David Abergel

I'm running a marathon in April so I've bought myself a pair of fancy shoes that have a plate and lots of foam and so on. I've trained in them a couple of times now and honestly, these things are basically cheating and should be banned!

I am at a winter school this week and have been reminded that chalkboard talks are usually of more benefit to the speaker's reputation for being able to give a chalkboard talk than they are of benefit for the education of the audience.

Feeling quite patriotic. This is what equality under the law is meant to look like.

Every month I have to go to our production database, copy a bunch of information about which papers in our next issue are associated with which News and Views etc into a Word document, and then send that document to the production team.

And every month the inefficiency drives me completely mad. 😡

That feeling when your code mostly works but there's that one pathological edge case where it does something weird and you don't know why... 😡

I think it's fair to say that was one for the purists.

New England barely made a first down in the first half, so I'd say it's going pretty well so far.

Off to watch the #superbowl. #AnyoneButNewEngland

Gladys Mae West obituary: mathematician who pioneered GPS technology She made key contributions to US cold-war science despite facing huge barriers as a Black woman.

No joke: I got angry hate mail today for writing an obituary of a Black woman scientist—because the person felt she did didn’t deserve the recognition.

Which just makes me want to share it again: www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Big shots emailing to say that "you have made the right choice, in my view" is always so affirming. 🙄

It's a lot less cringe than Common Sense. I quite enjoy them, although they are an investment.

It's honestly like you never left.

At any rate, your usual reminder: when the science media, being less careful than Natalie, asks "Is physics in crisis?", they mean high-energy physics, done by a small proportion of physicists.

Chip soup??

At home with Jakob Ingebrigtsen: ‘I’ve fed my obsession my whole life’ In an exclusive interview at his home in Norway, athletics’ ‘iron man’ tells Sean Ingle why his career feels like ‘99% losses’ and why he believes he can break world records from 1500m to the marathon

The main photo on this piece is just incredible.

www.theguardian.com/sport/2026/j...

Fortunately, Springer Nature has a near-infinite number of options! 😅

But more seriously, yes on the transparency point. I had a lovely conversation last week with someone whose paper we declined to peer review and who wanted to understand a bit more about why. I think it was really constructive.

The authors patiently explained something that I had missed and I was very happy to give them a chance.

Perhaps the omniscient editors at Matter don't make mistakes, but the rest of us are definitely human and sometimes do. We like to have the opportunity to correct them when they happen.

I have to say that I disagree with the first point in this editorial from @cp-matter.bsky.social, that you should never appeal a desk rejection. I can think of several excellent papers that I have published after initially desk rejecting them. www.cell.com/matter/fullt...

Preferential play - Nature Physics Nature Physics - Preferential play

I wrote a research highlight on a paper in @physreve.bsky.social that uses statistical physics to analyse football matches. ⚛️

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I had already read the manuscript and knew what its claims were, so it was easy to see that this was complete bullshit. But nevertheless I'm astounded that this kind of hallucination is still possible.

Do better google!

There is no preprint of this manuscript on the web.

However, the AI found a bunch of similar papers and claimed that their results were actually conclusions of this manuscript!

It literally said "[Title] is a scientific paper that demonstrates [a bunch of things that were in other papers]."

When I'm assessing a manuscript, I quite often put the title into a google search as this can be a good way of finding related literature. I did this yesterday and, for largely procrastinatory reasons, took a look at the AI summary thingy that comes at the top of the results page.

It was shocking.

A person works on a math problem on a white page. Stock image.

A Review in Nature Reviews Psychology discusses individual, interpersonal and sociocultural influences on maths anxiety in children and their impacts on long-term engagement and achievement in mathematics. go.nature.com/3Z9kSbY 🔒

I guess yesterday was "a good points day" for #NASCAR. Looking forward to drivers using that phrase ad nauseam this season 😉.

Hopefully that would fix some of the pathological driving that I feel was a direct result of the "win and you're in" system. And the big bonus for winning will also make it less likely the championship will be decided before the final race.

Stage points can stay the same; whatevs.

But most importantly, I'd change the points system. No more "every position is a point". Reward winning with 100 pts, 80 for second, 70 for third, down to 1 for 40th.

That incentivizes winning (because again, America) but also penalizes crashing on the last lap while recklessly going for the win.

I gather we will learn what the new #NASCAR season format will be tomorrow. Exciting. If I was in charge, here's what I'd do:

I get the need for some kind of playoff because America, so I would go back to a ten-race chase-style runoff, but eliminate the bottom half of the field after five races.

Trump Media to merge with fusion energy firm in $6bn deal The company behind President Trump's Truth Social platform makes a surprising move into the energy sector.

Building a utility-scale fusion plant starting next year seems ambitious... www.bbc.com/news/article...

A glorious selfie with the official MAHA lanyard seconds after I made it past Secret Service screening.

About that exclusive, "closed-to-press" MAHA summit last week with RFK and JD Vance: I got in.

Here's what I saw. 🧵 🧪

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

<<Insert comment about contemporary political discourse here>>