Mark Fabian
markfabian.bsky.social
Mark Fabian
@markfabian.bsky.social
Ass-Prof of Public Policy at Warwick. Work mostly on wellbeing from an interdisciplinary perspective. Interested in *everything*. Run ePODstemology: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1763534/episodes
Pinned
Friends, foes, family:

I have a popular booking coming out on April 10 - Beyond Happy: How to rethink happiness and find fulfilment. It's the book I wish existed when I was 18. I couldn't find it in 20 years of searching, so I went and wrote it.

A video brief:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XPZ...
Beyond Happy: How to rethink happiness and find fulfilment
YouTube video by M. Fabian Education
www.youtube.com
Reposted by Mark Fabian
May your year be blessed with accepts subject to minor corrections.
January 1, 2026 at 7:30 AM
If you play BG3 this is cinema:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=sX1X...
Using RIDICULOUS Strategies in Baldur's Gate 3 | The Movie!!!
YouTube video by Fracture
www.youtube.com
December 31, 2025 at 11:50 PM
Reposted by Mark Fabian
This is a great paper on scale norming that also presents a really nice discussion of how people come up with their responses to surveys, and how that can change over time. One read of it has me wanting to put it into my assessment syllabus already.
December 29, 2025 at 2:45 PM
Reposted by Mark Fabian
Discworld QOTD, from Hogfather
December 25, 2025 at 6:01 PM
Right at the death I've got an academic publication for 2025 - coauthored with one of my undergraduate honours students based on his dissertation (what a talent!):

Bricolage in local government policymaking on cycling infrastructure: a case study from Coventry

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
Bricolage in local government policymaking on cycling infrastructure: a case study from Coventry, UK
This paper contributes to mobilities scholarship through a qualitative study of perspectives articulated by policy actors affiliated to Coventry City Council towards cycling infrastructure. Mobilit...
www.tandfonline.com
December 23, 2025 at 4:45 AM
December air travel means Mark writes extremely belated movie reviews of stuff he watched on the plane:

open.substack.com/pub/profmark...?
December 20, 2025 at 12:54 AM
I am on holiday so of course I am blogging:

open.substack.com/pub/profmark...?

My quick analysis of the really genuinely very good new mythology in the Star Wars sequel trilogy.
The Final Star Wars Trilogy Was Good, Actually
It's mythology for the 21st century, kids
open.substack.com
December 19, 2025 at 11:01 PM
Reposted by Mark Fabian
A beautiful, grounding thread.

I want these things too, for all of us

🙏🌏💚
My friends, I don't want to rush to Mars or the moon to theoretically have the energy and materials to prop up extractive capitalism for another century or so.
December 19, 2025 at 6:50 PM
Good clear example of how AI drivel is ruining academic publishing and not just in MPDI-like journals
Closing out my year with a journal editor shocker 🧵

Checking new manuscripts today I reviewed a paper attributing 2 papers to me I did not write. A daft thing for an author to do of course. But intrigued I web searched up one of the titles and that's when it got real weird...
December 19, 2025 at 7:58 PM
Reposted by Mark Fabian
Canada lynx
December 19, 2025 at 6:05 PM
Reposted by Mark Fabian
It’s what dark persistent predatory personalities (aka malignant narcissists & psychopaths, etc.) do – and not just today, not just in the 20th century, but throughout history.
(A bit more in ALT)
December 17, 2025 at 10:00 PM
Reposted by Mark Fabian
(I think people should be able to end their lives if they want to, w support & w/o stigma. But I also think people should have pain medication, good healthcare, mental health therapy, and guaranteed housing, w support & w/o stigma…it is a lack of these which cause depression and suicidal ideation…
December 14, 2025 at 10:34 AM
Obligatory Japan trip photo booth fun times. I was genuinely too large for the machine.
December 14, 2025 at 8:11 AM
Reposted by Mark Fabian
“Tell your children who the cowards were.”
December 13, 2025 at 2:16 PM
Reposted by Mark Fabian
As UKRI explores using LLMs to review grants, it's a good time to revisit Bryan Wilder's excellent blog post.

There are a lot of naive reasons to oppose AI review ("you'll never automate human intuition!"). But there are also good reasons, including the *load-bearing role of human disagreement.*
Should LLMs be used to review papers? AAAI is piloting LLM-generated reviews this year. I wrote a blog post arguing that using LLMs as reviewers can have bad downstream consequences for science by centralizing judgments about what constitutes good research.

bryanwilder.github.io/files/llmrev...
Equilibrium effects of LLM reviewing
Equilibrium effects of LLM reviewing
bryanwilder.github.io
December 5, 2025 at 3:25 PM
Reposted by Mark Fabian
The philosophers were so preoccupied with whether they should that they didn't stop to think if they could.
December 3, 2025 at 9:35 PM
Reposted by Mark Fabian
let's get this graphic into public finance class

bsky.app/profile/852d...
November 30, 2025 at 7:27 AM
Reposted by Mark Fabian
Students applying for grad school, or reaching out to professors. I have an important piece of advice for you: STOP DOING THIS 👇 (a thread) #STEM #PhD #gradschool #academictips
November 21, 2025 at 9:53 PM
Reposted by Mark Fabian
You might not like it, but this is what peak male performance looks like
Additionally, hippos - despite being massive - have almost no fat on them. All of that impressive bulk is muscle.

2% body fat. Compare that to Elephants, which are around 8-10%, or rhinos, which are 10-20%.

The average human is around 20-40%, for reference.

They're *all* muscle.
November 24, 2025 at 1:57 AM
Recently did around 30 requests to ppl who'd published very similar papers to the one I needed reviews for. 3 declines, 25 no response. Please at least decline guys it slows stuff down so much otherwise.
I'm still relatively new to this journal associate editor business, but it already sucks… I've had a paper on my desk for more than a month now:

Reviewers invited: 12
Of those…
Declined: 5
No response: 7
November 24, 2025 at 7:34 AM
Reposted by Mark Fabian
I have extensive instructions on spatchcocking a bird (and why) in COLOR TASTE TEXTURE!

(also highly recommend getting poultry shears)
I’m an Autistic classically trained chef and I wrote a food aversion acceptance cookbook and guide titled COLOR TASTE TEXTURE, that’s all about finding out what works for specific sensory needs and how to customize food for them. It’s useful for all ages, no cooking experience necessary.
Color Taste Texture by Matthew Broberg-Moffitt: 9780593538593 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books
An accessible family cookbook that offers solutions rather than tricks to empower the food-averse, autistic, and picky eater, with 46 recipes. This much-needed cookbook combines tips and techniques.....
www.penguinrandomhouse.com
November 24, 2025 at 3:12 AM
Reposted by Mark Fabian
I am Jupiter
November 24, 2025 at 6:54 AM
Reposted by Mark Fabian
November 21, 2025 at 9:26 PM