But of course it did. Because unless you literally open up the entire set of files/data, etc. on which you train any AI and open up how and what patterns are being recorded from which it is "learning" you will have precisely this! No black boxes--make it transparent and very carefully monitored.

"you can blink all you want . . ." 🤣🤣🤣🤣

Mitch McConnell Clarifies Absence Due To Brief Planned Trip To Afterlife https://theonion.com/mitch-mcconnell-clarifies-absence-due-to-brief-planned-trip-to-afterlife/

On bullshit www.psypost.org/new-psycholo... "...repeating statements made by someone indifferent to facts heavily increases how truthful those statements feel..." Study: "truth-indifferent communication may pose a greater & more insidious threat to public belief than deliberate deception..."

Congratulations to our new @britishacademy.bsky.social fellows. But also sobering as they point out when @exeter.ac.uk is simultaneously putting their jobs &those of a hundred others in humanities, arts and social sciences, The Academy's remit, under threat! #DefendExeterUni @exeterucu.bsky.social

New Issue of Pasts Imperfect is out. Special issue on Homer and the Odyssey, Mayan ruins and much more. Also ends with a plea (thank you @sarahebond.bsky.social) for signing the petition to #DefendExeterUni @exeterucu.bsky.social

μοι ἔννεπε, μοῦσα, of this special Homer issue! Resident Homer sage @sentantiq.bsky.social weighs in, Yoandy Cabrera has a list of Hispanic reimaginings of The Odyssey, saving Chaco Canyon, Mayan ruins reveal an ancient astronomer, new ancient world journals via @yaleclassicslib.bsky.social & more 👁️‍🗨️

Total vindication for the Immortal Science, tho...

we need steel to build all the new shiny buildings on campus, what will happen in those buildings without any staff is anyone's guess but the buildings are what is important

Another excellent example of just how incurious and limited the UK press has been about this crisis. Not one mention of the cuts to humanities that Bristol’s own VC is trying to push through at the moment in this article about her position on the cuts 🤔🙄. www.theguardian.com/education/20...

This came in the mail today. I've been waiting 3 years for it!

The incredible Professor John Esposito, Georgetown University, died today. His legacy is immense, and to those of us who knew and worked with him, he will be deeply missed. The world has lost one of the giants of academia. 💔 His life, captured here 2 years ago: www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFwd...

One of the OfS's biggest 'achievements' during her tenure was spectacularly mishandling the Kathleen Stock / University of Sussex free speech fiasco, which led to a catastrophic defeat at the High Court for the OfS.

Latest from the Multicultural Middle Ages Podcast (@mmapod.bsky.social ): "Tadghout explores how knowledge was not only preserved but actively reworked through processes of copying, annotation, and translation." On Avicenna & the Canon of Medicine. www.multiculturalmiddleages.com/post/books-w...

NORTHWESTERN: *appoints prof as inaugural Chair of Social Justice in Reporting* PROF: *supports social justice* NORTHWESTERN: No not like that

We’ve crunched the data and it shows teaching only staff in social science, humanities and arts went from 34% in 2012/13 to 42% by 24/25 and that this has been concentrated at early and mid career level www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/policy-and-r...

This is incredible. Despite the impossible odds @thrasherxy.bsky.social will be up against to win this case, it is important that we support this lawsuit, and all the others like it that should be filed because line by line this reads like what universities have done to professors across the country

I would like to note that one of the few who reposted footage of catastrophe in Gaza was our beloved community member @rdcgladys.bsky.social. She is surviving genocide herself in Congo. She has sympathy for what folks in Gaza go through because her life's a nightmare too.

When the far-right scumbag newspapers turn against you, maybe the game's up for Farage? "DAN HODGES: Farage is learning that when voters are shouting at you, it's bad. When they're laughing at you, it's over..." #Reform #Binface #Clacton

This is excellent from @mcraeandrew.bsky.social

This is the dirtiest type of research. Princeton scientists took $15 million from BP and shaped their research on carbon capture in consultation with the oil company: www.propublica.org/article/wedg...

@BylineTimes doing incredibly important proper investigative journalism to reveal how Cambridge University is being expolited by the immensely rich, trans-national, far white, racist, Christian-nationalist network. bylinetimes.com/2026/07/09/p...

I’m genuinely shocked that almost the entire Anglophone world is busy dismantling academia. The research and teaching missions of universities make them economic engines that pay for themselves several times over—all while building soft power essentially for free.

@exeter.ac.uk management claims consultancy has begun for a compulsory redundancy process. @exeterucu.bsky.social has registered with the arbitration committee that the law requires proper data to be shared before such a process can begin. This is the data needed which we haven't been given.

Senior management @exeter.ac.uk "We are in serious financial trouble so we need to make these drastic cuts NOW, otherwise we face major deficits". The VC yesterday "We have a 1% surplus for this year, which is not enough so we need to make drastic cuts NOW". #DefendExeterUni @exeterucu.bsky.social

Missed the VC’s speech? Lucky you. Here’s the financial highlights! 1/ Confirmed Exeter uni is STILL IN SURPLUS for 25/26 2/ The top 16 execs at Exeter have a combined pay packet of nearly £4m 3/ The VC has a pay packet of nearly £400k a year 4/ Our cash reserves are going up, year on year [1/2]

The UK govt is spending £1.2m a day (about £1.5bn total by 2028) supporting remnants of an inefficient, doomed, steel industry that employs under 40k people Meanwhile it throttles what was a vibrant, growing, internationally competitive HE sector that employs >440k Explain industrial policy to me

Good old Nige. Nice bloke down the pub Nige. Friendly, likes a laugh and a pint Nige. Open, honest, man of the people Nige. Eh? Eh? (His aggression & fragility when faced with the slightest of scrutiny just highlights how infrequently the press have bothered to do it for the last couple of decades)

Here's a good write up of how private equity is destroying UK Higher ed now too after already doing a number in US and elsewhere. www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/politics/pol...

For the 1,000th day of the genocide in Gaza, I wrote about one of the most marked shifts I've noted since my return to Jordan: the relative absence of Western brands (especially foodstuffs). Let me know what you think.

Yes to this, but make no mistake that the attacks on humanities & damage to HE is the confluence of ideologies, private equity, consultants, genocide-profiteers, senior management, media moguls and a desire to crush unions (often more well-represented amongst HASS academics).

Wake up, University VC and Council. It’s not too late to turn this around and champion your humanities staff and our world-class departments. #DefendExeterUni www.theguardian.com/education/20...

I am not opposed to people leaving because that is what they want to do for their own well-being and have means to do so, BUT the problem with higher ed IS senior management & the millions they are scraping up top & investing in their stock portfolios with unnecessary expenses. #DefendExeterUni

Starmer’s goodbye gift to Britain: a US pharma deal that could be more lethal than Covid | Aditya Chakrabortty

Tremendous support from across various segments of our society--businesses, public figures, MPs, & even a former archbishop of Canterbury--against the UNNECESSARY cutting of humanities, arts & social sciences @exeter.ac.uk #DefendExeterUni @exeterucu.bsky.social www.theguardian.com/education/20...

We just had a meeting with over 700 (!!) of our members and OVERWHELMINGLY voted in favour of a motion to calling for a strike ballot! 🩷 We're doing this together. We are the University! #DefendExeterUni.

Two Important articles dissecting the situation here and beyond for higher ed, including the problem with consultants @exeter.ac.uk @exeterucu.bsky.social #DefendExeterUni www.technosphere.earth/the-bonfire-... 1/2

From a colleague @exeter.ac.uk @exeterucu.bsky.social . Read that carefully in terms of cash reserves of the uni & how much they have increased over the last few years, entirely thanks to some serious surpluses (which resulted in upper management taking bonuses one year while staff got cuts)

The story does not cover how the institute is being created by making staff in many departments redundant (~200 people), including those who work on climate, nature and environment on the Penryn campus in science and humanities @exeterucu.bsky.social . It also doesn't cover the protest today.

This is what @exeter.ac.uk is actually doing with regards to environment and sustainability, while the VC is giving a keynote at a climate conference today and claiming sustainability is part of Exeter's 2030 strategy.

Nearly half of the academic staff in the Environment and Sustainability Institute at the Penryn Campus are now at risk of redundancy. Putting your world-leading staff at risk is not sustainable! 🌍🔥[1/4]

Scenes from our VC’s climate conference talk ‼️ You can’t please all the people all the time. But as our senior management are learning if you lack a moral compass, make bad decisions and remain aloof and refuse to listen to the upset you cause, you certainly CAN alienate all the people all the time.

More on the real problem with Higher Ed, upper management bloat and sucking blood/££$$ from uni. 1/4

Stop Redundancies at the University of Exeter - Sign the Petition! c.org/FGHGHDQ9zs via @UKChange Draconian steps. Entirely unnecessary since the university has cash reserves of ~150 million and has had budget surplusses in almost every year the last decade #DefendExeterUni

The Exeter UCU branch statement on the proposed cuts, most of which will land on humanities and social sciences. World-leading departments in HASS are under threat of losing up to 25% of their academic staff. Failure of leadership through and through (esp. since no real data to support it).

Churchill was also the PM when the British caused a famine in Iran during WWII by forcibly requisitioning stores of grain there.

Westminster risks brushing over the fact that Jeffrey Donaldson, one of the key figures in keeping Theresa May in power post-2017, has been convicted of child rape.

So true about UK unis! "Heavily metricised, buried in audit and groaning under the weight of paperwork, no one seems to have told universities that these techniques were tested and found wanting by most private sector companies in the 1980s and 1990s" 1/2 isrf.org/blog/what-do...