So much of our language reflects
the common “car first” bias around our streets, & we should never forget that much of that language was the result of deliberate campaigns to specifically re-write our perspective of streets as “for cars only.” This is one of the more subtle, but important, examples.
Telegraph newspaper editorial on Mandelson's appointment in December 2024 versus editorial today
Fun fact - at the same time as acting in the war film ‘The Bridge at Remagen’, actor Robert Vaughn was working on his PhD - "The Influence of the House Committee on Un-American Activities on the American Theater 1938–58". Considered the definitive work on the McCarthy blacklisting.
Due to overwhelming demand (two requests) this is how I predicted flu bed numbers - actuals were 3,140.
I looked at the weekday-matched growth rates, and extrapolated to second derivative. That’s all. Took 10 minutes. The rest of the time was looking at NHS press releases and yelling at my screen.
Right. Hitler's DNA. Brace yourselves for a deluge of misinformation and bad science.
I'm in Australia, so do get in touch if you want some expert debunking.
One of the best pieces of science journalism of 2025 is Jon Cohen’s terrifying article on how Trump/RFK Jr/their crew of MAGA/MAHA dudes, like Jay Bhattacharya, have dismantled US pandemic preparedness (www.science.org/content/arti...)
Then read Jay’s astoundingly stupid “pandemic prevention plan”😢
Veganism has faded partly because consumers want *protein*, but a Greggs vegan sausage roll has more protein than a meat one.
A Cambridge study that, if you label sausage rolls for their protein content, the % of consumers choosing meat-free more than doubles: www.eurekalert.org/news-release...
Meanwhile in the UK
"Do you think it was wrong to leave the EU?"
"Yes."
"And yet you would vote for the people who told you leaving the EU is a good idea?"
"Sure, why not?"
FT graph showing massive UK public support for the opinion that it was wrong to vote to leave the EU.
Ah! Good morning, reality. And welcome. We’ve been expecting you…
Amazing story in The Times. Reform UK failed to pay VAT to HMRC on its sales (tickets, merchandise). About £400k in all.
Not tax avoidance. Not tax evasion. They just didn't realise when you sell stuff you have to charge VAT.
Paperback publication day! Have a good read. Things changing far too slowly for #womeninSTEM
New updated from @ONS, UK.
Number of deaths is further reduced, most importantly, the age-standardised data, which shows the COVID-19 effect in the pandemic years 2020-2022.
The historical context is also good to keep in mind.
1/4
A bleak dystopia where Sharia law predominates, while economic and cultural divisions mean that the different communities live parallel, segregated lives.
Oh, wait, that’s Dubai …
The infection and damage to multiple organs was a feature of initial infection in an immune naive population. Whilst it might still be a feature in a sub-population of immune compromised individuals, it is no longer a manifestation generally. It’s now just another cold causing human coronavirus.
Everyone dies in the end! It’s just a question of when and from what cause. Cure one disease or pathology and the others lower down move up the list.
I think sometimes we can become obsessed with small details and arguing about complex issues. It often pays to step back and ask the question, has there been a major impact on global metrics? Infection and immunity is a complex subject, but all causes mortality and morbidity is a much easier metric!
Yet that repetitive reinfection of a majority of the worlds population is failing to show any significant increasing trends in deteriorating world health! Indeed an analysis of population mortality and morbidity shows a return to pre-pandemic trends. www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...
I would argue that the recent global observation that life expectancy trends have returned to pre-pandemic projections, despite ongoing rounds of reinfections with SarsCoV2 pragmatically answers the question in the negative! www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...
I think you could include influenza as an infection we understand in great detail and it’s also a respiratory infection caused by an airborne RNA virus, so a better comparator with COVID19 than is HIV, a sexually transmitted DNA retrovirus.
Ah yes, the exact opposite of science.
Very much the quiet part out loud.
Much to parse here. First, it's part of Sketch's ongoing campaign "Poor British Motorist!" This was during the great motorway building boom. And do you know who profited from that boom? Transport minister Ernest Marples ...
A small primer on the #NobelPrize awarded to Mary E. Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell and Shimon Sakaguchi today. This prize was for combining two separate fields of immunology research - genetic research on IPEX and immunology research of regulatory T cells (#Tregs), with enormous impact on biology/medicine
6 October 2025 The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet has decided to award the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine to: Mary E. Brunkow Institute for Systems Biology, Seattle, USA Fred Ramsdell Sonoma Biotherapeutics, San Francisco, USA Shimon Sakaguchi Osaka University, Osaka, Japan “for their discoveries concerning peripheral immune tolerance”
This year's Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was just announced:
www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medic...
This seems like a good opportunity for me to explain a bit about peripheral immune tolerance and where the prizewinners' work comes in 🧵
It’s the main day of the three for shadow ministerial speeches at the Tory conference and it’s fair to say that…. the main hall is not packed.
Back in 1978 I was accepted for a PhD studentship supervised by Cesar Milstein at MRC LMB, it was a truly life changing opportunity.
Lot of folk want to blame others for rising prices... and sure, venture capital, energy price rises, commodity costs... but you're also just proving the point of not wanting to own the policy choices... how much do you think it costs to eat out in Scandinavia?
We are in the foothills of a solar-wind-battery civilisation. This is our best chance of avoiding catastrophe. But it threatens the profits of fossil fuel companies & nations - so these are pouring money into right-wing populism to stop the transition. This seems to me the biggest story in politics.
Somehow we don't talk about this enough.
Douglas Barrowman and Michelle Mone's company, PPE Medpro, has just been ordered to refund the Government £122m from a PPE contract.
There are two very odd things about PPE Medpro that may affect the odds of the Government ever getting that £122m...
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