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Review (SF): Luminous: Silvia Park **** - Genuinely interesting exploration of robot/human relations, particularly around children, set in a post-reunification Korea - enjoyable novel, if very slow and overlong. popsciencebooks.blogspot.com/2025/04/lumino… #bookreview #sciencefiction #robots

For me our Ford Anglia was a supercar…

Just heard a BBC promo that said ‘we will find your sleight of hand’ as ‘we will find your slice of ham’ - much more interesting.

What do you when an environmental good damages revenue? Find another way to get the money - but making it fair is not going to be easy:

It makes sense to choose your battles, and chlorine washing chicken is not one of them (I wish we did it too):

Good magicians have to be excellent psychologists. It seems odd then, when listening to Tim Harford on his Cautionary Tales series on Houdini that the master magician had a psychology fail when trying to win over Arthur Conan Doyle brianclegg.blogspot.com/2025/04/houdin… #deception #magictricks

Thinking about the scientific sin of p-hacking, it's tempting to wonder if astrologers were the original p-hackers: brianclegg.blogspot.com/2025/04/were-a… #astrology #phacking #dubiouspractice

Sometimes you need to give your tricks away...

Picturing Aura: Jeremy Stolow *** - What could have been an interesting takedown of the pseudoscientific concept of photographic auras, along with historical ideas about them, is far too accepting of the practice. popsciencebooks.blogspot.com/2025/04/pictur… #pseudoscience #bookreview #psychology

The connectors in my office are gradually transitioning from USB to USB-C - but I'm yet to see a USB memory stick (thumb drive). When does the hive mind think they will transition for the norm to be USB-C?

Interview: Genetics and neuroscience specialist Kevin Mitchell tells us why it's not enough to consider humans (and other animals) machines, why philosophy still has a role and how we can now take a wider view than pure reductionism popsciencebooks.blogspot.com/2025/04/kevin-… #freewill #neuroscience

Protect authors’ livelihoods from the unlicensed use of their work in AI training - Sign the Petition! chng.it/dRcRXcyTLJ via Change.org UK

Interesting piece by Liv McMahon and Zoe Kleinman Zoe Kleinman on BBC News site bbc.com/news/articles/… - but illustrates lack of audience focus (that first B is British) - the whole article is about the impact of the Trump tariffs on iPhone prices in the US. No mention of prices here.

*Please retweet* Thanks 2025 Binks Symposium on Renewable Energy Storage & Generation: 4 June 2025, University of Oxford Department of Physics at University of Oxford Details, speakers & FREE registration via link below (also opportunity to present posters). lnkd.in/d8xPFNp2 Organisers: Henry Snaith Group & me

A thank-you to the excellent The University of Buckingham for the honour of receiving an honorary doctorate from them and some thoughts on science and truth: brianclegg.blogspot.com/2025/04/a-than… #scienceandtruth #evidence

Updating a post from 2015, I reflect on a coincidental collection of references to mechanical computers: brianclegg.blogspot.com/2025/04/mechan… #computing #historyofcomputing #mechanicalcomputers

Before setting up my new desktop computer I managed to dispose of around 300Gb of junk. So does a tidy disc make for a tidy mind? brianclegg.blogspot.com/2025/04/does-t… #storage #computerstorage #hardware

Review by Andrew May - Target Earth: Govert Schilling ***** 17 April 2025 - A short but fascinating and wide-ranging primer on all the natural things that can end up on Earth after coming down from outer space popsciencebooks.blogspot.com/2025/04/target… #bookreview #popularscience #meteors

We're all aware (I hope) that generative AI large language models can make things up, but I've rarely seen such a dramatic AI hallucination as the one shown here: brianclegg.blogspot.com/2025/04/a-salu… #artificialintelligence #generativeAI #hallucinations

Why I (somewhat nervously) stick to my original lanyard at the University of Bristol: brianclegg.blogspot.com/2025/04/in-pra… #environment #lanyards #politicalstatements