Black and white photo of a thin crescent moon.

Moon sliver.

they accidentally sent me to korean youtube im not coming back

Cropped image of the cover of the paperback edition of The IPCRESS File, with the author’s name and book title at the top; beneath a pair of glasses sits atop a striped background.

6th Despite flashes of wit and invention, and an immersive sense of 1960s London, Deighton’s ‘The IPCRESS File’ never quite came alive for me. Have had more enjoyment with Le Carré, Ambler and Chandler… #BooksOf2026

In case you missed it last week:

A snippet of next week's Under Review podcast where negative and null results are under review with the brilliant @scurry.bsky.social

He highlights the importance of these results and how they could qualify as impact case studies, especially concerning issues like the MMR vaccine and autism link.

Thanks!

I need to know for Thursday!

HIVEMIND: has anyone flown to the UK from Schipol on an EU passport in recent weeks? If so, did you get caught up in huge passport/biometric queues?

Why did I check the quote tweets on this? I knew they were going to depress me, just wall to wall people who are going to be poorer than they should be in old age who think that “invest more in stocks and shares ISAs” is some kind of spiv’s charter and not, you know, important advice.

Watch A Gorilla Story: Told by David Attenborough | Netflix Official Site Veteran naturalist Sir David Attenborough tells the story of a remarkable group of gorillas, from his first encounter in the '70s to the present day.

A touching story, 50 years on. It’s going to be absolutely dreadful when David Attenborough dies. www.netflix.com/gb/title/816...

League Two: Bromley promoted to League One as Notts County beaten Bromley are promoted to League One for the first time in the club's history after Notts County's defeat by Barnet.

Brilliant Bromley! www.bbc.co.uk/sport/footba...

Paper in Science: “Protein-templated synthesis of dinucleotide repeat DNA by an antiphage reverse transcriptase.” A funky finding, though Crick’s Central Dogma remains intact.
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

The art of the impact case study Ten observations from real evaluation practice

LATEST on the @rorinstitute.bsky.social Substack: Marta Wróblewska offer 10 practical suggestions on how to write an impactful impact case study: open.substack.com/pub/research...

It’s not funny because it’s true…

“I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.”

a black and white photo of two men standing next to each other with the words `` i 'm shocked . '' Alt: Scene from Casablanca where captain Renault tells Rick he is shocked to find gambling in Ricks joint.

“I’m staggered I was not told that Mandelson failed vetting.”

Writing a great Impact Case Study can take as much time as writing a research paper.

In today's post, Marta Natalia Wróblewska PhD shares ten practical observations from her experience as "Impact Ninja": researchonresearchinstitute.substack.com/p/the-art-of...

The secret fear of the morally depraved is that virtue is actually common, and that they're the ones who are alone. In Minnesota, all of the ideological cornerstones of MAGA have been proved false at once. Minnesotans, not the armed thugs of ICE and the Border Patrol, are brave. Minnesotans have shown that their community is socially cohesive-because of its diversity and not in spite of it. Minnesotans have found and loved one another in a world atomized by social media, where empty men have tried to fill their lonely soul with lies about their own inherent superiority. Minnesotans have preserved everything worthwhile about "Western civilization," while armed brutes try to tear it down by force.

Really powerful, hopeful paragraph from the latest article in the Atlantic by @adamserwer.bsky.social

Graphic titled “Ireland and the Barcelona Declaration.” Text announces the University of Galway as the first Irish signatory and invites more institutions to join. On the right, a map of Ireland is shown in the colors of the Irish flag (green, white, and orange). At the bottom left, the phrase “Bí linn” appears alongside a handshake icon, and at the bottom right, the name “Barcelona Declaration on Open Research Information.”

🇮🇪 𝐈𝐫𝐞𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐣𝐨𝐢𝐧𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐁𝐚𝐫𝐜𝐞𝐥𝐨𝐧𝐚 𝐃𝐞𝐜𝐥𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐦𝐮𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐲

@uniofgalway.bsky.social becomes the first signatory from Ireland 🇮🇪

🌍 The BD community now spans 𝟑𝟑 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐬. Explore signatories and supporters by country: barcelona-declaration.org/signatories_...

Welcome ⋅ Bí linn 🤝

Not clever enough for this viewer, I’m afraid.

Season 3 of BBC’s The Capture didn’t have the panache or the momentum to carry off the excesses of its plot. The script left too many characters with insufficient menace or authority. I mean, how can you make Ron Perlman *not* seem threatening?

Cropped image of the cover of the paperback edition of The IPCRESS File, with the author’s name and book title at the top; beneath a pair of glasses sits atop a striped background.

6th Despite flashes of wit and invention, and an immersive sense of 1960s London, Deighton’s ‘The IPCRESS File’ never quite came alive for me. Have had more enjoyment with Le Carré, Ambler and Chandler… #BooksOf2026

Dear politicians, if you want to come across as a human being, please stop saying “I’ve been very clear…”. Thank you for you attention to this matter.

C’mon Bromley!!!

This is... incredible.

Hegseth quoting Pulp Fiction as actual Biblical verse.

🌍 Join us for the launch of our Practical Guide for Funders! Co‑hosted with the Global Research Council and Science Europe, the events bring funders together to explore how the Guide can support changes in research assessment. 📅 Three online sessions in May: register now! sfdora.org/2026/04/15/l...

OK America, the joke’s gone on long enough. Where’s your real president?

UK and EU finalise agreement to bring UK into Erasmus+ in 2027 Thousands across the UK set to benefit from re-opening of the historic Erasmus+ programme

The UK rejoining Erasmus is the best science news for a while! #AcademicSky

www.gov.uk/government/n...

Your chance to help shape DORA's work to improve research assessment practices!

Screenshot from linked article. Text reads: "This social model of stupidity — crystallized in the Orwellian image of brainwashed drones, trained to obey — has a superficial plausibility as a depiction of contemporary authoritarianism, but it misses a critical dimension of liberal societies as they took shape in the late 20th century. Judgment was not replaced by personal autocracy, but rather outsourced to impersonal, superintelligent systems of data collection and analysis. Over the middle decades of the 20th century, the neoliberal argument for markets, made most potently by Friedrich Hayek, always emphasized that their primary function was to organize a society’s knowledge. Where markets ran smoothly and prices were set freely, there would be no need for anyone to exercise judgment beyond their own immediate wants, desires, and expectations. The “stupid” person has just as much potential to thrive in a neoliberal society as the “smart” person, because the price system will ultimately decide on collective outcomes. In the early 21st century, as platform capitalism has taken off, similar arguments have been made for “big data” by the Silicon Valley ideologue and former Wired editor Chris Anderson, and for randomized controlled trials by the MIT economist Abhijit Banerjee: that they will happily render the theories, judgments, and explanations of human beings — with all their biases and errors — redundant. Once everything is quantified, right down to nano-details, not even measurement is needed, just algorithmic pattern recognition."

Stupidology: The outsourcing of judgment. Very good essay by William Davies that I think applies not only to political or economic judgement… or assessment. www.nplusonemag.com/issue-51/pol...