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Doug Clow

@dougclow.bsky.social

550 followers 410 following 1.3K posts

I help people understand things and change them, with data. Views here my own. "I can't quite work out whether you're a tremendously silly man, a tremendously serious man or, as I suspect, a rather unholy combination of both." dougclow.org/contact

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Doug Clow @dougclow.bsky.social · Feb 5

Also I am loving this site at the moment because the Discover feed has clearly worked out that I love daffodils and keeps showing me them. Apologies if I have freaked you out by randomly liking yours: I genuinely just love daffodils.

Doug Clow @dougclow.bsky.social · 1h

A casual mention of the fox/chicken/grain problem has nerd-sniped me in to yet again in to trying to formalise my long-held hunch that a generalisation of that problem (neighbouring entities in an ordered list cannot be left together) maps on to the Towers of Hanoi.

Doug Clow @dougclow.bsky.social · 4h

:) Yeah my guess is the ISS will have other, more serious, problems besides internet timeouts if it somehow finds itself beyond low Earth orbit.

Doug Clow @dougclow.bsky.social · 6h

Also love the way you can just have an ordinary Teams call with the ISS. Excellent demo of the layered architecture model: Teams doesn’t need to know anything about how the lower layers doing the physical ground-to-space link work. One for intro networks lectures @richardclegg.bsky.social?

Doug Clow @dougclow.bsky.social · 6h

I’ve enjoyed Steve Mould’s videos for years, including his argument with Mehdi from ElectroBOOM about how the Mould chain effect works. And here is Don Pettit (of whom I am also a fan) testing it out on the ISS! Top high geekery.

(NOT) Steve Mould (Bot) @stevemould-ytbot.bsky.social · 19h

NASA took my bead experiment to the ISS

NASA took my bead experiment to the ISS

The full unedited conversation is over my my Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/stevemould Here's the chain fountain play list: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLcqX4UMXNKEdNBKABT3ZF6Fvu5Jkq3OxB Medlife Crisis: https://www.youtube.com/@UCXFgI0Lgrwc_fY2ttqQ9Yhg

www.youtube.com

Doug Clow @dougclow.bsky.social · 21h

Well done everyone, you've all done really well this week! My goodness, what a week it's been. And what amazing people you have been, as you always are. Well done on making it through another week, and all the very best for the great weekend you deserve.

Doug Clow @dougclow.bsky.social · 22h

Sounds like the Special Patrol Group's approach to policing protests ... which probably marks me out as not from round there!

Doug Clow @dougclow.bsky.social · 22h

;-)
I was just remarking yesterday how Milton Keynes includes Loughton, Broughton, and Woughton ... and none of them rhyme.

Doug Clow @dougclow.bsky.social · 22h

The bit about the English mispronouncing them, for sure, but not all languages are as ruthlessly regular as Welsh. Although also fair to say few languages are as frustratingly irregular and opaque in their orthography as English. You would not pick it as a lingua franca on those grounds.

Doug Clow @dougclow.bsky.social · 1d

It’s later than you think!

Doug Clow @dougclow.bsky.social · 1d

I'm overall on balance in favour of the 20mph scheme but I note that my car insurance renewal fell by a similar amount and I'm based in England.

Doug Clow @dougclow.bsky.social · 1d

Which, I have learned, needs to be connected at both ends.

Doug Clow @dougclow.bsky.social · 1d

No, just a wire this one.

Doug Clow @dougclow.bsky.social · 1d

Just spent five minutes frustrated that my watch wouldn't charge. Plugged and unplugged, check for scuzz in the socket, fiddle with settings, try again, reboot. Eventually I move the cable and accidentally reveal the other end of it. Which is not plugged in to anything. I am good at technology.

Doug Clow @dougclow.bsky.social · 1d

Tempting except I have meetings with clients and “it’s a bit gloomy, didn’t fancy talking to you, knocking off early for the weekend instead” is not really the sort of professional, client-centred attitude we aspire to.

Doug Clow @dougclow.bsky.social · 1d

And it is DARK in the MORNING this is UNACCEPTABLE. Someone should do something.

(Actually I have a very bright key light at my desk and that does help.)

Doug Clow @dougclow.bsky.social · 1d

It is getting DARK before I even finish WORK and this is SUBOPTIMAL.

Doug Clow @dougclow.bsky.social · 2d

Yeah it all looks depressingly symptomatic of a demoralised, overstretched ONS. I do really hope they can turn things round, and get the support they need from government to do so.

Doug Clow @dougclow.bsky.social · 2d

In fairness in that context the metaphor works well if the management is working well. Coxing is a distinct role from rowing; if small one can do both but it needs a specialist if you’re big enough. But they need to be very closely linked with excellent communication, or it’s an inefficient misery.

Doug Clow @dougclow.bsky.social · 3d

We need better official statistics! FT describes this as “another setback for the beleaguered agency”, the ONS, but from the report it seems the mistake was in information given to them by HMRC. Not a small mistake and very far from an isolated one.

Chris Giles @chrisgiles.ft.com · 3d

There goes my long held view that cash government receipts were accurate because you just had to add some columns in a bank account

on.ft.com/3J0Y6yE ONS revises down government borrowing estimates after data error

ONS revises down UK government borrowing by £2bn after VAT error

[FREE TO READ] Office for National Statistics reduces estimate for current fiscal year just weeks before Rachel Reeves’ Budget

Doug Clow @dougclow.bsky.social · 3d

Have been reminded of the confusing quintet: Al Gore, Gore Vidal, Vidal Sassoon, Siegfried Sassoon, and Siegfried & Roy.

Doug Clow @dougclow.bsky.social · 3d

Just reminded of another wildly dissimilar pair that I get confused for having similar names: Joe Wicks and John Wick.

Doug Clow @dougclow.bsky.social · 4d

Ohhh I've done that but hopefully never in public. Less of an issue than it used to be. As with Isaiah Berlin and Irving Berlin, I am quite clear that they are two very, very different people but my brain nevertheless wants to mush them together on phonological similarity grounds.

Doug Clow @dougclow.bsky.social · 3d

Older folk & negronis are forever linked with the poet Gavin Ewart doing Lunch with the FT at 79, which started with negronis (“not an amateur’s drink”) and ended with Mrs Ewart phoning the FT next day to say he’d come home happier than she’d ever seen him and also he died. on.ft.com/3cQK7WF

Let’s do lunch!

Bill Gates had a burger, Lord Hanson had to put out his cigar. On its 18th birthday, we revisit the big names and big bills that tell the story of Lunch with the FT

Doug Clow @dougclow.bsky.social · 4d

Relatedly, I've just put on Donna Summer's I Feel Love, which was a staple at discos, club nights, and raves I went to in the late 80s/early-mid 90s but astonishingly was released in 1977.

Doug Clow @dougclow.bsky.social · 4d

Ok yeah I see where you're going. It was played a lot in discos in the 90s, so it wouldn't be out of place. I'll allow it in that context. I would also rule it eligible for the general exception to any playlist exclusion criteria for absolute bangers.

Doug Clow @dougclow.bsky.social · 4d

Ohhh I've done that but hopefully never in public. Less of an issue than it used to be. As with Isaiah Berlin and Irving Berlin, I am quite clear that they are two very, very different people but my brain nevertheless wants to mush them together on phonological similarity grounds.