I got my permanent job at a university in 2008 (after 8 years hourly-paid) and now face redundancy. My salary has declined in real terms for my entire career. The graph for senior management pay in a broken sector looks very, very different. This is not an accident.

Absolutely. A single confabulated reference is enough for me to reject a paper as a reviewer or editor. This is only a problem if we let it be a problem.

When you use AI to do your writing, you are telling your audience: “I deserve your attention, but you do not deserve my effort.”

That's what they call "an Egyptian snooker". Very tough position to get out of, might require some treats.

There's always someone in the way #snooker #worldsnookerchampionship

Watching the snooker world championship and even after googling the sponsors I still have no idea what Halo is or does. At least when cigarette companies sponsored the #snooker you knew where you were.

#Snooker cat.

There should also be a 2026 edit of *A View to a Kill* where James Bond finds out about the plot to destroy Silicon Valley, thinks for a moment, and then wanders off, hands in pockets, whistling.

"Psychoanalytic Jonathan Creek": Jonathan investigates how someone can leave a room they never entered (it's the womb).

OpenAI: We’re burning money like the Joker. A miracle needs to happen for us to turn a profit Microsoft: Please please use our AI systems, we’re teetering on the edge here Anthropic: I wonder what’ll kill us first: lawsuits, regulations or model collapse Media and universities: AI is here to stay

Saw that @talkingpicturestv.bsky.social are showing Lindsay Vickers' *The Appointment* (1981). Noticed that this screening is in 4:3 rather than 16:9, so looked the film up and it seems that it was never shown in cinemas. So was it always in 4:3, or are copies now taken from the home video release?

It's snooker eve. Don't forget to put a mince pie out for Steve Davis.

This is an odd piece on Mark Fisher. I don't think there's any real sense in which *Capitalist Realism* was ignored on publication, and the article ends up inadvertently suggesting that Fisher was simply a populariser of Jameson and Derrida. www.theguardian.com/film/2026/ap...

I finished Guy Standing's *Human Capital: The Tragedy of the Education Commons* yesterday, and while it's correct on the broader instrumentalisation of education, it didn't feel especially precise on the situation in higher education (which is odd because this is Standing's own sector)...

I'm teaching a week long course on the Gothic imagination from *Frankenstein* to *Starve Acre* at Brasenose College in Oxford this August: lifelong-learning.ox.ac.uk/courses/the-...

Cat: have you perchance stumbled across seminal mid 1970s album La Düsseldorf, by La Düsseldorf? Dog: idk man Imagine Dragons kinda bangs

Contracts are signed, so I can announce my next book: *Arthur Conan Doyle*, in Liverpool UP's Writers and Their Work series. Or: Southsea resident writes about Southsea resident.

I see that the sheer charisma of JD Vance has been at work.

We are open for applications to the MA Victorian Gothic: History, Literature and Culture for Sept 2026. Tutors include @c19thceleb.bsky.social @christopherpittard.bsky.social @bradbeaven.bsky.social @karlbell.bsky.social For info on our distance learning course see 👇 www.port.ac.uk/study/course...

The Flyer of Dorian Gray.

Well, it all seemed to go to plan but let's wait until Bernard Quatermass gives it the thumbs up, right?

I remember predicting this on Twitter ages ago, where someone promptly accused me of being some kind of eco-doomster predicting the demise of all technology within the decade.

Not perhaps quite to the same extent, but HIGNFY popularising Boris Johnson has to be up there as well.

So Trump has spent billions of US money on a war which has resulted in Iran now imposing massive tolls on a waterway which was previously free? And yet I will still occasionally overhear people in the pub describing him as a businessman.

Remember: whenever Trump refers to anything as "the biggest X in history", consider whether he could identify a top ten - or even three - of similar occurrences in order to make that claim.

I've just noticed a curious thing in my copy of Thomas Richards' Commodity Culture of Victorian England (Verso edn): it includes scanned annotations from a previous copy! Don't use Printforce's print on demand services, I guess.

No, it’s actually not. Learning isn’t just content. Learning is habits of mind. You wouldn’t tell a musician to outsource practicing scales, or an athlete to have AI run their laps. It’s the same goddamn thing, and don’t let anybody sell you otherwise.

"No matter how you feel about throwing knives at students, its use is growing more widespread and it's important that educators understand how they could integrate it as a tool in their classrooms. In this article, hear from Tim Zarbi, CEO of Eduknives..." #EduKnives

Interesting that BBC News can't decide whether 'bastards' should be blanked out or not.

I'm reading Guy Standing's *Human Capital: The Tragedy of the Education Commons*. While there's a lot to agree with, Standing has a tendency to accept some narratives at face value. Yesterday I read these paragraphs:

Happy "M5 in the 1980s" day to all.

FFS... this is ridiculous... @christopherpittard.bsky.social is it you always having issues with Outlook? Its not you. Turns out Outlook even stumps actual rocket scientists...

Stunningly awful performance from Kemi Badenoch on BBC Breakfast right now. She keeps being asked about petrol prices but because she's only prepared on household fuels today she keeps ignoring those questions.

Did they opt out of making their intellectual property free for anyone to exploit for their own commercial purposes? Isn’t that how it’s supposed to work?

Walked past this house this morning and am now seriously tempted to buy a scratchcard in the distant hope of becoming an instant millionnaire. Not only is it a fantastic house, but next door (on the right of the picture) belonged to a friend of Arthur Conan Doyle. pearsons.com/properties/h...

If I were spamming people with emails from 'Pearson Higher Education', I'd make sure I understood how grading in HE works. Since first class marks start at 70%, a class average of 68% would, in fact, be suspiciously high.

Quite a bit of rereading in March.

My copy of the new issue of *Clues: A Journal of Detection* arrived this afternoon, and it's nice to spot the first citation of *Literary Illusions* in the wild.

I'm revising my outreach sessions for college students on studying English Literature at university. Does anyone more in touch with the teenage mind know what the fellow kids enjoy reading now? I'm getting the impression that Sherlock Holmes has slipped out of popularity...

There's probably more cocoa in an adult cheetah.

Well, this is weird because I only learnt about this wall this very morning while (re)reading Colin Dexter's *The Daughters of Cain*. (Obviously, I learnt about it the first time I read the novel, but that was back in 1995, so I unlearnt it in the last 30 years).

Can we have one of these inquiries here, please? #UKHE is also leading a stupid amount of money from the public institutions to these leechy private businesses. And yes, the lack of accountability is a key part of the issue about that.

I’ve said it before and I’ll no doubt say it again. Universities are roughly 1000 years old. They predate most operating models including capitalism and have lasted for a reason. Installing insecure, helpless managers who ape business methods results in bad businesses, not good universities.

The Victorians: not that prudish at all.

My first ever academic job interview was at Anglia Ruskin. A week earlier my new wife and I were in the British Embassy in LA to apply for her UK residency. They wanted to know about my employment (which, as a new PhD, was non-existent) so I told them I had a job interview in Cambridge next week.

The new LRB has arrived and I'm wondering how quickly Patricia Lockwood will turn her piece on Willa Cather into a piece on Patricia Lockwood.

The subsidiary company scam continues...

Julian Barnes interview on BBC4 right now. That's the licence fee justified.

For a single case, yes, but this article points out that there are a bunch of similar cases in the pipeline. Plaintiffs also won in New Mexico this week. calmatters.org/economy/tech...

Seems odd that a group calling itself The Bible Society would just unquestioningly accept the conclusions drawn from a set of unchecked data... www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...