ne good news, one very bad news, and one update (please do read them all):Good news: my first paper in my PhD is finally published! It's open access with this link: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1475-7516/2026/05/022/pdfThere are a couple of things you might not have expected: first, I am actually now a PhD student in physics, not maths! My research area (quantum field theory in curved spacetime / inflation) is still very heavily maths related, and I *might* eventually talk about it on YouTube, but it will take many, many videos to get there. And second, I'm now based in the University of Nottingham. That brings me to the very bad news.VERY bad news: due to a poor management decision (read: reckless spending) by the University of Nottingham, many staff members (56/71 academic and technical staff in the school of physics and astronomy) are facing risk of redundancy, through no fault of their own. See https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx21gwq3j67oI normally don't comment on this kind of stuff publicly, but the scale has been ridiculous enough to warrant my comment on this.You might know University of Nottingham from the professors in Sixty Symbols and DeepSkyVideos. Some professors like Tony Padilla and Ed Copeland also presented on Numberphile. I even made a video specifically dedicated to George Green, a Nottinghamian miller famous for Green's theorem, which you might know from vector calculus; and Green's functions, the backbone of QFT. On the more "practical" side of physics, Peter Mansfield from Nottingham was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine for his discoveries that made the MRI scanner possible. I can say from the field of theoretical physics research, Nottingham has consistently been one of the best in the UK, and therefore baffled by the university's decision to harm its reputation, and hence student intake and income.I know most of you are not in academia, but for those of you who are, this is not an isolated incident. Coupled with the recent spending cuts of fundamental research by UKRI (see, e.g. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2026/feb/06/uk-scientists-cuts-funding-projects-research-facilities ), and perhaps even worse situation across the pond, it will happen to you at some point too. I know signing petitions doesn't usually do much (that's really the last resort after all negotiations with the uni failed), but it's at least heartening to see academics worldwide are rallying against this decision, and you might recognise quite a lot of names (at least you'll recognise Sean Carroll and David Tong) in: https://nottinghamphysics.github.io/Open_Letter/#signatories. Consider signing it if you're an academic.Update: I'm now recording a slightly different video, about how AI slop is already flooding maths YouTube, and it's a video with my face on it. Hopefully can finish recording that soon enough. I will keep doing the video series on differential forms on here, just that recently there have been too many things that I am opinionated enough to rant about on the internet.
