this graph about southern ireland is something else

no wonder they are having fuel protests in the roi

The case for bundling substacks No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money

The case for bundling substacks
www.edwest.co.uk/p/the-case-f...

How bad is the youth life-satisfaction crisis? Certain groups are hurting, but overall you're creating a moral panic

The kids are alright
statsandsociety.substack.com/p/how-bad-is...

Cowper’s Cut 410: The age of miracles “This excuses culture does the centre-left no favours. If we tell the public that we can’t make anything work, then why on earth would they vote to keep us in charge? In the NHS, we have an initiative...

Labour have been in government for just over 18 months.

They still have no form of vaguely achievable, credible or realistic health policy, which seems like a problem. www.healthpolicyinsight.com/cowpers-cut-...

On this Epiphany Eve, the Armenian Chapel of Dzordzor, in north-west Iran, where, over centuries, Armenian Christians looked up at the same night sky into which the magi gazed.

My wife gets migraines. She takes Migraleve after she gets them. As preventative measures she cut out cheese, chocolate and alcohol from her diet. Plus has special Migraine glasses to wear if she goes to the cinema.

‘A Recipe for Idiocracy’ What happens when even college students can’t do math anymore?

So, maybe not the phones?
www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/1...

It doesn’t need to be either/or. Ive had a Kindle since 2011 but still read paperbacks too.

In other news look at councils projected cumulative deficit just on special needs costs over the next few years. Yikes.

A COHORT THEORY OF DRUG-DEATH EPIDEMICS - How supply shocks create them and generational turnover ends them ‘There’s a hole in Daddy’s arm where all the money goes, Jesus Christ died for nothing, I suppose’

Ive written about drug-death epidemics on my new Substack. How they begin and how they end.

open.substack.com/pub/postlibe...

The worst you can accuse Panorama of doing is making a misleading edit – and I’d dispute that! – to make *a point that was true*.

The programme aired without anyone seeing any issues with the edit. It was on iPlayer for a year without complaints. Donald Trump *did* incite Jan 6th.

I suspect being sued for a billion dollars by Donald Trump, who is about as popular as cholera in Britain, for saying something true about what Trump did (albeit with a bad edit) will probably do the BBC's public trust and approval ratings quite a lot of good in the end.

A COHORT THEORY OF DRUG-DEATH EPIDEMICS - How supply shocks create them and generational turnover ends them How supply shocks create them and generational turnover ends them

New essay.

I use the 18th century gin craze as a template to trace the trajectory of modern-day drug-death epidemics and to discern how the American opioid crises and the Scottish drug-death problems are likely to peter out eventually via generational turnover.

open.substack.com/pub/postlibe...

A COHORT THEORY OF DRUG-DEATH EPIDEMICS - How supply shocks create them and generational turnover ends them ‘There’s a hole in Daddy’s arm where all the money goes, Jesus Christ died for nothing, I suppose’

Ive written about drug-death epidemics on my new Substack. How they begin and how they end.

open.substack.com/pub/postlibe...

Attention on social media depends more on how you express yourself than on who you are - Nature Human Behaviour This study shows that how you express yourself is more influential than who you are in attracting attention on social media. Attention is easier to acquire than to sustain.

Goffman in the digital age
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The private sector is supposed to be better value for money because it has a profit incentive. But if not regulated properly - and often it's impossible to regulate properly - the profit incentive makes it less efficient to the state.

Also highlights a point I spend a lot of time on in my book - the government is woefully bad at managing private contractors who endlessly rip us off. This is not more efficient.

Cowper’s Cut 398: Only really bad ideas can save us now My variations on the theme of Labour’s clue-deficit on health policy and politics are, alas, with us yet again this week. Sorry, innit. I’ll stop writing about it as soon as it stops being true. In ...

Unpaywalled for the next couple of hours: my latest column, which looks at why Labour’s health policy thinking is so remarkably bad. www.healthpolicyinsight.com/cowpers-cut-...

Smartphone use in a large US adult population: Temporal associations between objective measures of usage and mental well-being www.pnas.org/doi/full/10....

We mustn't forget the capacity of football to bridge divides in Israel. There are many sports-based peace initiatives in Israel eg Football for Peace. Hapoel Tel Aviv has had Israeli Arab players throughout its history & has a large Israeli Arab fanbase
This doesn't deny racism in Israeli football

Good result for Yorkshire in the Turkish League

67% of the goals Arsenal have scored in the Premier League this season have come from set plays - the highest proportion in the division.

Fundamental features of social environments determine rate of social affiliation www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Smartphone use in a large US adult population: Temporal associations between objective measures of usage and mental well-being | PNAS Smartphones are essential tools in daily life yet concerns persist about their potential effects on mental health and well-being. Research on these...

More null results in relationship between smartphone usage and mood (US adults)
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Next time somebody asks me what Bluesky is like, I'll send them this

he's going to do another moronic speech isn't he

Way past its prime: how did Amazon get so rubbish? Sick of scrolling through junk results, AI-generated ads and links to lookalike products? The author and activist behind the term ‘enshittification’ explains what’s gone wrong with the internet – and ...

This is so good from Cory Doctorow on all the tricks Amazon uses to get both consumers to pay more, and how businesses on the platform end up paying it 45-51 cents on every dollar.

Plus he rightly calls for regulatory change, not just individual consumer action
www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Nottingham Forest's first home game in Europe since 1996 ends in defeat.

It means after six games in charge, Ange Postecoglou is still looking for his first win since replacing Nuno Espirito Santo.

Hollow words when almost every weekend in London protestors shout 'globalise the intifada' and 'Khaybar, Khaybar ya yahud' and nothing is done by your police to address antisemitism and extremism.