Talking to a monk is fine, as long as one does not think that their opinion will be representative of the whole of the theology they are part of. 1/

The Center for Religious Studies at Ruhr-Universität Bochum (Germany) is advertising a postdoctoral position in the History of South Asian Religions. You can find the full announcement here: jobs.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/jobposting/f.... The deadline will likely be extended until 10.12 #SanskritJobs

"Given the complexity and length of the song text, coincidence can be ruled out as the cause of the reproduction of the song lyrics," the court wrote in a press release. #AIEthics #digitalGovernance good to see a judicial system NOT in thrall to us tech, unlike the UK, apparently.

This is one of my favourite icons ever, hence I had to repost it (notice Jesus's right arm)

I am really enjoying these threads on the iconography of St. Martin.

According to Kumārila, an injunction (the śabdabhāvanā) motivates one to bring about the action (the arthabhāvanā), through which one brings about the result. The whole process is started by the injunction but it only works on addressees that independently desire the action's result, e.g. heaven.

I recently finished "The dark forest" (by Liu Cixin) and I am back to the same problem I had while reading "The three body problem", namely I like the plot & the nerdy parts (wallbreakers' disclosures!), but the women characters are beyond hope and make me suspicious of the author as human being 1/

Sure, let's encourage students to use ChatGPT (after having told them that plagiarism is bad for years…)

I honestly don’t get the value of this company. They hoover up energy and water. Their product constantly gets things wrong and, in extreme cases, coaches people into suicide. And it’s all built on what seems to be malicious and vast intellectual property theft. What does OpenAI offer the world?

There are angels hovering round: sacristy of S. Marco, Basilica of the Santa Casa, Loreto. Painted in 1477 by Melozzo da Forli, angel man, whose day is today.

In the age of AI, it becomes critical to assess the witness' reliability. Who says that A thinks that B? If it is an unknown "reporter" or anyway not an expert, perhaps we should default into mistrust.

This is why this is a problem for democracy. See my full piece on this here www.artnews.com/art-in-ameri...

Identifying flaws in GenAI unfortunately offers a pretext for claims that perfecting the product is just a matter of time & money. So pointing to chatbots’ role in,say, suicides can only go so far if we don’t also identify the systemic, irresolvable lack of Gen AI’s human commitment bc math has none

Acc. to Kumārila, in each finite verb, bhāvanā ('actualisation', 'bringing into being') is the meaning of the verbal ending & it is distinct from the meaning of the verbal root. In other words, a finite verb like "[she] cooks" is in fact made of 2 separate morphemes & their corresponding meanings 1/

I doubt any prospective student is likely to read this, but if your PhD proposal looks like it was written by ChatGPT then I will not want to supervise you. If you can‘t write even a research proposal by yourself then you are not ready to carry out research.

Holy fucking shit

On volunteering our work for publishing houses that then feed it to LLMs. Perhaps we should just stop? elisafreschi.com/2025/11/08/o...

According to Śālikanātha all words within a sentence, once connected, convey the sentence meaning. The options he is disagreeing with are that the sentence meaning is obtained through a partless sentence (as in Bhartṛhari) or from the last speech sound or from the word-meanings (as in Kumārila). 1/

According to Sanskrit philosophers, children don't become proficient language users through individual words, but through sentences. Śālikanātha says that they have to extract the meaning of individual words through their presence or absence in the sentences they hear. #SanskritPhilosophy

Should we not think twice before imposing ChatGPT to all students? If not, what's the point of all the mental health-related accommodations?

While researching my current column, I had trouble finding something PM Carney said in a speech in either Factiva or Google, so I tried asking ChatGPT-5 to search for it. This was its internal response. It hallucinates in basic searches. It can't write truth. It can't copyedit. What is it good for?

UPDATE: I apologise for not being able to help you, but time is limited and I prefer to volunteer my time to help publishers who have higher standards than the one you chose (if they want to focus only on profit, they should start paying their contributors, editors, peer reviewers…). 1/2

I have many paper to review, but would be willing to make time for one more. However, I do not want to make sacrifices to help LLMs continuing their intellectual thefts, environmental damages and deskilling of students and thinkers alike. 1/2

Since I am a terrible nerd, I am listening to it. Opening statement by Helen Andrews: Women are responsible for the *pathology* known as "wokeness". 1/

I wonder what will happen first, me being fired or me having to flee because I do not accept to use AI in class, at @utoronto.ca 1/

"After burning through almost a trillion dollars, we finally invented a computer that can't do math." "For the torment nexus, that is the AI industry, to get built, it needs to convince you that your only option for survival is to help build it."

Some students know how to touch "Ever since my 1st class with you as my prof (which I believe was…), I've made it a mission to take as many of yr courses as possible. Clearly, I found the subject material to be most fascinating, but more importantly I felt that being in yr classroom meant far more 1

This is what I find with my students, too. 90% of them think that AI is net bad, and none argue with my intro lecture about the objective harms of AI. And yet we get emails in our inbox from the university twice a month promoting AI tools.

Friday Nov. 7 (9AM PST, 12PM EST, 6PM CET, 1030PM IST), please join us for an exciting AAR #online #symposium on _Buddhist Feminist Historiography_ in celebration of Prof. Stephanie Balkwill's tour de force, _The Women Who Ruled China_ Register here: aarweb.org/event/buddhi...

Too real! I spent years cautioning students to think critically about when and how to use Wikipedia, and now I'm like oh good you used Wikipedia. Sigh.

Nature suggests you use their "Manuscript Adviser" bot to get advice before submitting I uploaded the classic Watson & Crick paper about DNA structure, and the Adviser had this to say about one of the greatest paper endings of the century:

UPDATE: After 10 days, my luggage is still missing. AirCanada (@aircanada.bsky.social) never contacted me once and now their App with the "bag tracking" feature tells me that they are unable to track it at all and that I should "try with another bag"!

Looking forward to this conversation with @danmcquillan.bsky.social later today. Registration link below.

Scary 👻 🎃

It would be easy for universities to re-introduce the essay as assessment method by bringing back access-controlled computers in libraries that are not connected to the internet and AI-free, and to require that essays be written on those machines only. This would also increase traffic to libraries.

Really interesting thread on the use of ChatGPT as tutor for #students

From George Karamanolis' The Philosophy of Early Christianity: A contemporary philosopher, William Matson, finds religion the worst offender against philosophy and claims that 1/

A Sourcebook in Global Philosophy New publication edited by Mohammed Rustom equinoxreligionlibrary.com/projects/sou...

Contradictory news from @aircanada.bsky.social !

On a separate note, I just read #FranzKafka's Das Urteil (The Judgement), 1913. An amazing and powerful read, especially if you —like me— like unreliable narrators, reflections on estrangement and on deontics. #booksky #books

Flying w @aircanada.bsky.social (& other carriers) w 8 flights within 7 days. At YYZ I was asked to give my carry-on luggage bc of space reasons. I begged them to let me keep it, perhaps they could ask someone who didn't have to change. No way. End: Baggage lost😡

📢 The JHI invites applications for the 2026–27 Critical Digital Humanities Postdoctoral Fellowship, a 1 year fellowship supporting a recent PhD. Theme: Doubles, Doppelgangers 📅 Apply by Nov 25, 2025 | 4pm EST 🔗 More info: uoft.me/cdh26-27 #digitalhumanities #DH #postdoc #postdoctoral

postdoc in Buddhism: protestantstheologischeuniversiteit.recruitee.com/o/postdoctor... #SanskritJobs #PhilosophyJobs

Jonah Dunch on Zhuangzi and fish sentience: "It strikes me that the fish pain skeptics are making the same sort of mistake as Huizi in the happy fish story. They want to deny that we can read off the mental states of fish from their behaviour. 1/

Please spread the word: @lexacademic.bsky.social are offering three bursaries (with complimentary proofreading) for graduate students with dyslexia in philosophy, classics, and art history.