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 ...

Just wondering. If an Historian or an English Literature professor perpetuates a falsehood in their professional life, would it be a crime against the Humanities? (Don't ask ... its been a #LongDay!) #PhDchat #AcademicChat #AcademicSky #History #Literature

My old university used to have 'Guides' to systems etc & how they work. My new university, showing the heavy hand of management consultants, now has 'Knowledge base articles'. I think I need to check whether information is the same as knowledge. That would be a philosophical question. #PhilSci

I have a feeling this is not going to work out well for Starmer. Very poor decision. Very undemocratic. #Burnham #UKpolitics #LabourParty @teamlabouruk.bsky.social www.bbc.com/news/article...

Benjamin Netanyahu appointed to Donald Trump’s “Board of Peace” for Gaza? Please tell me its 1st April. Please? #Gaza #Netanyahu #Trump #satire #politics www.abc.net.au/news/2026-01...

Who can you trust? Not these non-existent experts who have been cited in multiple newspapers multiple times. This is about existence "rather than the many other cases where the expert does not have the knowledge they claim." #fake #experts #knowledge #academicsky pressgazette.co.uk/news/named-5...

Is the US turning fascist? A very good contribution to the debate. #USpolitics #Trump #politics #USA www.nytimes.com/2026/01/12/o...

And today's exchange rate has been set at: One Nobel Peace Prize = One Bauble #USpolitics #Venezuela #PeacePrize #Nobel www.bbc.com/news/article...

We used to think that Nigel Farage's route to the top involved him joining the Conservative Party & being elected its leader. It now looks as though it it'll be by the Conservative Party joining Reform one person at a time (eg. Robert Jenrick). #UKpolitics @patrickdunleavy.bsky.social

An interesting case study in damage limitation by an Australian state government and an internationally acclaimed festival board mired in a censorship controversy. Would make a very good PhD project for a determined student! #Adelaide #AcademicSky www.indailysa.com.au/news/just-in...

#sociology #politics Read this & wondered if the very rich bringing themselves together in #branded living spaces is an act of hubris given revolutionaries will now know exactly where to find them come the revolution. Opposite of Marx & factories concentrating workers? www.bbc.com/news/article...

Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's Nazi minister of propaganda, chooses Jewish baby as the prefect Aryan. In a world that seems to be going crazy, this story and part-obituary that involves its own craziness brings a little hope and a smile. #Sociology #politics #crazy www.nytimes.com/2026/01/09/w...

And meanwhile in either the 'couldn't make it up' or the 'another way in which US academe is eating its own entrails' basket, here's news that will make you want to laugh or cry (maybe both). #USpolitics #Philosophy #HigherEducation #madness www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty...

Happy New Year to everyone from tonight's fireworks at Glenelg Beach here in South Australia! Hope its a good 2026 for everyone!!

Quite possibly the finest (true) Christmas story I've ever come across. You'll find your eyes going damp as you read it, I promise. www.bbc.com/news/article...

Wishing everyone a good and restful Christmas!

Its easy to forget that between 1928 and 2016 every single winning Republican ticket for the presidency contained either Richard Nixon or someone whose surname was Bush. That's 92 years. Happy Christmas everyone! #USpolitics #politics

So pleased to have had my Doctoral Haiku #1 published in So Fi Zine, an indie publication for sociological fiction, poetry, and visual art. #phdchat #phdforum #poetry #academicsky Thought I'd share. ⁠ PhD shelved New scholar arrives in Spring Knowledge moving on. sofizine.com/edition-18/

Can AI check if a piece of work has been created by GenAI? Not always. I popped the first few hundred words of the US Constitution (written in 1787 using quill pens & ink) into ZeroGPT.com to be told that they were almost certainly written using Generative AI. If so, it certainly explains a lot!

Purely for the purposes of distraction on a strange day, imagine you're 12 years old again and your teacher has provided this image and asked you write short story about this picture. What would be your opening sentence? Go on, humour me! 😎 #writing #booksky #Trump #Musk

I've been following #USpolitics for more than six decades and still haven't found a reason why the country has been and remains so paranoid. What is it so afraid of? Why do these continuous witch hunts happen? What is it about the American psyche? #politics www.kenklippenstein.com/p/leak-fbi-l...

A very disturbing development. #AntiExtremistResearch bylinetimes.com/2025/12/02/t...

@firefox.com Firefox, you've done it again with your latest update. Removed the single most useful thing on the browser, the 'Restore the previous session' which allowed you to re-open all your tabs if the browser was accidentally closed (either by me or a forced reboot). Please restore the restore!