William Cullerne Bown

Today I argue Keir Starmer can only be understood in the context of deep shifts in the character of our politics that are still hard to grasp open.substack.com/pub/williamc...

A joy

I'm grateful to the Science and Technology Facilities Council for being willing to meet with me to talk about the impact of recent decisions on UK science and researchers. (1/4)

As of today, our new newspaper about research, higher education and industrial strategy has a name - and a purpose. Going live 1 January.

Over time the concentration of award-winning researchers weakens: from 'a few science-strong universities in high-income countries to a more diverse set of institutions across the world'. Except in economics. Huh. www.nber.org/papers/w35875

Curious, all the more so because Times Higher don’t seem bothered to contest or comment on the allegations. bylinetimes.com/2026/09/30/t...

Oh. Hallo @theresearchdesk.bsky.social

Oh. Hallo @theresearchdesk.bsky.social

Trying out the new and now settled in @theobserveruk.bsky.social this Sunday. “Vronsky redux, anyone?” is how the page of editorials (p3, before the news) concludes. I like re-reading Anna Karenina as much as anyone, but I have no idea what or who is intended by this.

Saw Sambizanga last night at the BFI. An unforgettable film that you watch as much for the verité as the drama. It’s an amazingly immersive dive into a particular place and time (Luanda 1972). It’s on again in the coming weeks so go if you can!

This is how the nuclear industry petred out in failure throughout many countries in the 1980s and 90s

If I'm reading correctly, looks like the previous LZ search was 5.5kt and 60 days, so .9 tonne-years, or about 1/3 of the current search size.

What I will say about the US-Canada trade spat is that time is on Carney’s side. Every day this goes on is a day that Americans are reminded that they don’t like Trump fucking with their longtime friends in Canada. And the midterms are coming.

We need a systematic mapping of what, for want of a better word, we could call Big Anti-Science.

Waiting in Moquette Fun photography of Andreya wearing a classic London Underground patterned moquette dress & socks whilst waiting for a train at Bank station. #photography

Bakerloo Line Moquette Tattoo I'm a big fan of the moquette patterns that you can find on London Transport, especially underground trains. So it was an absolute pleasure meeting Liz who had a very detailed Bakerloo line Tattoo. #tattoo #photography #railway

Fun selfie in the Victoria Line PlayStation carriage! I couldn't resist wearing my Victoria line moquette Jacket.

Emily's wonderful performance on Mastermind with specialist subject TfL moquettes - here's a 2009 pic with the top 3 designs in the international competition we at London Underground ran to re-start the process of commissioning designs. Seen against the PPP moquette that kicked it off!

Dame Nature a changé la moquette! 🧡🍂

AI response: 'The phrase "McDonald's Omega" can refer to a physical McDonald's restaurant location in the Omega business park area of Warrington, UK, vintage corporate-branded Omega wristwatches given to franchise owners, or "McDonald's omega," a statistical measure used in psychological research'

Extremely thorough post on Cofnas case by Sunder here

My sleep is off because camomile tea is not what it used to be. First Sainsbury’s and now Waitrose bags have lost their punch. Does anyone else who uses this stuff to get through the night have any suggestions?

“For years, governments have wasted money on useless degrees and ungrateful universities when the backbone of Britain, real Britain, the men and women who get up and go to work in the dark and come home in the dark have been ignored,” says a party document outlining the policy.' 2/3

I watched this all the way through.

In possibly the fastest shift in public opinion I've ever seen, local data center approval went from -5 to -65 in less than a year heatmap.news/daily/data-c...

I'm now at the point where I'm not even sure peer review is doing anything at all. I don't think people in our field understand how prevalent copy-pasting AI output into peer reviews is. It genuinely makes me question what we're all even trying to do anymore. Our field needs to decide what it values

I think the gatekeeping function of peer review is still intact. People still form opinions about papers, even if there's a risk that they increasingly do so based on superficial readings. At the same time, AI can also flag issues that reviewers might previously have overlooked. 1/4

It's basically what you'd expect, right? In the olden days it used to just be called 'doing your child's homework for them' and the results were the same

This result seems plausible to me.

40 years of failure

This should be keeping every scientist awake at night.

The AI companies seem more and more like a mechanical, real life version of that dark scifi fantasy where someone infects the entire world with a virus to which only they have the antidote. www.ft.com/content/a994...

The “central magic of science” is that it is possible to write down a mathematical formula that predicts the existence of things previously unsuspected - black holes, antimatter, the Higgs boson… - that turn out to actually exist! AVAILABLE ON KINDLE FOR 99p www.amazon.co.uk/Magicians-Gr...

Oh no I accidentally listened directly to the eclipse for a few seconds and now I can't hear anything

Weird watching the right-wing columnist cohort try to collectively pull the handbrake on ethnonationalism. Like the world's biggest hotdog man convention.

As I was saying

So I've had a go at this! open.substack.com/pub/gileswil... My beef is not with the FT. It's a precautionary warning to any bad faith policy wonks minded to misuse a number that's frankly more meaningless than meaningful

A very interesting take on industrial strategy. Britain needs to redefine what it considers cutting-edge

John Bell dug a bit deeper. The violation of Bell’s inequality implies the world can’t be both local & realistic. Either entanglement allows instantaneous correlations between distant particles OR physical properties do not exist independently of measurement. A profound challenge to our intuition!

Despite many attempts at official sabotage by a string of increasingly shambolic UK governments, the GDS still exists, and it still does amazing work, even though it operates today with a fraction of the official support that it enjoyed at its inception. 15/

In a traditional Japanese garden, found objects provide a focus for contemplation.