@carolinefiennes.bsky.social
Director of Giving Evidence: helping donors make decisions based on sound evidence. (www.giving-evidence.com) "Charmingly disruptive" - Nobel laureate Richard Thaler. U.Cambridge visiting fellow. Former FT columnist. Irrationally exuberant. Church nerd.
Woah:
04.03.2026 10:59 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
📢 We are hiring a Postdoctoral Fellow in Sociology at SOFI, Stockholm University.
Interested in research on the causes and consequences of social policy for individuals and society?
Apply by 13 April 2026.
More information and application:
su.varbi.com/en/what:job/...
#postdoc #sociology
In maths/physics, "unreasonableness" has a strong & vert positive resonance: abstract ("useless") maths has often turned out to be "unreasonably effective" at explaining & modelling natural phenomena, ie, physics 😊
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unr...
Are you feeling better today?
(Genuine q about illness!)
Screenshot of the "Does that use a lot of energy?" online app
Hannah Ritchie has built a fun little tool where you can compare energy usage of various products and activities.
This is super helpful imho, because it's so hard to develop intuitions even just about the scales involved here.
hannahritchie.substack.com/p/does-that-...
This made me laugh out loud!
Thank you 👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽
Fyi @zabong69.bsky.social who will like this too.
Reminder that Spain's economy is outstripping most (all?) others in Europe, according to that rather good recent article in the NYT by its Prime Minister explaining & defending its open stance on immigration.
03.03.2026 12:02 — 👍 17 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0Yes, I read yesterday about, during the Civil War, horses being stabled in the chancel, something (shops?) in the nave...and a road running through the transepts!!
03.03.2026 09:21 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Book extract
Don't complain about having to pay to enter St Paul's Cathedral! - it's been charging since 1709, before it was even finished (=1710).
Maybe to deter the riffraff? 👇🏼🫣
Ausgezeichnet....
02.03.2026 19:47 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0Definitely a requirement for the Nobel Peace Prize 👍🏽
02.03.2026 19:08 — 👍 3 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
Mindfulness drawing thing
@zabong69.bsky.social
Karsten: I really think that you should do more of those mindfulness drawing things:
Full page ad in The Economist
Bit surprised that Infosys runs an advert featuring (the legendary 🤩) Rafael Nadal who retired 18 months ago 🤔
{Tbc: I'm happy to see pictures of Rafa any time: IMHO those huge billboard ads he did for Calvin Klein could / should have been funded by the Arts Council 🤣
Just a bit not current now.}
Sounds great. Sign me up! 😜
02.03.2026 10:31 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
Alan Turing and Bertrand Russell: 👯♂️💃🏽🕺🏽
Party like it's 1939....
🤣
I get the mark today for an essay for my UCL Master's, in which I lay out a mystery (why xyz paper is so crap), say that it's unclear why the paper is so crap, and that "my conjecture is that..."
I thought that sounded dead erudite and science-y 🤣
Wish me luck, ha ha... 👍🏽
"A theorem prover"? You mean that you put in a conjecture & it proves it (or disproves it, presumably)?
Like the Goldbach Conjecture or Riemann Hypothesis?
That is a good trick if your gadget can do it 🤣
You enjoyed Skios? Interesting. I thought it awful, esp compared to his well-researched & masterful writing like Headlong, Copenhagen, Democracy. I wouldn't have guessed that it was even by the same person: felt like it was trash-lit written in an afternoon.
Not saying that you're wrong, obv!
Screenshot of seminar slide...
Whatever do you mean?
This 👇🏼is all perfectly clear:
Quite the charity governance story here 👇🏼
01.03.2026 20:39 — 👍 7 🔁 3 💬 0 📌 0!!!
01.03.2026 20:39 — 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
?
Who is 'we'?
@zabong69.bsky.social
OH LOOK! I have finally bumped into your old friend 😜
Screenshot of Wikipedia: " Copenhagen opened in the National Theatre in London and ran for more than 300 performances, starring David Burke as Niels Bohr, Sara Kestelman as Margrethe Bohr, and Matthew Marsh as Werner Heisenberg. It was directed by Michael Blakemore. "Copenhagen" transferred to the Duchess Theatre in London's West End, where it ran from 8 February 1999, for more than 750 performances. "
Saw Tom Stoppard's play Arcadia y/day: it's odd, mainly fiction in which the characters sometimes talk about maths / physics. The play isn't about maths/ physics.
By contrast, Copenhagen, which is back on soon(🙂: in Hampstead), really is about physics: and look how popular it is!
“If Kamala wins, only death and destruction await because she is the candidate of endless wars. I am the candidate of peace. I am peace.” - Trump, 11/1/24
“I’m not going to start a war, I’m going to stop wars.” - Trump, 11/5/24
Israel has closed all the crossings into Gaza and reimposed total siege.
28.02.2026 19:39 — 👍 1126 🔁 609 💬 12 📌 38
BREAKING: Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has been killed and his body has been found, reports Reuters, citing Israeli media reports.
🔴 LIVE updates: aje.news/s9152d
Great news. Henrietta Lacks was Black & a "poor tobacco farmer": cells were taken from her, without her consent in 1951, reproduced into a huge industry for pharma research. She & her family never got a dime.
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks recounts it: a fabulous book.
A trailblazer (which I did not appreciate enough when I sat in her lectures!).
ras.ac.uk/news-and-pre...
Men studying a dragon
ENDOWED PROFESSORSHIP IN HISTORY OF SCIENCE
My home department at Uppsala University is advertising an endowed professorship in the history of science. This is the best position in the field in Sweden, and probably in all of Scandinavia. Apply before 30 April 2026. www.uu.se/en/about-uu/...