David Firth

Living with the planet LATE Tackle big questions and explore bold ideas about the future of our planet in this season’s British Academy Late. Immerse yourself in the sounds and music of the rainforests of Papua New Guinea; discu...

If you are looking for a thought provoking night out in London this week we are holding a free evening of talks, exhibits, performance and even zine making on Thursday. All on the theme of ‘Living with the Planet’. You need to book but tix are free
www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/events/livin...

That's the first post this season about my "evenings and weekends" project, alt3.uk. That really is an unusual amount of apparent "home disadvantage" so far in the EFL Championship. I don't think I have seen anything like this since the covid times.

It's early days, of course...

Screenshot of first page of slidecrafting-book.com website

I'm exited to announce a new resource about making slides with quarto and revealjs. This book is the combination of all the work I have done in this area, reordered and polished up

There isn't a lot of new information yet, but this format allows me to add more easily

slidecrafting-book.com
#quarto

Top statistician accuses government of spinning rock art science A scientist who quit a major study on WA rock art is accusing the government of downplaying findings linking damage to heavy industry.

Ok so "top statistician breaks silence" is up there with "worthwhile Canadian initiative" as a headline, but you still might want to read it
www.abc.net.au/news/2025-10...

“I am increasingly concerned over threats to the values that allow science to flourish. Today at a meeting of the Royal Society’s Council, I led a discussion regarding some of those threats. “Science thrives when individuals and institutions have the freedom to carry out research without fear of discrimination, censorship, or other restrictions that would hinder their work. In support of that, Council believes that it is not the role of the Royal Society to police the personal political opinions of individual Fellows and disciplinary procedures should not be initiated because of a Fellow’s social and political views. “However, the Society can and will criticise Fellows who act in a way that runs counter to the values of tolerance, courtesy and respect for others that allow science to flourish. Elon Musk’s contribution to the ‘Unite the Kingdom’ rally is an example of a growing tendency towards the use of the language of violence, and narratives of division and polarisation. This language and these narratives threaten the values that enable science to thrive and the Royal Society rejects them, from wherever they originate.”

The Royal Society has met to discuss Elon Musk – and they’re NOT removing his fellowship. They are criticising him publicly, but stopping short of actual removal.

This feels like the kind of compromise that will please *absolutely nobody*.

I’d double down. “Yes. I’m obsessed. He’s a fascistic, law breaking, populist, Russia aligned, dark money sponge. He’s leading in the polls. This is an emergency”

We do this kind of research precisely so everyone can be better informed and the political and media narrative can get things right. It’s relevant for all parties, and free to read!!

Reform UK's ex-Wales leader Nathan Gill admits pro-Russia bribery Nathan Gill admits eight charges of bribery while being a Member of the European Parliament.

Nathan Gill is no fringe politician.

He was the leader of the Reform Party and before that UKIP in Wales.

A Brexit Party MEP.

A friend and ally of Nigel Farage, who in 2016 called him:

"terrific," and "as honest as the day is long."

This is a MASSIVE story

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

RIP Danny Thompson

RIP Danny Thompson. Here's a playlist featuring just some of the hundreds of songs that were graced by his bass playing. Includes Nick Drake, Pentangle, Donovan, John Martyn, Sandy Denny, Marc Bolan, David Sylvian, Kate Bush, Talk Talk, Lilac Time, Julian Cope etc
▶️ open.spotify.com/playlist/4XS...

Trump at the UN:

"I look at London where you have a terrible mayor... Now they want to go to Sharia law."

This is entirely false. London Mayor Sadiq Khan is politically moderate and has never ever called for Sharia law.

This is Islamophobic propaganda and a bigoted attack on Khan.

New US curb on high-skill immigrant workers ignores evidence of its likely harms President Donald Trump on Friday ordered an unprecedented new restriction on lawful immigration to the US by high-skill workers. Starting Sunday, new applications for H-1B visas required payment of an...

The US Administration has proposed an astronomical tax on lawful, high-skill immigrant workers.

The economic evidence is clear about what Americans can expect: Less innovation, less entrepreneurship, lower productivity.

A diminished future.

My new summary at @piie.com —>

Trump Promoted Hydroxychloroquine, A Drug Now Linked To 17,000 Deaths Trump promoted the use of hydroxychloroquine as Covid-19 treatment in the spring of 2020. A new study shows that the drug has been linked to approximately 17,000 deaths.

www.forbes.com/sites/joshua...

A useful reminder of what happens when due process is not followed. We have regulatory agencies with a breadth & depth of expertise for a reason (inc labelling). Look no further than the Kefauver-Harris Amendment (1962) & earlier Drug, Food and Cosmetic act (1938).

#OTD 1759 William Playfair b (d 11 Feb 1823) A Scottish engineer he invented or improved numerous statistical graphics methods still used today, including line, area, bar & pie charts. 1/3

Wikipedia:
▫️Free
▫️Sources at the bottom
▫️Full edit history
▫️Discussion page to check controversies
▫️Openly stated editing policies
Academia: "This isn't trustworthy!!"

AI:
▫️Literally none of the above and, usually, the complete opposite
Academia: "I guess we have to embrace this!"

I forgot to tag @davidselby.bsky.social

The UK’s problems aren’t caused by immigration It’s not hard to see how so many came to worry about the issue. But the data isn’t there

Impassioned plea for more mixed-methods research (quant & qual) from @timharford.ft.com

"The hard data is never as eloquent as a good story. Humboldt would measure the cactus but also sketch it; drag his barometer up a volcano, but spin a yarn about the epic climb."

www.ft.com/content/d419...

There's also the excellent PhD thesis (2020) of David Selby, "Statistical modelling of citation networks, research influence and journal prestige" wrap.warwick.ac.uk/id/eprint/15...

The new TOC from academia dot edu. By creating an Account with Academia.edu, you grant us a worldwide, irrevocable, non-exclusive, transferable license, permission, and consent for Academia.edu to use your Member Content and your personal information (including, but not limited to, your name, voice, signature, photograph, likeness, city, institutional affiliations, citations, mentions, publications, and areas of interest) in any manner, including for the purpose of advertising, selling, or soliciting the use or purchase of Academia.edu's Services.

If you’re on academia dot edu, let me suggest that you strongly consider deleting your account.

Chartle - A daily chart game Guess the country in red by analysing today's chart

So you have a Wordle type itch but love data? So here’s Chartle. Powered by numbers from @ourworldindata.org
chartle.cc

A schematic showing some techniques for assessing identifiability and how computation- ally expensive they are for computational models of different types, ranked in a typical order of computational complexit

A diagram of implication conditions between identifiability concepts discussed. Note how structural unidentifiability makes practical identifiability impossible, both locally and globally. Conversely, practical global identifiability, that may be (loosely) tested as described in the ‘Brute force checks . . . ’ section, would guarantee the other identifiability conditions

A really neat paper thinking through what "Identifiability" means, how we can determine it, and implications for modeling.

Arxiv: arxiv.org/abs/2508.18853

#statssky #mlsky

Fraud and cover-up Fraud and cover-up

All is not well at Elsevier richardtol.substack.com/p/fraud-and-...

The total number of deaths in the world, all the countries, from any cause, is about 65 million per year.

Question from me: "I warmly welcome the Leader of the House to his new role and associate myself with the support across the House for my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Gateshead South (Mrs Hodgson). Members have raised many times the unacceptable level of threats that we face. Increasingly, abuse and threats are being driven and whipped up by one platform in particular, X, previously known as Twitter, which has become a sewer of antisemitism, racism, misogyny and dangerous conspiracy theories. Its owner has specifically targeted Members of this House. With a new director of communications in No. 10 and a refreshed Front Bench, may we have a debate in Government time on whether it is appropriate for that platform to continue to be used for official Government communications?"

Answer from Sir Alan Campbell, Leader of the House: "What my hon. Friend says about X is truly shocking. We are very much in favour of free speech, but we are also against incitement to violence. We have delivered the Online Safety Act 2025 to seek to strike the balance between user protection and freedom of speech. On the matter of the Government’s use of X, it is right that the public are kept up to date with information and a number of people still use X, although of course many are moving to other platforms. I am sure that the Government will take that into account in our deliberations in future, and we also keep our wider social media practices under review."

It melts my head that X is still used for official Government communications, and, catching up on today's news and the fact we have a foreign billionaire inciting violence on our streets, it's clearer than ever that this should end.

I raised this in Parliament last week 👇

“Smiling group of 14 R-Ladies at R Dev Day, posing together in a meeting room with a whiteboard and chairs in the background.

R Developer Day at University of Warwick brought together R-Ladies from around the world 🌎.

Spaces like this remind us how powerful our global community is when we learn, collaborate and build together.

Thanks to Heather Turner for making this possible 💜

#RDevDay
#rladies

This is untrue on most major issues (though the media eıite don't know this). It is untrue on immigration in particular. Untrue on climate, on Trump, on human rights, on inciting racism. And much else

Starmer is losing senior figures at the rate of one a week Lord Mandelson's departure follows a similar pattern to that of deputy prime minister Angela Rayner.

Losing them 'at the rate of one a week'. Two data points. Why frame the article in this stupid way?

No data are available. The data explored in this systematic review and meta-analysis have been extracted from publicly available databases. Although the authors will not share the data directly, any interested researcher may apply the search strategy developed for this analysis, available in the online supplemental appendix.

There's no reason not to share data from a systematic literature review, other than cowardice.

This is a good point. And a bit related to last week's @royalstatsoc.bsky.social Discussion Meeting paper "Augmented balancing weights as linear regression". Open 1 more week for discussion contributions I think. rss.org.uk/training-eve...

Picture of graffiti Tax Evader Rayner

Graiffiti: Tax Evader

"Commentary *like this* about a deputy Prime Minister felt politically unsurvivable" - Chris Mason, BBC ten o'cıock news.

This script over these pictures treats vandalism & criminal damage as a legitimate form of democratic voice. The BBC should avoid doing that, esp in broader current climate

Poster, and #rstats package for drawing tetraplots, are at github.com/DavidFirth/t...