Tom Stafford

Open Call for Expressions of Interest in Max Planck Directorships:
Expressions of interest can be submitted until 31 October 2025. They will be treated with strict confidentiality

https://www.mpg.de/directors

Fantastic opportunity. Presumably part of an effort to poach disgruntled US […]

You Can't Just "Control" For Things Statistical control usually doesn't make an analysis causal and it can easily mislead

You Can't Just "Control" For Things

"Statistical control usually doesn't make an analysis causal and it can easily mislead"

https://www.cremieux.xyz/p/you-cant-just-control-for-things

clear, rapid introduction to key issues

@samulireijula.net defining scisci as based on large scale data set analysis seems inherantly quite limiting

JOBS: Counter Terrorism Unit - Homeland Security Group

" an understanding of the role online communications plays in radicalisation, and how online platforms and communications channels can be exploited to meet terrorist objectives would be a distinct advantage."

Senior Analysts […]

Cartoon Man bangs his head against various things

Relaxation Exercises for the Politically Aware

#leunig https://www.leunig.com.au/works/recent-cartoons/778-relaxation-exercises

Here's the showcase for my MSc course on data analysis and visualisation (only a few months late)

https://tomstafford.github.io/psy6422/class-of-2025.html

As with previous years, I'm proud of what all students worked on his year, what psych grads with no coding experience were able to show […]

Here's the showcase for my MSc course on data analysis and visualisation (only a few months late)

https://tomstafford.github.io/psy6422/class-of-2025.html

As with previous years, I'm proud of what all students worked on his year, what psych grads with no coding experience were able to show […]

@victorgijsbers

❤️ pynchon!

if you have any taste for the beats and mystics - ginsberg, bukowski - I'd recommend. Can't recommend one over the other. I read them back to back and years ago. Beautiful Losers is probably the more complete/mature novel

@victorgijsbers obscene, lyrical ... they sprang to mind pretty randomly when I was thinking about whether to recommend Beautiful Losers / Favourite Game by L Cohen

@victorgijsbers hard to recommend for everyone. Did you enjoy Tropic of Cancer or Last Exit to Brooklyn?

@Talia bizarre. And annoying!

The more publishing moves away from the better

@Talia what did they do now?

Got a couple of spare hours without distractions to finish off a draft of this paper. Writing should be easy, right?

#Writing #AcademicChatter

Annals of Scholarly Profanity What's the @*%#ing deal?

https://tomstafford.substack.com/p/annals-of-scholarly-profanity

"I have collected three triumphant examples of scholarly profanity, pieces of writing with a swear word in the title which fill an important gap in our conceptual universe, not despite but perhaps because of their use of cursing."

New off-topic newsletter from me!

https://tomstafford.substack.com/p/annals-of-scholarly-profanity

"I have collected three triumphant examples of scholarly profanity, pieces of writing with a swear word in the title which fill an important gap in our conceptual universe, not despite but […]

Annals of Scholarly Profanity What's the @*%#ing deal?

https://tomstafford.substack.com/p/annals-of-scholarly-profanity

"I have collected three triumphant examples of scholarly profanity, pieces of writing with a swear word in the title which fill an important gap in our conceptual universe, not despite but perhaps because of their use of cursing."

Graph x- axis months Jan to Dec y -axis average cumulative rainfall lines go up grey lines 1980s to 2010s red line 2020s, it rises above all the other lines in July

Although if you calculate decade averages the 2020s look significantly wetter in the 2nd half of the year

#ClimateChange #Sheffield

Graph x axis: month of the yeatr y axis: cumulative rainfall (mm) many grey lines, one for each year one red line, for 2025, which is under 99% of the other lines

It's currently raining in #Sheffield, but don't let that distract you from the fact we're in a severe drought. Here's some hyperlocal #DataViz - total rainfall for each year the Weston Park weather station has been operating - since 1883

Stop worrying about trust
I am once again reminding you that we have never trusted politicians
https://slowfutures.substack.com/p/stop-worrying-about-trust

Claims
- We’ve never trusted politicians, and there haven’t been any big shifts in public views of politicians’ trustworthiness since at […]

Briefing: AI bots join Community Notes and Clothoff whistleblower speaks Plus: Academics try fighting AI peer reviews with hidden prompts, SCOTUS refuses to review case against fact-checkers, and a tool that lets you search X without being logged in.

X opens crowdsourced moderation system Community Notes to AI bots https://indicator.media/p/briefing-ai-bots-join-community-notes-and-clothoff-whistleblower-speaks

Alexios from Indicator assesses the positives (yes, there are some) and the negatives (4th July)

#FactChecking

In the before times we used to run a festival called 'algomech' in Sheffield UK. The pandemic put paid to that but we're now coming back with a new small festival called Alpaca (festival of Algorithmic Patterns in the Creative Arts). If you are curious about […]

[Original post on post.lurk.org]

@cameronbrick.bsky.social gulag archipelago...in space

If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?

Was strewing over some idiocy I saw on here, then realised that Solzhenitsyn had perfectly captured my objection, the simplistic attraction of "If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate […]

[Original post on mastodon.online]

Man sitting in an armchair in front of the TV follows the instructions that appear on the screen: LAUGH (he laughs); BE ANGRY (he's angry); FEEL GOOD; BE HORRIFIED AND ANXIOUS. The TV then says: WELL DONE. THIS IS ALL PART OF THE NEW FASCISM. YOU'RE IN IT UP TO YOUR NECK. Man looks extremely worried but then the TV relents and says: ONLY JOKING. YOU'RE A FREE MAN. EVERYTHING IS O.K. STAY TUNED.

#MichaelLeunig got social media long before the current moment

https://www.leunig.com.au/

@pseudo-isidore.bsky.social i read this more a failure of HE than of AI

"Being able to write well and think coherently were basic requirements in most graduate jobs 10, 15 years ago,” said a senior recruitment professional at a large consultancy firm from London, speaking anonymously. “Now […]

@Edent nice. In the middle stages the center-periphery difference in gap size creates a texture gradient, which is a cue to depth, hence the illusion that it is bulging outwards

@satrevik as they should be!

I have shortcut keys to both search google scholar and to search google maps, which means I occasionally try and find out the number of citations to my local coffee shop, or the opening hours for classic works in cognitive science

Could be worse

#AcademicChatter

xkcd cartoon a man starts trying to fix his computer and escalating issues leave him surrounded by sharks in the ocean

Just need to resubmit this paper

↘️ just need to deal with this last reviewer query

➡️ ↘️ just need to rerun this analysis

➡️ ➡️ ↘️ just need to remember which code did that

➡️ ➡️ ➡️ ↘️ just need to install this library on my new machine

➡️ ➡️ ➡️ ➡️ ↘️ […]

[Original post on mastodon.online]

Also: JOB opportunity: postdoc in Metascience https://mastodon.online/@tomstafford/114788731145386588