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!

As perfect a rebuttal of current policy on the funding of the Arts and Humanities in Australia, the UK and the US as I've ever seen. #HigherEducation #AcademicSky #UKpolitics #USpolitics #Cancer #Stoppard

'A romance of narrow streets'. Love it! A new collective noun by Michael McClure found on page 59 of the rather excellent book 'The Last Great Dream' (by Dennis McNally) I've just started reading. As the cover says, 'How Bohemians became hippies and created the sixties'. Great dreams - Great stuff!!

@ausindimedia.bsky.social Is your influence spreading? Someone posted this and its not even the 1st of the month!! Happy Sunday!!

UK budget yesterday. From August 2028, English universities' tuition income from overseas students will be taxed at £925 per student per year, adding another £2,775 to cost of a 3-year course (or reducing an HEI's income by that amount should they not pass it on). Stupid move. #AcademicSky #PhDchat

If you're doing a PhD or looking for an academic career you'll have to get used to multiple variations on this from a whole host of anonymous referees. #AcademicSky #PhDSky #PhDChatter

Watching the first Ashes test match in Perth from my chair in Adelaide and the Australians, and particularly Travis Head, are scoring like its a T20 Match. Magnificent stuff! #cricket #Ashes

Note to all PhD students. Don't get downhearted. Always remember: “Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes." (Oscar Wilde) #AcademicSky #PhDSky #PhDChatter

Why do I twitch involuntarily whenever I read (or even worse, hear) the words seamless or seamlessly?

Interested in PhD supervision? New article out: a brief history of supervisor development & training in Australia & the UK. Available here, but if anyone can’t access it, just drop me a line at [email protected] www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.... #PhDSky #PhDChatter #AcademicSky

Saw a copy of the book titled "The Unpublished Dostoevsky" in a bookshop recently. Then it struck me that a published book titled "The Unpublished Dostoevsky" is a bit of an oxymoron, don't you think? 😎 #AcademicSky #publishing

Interested in doctoral education? interested in AI? Then this free to attend conference looks like it for you! Check it out here. #USpolitics #AcademicSky #PhDSky surveys.unisq.edu.au/index.php/85...

Like moths to the flame. The next step in the governmental capture playbook. #USpolitics #Mamdani www.nytimes.com/2025/11/05/b...

Just got this email from a Chinese outfit. Doesn't sound at all dodgy, does it? #AcademicSky #PhDSky #scam

@firefox.com Congratulations Firefox. Your latest update has removed one of the most useful elements of your browser ... the link to retrieve the previous session when you accidentally close the browser. Its the second time. Please put it back and don't remove it again!

Looks like a timely warning for any Linkedin users. Thanks @rachelwight.bsky.social Much appreciated!

"The nuclear testing ordered by President Trump will not involve nuclear explosions.. (but rather) the other parts of a nuclear weapon” to ensure they are working properly." #PhDSky #AcademicSky Note to any watching PhD students, the word 'test' is working hard here. Conceptual clarity is important!

Another example of state violence. www.bbc.com/news/article... #USpolitics

This is what making war on the most disadvantaged in a society looks like. #USPOL www.propublica.org/article/phoe...

#Academia #Academicsky Ever wondered whether the viva makes a difference to the outcome of the PhD examination? Well, now we know! (Spoiler alert ... it does.) Open access at www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Another university leaves the ranking system behind ...

It strikes me that one of the great advantages of a book over a digital reader is that the book's publishers never force an unwanted update on me to improve my experience & are completely unable to rearrange the pages in the volume into a random order just because they can. #reading #books #digital

Saw this & thought, 'All that picture needs is a table full of food in front of the assembled throng & its a dead ringer for Leonardo's 'The Last Supper'. And then, there's just as many women in the photo as there were in the painting. Who's playing Judas? #Gaza www.nytimes.com/2025/10/14/w...

Chilling. #antifa

Spent Saturday finishing my reading of Maria Dahvana Headley's wonderful 2020 translation of Beowulf. Glorious use of alliteration and a great romping read through this magnificent tale! Highly recommended to anyone like me who finds poetry hard to read but who grew up on Scandinavian & Saxon sagas

SCHOLARS BEWARE! Last Friday just before COB here in Adelaide I was notified that an article of mine had been published online. Almost exactly 6 hours later I received this phishing email inviting me to follow a (doubtless dangerous) link to find out about my 'research award'. #ScamAlert

A very powerful exposition bu people who study such things of why what's happening in the USA is so dangerous. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/07/o... #politics #USA #Trump #Miller

If you're reading this and you're connected to UTS as staff, student or alumni, please engage with this survey. #academicsky

Work in an Australian university? You really should be taking this short survey.

A true story straight out of John Le Carre. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/05/o...

@thephdplace.bsky.social For PhD students everywhere. Ever wondered if your doctoral viva or PhD oral examination makes any difference? A just-published article demonstrates it can and does. Open access and free to read. #PhD #researchdegree #doctorate www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Have you ever wondered whether your doctoral viva or PhD oral examination makes any difference? Wonder no more! A just-published article demonstrates it can and does. Open access and free to read. #PhD #researchdegree #doctorate www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Having been a member of many university examination boards both as an internal and an external examiner I simply cannot conceive of how this tragedy could have happened. Where were the subject tutor & course leader? Failure is relatively rare. You'd notice & question it. www.bbc.com/news/article...

Chilling. www.chronicle.com/article/hear...

Something to show students (or any others) tempted to use #GenAI to produce authoritative & factual documents. Politician presents a list including a misattributed author, invalid links and inaccurate dates and study titles to a Parliamentary committee. Not pretty! www.abc.net.au/news/2025-09...

From the horses mouth. I asked ChatGPT to tell me why GenAI is so bland. It told me 'that’s a great question — & a fair critique', continuing it is trained to be safe & inoffensive... (uses) averaging over massive data ... lacks true emotion or stakes. GenAI feels like eating plain toast every day.

Future historians examining and recounting the US descent into authoritarianism will mark this date and this event as bring one of the key moments on that journey. A very dark day. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/15/u...

Charlie Kirk was a racist, homophobic, transphobic, elitist Christian Nationalist who advocated for public executions that children should have to watch - including presumably the stoning of gays he advocated. Johnson, 2nd most recent Conservative UK PM, calls his views 'simple common sense'. Odious

For one reason & another today's been a hard one. Its nearly evening & this wonderful piece of music is helping bring me back down to earth so I thought I'd share it in case others are in need of something nice ... Its that simple - nice! #music #calm #beauty #sublime www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DBi...

Interested in PhD education? Graduate Research? The Quality in Postgraduate Research conference is the world's oldest (and best :-)) conference on all thing doctoral (est 1994) and the call for papers for the #QPR2026 conference in Adelaide in April is currently open at www.qpr.edu.au Check it out.

I've have finally given up on the sewer that is Twitter/X, finding its constant stream of Musk & Trump's narcissistic ramblings & promotion of the Extreme Right & neo-Nazis unbearable & positively bad for my wellbeing. There was also the fact that almost all of my new followers were bots. Breathe!

Sadly, this otherwise sensible piece in @ConversationEDU on responding to the rise of neo-Nazis does not mention education once. Education underpins democracy & that means education in the formal sense & also by the media, politicians, religious bodies etc theconversation.com/when-it-come...