James Dickson

Hoping to use twitter to promote science communication, evidence based health and policy, and social entrepreneurship

[Michael Shurkin @MichaelShurkin]

De Gaulle was right.

[Deedy @deedydas]

All languages covey information at a similar rate when spoken (39bits/s).

Languages that are spoken faster have less information density per syllable!

One of the coolest results in linguistics.

[James Dickson @jamesdkiwi]

@humphreys_adam Will you do any in Oxford?

[James Dickson @jamesdkiwi]

@humphreys_adam @OUPAcademic @OUPSocSci @UoRPolitics @UniRdg_Research Ohhh, this looks really cool.

[Samuel Boateng @okohboateng]

I've started a postdoc at Oxford. It's surreal to be here and to continue my research in Jazz, African music, and 20th cent. Black popular performance at @StJohnsOx, @UniofOxford.

[Dylan O'Sullivan @DylanoA4]

I just found out that Bill Watterson (the genius behind Calvin and Hobbes) gave a commencement speech in 1990 and it's incredible

1/2

[James Dickson @jamesdkiwi]

@amoralorealis This helps both maintain rural populations and supply essential products and services to they produce. Overall, that's a good thing. But it doesn't change that this is a reallocation of wealth created in one place (cities) and moved to another (rural areas).

[James Dickson @jamesdkiwi]

@amoralorealis A lot of the (often more upset) comments under this are of the sort "but rural people grow food / extract resources". Sure - that makes it a strategic decision for resources to be redistributed towards rural areas

[James Dickson @jamesdkiwi]

@kpetrovvic @mmbronstein @ismaililkanc @UniofOxford Congratulations!

[Giulio Mattioli @giulio_mattioli]

Aviation accounts for 3.5% of climate change impact, and it's one of the sectors where emissions are increasingly most rapidly.

But where do aviation emissions come from?

The answer is in this new paper led by Frédéric Dobruszkes - THREAD https://t.co/gkig3kAFVz

[Dan Davies @dsquareddigest]

me, weeping: all I'm asking for is what this actually means, are you talking about debt or deficit, vs what baseline, who is making the forecast, you even changed the accounting convention

everyone : the BLACK HOLE is ONE HUNDRED BILLION POUNDS

[James Dickson @jamesdkiwi]

@EleonoraSberg @OxUniMaths Welcome to Oxford! I hope you have a wonderful time here!

[Mikko Rautalahti @MikkiHEL]

I'm gonna say a couple of more things, just based on a lot of the conversation that I'm seeing.

First of all, I'm not... _really_ talking about the technology here. That's an aspect of it, sure, but I'm really talking about what's being communicated.

(So, another thread.)

[Randall Munroe @xkcd]

UK Coal https://t.co/LqmawjI9EJ

[David Fickling @davidfickling]

How did the US invent solar power and dominate it for 60 years, before giving it up to China over the past decade?

The answer is, IMO, quite different to the stories we have told ourselves in recent years. And it has important lessons for the future.🧵

https://t.co/uj1bwFgYZA

[Dominic Grieve @dominicgrieve_]

Ten years ago this month that David Cameron dispensed with my services as AG. I had told him that his plans to scrap the HRA and threaten to leave the ECHR if it proved incompatible with his British Bill of Rights were unworkable and would not help solve our security or immigration challenges one bit. So it proved. When published, his plans were quickly shown to be flawed and never implemented.
Ten years on, despite the repeated huffing and puffing, we still have both the HRA and the ECHR. This despite having had Suella Braverman as both Home Secretary and as a parody AG.

One might have hoped that the penny would have dropped that the policy serves no useful purpose, as any minor benefit will be entirely outweighed by the downsides. We must be thankful that Rishi Sunak seems to have realised this as did the last AG Victoria Prentis.

So it is depressing to see candidates for the Conservative leadership such as Tom Tugendhat return yet again to this theme. It has become a kind of ritual, without which no candidate feels they could be acceptable to the membership. And that I am afraid also shows how the Conservative Party continues to be mired in ideological fantasies that lead directly to its wipe out this year. For a Party whose members used to laugh at the inanity of Labour supporters singing the Red Flag at the end of their conferences, it is a sad reflection on where common sense has gone.

[Dominic Grieve @dominicgrieve_]

@RobertJenrick This is one of the most astonishing videos I have ever seen posted by a Conservative MP, let alone a candidate for the leadership. Most of it is twaddle, a series of promises of change that leaving the ECHR will do nothing to take forward.

[James Dickson @jamesdkiwi]

@nialloconghaile Might also be helpful for Starmer et al. to stop referring to it as "free movement for young people". Insisting on making youth visas sound like free movement is only going to make it harder politically

[Alexander Clarkson  @APHClarkson]

If Labour wants freer movement in one area like UK musicians it will have to compromise on freer movement in other areas like youth mobility

After 8 years of this it is bizarre there are people in Whitehall who have still not internalised the UK's asymmetry of power with the EU

[Minnie Rahman @minnierahman]

I know nobody likes to listen to campaigners. But we have been saying/providing evidence that the Home Office is wasting tax payers money with expensive, bureaucratic, nonsense policies. This isn't because there are too many people moving here, it's because the system is shite.