David Firth

Applications open for the new Chair of the UK Statistics Authority The Cabinet Office has launched a recruitment process to appoint the next Chair of the UK Statistics Authority. The successful candidate will lead the UK Statistics Authority Board, which oversees th...

Recruitment has begun for chair of the UK Statistics Authority. Could you help rejuvenate our official statistics? An important role

3 days a week / £75-£81k / 5 year term / apply by 5th September

uksa.statisticsauthority.gov.uk/news/applica...

CAN YOU HELP US DISCOVER THE STORIES BEHIND THESE 'ILLEGAL' LADIES' FOOTBALL MATCHES AT KENILWORTH ROAD IN 1935? - Luton Town FC Do you recognise any of the players running out of the tunnel? Perhaps your great-grandmother told you tales of the time she played at Kenilworth Road? Do you

@mrjamesob.bsky.social
Illegal football at Kenilworth Road.
www.lutontown.co.uk/en/news/can-...

Worth also highlighting that keeping packages up to date takes resource - resource that often isn’t given by senior managers because they don’t even understand what CRAN is, or the value of packaging up code, functional programming etc etc. I could go on.

Universities urged to hasten ‘quiet retreat’ from X after Grok outcry - Research Professional News Fresh analysis shows increasing numbers of UK universities going silent on Elon Musk’s platform

“Grok’s Nazi turn wasn’t a glitch–it was the direct result of Musk’s determination to use X as a platform to promote his far-right politics. No excuse for any university to be funnelling money or clicks his way."

Me in @resprofnews.bsky.social

www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-u...

PNAS just asked me to order reprints for our recent commentary. For fun, I thought I'd see how much they cost.

25 prints—of just one page, mind you—646 USD. And then they have the temerity to charge 160 USD for shipping.

The for-profit publishers will take all we let them. Choose other journals.

Happy birthday Brenda Milner! 🧠🎉
Today is her 107th birthday, she's a legend, a superhero.

Welcome! You are invited to join a webinar: Rapid Response Data Briefing: American Time Use Survey. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email about joining the webinar. Did you know that the American Time Use Survey (ATUS) is up for renewal? Join us to learn: - What's in the ATUS? - Why is ATUS important? - What are the risks facing its continued collection and publi...

The American Time Use Survey is up for renewal, or cancellation.

OMB is gathering input on the data's importance.

@ipums.bsky.social organized a rapid response briefing to equip us with tools to effectively comment.
#EconSky #sociology #policysky

Register:
us06web.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

FIFA opens office at Trump Tower, New York - Inside World Football July 8 – FIFA has opened an office at Trump Tower in New York City, deepening its already close ties with the much-criticised US administration.  US President Donald Trump and FIFA supremo Gianni Infa...

People: World Cup can't happen now FIFA will pull out

football fans: FIFA will just do corruption

People: who even understands how to be corrupt well enough to navigate this situation?

FIFA:

www.insideworldfootball.com/2025/07/08/f...

it’s insane that real antisemitism like this is intensely normalized and endorsed by the most powerful people in the world but you can’t say free palestine without people trying to ruin your life

甘利 俊一 栄誉研究員が「京都賞」を受賞 甘利 俊一栄誉研究員（本務：帝京大学 先端総合研究機構 特任教授）は、人工ニューラルネットワーク、機械学習、情報幾何学分野での先駆的な研究が評価され、第40回（2025）京都賞（先端技術部門　受賞対象分野：情報科学）を受賞しました。

Shunichi Amari has been awarded the 40th (2025) Kyoto Prize in recognition of his pioneering research in the fields of artificial neural networks, machine learning, and information geometry

www.riken.jp/pr/news/2025...

Two more climate change explainers from the RSS task force including @dariodomi.bsky.social @adrianraftery.bsky.social @andrewcparnell.bsky.social amongst others.

On the "practicality anything" point: surely that can't be right? It depends on the estimator used.

We are At War now, according to President Bush, and I take him at his word. He also says this War might last for "a very long time." Generals and military scholars will tell you that eight or 10 years is actually not such a long time in the span of human history - which is no doubt true - but history also tells us that 10 years of martial law and a wartime economy are going to feel like a Lifetime to people who are in their twenties today. The poor bastards of what will forever be known as Generation Z are doomed to be the first generation of Americans who will grow up with a lower standard of living than their parents enjoyed. That is extremely heavy news, and it will take a while for it to sink in. The 22 babies born in New York City while the World Trade Center burned will never know what they missed. The last half of the 20th century will seem like a wild party for rich kids, compared to what's coming now. The party's over, folks.

From Hunter S. Thompson’s ESPN page 2 column one week after 9/11.

Oh

time.com/7295195/ai-c...

Colin Brazier on x Independent schools are a gift to the nation. Parents sending their children there stump-up fees, while also paying taxes as if their kids were in the State sector. Rational politicians would encourage more of them Labour cancels them

Absolutely ludicrous narrative.

Nobody sends their kids to private schools out of some altruistic instinct.

And moreover all the schools that are closing seem to have been struggling already.

When independent schools closed under the Tories nobody blamed the government

The influence of Bletchley Park on UK mathematics The Second World War saw a major influx of mathematical talent into the areas of cryptanalysis and cryptography. This was particularly true at the UK’s Government Code and Cypher School (GCCS) at B...

The influence of Bletchley Park on UK mathematics

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

This is excellent news.

Land of the free

This looks super interesting, a great topic for discussion at an RSS meeting.

But really 🤨: "usages"??!

Why not just "use"?

Call for discussion papers 2025: Innovative usages of natural experiments and causal inference in statistics and data science👇

rss.org.uk/news-publica...

😂

Here you go: an absolute beast of a starter pack, with many of the UK's most prominent humanists on it. Includes scientists, historians, philosophers, public figures, the New Humanist editorial team and Humanists UK staff. A network for reason and decency.

go.bsky.app/PTC4j2d

We are delighted to announce that Prof. Jonathan Wakefield (University of Washington) will deliver the next CRiSM colloquium on 29th May at 11am. he will speak on Small Area Estimation in Low- and Middle-Income Countries. warwick.ac.uk/fac/sc...

I’m old fashioned enough to think the BBC should be leading on what the deal is and what it means. Rather than the political claims from both sides.

@timleunig.bsky.social (h/t @stephenkb.bsky.social) Source: timleunig.substack.com/p/internatio...

And politically stupid, too. Alienates core vote (& they do have places to go) in pursuit of votes he'll rarely get, & demolishes his core policy agenda of growth, making his re-election more unlikely. Even those (inc. me) willing to cut him a lot of slack feel betrayed. A truly awful day for UK.

Yes.

Now read from the start of the thread.

Academic conference. You invented academic conference.

Tighter restrictions on visas aren’t just mean-spirited, they’re counter-productive Making it harder for people to come to this country to work, study or stay may get the immigration numbers down, but it’s also a one-way ticket to plummeting growth, argues Jonathan Portes

"Making it harder for people to come here to work, study or stay here may “get immigration down” but will also “get growth down”.

Prioritising the former is a bet voters prefer fewer foreign students/workers even if means closed universities and care homes.

www.independent.co.uk/voices/tight...