iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Six of the ten hottest Tour de France stages on record happened this year. The average stage temperature was 29.4°C, nearly 3.5°C above the previous hottest edition in recent seasons. Link: willpball.substack.com/p/was-2026-t...

Title: 'Was 2026 the hottest Tour de France ever?"
Subtitle: Checking claims against a century of temperature records
By Will Ball

A bar chart showing that the 2026 Tour de France was the hottest of recent memory.

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Dr Will Ball @wpball.com · 27/07/2026

Yes, average speeds have gone up but that's not purely down to physiology. If it was possible to look at the distribution of speeds during the stages that would likely tell the true story - more time spent at higher speeds because the racing starts earlier & there are fewer soft breakaways.

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Dr Will Ball @wpball.com · 23/07/2026

Behind the scenes with the Commonwealth Games opening ceremony planning team. "Fuck it, let's just have a massive Tunnocks tea cake with sparklers"

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Dr Will Ball @wpball.com · 15/07/2026

As much as I enjoy England and their coach/tactics being the reason for their loss, it seems a bit 'Brits at it again' behaviour to ignore that Argentina may have influenced the result somewhat too.

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Dr Will Ball @wpball.com · 15/07/2026

Irish and Scots fans can legitimately support Argentina because of Alexis Mac Allister right?

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Dr Will Ball @wpball.com · 25/06/2026

As this is unconsented, identifiable patient data being used for non-clinical purposes, surely they should be receiving a massive fine for this?

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Dr Will Ball @wpball.com · 19/06/2026

Scottish Summer: wearing shorts in the rain.

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Reposted by Dr Will Ball

Lorenzo Fabbri @epilorenzo.bsky.social · 08/06/2026

I've been building the etverse: R packages for causal inference in epi. The idea is triangulation: come at the same question from angles that fail for unrelated reasons (different methods, designs, assumptions) and trust it more when they agree. etverse.github.io #episky #causalsky #RStats

etverse.github.io

etverse — triangulating causal evidence in epidemiology – etverse

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Dr Will Ball @wpball.com · 09/06/2026

Instead of funnelling yet more cash to tech companies who over promise and under-deliver, can we perhaps trying to reducing social and economic inequalities first?

"Evidence shows that one to one tutoring can accelerate a pupil’s learning by around five months, but access to tutoring is deeply unequal, with children from wealthier families far more likely to benefit. The government is running a tender for industry to co-create AI tutoring tools with teachers, with the goal of bringing these tools to a similar level of quality, so that we can offer, at scale, the kind of personalised one to one support often only available to a privileged few.

By adapting to individual pupils’ needs, the tools could provide extra help when they get stuck and identify where they need more practice to master their lessons, with the potential to help them catch up with their peers.

From Summer term this year, there will be teacher-led co-creation of AI tutoring tools with industry."

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Dr Will Ball @wpball.com · 26/05/2026

This should be made available publicly as an official statistical ouput after each election as a matter of course.

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Dr Will Ball @wpball.com · 21/05/2026

Is there a more tainted phrase than 'actionable insights'?

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Dr Will Ball @wpball.com · 15/05/2026

What's the term for knowing an above average amount about a topic but nowhere near as much as true 'experts'?

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Dr Will Ball @wpball.com · 12/05/2026

Article submitted 🥳 Now to wait for the emails about inevitable mistakes I made in the formatting etc

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Dr Will Ball @wpball.com · 09/05/2026

Reasons to be cheerful in the Scottish elections. Reform + Cons have 2 fewer MSPs than Cons got in 2021 SNP + Greens have the same number of MSPs as they got in 2021 A majority for Independence supporting parties once again.

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Dr Will Ball @wpball.com · 08/05/2026

So far there's been a larger drop off (vs 2021) in regional list vote share for SNP than in the constituency vote. One interpretation of that is more people realising that an SNP list vote is next to worthless in the additional member system.

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Dr Will Ball @wpball.com · 08/05/2026

If you're interested in elections, nobody does it better than @ballotbox.scot

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Dr Will Ball @wpball.com · 03/05/2026

Tadej Pogačar's last 17 races days: 12 wins (+1 GC victory) including World & European Champs and 4 of the 5 monuments 2nd place at Paris-Roubaix and GP Montreal His worst finishing position was 6th in the Romandie prologue.

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Dr Will Ball @wpball.com · 22/04/2026

Petition to make it so that the originally named place comes up first when searching for weather forecasts, regardless of relative population size. Perth, Scotland before Perth, Australia!

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Dr Will Ball @wpball.com · 15/04/2026

My daughter (7) and I have been recording the height of a sunflower she's been growing. Here's the graph so far.

A lollipop chart made using R. It shows days on the x axis and height in cm on the y axis. Height has increased from 0cm on day 0, to 16cm on day 17

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Dr Will Ball @wpball.com · 11/04/2026

A cohort of epidemiologists.

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Dr Will Ball @wpball.com · 09/04/2026

When you get the 'your grant application was unsuccessful' email, you get the rest of the day off right?

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Dr Will Ball @wpball.com · 03/04/2026

It's not bad when you get to see the Northern Lights on a semi-regular basis from your window.

A very faint green aurora borealis in a clear night sky above the lights of some houses

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Dr Will Ball @wpball.com · 17/03/2026

Lá Fhéile Pádraig sona doaibh. 🇮🇪☘️

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Dr Will Ball @wpball.com · 14/03/2026

I'm disappointed that Ireland didn't end up winning the Men's 6 Nations, but at least Henry Pollock didn't get the satisfaction of winning that game. 🇮🇪☘️

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Dr Will Ball @wpball.com · 14/03/2026

Quality game of rugby between two quality teams #IREvSCO #COYBIG The question remains though, will England lose out of spite to deny an Irish 6 Nations win, or simply lose because they are shite?

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Dr Will Ball @wpball.com · 06/03/2026

Hard defence on both sides of this game. Ireland a little flat in attack. Not sure Wales can keep this up mind. #IREvWAL

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Dr Will Ball @wpball.com · 03/03/2026

If researchers were actually afraid of overpromising, they would also refrain from making strong recommendations based on their analysis of associations. The linked paper is great though. It makes clear the core aims of research & that methods should be guided by the aim/research question

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Dr Will Ball @wpball.com · 02/03/2026

If your support for democratic principles is contingent on agreeing with the policy outcomes, you are simply not a supporter of democracy.

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Dr Will Ball @wpball.com · 26/02/2026

How do you react when someone says that X is a 'good predictor' of Y? #EpiSky

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Dr Will Ball @wpball.com · 26/02/2026

Looking forward to hearing about some interesting research on the life chances of young people. Talks on free school meals, sure start, mental health and policy. From the delegate list it looks like I'm the only attendee from Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

A photograph of a PowerPoint slide for the Understanding Society Insights conference. The subheading reads 'Children and Young People's Futures'

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Dr Will Ball @wpball.com · 25/02/2026

Blanket social media bans are a blunt instrument with no evidence of effectiveness in reducing harm. We should focus on the content rather than the medium.

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Dr Will Ball @wpball.com · 20/02/2026

Friday afternoon and I just finished writing a fellowship proposal ahead of the submission deadline next week. Happy days!

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Dr Will Ball @wpball.com · 01/02/2026

"Never miss a moment" the advert tells me, halfway through a cycling race I'm trying to watch.

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Dr Will Ball @wpball.com · 30/01/2026

What are some of the best DAGs you seen that depict time-varying confounding? Could be from a 'real' worked example, or generic. #EpiSky

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