Caveat: this one is pretty faint and it always looks better on a camera.

A very faint green aurora borealis in a clear night sky above the lights of some houses

It's not bad when you get to see the Northern Lights on a semi-regular basis from your window.

A meme with a person happily reaching out towards a ball. The person is labelled 'chasing group' and the ball is labelled 'MvdP'. The second panel zooms out to show that the man is held by a larger person/thing labelled 'group 2 syndrome'.

Ah cycling, never change.

#E3 #Procycling

A cool looking grass head guy.

You can grow grass indoors.

Like any activity in academic research though it's at risk of being viewed through simplified metrics which can create perverse incentives.

Impact is an arm of REF in the UK so draws a lot of attention.

The positive spin is that it's a genuine alternative approach to just publishing X number of '4* papers'. In my experience, the folks who work in the space acknowledge that it takes a lot of time to create meaningful 'impact' too.

How long do you reckon it will be until he does a sponsorship with a betting company?

£5 says less than a year.

A close up screenshot of the words 'choose good names for things'

Je refuse.

Lá Fhéile Pádraig sona doaibh.

🇮🇪☘️

Out of context bluesky

👀

I'm disappointed that Ireland didn't end up winning the Men's 6 Nations, but at least Henry Pollock didn't get the satisfaction of winning that game.

🇮🇪☘️

Quality game of rugby between two quality teams #IREvSCO #COYBIG

The question remains though, will England lose out of spite to deny an Irish 6 Nations win, or simply lose because they are shite?

Like milk

Forza Italia!

df %>%
mutate(time = NULL) %>%
filter(status != "dead")

Hard defence on both sides of this game. Ireland a little flat in attack.

Not sure Wales can keep this up mind.

#IREvWAL

I'd take del Toro and Pogačar any day of the week.

The other aspect to this is that this process has motivated me to try to ask more policy-relevant questions in my research.

Not simply describing a problem, but working out the alternative world we could be living in if we change something for the better.

Very common reaction in the field of health inequalities research I think, when people replicate a social gradient in X outcome.

Describing, quantifying & monitoring an intuitive but important issue has utility though. Easy to ignore unevidenced claims.

If researchers were actually afraid of overpromising, they would also refrain from making strong recommendations based on their analysis of associations.

The linked paper is great though. It makes clear the core aims of research & that methods should be guided by the aim/research question

If your support for democratic principles is contingent on agreeing with the policy outcomes, you are simply not a supporter of democracy.

Does the title 'Assistant Prof' mean something different in Oxbridge? I wouldn't consider that to be entry level.

Will technology reduce the cost of delivering public services? | IPPR The Scottish government has huge ambitions for digitising public services. In late November 2025, first minister John Swinney stated that:  “…the potential

"it seems that AI developers often have a poor understanding of the services they wish to render redundant."

www.ippr.org/articles/wil...

In my experience it's often followed up with a policy recommendation for intervening on X.

Massive red flags for conflating prediction and causation.

How do you react when someone says that X is a 'good predictor' of Y?

#EpiSky

A photograph of a PowerPoint slide for the Understanding Society Insights conference. The subheading reads 'Children and Young People's Futures'

Looking forward to hearing about some interesting research on the life chances of young people.

Talks on free school meals, sure start, mental health and policy.

From the delegate list it looks like I'm the only attendee from Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

A photographer of Central London taken out of the window of an aeroplane.

Hello London.

Blanket social media bans are a blunt instrument with no evidence of effectiveness in reducing harm.

We should focus on the content rather than the medium.

a do not press sign next to a yellow button Alt: Dougal from Father Ted looking at a button that says 'do not press'.

Me, waiting for one final approval on a fellowship application which is ready to submit.