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Thomas Gladwin

@tegladwin.bsky.social
1.1K followers 1.8K following 199 posts

Interested in applied and fundamental psychological science; private sector user research/consultancy and independent scientific research. Personal website: tegladwin.com.

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Thomas Gladwin @tegladwin.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
See, maths text books *can* be pleasant!
Image of a page of a maths books showing exercises. The last exercise is asking the reader to draw flowers and apply translations to them. The exercise ends with: "Admire your pattern. Draw other images of the flower under isometries to make other beautiful patterns."
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Thomas Gladwin @tegladwin.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Saw Pressure today, really glad I caught that in the cinema. Much more interesting than I'd expected and especially nice I think for anyone involved in science - it can be actually relevant! It had Fraser and Scott who were great as expected but so was the whole cast. #Pressure
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Thomas Gladwin @tegladwin.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Saw Hope (2026) - great fun, very different, uh, wotsit, media literacy assumptions? But you easily enough tell what are supposed to be jokes even if they don't land like you expect, or if you're not 100% sure they're satirizing something, and if so what. I suspect the ending is something hilarious.
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Chris Parr @chrisjparr.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Chris McDonald: funding system ‘destroying’ value of research. New science minister wants fewer, longer-term grants and a “smoother and simpler system”. www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-p...
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Thomas Gladwin @tegladwin.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
Noticed yet another academic scandal. I think I saw some calls for stronger punishment for the researcher. Admittedly as an ex-academic, I think that's the wrong thing to focus attention on. Why are these people so successful in the first place? Who gave them all that funding? #academic #ariely
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Freya Sierhuis 🟥 @freyas.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
My God what a ferocious, hair-raisingly good book- absolutely sensational!
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Thomas Gladwin @tegladwin.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
It was worth leaving academia just to understand this skit: youtube.com/shorts/6_FzZ... #product #sales #businesscasualty
youtube.com
Song is Mr. Jambo by Kyle Gordon, featuring Barry Bergen
YouTube video by Business Casualty
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KimBo @zapperfan7.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
A rooftop wind turbine that could change the way we think about home energy Imagine generating electricity from the wind without needing a massive tower, a huge plot of land, or a traditional wind farm. The technology shown here is designed to bring small-scale wind generation directly onto rooftops
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Thomas Gladwin @tegladwin.bsky.social · 04/07/2026
Cursed namesake overshadowing me once again. If I add "psychology" to my name I do appear though! Although merged with another namesake, come on people.
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Thomas Gladwin @tegladwin.bsky.social · 04/07/2026
Went to see A Private Life today - covers a combination of psychoanalysis and related topics and a thriller/mystery/romantic comedy? Not 100% sure about what I think of it but well worth watching. Minor thing - the ("A" in the) translated title seemed slightly off? #APrivateLife
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Julia M. Rohrer @dingdingpeng.the100.ci · 02/07/2026
I disagree with the broader framing: no gold standard, RCTs overrated, observational analysis is getting so good confounding is not as a big of a threat as people make it out to be. There are good reason to privilege RCTs where they are possible.>
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Berna Devezer @devezer.bsky.social · 28/06/2026
"The more phil of science I read, and the more familiar I became with different pockets of the metascience community, the more I came to realize how little consensus there is about how to evaluate science. But I don’t blame those who default to thinking the metascientists have figured things out.
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Katherine Stiles @katherinestiles.org · 24/06/2026
#AcademicSky #EduSky #HigherEd University of Exeter cuts an ‘existential threat to humanities’ “The proposals will mean that Exeter’s history, English, modern languages and politics courses could see up to 25 per cent of their staff cut.” 🖋️ @julietterowsell.bsky.social ‣ @timeshighered.bsky.social
timeshighereducation.com
University of Exeter cuts an ‘existential threat to humanities’
Russell Group institution cites changing student demand as it puts 500 staff at risk of redundancy, with 150 jobs set to go
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Thomas Gladwin @tegladwin.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
Musings on the move from academic psychology to user research / consulting: www.tegladwin.com/UserResearch... #userresearch #ux #psychology
tegladwin.com
Thomas Edward Gladwin's homepage
The homepage of Thomas Edward Gladwin.
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Arturo R. Garcia @aboynamedart.bsky.social · 14/06/2026
Addendum: this is true - just on the app, though, not desktop
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Thomas Gladwin @tegladwin.bsky.social · 10/06/2026
Preprint of a study on AI for scientific idea generation: https:// arxiv.org/abs/2606.08251 (I think I was one of the 6000+ people who contributed :D) From the Abstract: #AI #Science
arxiv.org
Contemporary AI lacks the imagination to diverge or negate in science
Bold projections that artificial intelligence will accelerate scientific discovery have raced ahead of evidence from working scientists, and the field still lacks large-scale, scientist-in-the-loop te...
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Drew Broussard @drewsof.bsky.social · 06/06/2026
The Guardian's crowd-sourced top 100 novels of all time list is *so* much more interesting than the one they ran created by industry people: www.theguardian.com/books/ng-int...
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Thomas Gladwin @tegladwin.bsky.social · 05/06/2026
Went to the M. C. Escher exhibition in London today - really, really cool. I actually had just enough topology to get one of his limit-tessellations. They had some fun interactive things too - see pics (I messed up the pose on the "reflection in a shiny ball" one, but anyway). #Escher
An exhibition feature where your image is projected onto Escher's drawing of a reflection in a shiny ball held in the artist's hand.Me in a mirrored room with Escher's birds reflected into infinity.
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Maggie Wiggin @maggie162.bsky.social · 01/06/2026
My god, Octavia Butler, just miss ONCE
 Page from a book saying:

From EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING
Choose your Leaders with wisdom and forethought.
To be led by a coward is to be controlled
by all that the coward fears.
To be led by a fool is to be led
by the opportunists who control the fool.
To be led by a thief is to offer up your most precious treasures to be stolen.
To be led by a liar
is to ask to be told lies.
To be led by a tyrant is to sell yourself and those you love into slavery.
t
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Urban Truth Collective @urbantruth.bsky.social · 02/06/2026
They want us to be afraid. And angry too. And they definitely want us to stay dependent on cars. THAT’S the real conspiracy. #UrbanTruth
“Wait, we’re afraid of walkable distances now?”

Image of vibrant walkable mixed-use community filled with people. Via the Urban Truth Collective. #1HourCityConspiracy
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Judah Grunstein @judah-grunstein.bsky.social · 31/05/2026
Not an original thought, but the far right's use of gender is a subcategory of enforcing conformity in order to subordinate the individual to the movement/state. It's not only twisted and unhealthy on a personal level but fascistic on a socio-political level.
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Dave Jorgenson @davejorgenson.bsky.social · 23/05/2026
Colbert guest hosted a public access TV show in Monroe, Michigan a day after the Late Show ended. Guest star: Jeff Daniels Special appearance by: Eminem Musical director: Jack White Genius. youtu.be/jJTXB5uT_C4?...
youtu.be
Only In Monroe --- May 22, 2026
YouTube video by Stephen Colbert
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Eric Ravenscraft @lordravenscraft.bsky.social · 14/05/2026
still not quite over the fact that i watched 15 year olds get sued for millions of dollars for downloading twelve songs and now we all have to accept AI slop because every tech company in the known universe decided that IP laws don't exist now that they're inconvenient for them
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Dr. Holly Walters @manigarm.bsky.social · 17/05/2026
I'm sorry, what? In writing my first monograph, I spent six weeks trying to track down a citation in TWO languages I didn't know. And good thing too, because the citation was wrong. That's scholarship. That's research. You know, the thing we're trained to do?!?
The reactions of some researchers on Twitter finally being held responsible for not having read the very paper they submitted are... something. Mainly, they don't think they should have to check every citation or make sure the data is real and accurate. Because it's too hard, I guess.
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Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 17/05/2026
“I don't understand what it's supposed to do. Every time I see a video on Instagram that's like, 'Hollywood is cooked,' what follows is, like, the most stupid dog shit I've ever seen in my life…”
hollywoodreporter.com
Seth Rogen Says If “Your Instinct Is to Use AI” to Write Scripts, “You Shouldn’t Be a Writer”
'The Studio' creator said people who are thinking about using the technology to aid their writing skills should try another occupation: "Go do something else."
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Thomas Gladwin @tegladwin.bsky.social · 18/05/2026
Gary with a really concise segment on wealth tax: youtube.com/shorts/V2M0_... #wealthtax #garyseconomics
youtube.com
Either tax the rich more or have extreme poverty
YouTube video by Garys Economics
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Thomas Gladwin @tegladwin.bsky.social · 14/05/2026
Response to a paper from a while back that claimed "Yet, as we formally prove herein, creating systems with human(-like or -level) cognition is intrinsically computationally intractable."; from the response, "the proof relies on an unjustified assumption". arxiv.org/abs/2411.06498
arxiv.org
Barriers to Complexity-Theoretic Proofs that "AGI" Using Machine Learning is Impossible
A recent paper (van Rooij et al. 2024) claims to have proved that achieving human-like intelligence using learning from data is intractable in a complexity-theoretic sense. We point out that the proof...
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Thomas Gladwin @tegladwin.bsky.social · 14/05/2026
Having started my most recent "maths I'm not smart enough for" book, I hypothesize that the proportion of words like "clearly", "obviously" or "evident" would be inversely related to any objective measure of the didactic quality of the book.
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Rolling Stone @rollingstone.com · 30/04/2026
EXCLUSIVE: Melissa Hortman Died in a Shocking Act of Political Violence. This Is the Story of Her Life.
rollingstone.com
Melissa Hortman Died in a Shocking Act of Political Violence. This Is the Story of Her Life
Melissa Hortman died in a shocking act of political violence. This is her story
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Sunder Katwala (sundersays) @sundersays.bsky.social · 29/04/2026
High Court rules the Office for Students acted beyond its powers in its first major case; misdirecting itself on law of free speech & showing bias + a "closed mind" to "unlawfully prejudge" this case to send a signal to universities via a "wholly disproportionate" sanction (£565k fine) on Sussex Uni
Press summary of High Court judgment.
- OfS did not have juridstiction over the Sussex policy document, as opposed to a governing body document
- misdirected itself on meaning of "free speech within the law" and "academic freedom"
- failed to give due regard to the university's freedom of speech code of practice
- failed to consider whether breaches had been rectified
- "unlawfully predetermined the decision" via bias & a "closed mind"
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Rich @hoxtonrich.bsky.social · 27/04/2026
This should be a source of national shame & it’s happening because of a failure to tackle environmental & social influences on health & failure to design healthy environments www.theguardian.com/society/2026...
theguardian.com
People in UK spend fewer years in good health than a decade ago, study finds
Exclusive: Health Foundation says Britain is ‘going backwards’ compared with most other rich countries
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Thomas Gladwin @tegladwin.bsky.social · 26/04/2026
(BTW, is there no share-to-Bluesky button on the Nerve site, just the usual suspects?) www.thenerve.news/p/stewart-le...
thenerve.news
Stewart Lee: Epstein’s evil legacy destroys everything it touches. Everything except Palantir
Mandelson, and by extension Starmer, are tainted by proximity to the abuse scandal. But the paedophile was a close associate of Peter Thiel too. Why don’t we talk about that?
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Ketan Joshi @ketanjoshi.co · 24/04/2026
this post is warmly dedicated to everyone who bought an SUV 'for safety' www.transportenvironment.org/articles/eve...
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Thomas Gladwin @tegladwin.bsky.social · 23/04/2026
Man. They have to join things up legally somehow surely. Former boss at Lucy Letby’s hospital arrested on suspicion of perverting course of justice - Suspect is one of three ex-senior leaders also arrested last year on suspicion of gross negligence manslaughter www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...
theguardian.com
Former boss at Lucy Letby’s hospital arrested on suspicion of perverting course of justice
Suspect is one of three ex-senior leaders also arrested last year on suspicion of gross negligence manslaughter
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Michael Byron #Fella @michaelby.bsky.social · 20/04/2026
www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202... Insightful.
theatlantic.com
What I Learned About Billionaires at Jeff Bezos’s Private Retreat
For the richest men on Earth, everything is free and nothing matters.
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Nick Dearden @nickdearden.bsky.social · 14/04/2026
“If you criticise Palantir’s platform one more time, you are going to lose your job.” Solidarity to all NHS workers opposing this toxic corporation. Shame on those bullying them. But they won’t stop us. We’re going to ditch Palantir. www.ft.com/content/ff70...
ft.com
Senior NHS officials warned staff over criticising rollout of Palantir platform
Ethical objections and uneven adoption have made the tech group’s contract a divisive issue within English health service
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Thomas Gladwin @tegladwin.bsky.social · 28/03/2026
Switched to Qobuz for music and really loving it. Very different experience, what with the suggestions I'm getting from them, and (as I'm using it anyway) a much more mindful usage. Like I don't turn on the slop-fountain, I'll at least pick some interesting-looking album. Getting way more variation.
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Todd Vaziri @tvaziri.com · 25/03/2026
Very good interview. Gift link. What the 'Project Hail Mary' Directors Learned From a Firing www.nytimes.com/2026/03/20/mo...
nytimes.com
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Carla Denyer @carladenyer.bsky.social · 25/03/2026
Labour have been smearing the Greens on our evidenced-based approach to drugs. If the PM won’t listen to us, and he won’t listen to the experts, will he listen to the families at @anyoneschild.bsky.social, who have lost loved ones under the UK’s current negligent drug policies?
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K-Wullums @kwullums.bsky.social · 24/03/2026
What a Wikipedia find. Thanks for bringing this to my attention en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_V...
en.wikipedia.org
Great Vowel Shift - Wikipedia
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British Journal for the Philosophy of Science @thebjps.bsky.social · 24/03/2026
We now have a brand new youtube channel, where we'll be sharing BJPS Short Reads (new episodes as they are released; back catalogue whenever we can...). And we're starting with a banger... youtu.be/VTE87PDMNuc #philsci #philsky #hpbio
youtu.be
Death in Mind | BJPS Short Reads
What does the opossum’s playing dead tell us about animal minds? By Susana Monsó and Laura Danón Read the essay here: https://www.thebsps.org/short-reads/monso-danon-death-in-mind/ #philsci
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Laura Helmuth @laurahelmuth.bsky.social · 22/03/2026
This is a great list of techniques for getting real information out of a Google search and avoiding AI slop and paid results. (One thing not included is that if you add "-ai" to a search, you block the AI summary) cardcatalogforlife.substack.com/p/google-has...
cardcatalogforlife.substack.com
Google Has a Secret Reference Desk. Here's How to Use It.
40 Google features to find exactly what you need, the alternative search engines that do things Google won't, and the reference desk framework underneath all of it.
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Thomas Gladwin @tegladwin.bsky.social · 22/03/2026
Just saw Project Hail Mary - loved it. Very opaque spoiler comments - it's another thoroughly positive film, like Superman 2025. I feel like there's maybe a shift away from edgy, grimdark cynicism, thank goodness.
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rimidar @rimidar.au · 12/03/2026
Increasingly convinced that the key text to understanding our current state of affairs is King Lear
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Natalie Wynn @contrapoints.bsky.social · 09/03/2026
NEW VIDEO youtu.be/uiGIbdrQjbI?...
youtu.be
Saw | ContraPoints
YouTube video by ContraPoints
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Coup Otter @therealjimsanto.bsky.social · 07/03/2026
a four-panel stick-figure cartoon

panel one:
three standing figures. from left to right, a guy wearing a necktie looking at his phone, an angry MAGA guy yelling FUCK YOUR FUCKIN POST FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU, and a rando just standing there like an NPC. 

panel two:
the guy looking at his phone shows MAGA guy his hand, causing MAGA to vanish. the word Block hangs in the air where fuckface once was. a green-bordered in-game message appears, reading "+2 Mental Health." now the rando is suddenly interested.

panel three:
as our man continues doom-scrolling, a sly grin on his face, the rando on the right puts on a punch-me face and snarls: "Typical lefty, blocking everyone who disagrees with-"

panel four
phone guy shows the hand to punch-me face, causing the rando to vanish. the word Block hangs in the air where that dickhead was. a green-bordered in-game message appears again, reading "+2 Mental Health."
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Eddie Smith @eddsmitty.bsky.social · 05/03/2026
⚠️WOKE CONTENT⚠️ 🧵 The only thing that is shocking about this is that we weren't taught about it. Cruel medical experiments on slaves in the South were common. Black "specimens" were subjected to (cont) #ProudBlue #ResistanceRoots #USDemocracy #Voices4Victory theconversation.com/how-black-sl...
theconversation.com
How black slaves were routinely sold as ‘specimens’ to ambitious white doctors
The horrors of slavery also spread to research: black bodies provided easy targets for medical experiments.
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Laura Helmuth @laurahelmuth.bsky.social · 03/03/2026
This is a nice contrast to all the awful behavior confirmed through the Epstein files. Proud of @jenlucpiquant.bsky.social & @seanmcarroll.bsky.social for picking up on the sexism & charlatanism right away.
science.org
Meet three scientists who said no to Epstein
The warning signs included a web search, a mother’s doubts, and inklings of a “sexist attitude”
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