …
2022-10-26: Derek Thompson writes about Britain’s economic decline over the past few years. In the midst …
2022-10-26: New Prime Minister, new lectern
2022-10-25: What does the Labour party stand for these days?
2022-10-24: Another day, another British Prime Minister. Now the UK is to be led by Rishi Sunak who was selected …
2022-10-22: Watched season 2 of The Capture 📺. Another pretty gripping season of this thriller, following DI …
2022-10-22: Listening to The Unraveling of PUPTheBand by PUP 🎶. One of my favourite albums of 2022 so far, from …
2022-10-22: Watched No Time To Die 📽. 2021’s James Bond film, containing most of the classic Bond tropes …
2022-10-21: Incredible to imagine that if the Lib Dem motion to disallow anyone from becoming Prime Minister if …
2022-10-21: So the lettuce won.
2022-10-20: Liz Truss finally decided to quit as Prime Minister, after 45 days in office, acknowledging she …
2022-10-17: I was curious what % of the UK electorate is a member of a political party. Turns out just 1.5% of …
2022-10-17: Austerity policies kill people
2022-10-16: Yet more ramblings about AI generated art
2022-10-15: A friend informs me that the Daily Star is running a livestream of a lettuce to see whether it can …
2022-10-14: Channel 4 created a show where they purchase artwork from “controversial” artists such …
2022-10-13: In an event that definitely isn’t straight out of a Stephen King horror novel, a huge flock of …
2022-10-13: Another study associates increased step count with several positive health outcomes
2022-10-12: Watched season 1 of The Capture 📺. A thriller in which a man is first freed from jail thanks to …
2022-10-12: Finished listening to: A Special Place for Women by Laura Hankin 📚. Somehow I’d gotten the …
2022-10-12: Otavio Cordeiro just released an Obsidian plugin called Micro.publish that lets you post directly to …
2022-10-09: In a piece arguing that the start of the ‘current era’ began with the dual inventions of …
2022-10-09: On my way back from a very enjoyable New Scientist Live show, the first IRL one I’ve attended …
2022-10-09: Sir John Betjeman, poet, as immortalised in St Pancras railway station, London, having campaigned …
2022-10-07: How Truss' rampant "tax cutting" policies actually increase your tax burden
2022-10-07: Just to add further confusion to my plastic recycling dilemma, the Chartered Institution of Wastes …
2022-10-05: Should I use my plastic recycling bin?
2022-10-05: Finished reading: A Book Of Secrets by Derren Brown 📚. Philosophical meanderings on how one can …
2022-10-04: Finished reading: Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex by …
2022-10-03: Watched The Last Witch Hunter 📽️ Val Kilmer is an 800 year old witch hunter, cursed to eternally …
2022-10-02: Hugo Gye tweets results of a poll by BMG Research showing that the public supports most of the …
2022-10-01: Watched season 1 of Shadow and Bone 📺, a fantasy type show based on an amalgamation of books by …
2022-10-01: For what I think is the first time, a judge has ruled that the content social media companies …
2022-09-30: The wordcloud of answers that occurred when PeoplePolling asked respondents “What word or …
2022-09-30: New coins for King Charles III
2022-09-30: Seem I missed that 2 years ago McVities officially confirmed that the side of a chocolate digestive …
2022-09-30: A study from a few years ago looked at some results from Alaska’s “Permanent Fund …
2022-09-29: Behold a new entry into the cesspit that is much online marketing: ads that load podcast episodes in …
2022-09-29: This post by Emily Riederer is a great summary of four potential approaches to trying to infer …
2022-09-28: In amongst the economic chaos, voters appear to think that the Labour Party is more trustworthy than …
2022-09-28: The next UK crisis: mortgage payments?
2022-09-27: Am excited that the Labour party finally have a plan that I both know what is, and at least on the …
2022-09-26: Watched Everything Everywhere All At Once 📽. A truly wild ride, following a bored woman struggling …
2022-09-25: Haven’t thoroughly dug into the Conservative’s latest mini-budget yet but I think a …
2022-09-25: Finished reading: Turning the Tide on Plastic by Lucy Siegle 📚. A very readable book that highlights …
2022-09-25: 🌱 For the first year ever, our apple tree has produced fruit that’s both plentiful and palatable.
2022-09-23: TIL: Bubblewrap was originally designed to be used as a textured wallpaper. Alfred Fielding and Marc …
2022-09-22: I’m one of the literally 99% of subscribers who never used Netflix’s mobile games …
2022-09-21: A new study estimates that there are 20 quadrillion ants on our planet. That’s …
2022-09-20: Accepting fewer refugees and asylum seekers in recent years has cost the US economy >$9 billion
2022-09-20: Finished reading: The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss 📚. I’d probably never have selected …
2022-09-18: If Disney did ruin The Little Mermaid then it was 33 years ago
2022-09-17: Per YouGov, the public’s perception of whether King Charles III will be a good king or not has …
2022-09-17: Don’t want to accuse the NYT of spreading fake news, but this definitely didn’t happen! No, …
2022-09-17: Maybe the irrationality of monarchies is why they sometimes work
2022-09-16: The Queue
2022-09-16: In a particularly dour sounding move, AirBnB has introduced “anti-party tools”. This …
2022-09-15: Finished reading: How to Survive a Plague: The Story of How Activists and Scientists Tamed AIDS by …
2022-09-14: The polio virus re-emerges in the US
2022-09-13: A paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research suggests that between 19-29% of the decline in …
2022-09-12: Survey shows that young British people increasingly support authoritarian rule
2022-09-12: I'm struggling to believe the intro I have just written to a story but it's true.. …
2022-09-11: Saving money on your electricity bill - which devices consume the most?
2022-09-10: Started watching Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power 📺, the LOTR prequel Amazon created. Probably …
2022-09-10: In one of the stranger rituals following the Queen’s death, the Royal Beekeeper has been sent …
2022-09-10: A random downside of connecting too many things to the internet: A server error meant that some …
2022-09-10: How your expectations affect the way your body processes food - summary of a chapter from The Expectation Effect
2022-09-10: Finished reading: The Expectation Effect: How Your Mindset Can Change Your World by David Robson 📚. …
2022-09-09: No paper published yet so tbd, but researchers claim to have developed a smartphone app that can …
2022-09-08: Queen Elizabeth II died today.
2022-09-08: Not long after the UK temperature hit a horrible new high, a new study reports that the prevalence …
2022-09-08: A colleague introduced me to Super Auto Pets 🎮, so now I’m addicted. Line up some cute animals …
2022-09-05: It happened…we’ve got a new Prime Minister, Liz Truss 😩. Her victory speech felt …
2022-09-05: It’s known that performing acts of kindness makes both the receiver and the giver happier. But …
2022-09-05: From today’s Guardian: Shown calculations that her planned reversal of a recent rise in …
2022-09-04: Jason Allen won an art competition with this picture, which was generated via the Midjourney AI. I …
2022-09-04: One of my favourite charts found in the wild, both in terms of subject matter and presentation.
2022-09-04: Watched EastEnders 📺 for the first time in maybe a decade. Astonished to see that I recognise almost …
2022-09-03: Learning how to drink scotch in Edinburgh
2022-09-01: Contrary to the stereotype, new research involving frequent cannabis users finds no evidence of …
2022-09-01: The R library installr provides a super simple way to update your version of R to the latest if …
2022-09-01: I’m sure I’m late to the party on this one, but if you’re a Substack newsletter …
2022-08-31: For the past 3 months, Germany has been trialling a scheme where for €9 a month people can travel on …
2022-08-31: Started watching season 3 of Locke and Key 📺.
2022-08-29: Forbes reports that more than half of all Bitcoin trades are likely fake - wash trading, and that …
2022-08-24: Seeking the world's best ice-cream - a trip to Pizzo
2022-08-24: A trip to Tropea
2022-08-24: A brief trip to Capo Vaticano
2022-08-24: Finished reading: Sherlock Holmes and the Mayfair Murders by David Britland 📚. As a big fan of the …
2022-08-18: Finished reading: How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism by Cory Doctorow 📚. In which the author …
2022-08-15: Celebrating Ferragosto in Italy
2022-08-13: A delightful holiday in Calabria, southern Italy
2022-08-12: Well, this photo from an article in the Guardian today about a drought officially being declared in …
2022-08-11: If ever you felt the desire to have a 3D representation of your Github commits in the form of a city …
2022-08-10: I’m enjoying the “Standard eBooks” site as a source for out-of-copyright books for …
2022-08-09: The deconstructed murder mystery novel
2022-08-09: Don't over-interpret Pearson's correlation coefficient 'r'
2022-08-09: Watched Primal Fear 📽 over the weekend.
2022-08-09: Less than 6% of offences reported to the police lead to a charge
2022-08-07: Finished reading: The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy 📚. A fairly short, often …
2022-08-07: Over here, I wrote about why the majority of England’s Covid-19 deaths are now from vaccinated …
2022-08-02: Liz Truss, the odds-on favourite to be the British Prime Minister in a few weeks time, appears to be …
2022-07-29: My current stats nerd learning focus is structual equation modeling. It’s something I’ve …
2022-07-27: Finished reading: Oblivion: Stories by David Foster Wallace 📚. Rolling Stone quotes him as wanting …
2022-07-22: The internal climate migrants of the US
2022-07-20: I’m enjoying the “Moriarty - the Devil’s Game” podcast. In practice …
2022-07-19: This outrageous weather led me to discover that frozen grapes are an amazing ‘I’m far too hot to …
2022-07-19: So as today is the hottest UK day ever, I’m grateful for the Jay et al. study “Reducing …
2022-07-18: As highlighted by Tom Hamilton’s juxtaposition of a couple of recent newspaper front pages, …
2022-07-18: The UK is still on course for a record-breakingly high temperature this week. Already the air feels …
2022-07-17: The weather enters the culture war
2022-07-17: Temporarily paused watching the incredible Mr Robot show after season 2 to let it all sink into my …
2022-07-16: Finished listening to The Queen’s Gambit by Walter Tevis 📚. I enjoyed it a lot, but I also …
2022-07-16: The next version of iOS gives Apple devices a lockdown mode designed to repel even the kind of …
2022-07-16: A report from BCG suggests that plant-based meat alternatives are the most effective things to …
2022-07-15: The UK is too hot and only getting hotter
2022-07-14: Most of us might not recognise our next Prime Minister
2022-07-13: The R package "todor" lets you efficiently find all your remaining #TODOs
2022-07-11: I had fun over here, exploring a great dataset that Tim Durrant of the Institute for Government …
2022-07-11: A leak of Uber’s internal files reveals that they knowingly broke the law, put their drivers in …
2022-07-08: The Lancashire Telegraph reports that, following his resignation yesterday, Boris Johnson - wax …
2022-07-08: In another awful twist to 2022 reality, former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has been shot to …
2022-07-08: Bigquery Data View is a nice Visual Studio Code extension that lets you view BigQuery table schemas, …
2022-07-07: I’ve discovered one can kind of directly write SQL within Google Sheets to produce tables, …
2022-07-07: 60ish resignations later, the main deed is done. Boris Johnson has announced that he’s …
2022-07-06: Quite a day in UK politics, with more and more Conservative resignations since it was all kicked off …
2022-07-04: Barcoding the Queen's head - the new(ish) British stamp
2022-07-04: Imagine being so unimaginative that after hacking the British Army’s Twitter and YouTube …
2022-07-04: It didn’t take long for the harrowing post-Roe vs Wade stories to come in. Just 3 days after …
2022-07-03: The UK's carbon emissions trading scheme actually paid polluters last year
2022-07-03: Continuing my mostly subconscious attraction to media that has a “is anything real?” …
2022-07-03: Finally got around to trying out Fall Guys 🎮. It’s a multiplayer battle royale type game …
2022-07-02: Just learned that the “Do Not Track” setting many web browsers have does …
2022-07-02: 100 books you'll never read
2022-06-30: Vancouver’s Kiss Radio has apparently been playing Rage Against the Machine’s classic …
2022-06-29: Amazon is finally going to let you “Send to Kindle” digital books in epub format, the …
2022-06-29: A new study estimates that Covid-19 vaccines saved 14.4 million lives (95% CrI = 13.7 - 15.9 …
2022-06-28: I enjoyed The Haunting of Bly Manor 📺 more than I’d expected, so now moving on to watch …
2022-06-28: The Conservatives lose Tiverton and Wakefield big-time
2022-06-27: Absolutely incredible Bad Chart doing the rounds on dataisugly et al today, from the app version of …
2022-06-27: Pleased to see some very legitimate anti-SCOTUS sentiment making its way into Glastonbury this year. …
2022-06-26: Stuart Ritchie discovers that there’s not much scientific evidence either way for the commonly-held …
2022-06-26: Recommendation for the 5-4 podcast 🎙 - which should presumably now be renamed 6-3 - as a place to …
2022-06-26: Saudi Arabia bans rainbow coloured objects
2022-06-26: The US Supreme Court undoes decades of progress in a single week
2022-06-23: The UK Department of Transport comes up with a new definition of "median"
2022-06-23: Amazon aims to replicate your dead relatives
2022-06-23: A .gitignore file tells the Git version control software to stop tracking files you never want to …
2022-06-22: Check how a website is tracking you with the Blacklight service
2022-06-22: Our government didn’t really like the decision the European Court of Human Rights made with …
2022-06-20: Weekends are more fun, even if you're unemployed
2022-06-19: Started watching The Haunting of Bly Manor 📺. Supposedly a modern(ish) day retelling of Henry James’ …
2022-06-19: See how trackable your web browsing is with the Cover Your Tracks service
2022-06-18: Convicted fraudster Anna Sorokin (of Inventing Anna fame) has made the…curious decision to …
2022-06-18: Finished reading: The Dispatcher: Murder by Other Means by John Scalzi 📚. What happens in a world …
2022-06-17: Here’s a great copy-and-pastable summary of why if your study ends up with a p value of > …
2022-06-17: TIL: the first ever dotcom domain to be registered was symbolics.com, purchased by a computer …
2022-06-16: Boris Johnson’s ethics advisor has decided to resign. That’s the second one in two …
2022-06-15: I’m still struggling to get my mind wrapped around the incredible case of Blake Lemoine, a …
2022-06-15: Matter, one of my favourite apps for storing things I intend to read later - articles, PDFs, tweets …
2022-06-13: Currently reading: Oblivion: Stories by David Foster Wallace 📚. No more small-sample testing; no …
2022-06-13: Finished reading: The Rise Of Communism by Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius 📚.
2022-06-13: Elsewhere I wrote about using a multi-armed bandit approach to experimentation.
2022-06-12: Maybe we’re a little further on with the dream of driverless cars than I’d thought. San Francisco …
2022-06-12: Not a sentiment I necessarily often feel, but our royalty apparently have at least one very good …
2022-06-11: Whilst Queen Elizabeth celebrated being on the throne for 70 years last week, she’s still …
2022-06-10: Like apparently the rest of my country, I’ve recently been enjoying the Sex Pistol’s …
2022-06-10: A new study was recently published which adds to the previous evidence I read that coffee may be …
2022-06-09: Some data analyst truths in musical form. Am considering sending relevant snippets in place of …
2022-06-08: juicr looks like an awesome easy-to-use R package for automated and manual extraction of datapoints …
2022-06-07: In other software updates, Storygraph, which I find to be a nice non-Amazon competitor to Goodreads …
2022-06-07: Apple revealed its plans for the next version of iOS at WWDC yesterday - the most exciting of which …
2022-06-06: Somehow Boris Johnson survives to squander another day with a mere 40% of his beloved colleagues …
2022-06-06: In “unexpected things I learned recently”, the UK’s Gender Recognition Act 2004, …
2022-06-01: It’s amazing how unproficient I can still be after studying something for a solid year. To be …
2022-06-01: Finished reading: The Trial by Franz Kafka 📚. An absolute fever-dream of a book.
2022-05-30: The Gun Violence Archive reports that the US has had 227 mass shootings so far this year, where a …
2022-05-29: From yesterday’s paper: Boris Johnson is heralding a “new era of generosity and …
2022-05-29: Everyone has their own special goals and dreams in life, and it’s good to know that sometimes …
2022-05-28: Perhaps this is less surprising than it should be, but it turns out Twitter illicitly misused the …
2022-05-28: In what I’m sure must just be a tremendous coincidence, our prime minister, who is currently …
2022-05-28: This slide from Dr. D’Agostino McGowan is one of the best summaries I’ve seen of what exactly …
2022-05-28: An insight into how business is conducted in the modern era. Meanwhile, Musk’s relationship with …
2022-05-27: I enjoyed the most recent Normcore Tech newsletter, with its discussion around the unreasonable …
2022-05-27: Just came across the R package conflr which lets you post R Markdown output (including images) …
2022-05-25: In a continuation of the odd tendency some companies seem to have to see activities described in …
2022-05-23: 7 years behind the rest of the world, I’m just starting to watch Mr. Robot 📺. Choice very much …
2022-05-23: Coffee, Caffeine and Health - a summary of the paper by van Dam et al.
2022-05-21: Some days the world surprises you. Other days the Bored Apes dating club shuts down because only …
2022-05-21: Florida bans math textbooks to save students from ‘indoctrination’
2022-05-21: DuoLingo, an app I use to learn Spanish, informs us that a single sentence can potentially have over …
2022-05-18: Currently reading: The Trial by Franz Kafka 📚. It’s probably about time I read the original …
2022-05-18: Has Texas just outlawed content moderation?
2022-05-16: Am loving building the Lego piano set. The attention to detail is awesome. Gotta build the Lego …
2022-05-16: Some longer-form thoughts on the Roe v Wade leak with relevance to data privacy. Honestly, however …
2022-05-16: A friend reminded me that Boris Johnson’s critique of working from home as being a series of …
2022-05-15: Our Prime Minister is against working from home on the basis that: …you spend an awful lot …
2022-05-15: Incredible visualisation from Our World In Data showing the flow of human existence, from birth to …
2022-05-15: Currently reading: Violent Borders: Refugees and the Right to Move by Reece Jones 📚. From the …