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Jon Reades

@jreades.bsky.social
746 followers 194 following 431 posts

Prof of Geographic Data Science & HoD @ CASA, UCL. Python, Housing, Neighbourhoods, Industrial location, and Text. Sometime DB, MTB & 🍄 nerd. Co-auth: “Why Face-to-Face still matters” (bit.ly/3cW5gSr)

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Jon Reades @jreades.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Children are masters of physical comedy, well farce: 5YR OLD: “I will be super quiet and careful…” PAUSE. Knocks cup of juice off the table and screams in disappointment.
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Jon Reades @jreades.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
‘Class action’ type lawyers must be salivating given how far they got with manifestly weaker Covid claims.
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Dan Neidle @danneidle.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Luxury retailers want taxpayers to fund a 20% tax break for foreign tourists. They paid consultancy Cebr to claim this will raise £2.6bn for the UK. That convinced Sadiq Khan and Kemi Badenoch. But it's false: a free lunch. Four basic errors mask a £600m loss. Thread:
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Amy Diehl, Ph.D. @amydiehl.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Danish study finds after male managers had their first daughter, their hiring rate of women increased by 2.9% and promotions shifted in favor of women. The first-daughter effect also led to a relative earnings increase of 4.4% for their women employees. www.fastcompany.com/91613424/gir...
fastcompany.com
Girl dads make better bosses, study suggests
When male managers have daughters, women are hired more, promoted more, and earn more.
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Jon Reades @jreades.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
I can understand the temptation (though surely a better approach is a brutal outline stage so you don’t need AI reviews to winnow down full proposals) but you can’t pretend it is robust just because you used *different* LLMs. Even in that world you need people to validate independently.
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Jon Reades @jreades.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Or the government will later *add* a requirement for multi-region benefits that leads to those Frankenstein-bids which span nine universities and everyone gets a post-doc for six months but you’d be hard pressed to know what it achieved.
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Jon Reades @jreades.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Nice thing about libraries: all the (falling) books are free.
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Jon Reades @jreades.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Doesn’t quite work for the marketing copy if the self-driving car gives the illusion of being unsafe but is actually quite good.
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Jon Reades @jreades.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Was written by the bus lobby? Sure, let’s talk about the ‘problem’ of widening pavement and creating space for bikes *before* we get to the contribution of uncoordinated roadworks, rising deliveries, Uber and such, and lack of bus-only lanes www.theguardian.com/uk-news/ng-i...
theguardian.com
London buses in decline? Why public transport in global cities is slowing to a crawl – visualised
As experts fear for future of UK capital’s bus network, some commuters are giving up entirely. London is not alone – with worrying implications for poorest in society
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Jon Reades @jreades.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
The saying “it’s not rocket science” doing a lot of heavy lifting there.
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Jon Reades @jreades.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
The saying “it’s not rocket science” doing a lot of heavy lifting there.
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Jon Reades @jreades.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Doh! Thank you for that! I had clicked on the chart tweet and so couldn't see the link above any more. 🤦‍♂️
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Jon Reades @jreades.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Googling this only gave me Business Insider articles with strong slop/clickbait vibes — would love to include this in my teaching but can’t seem to track it down.
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Andrew Bell @andrewjdbell.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Want to work with me and others on a MAIHDA-related project? www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DSZ206/r... We are advertising for two 3-month RA secondment positions, to do something related to the MAIHDA method. That might be:
jobs.ac.uk
Research Associate at University of Sheffield
An academic position as a Research Associate is being advertised on jobs.ac.uk. Click now to find more details and explore additional academic job opportunities.
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History and Heritage Yorkshire @handhyorkshire.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Following on from my last post this may be of interest from 2022. www.uea.ac.uk/about/news/a...
uea.ac.uk
Research project tracks 420 years of English protest songs
A research project from the University of East Anglia (UEA) has found that English protest songs have been a vital form of political communication for more than 400 years.
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Jon Reades @jreades.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
I think it’s fair to say that my version would have been considered ‘challenging’ for any palette, refined or otherwise: it used vin cuit. I still have no idea why anyone was keeping it in tequila bottles. 🤷‍♂️ Of course, they did order a tequila sunrise in a traditional French restaurant so… on them!
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Jon Reades @jreades.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Made a tequila sunrise (I was wait staff) using something that was in a tequila bottle but was, er, not. Had I known anything about liquor I’d have known this immediately. But I served an undrinkable cocktail to a guest in a Michelin starred restaurant and they said nothing. I still cringe.
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Jon Reades @jreades.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
I am probably failing to appreciate the details but this is the only way that hasn’t done my head in. So it’s not about an actual amount, it’s about the ‘contract’ written into the budgeting process. Resetting it requires the university to realise ‘losses’ it hadn’t counted on.
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Jon Reades @jreades.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
I *think* this is how seemingly afforable programmes are ending up on the chopping block — they look like they are now costing the university money even though they still cover their own costs (but not, perhaps, the *revenue* the university had planned/banked on).
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Jon Reades @jreades.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Notice that there’s nothing in here about margins. It is the absolute number that matters, ratcheted up each year to deal with inflation, NIs, etc. As soon as you say you can’t meet that, you’re in deficit. It doesn’t matter if your margin is still 40-50%, you need to cut costs.
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Jon Reades @jreades.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Academic finances are… weird. The only way I can get my head around it, TBH, is to think of student income as a contract: you will deliver x in revenue next year, x * 1.05 the following year, etc. So if you fail to deliver ‘x’ then you are in ‘breach’ of contract and will have to make savings.
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Jon Reades @jreades.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
LLMs are clearly doing a lot of bad things to student learning, but I will say that one area where it has helped me as a teacher is in talking about pedagogy: no one is going to be willing to spend as much time talking with me about my module and assessment design as an LLM.
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Jon Reades @jreades.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Yikes! I took a Greyhound bus from Toronto to New York for one of mine before email even… but then my parents weren’t clearly insanely helicoptering my life.
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Centre for Economic Performance @cep-lse.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Anna Valero (CEP, GSOS) discusses how innovation targeted at reaching net zero represents a real strategy to boost productivity and reduce regional inequality in the UK. blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandp...
blogs.lse.ac.uk
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Jon Reades @jreades.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
Wonder how Labour leadership feeling about a cap on donations now? www.theguardian.com/politics/202...
theguardian.com
Christopher Harborne matches £36m Reform donation of Ben Delo
Party leader, Nigel Farage, says he is humbled by the contributions from cryptocurrency billionaires
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Jon Reades @jreades.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
It was dark all day. The air reeked. Fighter planes circled around and around. We couldn't reach friends. I still feel it in my body when someone says "9/11". And I wish we called it September 11th; it just feels right to me. There's no moral to these memories, just good and bad all mixed up. 3/3
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Jon Reades @jreades.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Then I walked to the hospital (now Langone?). Another database nerd and I spent the next 6 hours taking down people's names and skills in Excel (EMTs and construction ideally) so they could be reached by emergency services. People kept coming in waves just to see if they could do anything. 2/3
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Jon Reades @jreades.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
25 years ago today I was WFH in Brooklyn. I thought the bang I heard was a flatbed truck going over the potholes outside my building. I kept working. Then mum rang my mobile. From my roof I could see through the North Tower and watched them both collapse. 1/3
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Margot Finn @eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
'“Such awards tend to favour more established researchers and those at research institutes who are not required to take on the additional and vital task of teaching undergraduates,” said Stephen Curry, director of strategy at the Research on Research Institute.'
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Jon Reades @jreades.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Aaaaaargh. 😱
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Professor Peter Matthews @urbaneprofessor.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
They make a product that must be doomed to obsolescence if we're serious about climate change. They aren't innovating in the EV market in the way Chinese companies are and deserve to suffer the consequences. Yet higher education is directly related to the government's desire to create a
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Margot Finn @eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
'The number of students taking A-level music is at a record low: under 5,000, a drop of nearly half from 15 years ago....Music GCSE entries have also fallen. It has the widest attainment gap for disadvantaged students of any subject.'
theguardian.com
The Guardian view on music and drama education: reversing elitism starts at school | Editorial
Editorial: The number of students taking creative subjects at A-level and GCSE is at a record low. The arts must not become the preserve of the most privileged
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Met Office - weather and climate @metoffice.gov.uk · 01/09/2026
Summer 2026 is provisionally the UK’s warmest summer on record with the season’s mean temperature made around 130 times more likely due to human-induced climate change. Here, we delve into the numbers 🧵
Mean temperature for 2026 in the UK. The map shows widely above average temperature, particularly in the south. Rainfall amounts in summer 2026 in the UK compared to average. The maps shows widely dry conditions, though the west of Scotland is slightly wetter than averageSunshine duration in summer 2026 compared to average. The map shows widely sunny conditions in the season, with the south of the country particularly sunny.
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Brent Toderian @brenttoderian.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
“When mayors in other cities ask me how #Copenhagen afforded to invest in its cycling networks, I ask them how on earth they have been able to afford highway projects. We invested in bike lanes because that was the cheapest option.” What the world can learn from Copenhagen’s cycling revolution.
theprogressplaybook.com
Copenhagen Cycling Revolution: Lessons for Cities
Close to two-thirds of the city’s residents commute by bike to school or work every day.
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Jon Reades @jreades.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
Probably not the book for a true beginner, but I found this #APA book by Thomas Sanchez on #AI for #UrbanPlanning a good, accessible intro for linking up types of deep learning with planning application areas.
Artificial Intelligence for Urban Planning
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Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness @tangledwilderness.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Guess what? 1) You can 3D print a crow and squirrel feeder that looks like a Flock camera 2) Crows are extremely good at pattern recognition 3) People are fucking hilarious and creative and I hope every Flock camera gets its own personal murder (of crows) www.printables.com/model/180491...
printables.com
Flock Camera with chamber; squirrel and bird feeder V2 by David | Download free STL model | Printables.com
Designed to look like a Flock camera, hollow with chambers and a removeable hatch for putting treats for your friends | Download free 3D printable STL models
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Jon Reades @jreades.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
Much easier to be told on the GitHub issue tracker that you’re a bit of an idiot for asking the question when it’s obvious in the Lua source code but they’ll go ahead and update the documentation.
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Prof Katherine Brickell FBA @kbrickell.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
The love letter in house buying - fascinating paper which I suspect is also used in some parts of the UK housing market
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Jon Reades @jreades.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
And that long list of “things I will definitely fix before next year” which is about to have a brutal encounter with reality. But in the meantime…
A glass of wine in Termoli.
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Jon Reades @jreades.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
Really enjoying a talk on software dev and decision making in an AI-age that has gone in a very different direction from what I’d expected (all about human communication and voice and being heard). #BITES20206 in Termoli
Slide says notice -> interpret -> voice -> be heard -> change the outcome
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Guy Shrubsole @guyshrubsole.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
Rewilded land remains green amid drought-stricken English countryside, images show. Excellent work by the National Trust at Holnicote. #MakeBritainWetAgain www.theguardian.com/environment/...
theguardian.com
Rewilded land remains green amid drought-stricken English countryside, images show
National Trust’s Holnicote estate says restored wetlands and rivers offer proof of resilience to drought, wildfires and flooding
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Jon Reades @jreades.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
Summer is always a good time to #VisitScotland ❤️🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 (for for scale)
A collection of very large boletes and lactarius mushrooms. At least one sadly no longer edible.
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Jonathan Hopkin @jonathanhopkin.eurosky.social · 17/08/2026
Typically thought-provoking from Branko: what if excessive profits in the West are the reason China outcompetes us?
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Margot Finn @eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
'We’ve built a system where publicly backed finance is available on demand while private recruitment companies and financially stretched universities decide between them where volume expands, according to the economics of student acquisition rather than anything resembling national need.' 1/2
wonkhe.com
The low-income parents funding the franchised recruitment market
Fraud headlines, franchise growth and a court defeat are dots that rarely get joined up. Jim Dickinson pulls together the data on the weekend delivery cohort - who was funded, by whom, and on whose te...
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Jon Reades @jreades.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
But, good lord, people need to learn a thing or two about parking in Glencoe. And don’t block the bus stop.
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Jon Reades @jreades.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
Scotland delivering on the little pleasures of variable weather after months of frankly terrifying sun in London.
View from near Glencoe of actual weather.
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Jon Reades @jreades.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
I agree but still useful to have another piece of evidence to keep the issue ‘live’ for how much worse every subsequent government decision has made things for students (and staff). Government needs reminding the hasn’t even stayed in the same region as the settlement they promised.
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Jon Reades @jreades.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
This maps on to my experience so far — well, for intelligence substitute experience: open.substack.com/pub/arpitrag...
open.substack.com
7. AI: A Normal Technology?
AI in the Workplace
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Jon Reades @jreades.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
Maths, physics, French and history. Had to be segregated so I could do physics after history since they were timetabled together (because why would anyone…?). That was in early 90s. Sad to think that’s *still* an ‘odd choice’ but at least my school then had the resources to support me.
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Carsten Timmermann @ctimmermann.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
Fair enough; I’m all for it. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
theguardian.com
The Guardian view on the two cultures: bridge the divide, starting with A-levels | Editorial
Editorial: Seventy years after CP Snow warned of estrangement between the sciences and arts, breadth in education should be encouraged
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