David Firth

This will not surprise many parents. A lovely graph though!

#dataviz

Just because someone is rich and highly successful in business doesn't mean their brain can't be utterly melted online.

Trump Allies Near ‘Total Victory’ in Wiping Out U.S. Climate Regulation

A reminder that, while some of the damage that Trump & GOP are doing might seems temporary, the damage they're doing to the planet is permanent:
www.nytimes.com/2026/02/09/c...

BREAKING: UK govt auction secures 4.9GW new solar at £65/MWh and 1.3GW new onshore wind at £72/MWh, 13% and 21% below the price cap respectively.

All due online by 2029.

Join us on 24 March for our Discussion Meeting on 'Regression by composition' (Farewell et al.), online or at Imperial College London. Explore innovative statistical modelling and join the debate!

📅 24 March 2026, 4–6pm
🎓 Introductory DeMO: 2:15pm–3:15pm

rss.org.uk/training-eve...

Another exciting workshop to be held at Warwick Statistics this coming June: The ProbAI Theory of Scaling Laws Workshop from 22-24 June!

Website of the workshop: warwick.ac.uk/fac/sc...

Registration open until 31 March on a first-come-first-serve basis: warwick.ac.uk/fac/sc....

UK announces Meta-backed AI team to upgrade public services The British government said on Tuesday it had recruited a team of artificial intelligence specialists to build AI tools to improve transport, public safety and defence, using funding from Meta .

Okay, we're screwed.

Why evidence matters in health research Professor George Davey Smith explains why he encourages scientists to look for ways they might be wrong.

Mistaking correlation for causation doesn’t just waste research funding, it can shape real-world health advice.

In our new blog, Prof. George Davey Smith, 2025 MRC Millennium Medal winner, explains why he encourages scientists to look for ways they might be wrong.

www.ukri.org/blog/why-evi...

So @soumayakeynes.ft.com wrote this about buying Greenland, but it turns out it already has wider application
www.ft.com/content/3fb7...

On Multiple Time Scales and Collapsibility - Lifetime Data Analysis In this anniversary issue I briefly review some work on the notion of collapsibility and indicate some lingering questions.

On Multiple Time Scales and Collapsibility. David Oakes. Lifetime Data Analysis. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

NOW - Musk: "My prediction is there'll be more robots than people... everyone on Earth is going to have one and going to want one... who wouldn't want a robot to... watch over your kids, take care of your pets... we are in the most interesting time in history." 4:08 PM Jan 22, 2026 223.8K Views

Isn't this a telling aspiration? To want robots to look after your kids, so you can do stuff, rather than robots to do stuff, so you can spend time with your kids?

The darkness inside these shrivelled men must be like a gaping unfillable void.

Unclear who is responsible for this. Chiltern? Arriva (the parent company)? Porterbrook (apparently owns the rolling stock?)

A murky world of shareholders, CEOs etc.

This used to be a great rail service.

Thanks for actual data! Naturally some operators must have older than average rolling stock. Chiltern looks anomalous though.

@chilternrailway.bsky.social Only 3 coaches on my train between Birmingham and London today, same on the way back. Hopelessly inadequate. What's the reason?

100% this!👇

The coming collapse in immigration to the United Kingdom - UK in a changing Europe James Bowes analyses the fall in net migration to the UK as a result of government policies and explores some of the political and economic consequences.

(3/3) @jamesbowes01.bsky.social analysis, on which the Times article is based, explains the numbers and why the government's "earned settlement" proposals are a disaster economically as well as morally. [end]

ukandeu.ac.uk/the-coming-c...

"move slow and repair things" could save the world

If a Pakistani Muslim owned X, distributed indecent images of girls on a platform where govt do their PR, where some receive payments for posts, they would have distanced themselves by now. X would be shutdown and Braverman and Farage would be calling for a ban and investigation into Pakistani men.

Agreed, it works well for people like us who already have driving licence and/or passport. But effectively excludes anyone without either, as it's too hard to prove identity. Not good in that regard.

I call on my party and my government to remove themselves entirely from X and communicate with the public where they actually participate online and can be protected from such illegality.

Forensic analysis of objective video evidence. This is how you serve readers searching for clarity.

Farage: "I believe in vaccinations when they're vaccinations. I don't think what happened with Covid were vaccinations. You have to keep having them every 6 months."

Conspiratorial nonsense.

Some vaccinations like Covid shots require multiple/seasonal doses because immunity fades & viruses change.

He’s utterly unhinged and out of control. Congress could stop this in an instant, but its ruling party, the GOP, has become equally untethered from principle or reality. Too many Americans still cheering this on without any comprehension of the disastrous consequences, for themselves or the world.

I'd love to think that there is a future where authors can completely disengage from Amazon and still earn a living. Where they feel no pressure to view Amazon sales rank or total Amazon reviews as a barometer of their success. We are not there yet. But some of us can hope. bsky.app/profile/dj-a...

@talksport.com please stop saying just "United" when you mean the other lot.

#LUFC #LEEMUN

Isn't it fantastic to be a sovereign nation once again, able to make our own rules and not bend to the demands of foreign politicians?

Department of Statistics vacancy for an Associate Professor of Statistics with application deadline on 19 January 2026.

We are recruiting an Associate Professor of Statistics in the Department of Statistics, University of Oxford, in association with Jesus College.

Closing date: 19 January 2026

➡️ Details and application information: tinyurl.com/59tjt7m2

Daily Mail headline £6BN COST OF STARMER'S NEW BID TO SUCK UP TO BRUSSELS

Independent headline 25 November 2025 Brexit costing UK up to £90bn in lost tax revenue a year, new analysis shows Exclusive: Britons also up to £3,700 worse off, leading to calls for the Labour government to improve relations with the EU

It’s exactly this kind of dismal, prejudiced bollox from the Daily Mail that’s got us into the ruinous Brexit mess we’re in. What a moronic response to us rejoining Erasmus and all the benefits that brings. If they’re really worried about cost, they should push to cancel Brexit altogether.

This is a thread of quotes and curiosities from Appendix 1 of The British General Election of 2024 book by John Curtice, @lottehargrave.bsky.social @patrick-pme.bsky.social and myself, available as a free pdf under "Back Matter" at link.springer.com/book/10.1007...

The R Foundation is happy to be a partner on the project

"Enabling the next generation of R contributors"

awarded £500k under the Research Software Maintenance Fund (Software Sustainability Institute, UK).

Announcement: www.software.ac.uk/ssi-awards-f...

Congratulations to the project team!