I am once again begging universities to realise that staff - academic, professional services, estates, all of them - are the product they are trying to sell. Without staff there is nothing to sell. No amount of flashy buildings will replace staff in universities. UKHE is in freefall.

h/t @danielaldrich.bsky.social

Some well-deserved recognition for the excellent Dr Weikert (who also would deserve to have her name spelled correctly).

Jesus Christ. Anyone, at any point, raised what *universities actually do*?? Why do we have this lot in charge, who can't even think about what it is the institutions they're 'leading' are for in the first place. In fact, why are they meeting with Starmer's *economic* advisor?

This is exactly like the banking crisis of 2008. CEO’s was asked why they’d crashed the global economy, and they explained that their only responsibility was to enrich for their own institution regardless of consequences. Nobody was in charge of or responsible for the system as a whole.

Today is Mother Julian's feast. She is my favourite mystic with much wisdom. She does not shy away from difficulty or the violence of the cross, but looks them squarely in the face and comprehends the abundant love of God and all that is needful for life. 1/

It struck me late last night that a good replacement for that most glaring of misnomers 'Artificial Intelligence' would be 'Fake nous', but then I immediately thought it is too obvious not to have been proposed before. Is this in fact old νοῦς?

Do you have students who want to work with medieval sources and need to improve their Latin? There’s an intensive summer school in Birmingham for that! 🤓👇 palaeography.uk/study/short-...

Exciting post from @boydellandbrewer.bsky.social 🎉

Augustine is like: oh man if only religion made a person good. But it doesn't. So.

religious literacy — not to be confused with “religion” as such — is a civic good.

What's the next sentence, Adrian. WHAT IS THE NEXT SENTENCE.

Drop your crime fighting Catholics:

'While the war has been criticised as being in breach of international law, the reckless use of religion to support this war has not.' Dr Toby Matthiesen (Religion & Theology) on how leaders have used religion to justify their actions in the Middle East Read 👇 theconversation.com/god-on-their...

Two things that can be true simultaneously: Trump is a volatile idiot who does things for no good reason; the Trump administration functions in the interests of a section of US capital.

25 Mar 1235: the canons of #Lincoln unanimously & unexpectedly elect Robert Grossesteste, scientist & theologian as Bishop of #Lincoln #otd ( British Library Harley MS 3860)

If LLMs could talk, we would not understand them (Technology as grammar)

Reposting this poem that I wrote last fall because...well... [waves hands at the world]

I have a 'History Department in UKHE' joke but it's been reduced from 250 characters to 50 and is now merged with jokes from across ten other largely-unrelated disciplines while still being expected to be Just As Funny.

Has anyone written a review of the restructuring going on across UK HE? Trying to understand what is common across institutions: large, team-taught courses, centralised workload models, limited to no research time, promotion directly tied to grant income. How many consultancy firms are pushing this?

Oh really? Is that because pandering to the far-right and assuming they will act rationally, reciprocally, & in good faith has always worked in the past, & because there's good evidence that Reform can be trusted? I totally trust this former Tory advisor report published by a right-wing think tank.

This article is, as they say, bang on the money.

'The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason'. Starmer asks Trump to end the war swiftly *in order to keep prices down*.

"If AI handles the gruntwork, the learning pathway disappears" along with, potentially, the self-esteem pathway, the deep and lasting reward pathway, the ability to create anything worth someone else's attention pathway (&c. &c.)

Lectureship in Moral Theology at @stpatsmaynooth.bsky.social advertised. Come work with us… #academicjobs #theology #academicposts spcm.bamboohr.com/careers/40?s...

No-one says ‘Fast food isn’t going away, so let’s work out how to incorporate it into your diet’, yet we are often treated to the same non sequitur when it comes to AI

The next History of Liturgy Seminar is in London @ihr.bsky.social on Monday 16 March 17.30. Come hear Melanie Shaffer @bristolcms.bsky.social & @carrielarocco.bsky.social. In-person (chat! drinks! people!) or online. #medievalsky www.history.ac.uk/news-events/...

The reductionist fiction of the homo economicus is why we can't have nice things.

This is the stupidest g.d. thing I have read all day.

This should be mandatory reading for anyone considering investment in, or even engagement with, AI.

Summary of White House Briefings so far: Reporter: Can you tell us what Plan B is? Trump Regime: Plan B? We don't even have Plan A.

Sam Altman grows a conscience. Well, part of a conscience. Part of a 'conscience', you say, what's that? A 'con' is part of 'conscience'.

This one hits hard.

no, it simply isnt. People are talking about capital using gAI as an excuse to conduct mass lay-offs, about students losing learning because theyre being lied to about gAI in education, about the mass theft of the work of artists and authors to train LLMs, about CSAM and nonconsensual sexual images.

You can't... repeal... a scientific finding. At that point it's just called lying about it.

My doomer-worry about AI is not that the LLMs become omnipotent and take over the world but that the wealthy and powerful use it as a means to consolidate power and marginalize or lay off skilled workers and also everything about our technological and political and social life gets worse

The Higher Education sector has to get out there and defend itself, on the front foot, fighting fire with fire. Its enemies are coming at it. But it's just asleep at the wheel.

Dear university administrators, politicians of good will, and the general public, we need the field of religious studies more now than we have ever.

this is an amazing sentence

Striking paper from researchers at Anthropic using a randomised control trial to look at the effects of AI use on skills acquisition. TL:DR ‘We found that using AI assistance led to a statistically significant decrease in mastery.’ www.anthropic.com/research/AI-...

Revelation 28:7: "There was a great trumpet blast, and I saw the Lamb of God tackled to the ground by Babylonian border patrol and thrown in jail for illegal crossing."

I feel obliged to remind everyone that there are plenty of countries where higher education is either completely free or cost a token amount of tuition money and that many of these countries offer top notch teaching and research. It’s a political choice.

In the UK academic recession, you will be at one of these stages since many unis buy the same cuts model from the same consultancies. It is always the same process: *Talk of belt-tightening *Incidental savings (e.g. printing, refreshments) *Travel budgets cut *Promotion freeze (1/4)

Vosso

Next week’s course on Greek palaeography is sold out, but we still have some places on beginner and intermediate Latin 👇 #medievalsky @ies-sas.bsky.social ies.sas.ac.uk/news-events/...

The old test in moral philosophy ‘what if everyone did that?’ is coming back to haunt us. LLMs only work because the information they are sucking up was not generated by LLMs. But as they drive more and more real researchers out of business they are building layers and layers on their own quicksand.

Why is it ok for mathematicians to spend whole careers working on proofs when we’re expected to turn them around within a week?

I was praying for Minneapolis and the US earlier, for those living in fear of abduction and detention, and for those resisting, and I found I had the line “I have heard Him in the whistles of the ones of watch for ICE,” so I share that in case it encourages anyone.