Caroline Fiennes

Brava, your mum!

For example, a good friend, a bit older than me, bemoans:
"I'm nearly 60 & still haven't learnt to play the piano... but Caroline's just done a statistics degree!"

(My degree isn't - only - stats & I haven't finished it, but that's what she said!)

Oh. I'm doing a Masters now (age 472...): the reaction of every person I've told - bar one - has been really positive. It seems taken to indicate "s*** together" & self-improving & maybe also raging against the dying of one's brain's light.

The one is the one who got me interested in this topic 🤣

Yes. I too have marvelled at that!

Board on the wall above the reception desk with just the words: "safety, kindness, teamwork, improving".

These are the values of University College Hospital in London. Do you notice anything about this list?
🫣

And on a gorgeous day! Thanks for sharing.

Poland returns 91 Jewish objects to Greece, decades after they were stolen by the Nazis This marks the first time Poland has repatriated cultural property held under its care that was illegally taken from another country

For the first time, the Polish government has repatriated cultural property taken illegally from another country, returning sacred objects stolen from Greek Jews in Thessaloniki during the Nazi occupation. forward.com/fast-forward...

I'm going to Nepal next month!
Was already super-excited but maybe the rapper-Prime-Minister will drop by!!

Evidence Reviewer role in my team. Part time 0.5 FTE

Woah:

Postdoctoral Fellow in Sociology The Swedish Institute for Social research (SOFI) is part of the Faculty of Social Sciences at Stockholm University. The institute is an internationally leading research institute in the field of socia

📢 We are hiring a Postdoctoral Fellow in Sociology at SOFI, Stockholm University.

Interested in research on the causes and consequences of social policy for individuals and society?

Apply by 13 April 2026.

More information and application:
su.varbi.com/en/what:job/...

#postdoc #sociology

In maths/physics, "unreasonableness" has a strong & vert positive resonance: abstract ("useless") maths has often turned out to be "unreasonably effective" at explaining & modelling natural phenomena, ie, physics 😊

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unr...

Are you feeling better today?
(Genuine q about illness!)

Screenshot of the "Does that use a lot of energy?" online app

Hannah Ritchie has built a fun little tool where you can compare energy usage of various products and activities.

This is super helpful imho, because it's so hard to develop intuitions even just about the scales involved here.

hannahritchie.substack.com/p/does-that-...

This made me laugh out loud!

Thank you 👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽

Fyi @zabong69.bsky.social who will like this too.

Reminder that Spain's economy is outstripping most (all?) others in Europe, according to that rather good recent article in the NYT by its Prime Minister explaining & defending its open stance on immigration.

Yes, I read yesterday about, during the Civil War, horses being stabled in the chancel, something (shops?) in the nave...and a road running through the transepts!!

Book extract

Don't complain about having to pay to enter St Paul's Cathedral! - it's been charging since 1709, before it was even finished (=1710).
Maybe to deter the riffraff? 👇🏼🫣

Ausgezeichnet....

Definitely a requirement for the Nobel Peace Prize 👍🏽

Mindfulness drawing thing

@zabong69.bsky.social
Karsten: I really think that you should do more of those mindfulness drawing things:

Full page ad in The Economist

Bit surprised that Infosys runs an advert featuring (the legendary 🤩) Rafael Nadal who retired 18 months ago 🤔

{Tbc: I'm happy to see pictures of Rafa any time: IMHO those huge billboard ads he did for Calvin Klein could / should have been funded by the Arts Council 🤣
Just a bit not current now.}

Sounds great. Sign me up! 😜

Alan Turing and Bertrand Russell: 👯‍♂️💃🏽🕺🏽

Party like it's 1939....
🤣

I get the mark today for an essay for my UCL Master's, in which I lay out a mystery (why xyz paper is so crap), say that it's unclear why the paper is so crap, and that "my conjecture is that..."
I thought that sounded dead erudite and science-y 🤣

Wish me luck, ha ha... 👍🏽

"A theorem prover"? You mean that you put in a conjecture & it proves it (or disproves it, presumably)?
Like the Goldbach Conjecture or Riemann Hypothesis?
That is a good trick if your gadget can do it 🤣

You enjoyed Skios? Interesting. I thought it awful, esp compared to his well-researched & masterful writing like Headlong, Copenhagen, Democracy. I wouldn't have guessed that it was even by the same person: felt like it was trash-lit written in an afternoon.
Not saying that you're wrong, obv!

Screenshot of seminar slide...

Whatever do you mean?
This 👇🏼is all perfectly clear:

Quite the charity governance story here 👇🏼

!!!