To the Tories, the problem with the EU is that it represents a “statist juggernaut”; in the rest of Europe, the problem with the EU is that it represents a “capitalist juggernaut”… “Brexit marks the end of Britain’s role as a global superpower”– Fareed Zakaria (CNN).

Congratulations to newly-minted Imperial Astrophysics PhD, Dr Ciarán Conneely! It’s been a pleasure supervising him and learning from and with him about his thesis topic, “Application of Cosmic Microwave Background Techniques to a Gravitational Wave Stochastic Background”.

Looking for a macOS menubar app for easily exporting pictures from the Photos app — I remember seeing something like this recently, but can’t find it. Pointers welcome!

Delivered my first undergraduate lecture in a couple of years. I think I presented the material (extragalactic astrophysics) ok, but consider it a triumph that I didn’t collapse in a chalk-dust induced coughing fit. (Nb. I really like writing on blackboards!)

I voted, by the weirdly antiquated combination of an early-2000s web page letting me fax a PDF of my ballot, in the last place I lived in the US. Which was, uselessly, Nancy Pelosi’s district. But still.

We were listening to Bowie’s “Scary Monsters” with our three-year old and her first question on looking at the cover art was “Is that a boy or a girl?”, which I hope was an encouraging sign of her notions of gender fluidity (and then we played The Replacement’s “Androgynous”).

Thanks to Aretha for many things over the years, but perhaps especially for the dance parties she has inspired us to have with our one- and three-year old daughters over the last few days.

I am now so old that I have lost track, and am both embarrassed and happy to have discovered that this birthday is actually one less than I’ve been saying for the last few weeks.