Prof. Pam Birtill

My favorite variation of this theme are studies that say that future experimental studies are needed when the cause is something that cannot be experimentally manipulated, at least not in a targeted manner according to our current state of knowledge.

Please tell me why legal ebikes cut out at 15.5mph but cars can do 140mph+ without restriction 🤷‍♀️

This is AI.

Congratulations to all the new NTFs and CATE winners. Enjoy the moment! And commiserations to those who didn’t get an award this year - keep going!

They use that in nuclear power stations! Shocking…

We used to play in the woods on the railway embankment. In hindsight maybe not so ideal, but we didn’t come to any harm!

Generations of driving kids into their bedrooms

bsky.app/profile/bgor...

Guys until further notice I think it’s safe to assume ALL the animals jumping on trampolines caught on night vision camera are AI, yeah?

Great thread about the mistakes that academic orgs + institutions make on AI. They centre AI because they think it is inevitable. This is a betrayal of their mission to provide critical skills. We should think what we want to achieve & then look for tools, not assume everything is a nail. #resistAI

It doesn’t really matter though - it’s just that on UPF diet you eat more calories because it’s higher in calorific density. That’s hardly rocket science - it’s not making an unexpected claim. Somewhat more interesting is that you can still lose weight eating ad lib nutritionally balanced UPF

It’s in my diary! So close, I’ve no excuse!

More disturbingly, no one digs for potatoes in Feb, you get them out before the first frosts. You wouldn’t plant your first ones til mid March at the earliest. This stinks!

Not according to the data in the study. Turns out people like things pumped full of sugar and salt and fats.

Ultraprocessed or minimally processed diets following healthy dietary guidelines on weight and cardiometabolic health: a randomized, crossover trial - Nature Medicine A free-living trial in people with overweight or obesity found that minimally processed diets led to greater weight loss and cardiometabolic improvements than ultraprocessed diets following UK healthy...

That’s likely the mechanism of the impact. The diets were ad libitum (eat as much as you like). On ultra processed you eat more calories, because there are more calories per gram (calorie density) and the food is softer (which doesn’t trigger sensations of fullness). www.nature.com/articles/s41...

But relationships don’t make money.

A screenshot fromm a webpage called ;'winderful' which show the UK is currently generating 14 gigawatts of electricity from wind turbines. That is 70% of our demand

Yes, it's windy, yes it's not always windy, but now when it is, we get the vast majority of our electricity in the UK from trump goading 'windmills.' They do work, they are not a con, they don't kill whales, anyone who believes that dumb garbage deserves our maximum derision.

I am fascinated by the notion that Ai might help assessment management. Assessment is one of the vital, human, activities of HE where we cannot have errors. How might AI help the management of this??

Sounds like a Kazuo Ishiguro novel

Ahhh I love this. Will add this to my final year module!

Both?

What’s Lost doing in this group??

What the latest HESA data tells us about university finances The headlines are well known, but the full HESA release adds a lot of detail to a generally bleak picture. David Kernohan has the charts

wonkhe.com/blogs/what-t... this should help you identify a little bit about where to avoid

If the uni materially collapses, this won’t be possible as no one will be paid to do it…

Most geography degrees allow selection of options even if the course isn’t called human geography.

This is going to be a disaster, and I'm astonished any govt committed to growth hasn't seen it coming. A paperwork nightmare most people haven't even heard about.

Jesus Christ on a bike www.officeforstudents.org.uk/for-students...

Please send some of that rain north, we’re parched

metascience as "a transdisciplinary approach that uses large data sets to study the mechanisms underlying the doing of science" makes me uncomfortable on one hand bec i think this large data obsession is a massive issue with current metascience. otoh it explains why theoretical work is marginalized.

Man carrying home his gardening tools arrested by armed police in Manchester Samuel Rowe, who was returning from allotment, seeking to overturn caution for possession of offensive weapon

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

As an allotment person this is awful, but the ableism of the police makes it 10x worse.

Headtorch