UK HE, everyone. Will Labour ever acknowledge this crisis?

Assessing the tackling child poverty agenda: the role of prevention - Scottish Health Equity Research Unit March was a busy month for the tackling child poverty agenda in Scotland. First, we saw the publication of Bringing Hope, Building Futures, the Scottish Government’s third and final delivery plan…

Tackling child poverty agenda in Scotland is at a pivotal point, with any new administration facing challenging targets to reach by 2030; preventative approaches to policy are also gathering interest. Read our response to the tackling child poverty delivery plan scothealthequity.org/assessing-th...

Whistleblower says Trump officials thought USAID did 'just abortions,' asked for 'Barney-style' slides before gutting agency, per new book Read an exclusive excerpt from Nicholas Enrich's "Into the Wood Chipper"

NEW—I got an exclusive excerpt from a USAID whistleblower's new book that made me gasp multiple times. It details Trump's dismantling of the humanitarian aid agency & his team/DOGE's shocking ignorance to public health.

'Into the Wood Chipper' by Nicholas Enrich is out tomorrow. Read excerpt here:

Scientists invented a fake disease. AI told people it was real Bixonimania doesn’t exist except in a clutch of obviously bogus academic papers. So why did AI chatbots warn people about this fictional illness?

This is quite extraordinary- scientists set a kind of trap for AI chat bots by inventing a fake disease. AI told people it was real and… the deliberately bogus preprints started being cited in peer reviewed literature 🫣
🧪 #MedSky

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

'instances of published resmearch have rocketed since the introduction of large language models such as ChatGPT. The problem is particularly acute in public health disciplines...as LLMs can scan vast datasets...until they find an association that the group or company wants to see'. 3/3

Today the two-child limit is gone. Parents have told us what this will mean for their kids:

- A first-ever birthday party for a 10-year-old
- Better quality food
- Clothes that aren't completely worn out
- Going on the school trip without getting into debt
- A new mattress
- Swimming lessons

They tried to make this man an MP while he's being paid €10k a month by Hungary.

My goose neighbours, Honkalot and Mr Goose (RIP 😔), shortly after meeting and falling in love ♥️

Views on health policy and prevention: a look to the Scottish election In this webinar, we look at Scottish social attitudes towards preventative health and policy and discuss the health context in party manifestos with the Health Foundation.

WEBINAR: Looking ahead to the Scottish election, @davefinch.bsky.social​ joins our colleagues @scothealtheq.bsky.social​ on 23 April to discuss social attitudes towards health and preventative policy in Scotland, and what the party manifestos have to say on prevention.

Register now⬇️

Congratulations! Is your thesis available to read online?

This is excellent on journal cascading.

It's my own fault for using ChatGPT as a search tool, but this really made me laugh. "...with an important nuance..." is sublime 🤌

You may not like hearing this but actually free on-street car parking is objectively a ridiculous idea when you think about it for a second. Imagine if I plonked literally any other bulky item of personal property in front of my house and expected it to not require permission or payment!

Our LEAP conference takes place on the 22 April and spaces are filling up fast. Want to join us at Worcester College, Oxford to talk about all things meat and dairy production and consumption? Get registered!

cvent.me/YaMNOA

Miscellanea: The War in Iran This post is a set of my observations on the current war in Iran and my thoughts on the broader strategic implications. I am not, of course, an expert on the region nor do I have access to any spec…

Well, I am not sure what my analysis here is worth, but here is my 7,500 word primal scream of a military historian's take on the War in Iran.

My best summary: this war is dumb as hell.

acoup.blog/2026/03/25/m...

Scotland's smoking ban began as a bold experiment & became one of the country’s most effective public health interventions. 20 years later, it offers timely lessons on the power of purpose, preparation & delivery, writes Kat Smith, Professor of Public Health Policy. www.strath.ac.uk/research/ast...

TRT looks to me like a deliberate attempt to widen the eligible population from those with medical needs to basically healthy men who are ageing and tired and stressed by work and kids and mortgages and elderly parents.

Parallels with Valium, opioids, continuous glucose monitoring etc etc

🔔 Another ill-fated Glasgow cultural hub is in its final four days before tenants must sign a new lease or get kicked out. The landlord is the council's City Property, and tenants aren't too happy with them. 🧵
(Photo: Neil Scott)

#LifeExpectancy reflects more than health; it reflects society. After decades of improvement, it stopped rising in the early 2010s in the UK, the US and other rich countries.

🌟🛒Get 50% off 'Social Murder' until the end of March with code MUR50: https://ow.ly/jQoG50YrcV4

The Trump administration is gearing up to kick an estimated six million more people off of food assistance programs — including nearly two million children.

The move would save just $1 billion a year, while Trump spends upwards of $1 billion per *day* on his new forever war.

Priorities.

it is unfathomable to me that an article this made it through a double-blind peer review process

the opening sentence alone would surely raise huge red flags for any half-decent reviewer

this has gone under the radar, but this crisis has also caused a global spike in the cost of plastic, which seems almost certain to increase the cost of food

similar to energy we need to defossilize food systems, reducing dependence on single-use plastics, shifting to more sustainable reuse models

Once again a heartfelt thanks to David "cut the Green crap" Cameron and Nick "What's the point in a nuclear power plant that isn't ready until the 2020s" Clegg for their visionary political choices, whose consequences we get to enjoy today.

Organised by the Scottish Food Coalition, Scotland’s National Food Debate will be held on Wed 8th April, 6.30 – 8.30pm in Augustine United Church in Edinburgh and also online. This is an important opportunity to make all political parties know that food is a critical issue for voters.

Genuinely just bonkers to watch the USA do this to one of the most successful and innovative hubs of scientific research the world has ever seen. All those years of Free Speech On Campus debates and it turns out they actually wanted less cancer research. Absurd.

Europeans when asked to unblock the Strait of Hormuz

Some entertaining solutions for a stupid problem.

Exhibit A

A tweet that reads “The new academic wealth gap isn't your university. It's not even your advisor's connections. It's who knows Claude can turn 50+ research papers into a thesis chapter in 3 hours and who's still manually coding qualitative data. I just watched a sociology PhD skip 8 weeks of analysis. Here are the 9 prompts they used:”

fuck this so much

we are so not prepared for the mountain of dogshit “scholarship” about to flood journals everywhere

Thinking Allowed - Debt and Wealth Inequality - BBC Sounds Living with debt - and has inequality become ingrained? Laurie Taylor hears new research.

It was a pleasure and a privilege to speak to Laurie Taylor on BBC Radio 4 Thinking Allowed about my work on wealth @uomphilosophy.bsky.social and @lseinequalities.bsky.social and great to share the experience with Ryan Davey talking about debt www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...