I’m still waiting for the paper claiming an AI can work out how long your job will run for before submitting it to a cluster…

Thing is though, they aren’t computer scientists.

I had one elderly individual of what I imagine to be a similar demographic respond to my (pathetic and negligible) efforts to ‘save the planet’ with, “Who are you saving it for?”

I hate DST.

Does anyone else find the music they are now playing over scenes of destruction in Iran on the news (e.g. Laura Kuenssberg) — what’s the word — trivializing? I’m reminded of scenes from B movies and video games, rather than being given pause to reflect on the suffering of real people.

How lovely! ❤️

A task that should take a fraction of a second.

Windows just took over a minute to run a directory listing on a local device and display the listing of a hundred or so files graphically so I could choose one of them with a mouse.

Sometimes I wonder why academic organizations get so panicky about IT security when they already force us to use operating systems capable of sabotaging work with denial of service attacks of which nefarious actors can only dream.

Maybe it’s making a verb out of ‘destiny’?

We’re looking for a postdoc to join the SURPRISES project!

The project aims to understand the transformative changes needed to achieve sustainable and equitable coastal and marine futures that are resilient to surprises in African ocean basins.

Learn more and apply by 7 April 2026 buff.ly/zMQ4YZE

If you can take out a fuse box with a cheese toastie then your landlord should have replaced it years ago. It’s the landlord who needs to fess not you…

A map of the United Kingdom from Shetland to Cornwall, divided into three equal regions: ‘North’ (the southernmost point of which is Elgin, ‘Midlands’, which extends as far south as Lancaster, and South (which includes areas of England that identify as North such as Leeds)

I was educating people about this on LinkedIn only the other day, while responding to a provocative post about where in the United Kingdom is ‘north’

Do you know, I don’t think I’ve heard anyone say “It’s not rocket science” for ages now… It just goes to show that difficult things don’t last forever.

Just dropped in to #PoliticsLive debating immigration. Missed the beginning so did not know who anyone was. From what he was saying, I just assumed the chap who turned out to be Jonathan Hinder MP was from Reform.

I wish I was surprised at Sajid Javid's shocking immigration comments To have survived such sustained racist abuse only to perpetuate a new wave of bigotry on today’s immigrants is, well, dystopian at best.

I didn’t believe it but the Metro had a comment on it (could not find the original quickly): metro.co.uk/2026/01/26/w...

Actually, London would be much more fun with some mountains about the place. It’s a bit swampy.

Two words to invoke a nameless fear: “new recipe”

Why Professor Holliday Doesn’t Use Generative “AI” Why Professor Holliday Doesn’t Use Generative “AI” This is a (very) incomplete list of journalistic and scholarly sources that provide information about limitations and documented drawbacks of variou...

My course syllabi now contain a link to this document, "why Professor Holliday Doesn't Use Generative AI". Feel free to share/repurpose or just check out the links for your own reference. It won't stop some of them, but I want students to know why. docs.google.com/document/d/1...

I marched against student loans back in 1989. It was the first demonstration I ever went on. “Education is a right, not a privilege,” we sang, before the police charged us with batons. I hope you are able to effect positive change in our country’s attitude toward tertiary education.

Do be careful.

Academic publishing is broken. My suggestion is that each academic organization runs its own journal ‘Research Reports of the Uni of X’ or whatever. Lead authors would be bound by employment / grant award contracts to publish only in their organization’s journal.

I agree, but thankfully nobody can.

Sadly we don’t have a good Word processor.

A good word processor would collect these metadata automatically rather than relying on humans to enter it (which they are notorious for hating doing)

Congratulations to Professor Lorna Dawson, who has been named Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in New Year Honours List! 🤩👏

She was recommended for the award by His Majesty the King for her services to innovations in soil and forensic science.

Shouldn’t the real fess have been about the bodies in your freezer?

The sun makes me feel sorry when I forget the sun cream.

Is #ABM just a technique though? (Trying to find answers to that question — like “it’s a way of thinking about the world” — made me wonder if I needed help, however…) At the moment at least, I think the research is less driven by #ABM than it is by the things #ABM breaks.

Comic. [Two people one one side of a pile of seven apples, next to person with long hair next to five apples.] PERSON: Okay, with my seven apples added to your five, we have… let’s se… twelve apples! PERSON 2 [with hands raised]: Incredible! Perfect agreement with the theory! [caption] Experimental Mathematicians

Apples

xkcd.com/3180/