Peter Tennant
@pwgtennant.bsky.social
Epidemiologist. Causal inference researcher and trainer. Currently visiting @yalesph.bsky.social See my Intro to Causal Inference Course: https://www.causal.training/ See the Causal Inference Interest Group: https://ciig-seminar.github.io
Every time I buy a piece of clothing I like, I immediately want to get at least one more version of it, ideally in a different colour. And yet it’s often quite difficult to do that. I’ve never understood if that’s just because I’m rubbish at fashion or if it’s a market failure?
I was literally deceased by the end of this www.instagram.com/p/Dba8hsKyLXh/
Between the 1970s and 1990s the UK state made a strategic bet to expand Higher Ed. They poured in untold billions of your money. Now it's been handed over to private creditors to burn in a furnace. Then they just laugh at you: at all the taxes you've ever paid or will ever pay. True story. (2/2)
So it's farewell to the History subject area at the University of Hertfordshire, not the first nor the last to go. One of the best departments in the country, just extinguished like a snap of the fingers. Think of the waste. (1/2)
If we’re discussing covid, back in August 2020 the Prime Minister of the UK, Rishi Sunak, introduced a programme that subsidised £850m for people to congregate in enclosed spaces and get infected with the disease that killed people, then the state broadcaster depicted him as a superhero
Worth remembering that this government is subsidising a theme park to the tune of £1.3bn. An amount that would go some way to preserving the intellectual and economic footprint of our universities.
James Woodfield@jameswoodfield.bsky.social · 5d agoAccording to the parliamentary annual report & accounts for the 2025/26 financial year, the cost of subsidising the bars in the House of Commons alone was around £5.8 million. Meanwhile, to save £3 million less than that, Jodrell Bank is being defunded and shut down. share.google/MRHIvCsCsKoc...
Honestly, all science is 'activism' in one way or the other; 'my research is important and I (more than my competitors) need funding' is a political statement at heart.
Glad someone senior from the sector is pushing back. Labour MPs need to understand the serious real anger from graduates and the people who produce them. And the dangerous financial situation they have allowed to fester, or indeed worsened, in one of Britain’s leading sectors.
Labour has harmed universities as much as Trump, London School of Economics head says
LSE vice-chancellor Larry Kramer points to domestic student fees freeze, international student limits and rise in employers’ national insurance
ft.com
Neoliberalism in a nutshell. UEFA on FIFA's proposal: “The moment external investors acquire ownership interests ... football changes forever. Commercial return becomes a permanent obligation. ... Every decision is no longer driven by what best serves the game, but by what best serves shareholders.”
Nature did a short piece on our preprint about how LLMs will affect the practice of science; my more detailed thread is below.
Scientists using LLMs will ‘do more, less well’, modelling study predicts
Research suggests that the combination of incentives to publish and the use of large language models will lead to more papers, but they will be less refined.
nature.com
Carl T. Bergstrom@carlbergstrom.com · 2w ago1. We—@eduede.bsky.social, @mjcrockett.bsky.social, Kevin Gross, and I—have a new preprint on the arXiv today, based on ideas that emerged during an @sfiscience.bsky.social workshop in November 2024: The unintended consequences of large language models as a labor-augmenting technology in science.
If this is what happens to a scientific field as a whole when LLMs dominate the workflows of researchers, I can only imagine that the outlook is even worse for any individual researcher who is soldiering on without using them. 😞
Carl T. Bergstrom@carlbergstrom.com · 2w ago13. Hence our dismal conclusion: rather than finding that LLMs free us to do a better job of what we were doing before they came along, they shift scientific incentives (and the playing field of academic competition) in ways that compel us to do more and more, faster and faster, less and less well.
I actually know the answer to this and it's slightly insane. Google pulls from Wikipedia to determine if a place is a city, town, neighbourhood, whatever. Brighton's first line describes it as a "seaside resort" so Google Maps thinks it's a neighbourhood and doesn't display it in the "city" font.
Bordeaux, France, has now recorded more days above 40°C in 2026 alone than during the entire 105-year period from 1920 (when observations began) to 2025. This is deeply shocking.
Life’s getting a bit more crap here if you are a person from an ethnic minority 🧵
Govt planning c. 100 new data centres by early 2030s, mostly in already water stressed areas. They have no legal obligation to disclose how much water they use. Meanwhile Govt launches £75m publicity campaign to urge us to reduce water use & privatised water companies waste 19% thro leaks. Madness
No professional accomplishment has ever made me happier than this. theonion.com/translator-o...
Translator Of Original ‘Minions’ Epic Poem Slams ‘Sexless, Bloodless’ Film Adaptation
PHILADELPHIA—In a 4,500-word essay published in Harper’s Magazine, Emily Wilson, known for her popular translation of the Minions epic poem, blasted the latest film Thursday as a “sexless, bloodless” ...
theonion.com
"A study done in Phoenix done by Arizona State University found data centres can increase air temperatures by up to 4 degrees Fahrenheit in downwind neighbourhoods. The waste heat given off by one data centre as it cooled itself exceeded the amount produced by 40,000 households."
CNN@cnn.com · 6d agoNew research suggests data centers have an alarming and overlooked environmental impact: heat pollution. CNN's Laura Paddison reports.
New blog post! Odds ratios are...a bit weird. Here I explain two problems (interpretation, non-collapsibility) and provide some simple recommendations for improved reporting. www.the100.ci/2026/07/30/r...
Reviewer notes: Odds ratios are really odd
When psychological researchers investigate binary outcomes, they routinely report odds ratios to quantify the strength of an effect or an association. This is quite understandable given that psycholog...
the100.ci
Is “pragmatic” the new, “grown up” word? Andy, there’s nothing “pragmatic” about drilling for more oil & gas - to even consider it with the planet literally on fire is total madness. How many times must we say it will do nothing for energy bills or security? It would be an act of utter recklessness
Burnham promises ‘pragmatic’ approach to North Sea oil and gas
PM tells reporters the government cannot ignore the energy resource ‘when people are struggling’
theguardian.com
I am annoyed that my UK credit score takes a hit because I cannot register to vote in the UK.
Today experienced the 24th day of year hitting 30C in London. For perspective in whole of 1980s we had 21 days.
The Office: Woman Holding 'HOT' Sign
ALT: The Office: Woman Holding 'HOT' Sign
static.klipy.com
Tesla manager says self-driving vehicle team was so overworked that cars were ‘rolling hazards on public streets,’ lawsuit reveals
Tesla manager claims self-driving team pushed to point of ‘systemic safety breakdown’
Exclusive: ‘I was really trying to let them know how serious this was,’ fired Tesla manager Javier Medrano told The Independent. ‘‘But there was no sense of urgency’
trib.al
📣 Job alert: We are looking for a PhD Candidate in causal inference & health data science🔎 📍 Berlin (Responsible Health Data Analysis Team, BIH-QUEST) 📅 Starting: Oct 1, 2026 (3 years) 💼 100% E13 position 🔗 Read more and apply (deadline Aug 17): karriere.charite.de/en/job-vacan... Please share!
PhD Candidate (all genders) BIH QUEST Center (Team “Responsible Health Data Analysis”)
full-time | 17.08.2026 | BIH Berlin Mitte
karriere.charite.de