Pleased to have quite a long (for me) review in the Journal of Learning Development in HE of a new book by Abegglen et al. Title-Stories of hope: Reimagining education. Open Book Publishers Hot off the press & free todownload! #SoTL #Universities #Hope #Optimism journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jl...

As a Scot I feel obliged to share this repudiation of all the slurs that have ever been cast on my country's national musical instrument, the bagpipes. #Scotland #Jazz #bluesmusic

The world as we know it may not be ending! Employers are reversing many AI layoffs. "Studies find up to 50% of companies that replaced workers with AI are rehiring or expressing regret". Issues involve institutional knowledge, and disappointing productivity gains. www.techspot.com/news/112707-...

Just watch my first Scotland World Cup match for 28 years and find, half way through the first half, a hydration break. I've never heard of this before. I can only think this is to allow the TV networks to have another advert break to the normal one that comes at half time.

Permanent suspicion? Recursion? Increased valuing of pre-GenAI artefacts? "Maybe poets will resort to composing their verse in glass boxes in the public square"? A fascinating essay on unanticipated consequences in an AI world. lareviewofbooks.org/article/fake...

#USpolitics Not so fun fact. The US has had more presidents who were born in summer of 1946 (three: Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Donald Trump) than presidents who were born in all the years between 1947 & 1991 (one: Barack Obama, born 1961). (1991 because 35 is the minimum age to run for POTUS)

"For the first time in human history, we have a technology that can generate words separately from the thoughts they represent." An interesting article on #GenAI and #creativity using evidence from 370,000 College Essays. The comments are also worth reading. www.nytimes.com/2026/05/27/o...

Just thinking ... What a strangely inefficient world we've built for ourselves all in the interests of increasing efficiency, isn't it?

Amidst all the noise about AI & how it is going to completely change the way we work, learn etc, I found myself thinking of two other game-changers, Second Life [the future of Higher Education as I remember], & Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) [the future of art]. Whatever happened to them, I wonder?

An interesting NYT article which includes a good idea for student assessment in a GenAI world. If students use AI, they submit 2 versions of the assignment — one completed without AI and one done with it, with a written explanation of how the chatbot was used. www.nytimes.com/2026/06/01/m...

Preventing the Wayback Machine from saving the news puts today’s journalism at risk of disappearing from history. 📝 Help push back. Sign the open letter calling on publishers to stop blocking web archiving 👉 www.savethearchive.com/NewsLeaders

@robertsheppard.bsky.social Thought this would interest. www.counterpunch.org/2026/06/03/m...

Higher Ed curricula, etc have all been steered heavily towards preparing students for work with a focus on employability etc. Given everyone thinks AI is going to take all the jobs and leave everyone un-employed, perhaps we should re-orientate HE towards preparing students for a world of leisure?

GenAI is the future? Here are some saluatory tales. A short weekend read from a very good commentator on contemporary culture. #literature #journalism #reputation #AIslop www.honest-broker.com/p/how-to-des...

Fun!!!

#GenAi or #humans? Research suggests human-written essays offered up to eight times more new ideas than those produced by A.I.' Another that after ChatGPT became available, their essays suddenly used diverse and colorful language, but lacked truly creative ideas.' www.nytimes.com/2026/05/27/o...

I just got an email from ChatGPT asking for the names of my favorite coffee shops to get a personalized list of recommendations. Is this: #ChatGPT trying to pretend its my new best friend, or #ChatGPT owners thinking about bringing advertising into what the platform does? Small talk or advertising?

Is there any universe in which this makes sense? #Research #authorship

As colleagues who know me will realise, this is further evidence of the reason why I refuse to publish with, cite articles from, or review for any journals published by MDPI. If not actually predatory, they're very close to that end of the spectrum. #publishing #journals #research

Interesting piece on the English local elections. #UKpolitics Reform took many votes from previous non-voters (DNV). Cons shifted almost exclusively to Reform, to no one else. Greens took from Lab and (to a lesser degree) DNV. Nice table in the article. www.uglypolitix.com/p/former-non...

Sound familiar to any of my academic colleagues? www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/cla...

"Science Nobels are typically awarded for work done 20–30 years prior, a gap that has been increasing over time." Interesting article on Nobel science awards with a warning for the United States and other countries who are cutting research funding. ihe.bc.edu/pub/079igpxb... #research

Just released, a video of hot takes from the #QPR2026 conference set against the conference theme tune, the majestic Wade in the Water by the Ramsay Lewis Trio. Wonder if we'll make Top of the Pops? :-) www.youtube.com/@QPRConference

#QPR2026 Day 1 keynote ‘Futureproofing the PhD’ by Uni of Sydney's Prof Louise Sharpe President of the Australian Council of Graduate Research (ACGR) is up on line at lnkd.in/g-nKhk5C Other keynotes to follow shortly. #PhD #doctorate #GraduateResearch #HigherEducation #ACGR #universities #innovation

@robertsheppard.bsky.social Just in case you've not caught up with this. As you know, one of my great heroes, along with Tuli. Hope all's well. www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAL-...

With my politics hat on, I wonder what impact this sacking of US Navy Chief John Phelan will have on AUKUS and thereby Australia? #USpolitics #Auspol www.nytimes.com/2026/04/22/u...

@patrickdunleavy.bsky.social Do you think Starmer can survive the Olly Robbins appearance at the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee? In more normal times, I'd say no but would welcome your opinion.

Another reason never to buy on Amazon unless there really is no alternative. #prices #algorithm #ripoff washingtonmonthly.com/2026/04/20/h...

Surprise, surprise. "People, it turns out, hate being ripped off and resent having their time wasted." And the online world and chatbots cost us, the consumer, many billions of $$$s a year, much of which goes the businesses who tell you they value your custom. #AI www.nytimes.com/2026/04/12/b...

Will GenAI save the Humanities & Social Sciences? If AI is going to remove the entry-level jobs graduates currently head into (including jobs in AI & coding etc) will students start studying subjects for their own sake & enjoyment not simply for a job? #AcademicSky #PhDSky #university #sociology

Ever wondered what part #serendipity plays in a #PhD? Here's my first stab at an answer and I'm still working on it. #AcademicSky #PhDSky www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1...

Welcome to 1st April, the day on which you've got the hard task of deciding what's real news about what politicians the world over are doing, and what's an April Fool's Joke. Its got a lot harder than the days of patting your school chum on the back with a hand full of chalk hidden in your palm!

Some kind person's made a short video of the 2024 iteration of the conference I've helped organise and convened every two years since 2012. Keeping my fingers crossed that the 2026 Quality in Postgraduate Research Conference QPR goes just as well! #QPR2026 www.linkedin.com/posts/qualit...

AGL, my gas supplier has just told us we're being moved from quarterly to monthly billing to 'simplify budgeting' but the existing $12 late payment fee will apply to any late monthly payments. So that's 8 more chances a year #AGL will have to collect a late fee from me. @australiainstitute.org.au

An interesting piece which deserves to be read on political science and sociology courses when they deal with elites. #Epstein #darkconnector www.nytimes.com/2026/03/30/o...

Waiting to see the doctor today (routine), a family came in & sat opposite me. They gave their about 3-4 year old boy a hardback book &, instead of opening it he began to stab at its cover as though it was an iPad. Fortunately, they opened it for him & he seemed to enjoy what he found! :-) :-) :-)

Occasionally I find a message of hope. Here's today's ... hmpg.net #digital #useful #ideas

Your occasional reminder that, if your Friday's draining the last dregs of your physical and emotional batteries away, this video contains 19 minutes of the most beautiful, uplifting and relaxing music I've ever come across. #music #relax #beauty #wellbeing www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkDL...

"The paradox at the heart of modern higher education is this: we have created the most knowledge-rich era in human history, & yet wisdom; the harder, slower, braver capacity to know what to do with that knowledge, has never felt more scarce." lnkd.in/gy4upS3V #University #HigherEd #Knowledge #Wisdom

Wondering? Did decline of the quality of working conditions coincide rather too closely with the start of the idea that every organisation, even those whose name told you exactly what they did (eg schools, universities, police, banks, etc) had to have a Mission Statement. 😎 #business #grumpy #dayoff

If anyone needs something to calm them down today, I can think of nothing better than this 20 minutes of magic that I never tire of listening to. Close to perfection! #calm #music #relax www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkDL...

Just bragging that my team and I have been awarded an Australian Awards for University Teaching Citation for 'the conceptualisation, development and implementation of a model of HDR transition that facilitates the student socialisation and identity change involved in research degree study'. #AAUT

I just read in the New York Times that Trump has just announced he's going continue bombing Iran “uninterrupted throughout the week or, as long as necessary to achieve our objective of PEACE ...". Let me think about that ...

I was interested in how GenAI systems would talk to each other and so had ChatGPT and Grok write a collaborative story based on an initial prompt from me. Turned out very differently to what I expected. You can read (and comment on it) here. Thoughts? #GenAI jaigp.org/paper/13 #writingcommunity

Courtesy of Steven Wright, 'I woke up this morning and all of my stuff had been stolen and replaced by exact duplicates.' #Philosophy

Just come across the Journal for AI Generated Papers so decided to submit a short story written by two GenAI titans -following my prompt. Turned out to be something of a love story. Called 'The ghost in the machine: a meeting of minds between ChatGPT and Grok' you can comment at jaigp.org/paper/13

Just in case anyone needs something to think about over the weekend. (By the way, an ai agent is an autonomous software program that perceives its environment, reasons out problems, and executes actions using tools without constant human oversight) #genAI #Moltbook www.forbes.com/sites/johnko...

Scary and very troubling stuff going on here. #UKpolitics #Epstein #palantir #Mandelson #Thiel

The perils of GenAI - a salutary tale. "When two years of academic work vanished with a single click. After turning off ChatGPT’s ‘data consent’ option, Marcel Bucher lost the work behind grant applications, teaching materials and publication drafts. #AcademicChat www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Strictly for my Australian friends. Nearly choked on my coffee ...