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Caroline Fiennes

@carolinefiennes.bsky.social

2.5K followers 330 following 1.8K posts

Director of Giving Evidence: helping donors make decisions based on sound evidence. (www.giving-evidence.com) "Charmingly disruptive" - Nobel laureate Richard Thaler. U.Cambridge visiting fellow. Former FT columnist. Irrationally exuberant. Church nerd.

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Caroline Fiennes @carolinefiennes.bsky.social · Nov 13

Hello! I'm Caroline & I run Giving Evidence which supports donors & funders to be more effective by basing their giving on sound evidence: of where & why a need is, who's doing what about it, what works, & the intended beneficiaries' views.
Effective philanthropy.
And I'm doing a Masters right now😧

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Caroline Fiennes @carolinefiennes.bsky.social · 37m

The title should always contain the answer, for those of us with small brains!

Caroline Fiennes @carolinefiennes.bsky.social · 38m

Would love to set up a randomised trial on this to find out 🤣🤣

Carolyn E Holmes @carolyneholmes.bsky.social · 1h

Not really a research question, BUT:

Are physical fights in legislatures more common in parliamentary or presidential systems?

Reposted by Caroline Fiennes

Friends Provident Foundation @fprovfoundation.bsky.social · 1h

We're often asked why we don't use AI for the @fpracticerating.bsky.social research that is undertaken by Giving Evidence. Thanks to @carolinefiennes.bsky.social for a great look at why AI predictions about what might be likely just aren't good enough.

Foundation Practice Rating (FPR) @fpracticerating.bsky.social · 1h

Accuracy is essential to the Foundation Practice Rating. Plausible but incorrect answers generated by AI are not adequate. Find out more about why we don’t use AI for our research in this blog post by @carolinefiennes.bsky.social: foundationpracticerating.org.uk/why-we-do-no...

Illustration of a surreal office scene with neon birds interacting with digital elements around three people near servers and file cabinets; one bird writes on a digital mesh, another carries a paper.

Caroline Fiennes @carolinefiennes.bsky.social · 2h

2/ Also ChatGPT can't even accurately report the geographic remit of the - wait for it - Charity Commission for England and Wales!!

So, for now, we're sticking with the humans :-)

Caroline Fiennes @carolinefiennes.bsky.social · 2h

Why do we not use AI for the research in the Foundation Practice Rating? bc high risk of "bullshit" (technical term. Genuinely) among other things.
Its job is to say what is PROBABLY true. We're not interested in that: we're interested in what IS true!
foundationpracticerating.org.uk/why-we-do-no...

Why the Foundation Practice Rating does not use AI to gather data about foundations - Foundation Practice Rating

The Foundation Practice Rating doesn't use AI to gather data about foundations because it is inadequately accurate. That is the case as of now: AI may improve and we're open to using it in future.

foundationpracticerating.org.uk

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Caroline Fiennes @carolinefiennes.bsky.social · 17h

Amazing article about a guy you've probably never heard of, who was instrumental in the Bletchley Park code-breaking / inventing computers!
State school, son of brick-layer: reminder that talent (& ability to massively help *win a war*) isn't only in the elite.

www.theguardian.com/world/2025/o...

Move over, Alan Turing: meet the working-class hero of Bletchley Park you didn’t see in the movies

The Oxbridge-educated boffin is feted as the codebreaking genius who helped Britain win the war. But should a little-known Post Office engineer named Tommy Flowers be seen as the real father of comput...

www.theguardian.com

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Reposted by Caroline Fiennes

samuel @quilombo.bsky.social · 1d

This is what is left of Khan Younis, southern Gaza.

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Caroline Fiennes @carolinefiennes.bsky.social · 1d

Ivory Coast is naming loads more streets (good idea: hard to tax (or even survey) people if they don't live anywhere identifiable) & re-naming to remove references to colonial things (ie, France): www.ft.com/content/687a...
Wish Africa/Aus/ Canada would rename the stuff named after Queen Victoria!

Ivory Coast plans to turbocharge its economy with street-naming campaign

As election nears, the government is accelerating its effort to name roads

www.ft.com

Caroline Fiennes @carolinefiennes.bsky.social · 1d

Brava

Caroline Fiennes @carolinefiennes.bsky.social · 1d

When was that? I have thought for over 20 years that their science articles need more diagrams!

Caroline Fiennes @carolinefiennes.bsky.social · 1d

The Economist's science writing could usefully have more diagrams. This article is a good example: it 'explains' qubits & tunnelling (which benefit a lot from a good diag) but wastes a load of space on a silly generic 'science' picture which communicates nothing.

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Caroline Fiennes @carolinefiennes.bsky.social · 1d

2/ we've heard before so what fits with what we already believe.
Values & economic situation (eg, what shares we own, lol) make us differ in what we want to be true so what we believe.

Etc etc. People & things who differ from us in how they think are not so unusual.

Caroline Fiennes @carolinefiennes.bsky.social · 1d

For ex, consider the Q: why do people disagree about climate y? We all have access to the same info.

But we haven't all READ the same info. Prior experiences make us differ in whom we trust.
Confirmation bias: we differ in what...

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Caroline Fiennes @carolinefiennes.bsky.social · 1d

I'm kinda serious.
There are very different ways of (human) thinking - diff priorities, priors, cognitive abilities, available info, neuro-divergencies etc. They don't always diverge on gender lines.
Partly why 'deep listening' is useful. (Not that I ever do it: I'm always opinionated - & right 🤣)

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Caroline Fiennes @carolinefiennes.bsky.social · 1d

TBF, the UK has heads of state who last much longer than that 👇🏼 & who are elected by precisely nobody.
They have - and use - more power than many people realise - yet many people think this 'system' is fine in a notional democracy, and even rather charming 🤷🏽‍♀️

Hetan Shah @hetanshah.bsky.social · 2d

Aged 92, Paul Biya has been President of Cameroon for 43 years and has spent much of his time ruling from the same floor of the Intercontinental Hotel in Geneva. He was PM in 1975 when Harold Wilson led the UK and Mao Zedong led China. Biya is now ‘running’ for an 8th term
on.ft.com/4nUZthq

World’s oldest leader readies for another shot at power

Cameroon’s Paul Biya, aiming to stay in office until nearly 100, has attended only one rally and spent part of the presidential campaign in Switzerland

on.ft.com

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Caroline Fiennes @carolinefiennes.bsky.social · 1d

A bit like men, then 🤣

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Reposted by Caroline Fiennes

Open Culture @openculture.bsky.social · 2d

The Medieval Masterpiece, the Book of Kells, Is Now Digitized and Available Online

If you know nothing else about medieval European illuminated manuscripts, you surely know the Book of Kells. “One of Ireland’s greatest cultural treasures” comments Medievalists.net, “it is set apart ...

www.openculture.com

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Caroline Fiennes @carolinefiennes.bsky.social · 2d

Oxford University #physics dept is advertising a Dark Matter Day "for all the family" - which seems to me a heroic act of public engagement!

(TBF, we don't know anything about dark matter so there isn't much to say, lol.)

www.physics.ox.ac.uk/events/dark-...

Dark Matter Day 2025

Public lecture to celebrate Dark Matter Day 2024

www.physics.ox.ac.uk

Reposted by Caroline Fiennes

Sathnam Sanghera @sathnam.bsky.social · 13d

In its strategic report the company cited “unfavourable media coverage” as a potential risk to its business, warning that negative publicity for its service fees “could have an adverse effect on the size, engagement and loyalty” of its customer base. Let's hope so!

www.thetimes.com/article/1b9a...

JustGiving pays £25.8m dividend to American owner

The charity platform made the payment to the Nasdaq-listed Blackbaud after revenues rose by 9.7 per cent to £64.5m

www.thetimes.com

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Caroline Fiennes @carolinefiennes.bsky.social · 2d

Thank you. I had no idea.

Caroline Fiennes @carolinefiennes.bsky.social · 2d

When USians talk about the US's colonial history, they rarely seem to remember/ know that the US was a colonial power. Liberia was a US colony - in which some Black people took others as slaves, and it didn't pan out very well.

Citizen.Coping @propcazhpm.bsky.social · 3d

In 1857, Thomas Howland became Providence, RI's first Black elected official.

Later that year, he decided to emigrate to Liberia with his wife & daughter after the Dred Scott case denied Black people protections of U.S. citizenship. He was denied a passport.

Thomas Howland, 1856
John Blanchard

Portrait of a distringuished Black man from the 19th centrure wearing fine clothes, including high collar and tie of the day.
Museum Text:
Thomas Howland, the subject of this unusually expressive portrait, was a dock worker in Providence, Rhode lsland, In 1857 he became the city's first Black elected oficial when he was amed warden of its Third Ward. However, that same year he decided to emigrate to Liberia with his wite and daughter, perhaps in response to the recent Supreme Court decision in the Dred Scott case that denied African Americans the protections of U.S. citizenship. Because of this decision, Howland's application for a passport was denied, despite his status as a free man with the right to vote in his home state (he did eventually make it to Liberia). Howland's confident posture echoes that of the earlier Portrait of a Gentleman shown nearby, the fashionable attire of both sitters serving to reinforce thelir self-possession.

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Caroline Fiennes @carolinefiennes.bsky.social · 2d

Chester cathedral is astonishing in that you can get here: James' picture 👇🏼 is taken from *up on the East wall, above the High Altar* (I know coz I've been up there!) Only in v few churches is that possible: for one thing, there's often a massive window or apse above the High Altar!

James' photo is taken from the area marked: a walkway in the East wall, immediately below the great East window (which isn't that big, tbh 🤣) and above the High Altar.

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Caroline Fiennes @carolinefiennes.bsky.social · 2d

Very good 🤜🏼🤛🏼

Caroline Fiennes @carolinefiennes.bsky.social · 2d

Warm relationships within a family: like she & William have with Harry...or Uncle Andrew?

And so what that their kids don't have phones? - the eldest one is only 12 🤦🏽‍♀️

They just make noise.

Caroline Fiennes @carolinefiennes.bsky.social · 2d

Wow. Top academics - both Nobel laureates and both immigrants into the US - are leaving the US:

(Good luck to them, learning Swiss German...🥺🤣)

Florian Scheuer @florianscheuer.bsky.social · 3d

I am delighted to share that Nobel laureates Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee will join our Department of Economics @econ.uzh.ch at the University of Zurich on July 1, 2026, as Lemann Foundation Professors of Economics.

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