First look at the Moon and Earth together! 4 people on the left, 8.3 billion people on the right 🌎

Grade 1 listing in my area bans the thin double glazing that is indistinguishable from single glazing

The New York Times deleted Trump’s “open the fuckin’ strait” line to make him look less insane Their write-up falsely says his post says only “Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!!” and “Praise be to Allah”

you know the way "why did the Roman Empire fall" and "what are the causes of the First World War" are big questions that sort of function like Rorsharch tests, allowing people to debate ultimately inexplicable moments in history? "Why did no one stop Trump" a decent future shout for the third.

Undoubtedly interesting and significant but where does 'aware, have used, don't anymore' go?

Management consultants are ruining UK universities ft.trib.al/0LelZP9 | opinion

Crikey - Copilot for entertainment purposes only. www.pcmag.com/news/copilot...

Also true of research in general, where serendipity is often the source of discovery

And this; "If sex is taken too seriously, sexual persecution is not taken seriously enough".

What a time to be alive www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/...

Re-reading Rubin: "We have learned to cherish different cultures as unique expressions of human inventiveness rather than as the inferior or disgusting habits of savages. We need a similarly anthropological understanding of different sexual cultures".

‘Unable to tell if I am in the presence of somebody so intelligent I may as well be a labrador talking to Archimedes, or somebody so stupid I may as well be Archimedes talking to a labrador’ @mrhenrymorris.substack.com talks to Dominic Cummings mrhenrymorris.substack.com/p/dominic-cu...

This is my favorite climate change chart. Japanese monks, aristocrats, and emperors kept meticulous records of cherry blossom festivals for 1,200 years and accidentally built the world's longest climate dataset.

'The UK’s national academy for the humanities and social sciences, the British Academy, has called for a joined-up strategy, a sustainable financial model and meaningful engagement with authors when it comes to developing long-form open access (OA).' Link to the report in next post. 1/2

🚨 BREAKING: The European Commission has urged people to work from home, drive and fly less, and for EU countries to urgently roll out renewables, as it warned of a prolonged energy crisis as a result of the conflict in the Gulf. Full story: www.politico.eu/article/euro...

'Staff at the University of Edinburgh have demanded an end to the institution’s partnership with technology giant OpenAI, calling it “unsafe” and “insecure”. 1/2

Leveraging the power of the Supreme Court to bully one child out of playing with her friends per group. Is this feminism?

Condom use has been dropping across several demographic groups--but the reasons for this are many and varied. Here's a look at some of the contributing factors. https://www.sexandpsychology.com/blog/2020/3/4/are-condoms-going-out-of-style-six-theories-on-why-condom-use-is-decreasing/

I would love to know how ALCS works - best payment in a few years and not entirely sure why

Interesring Louis Theroux interview www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio...

Strong statement from UCU on principles for implementing AI in teaching, research and administration. This is much more reflective and comprehensive than the pervasive catch-all of 'responsible AI'. www.ucu.org.uk/media/15656/...

Interesting new article in Sexuality & Culture: "Faked or Felt? Sexual Pleasure of Female Sex Workers in Poland During Commercial Sex Acts" link.springer.com/article/10.1...

One thing that AI evangelists seem to assume, particularly legal AI evangelists assume, is that the thinking and analysis is quick, and the writing is just tedious busywork that slows us down. But the writing IS the thinking and analysis. You work out the thinking and analysis by writing it down.

I enjoyed Louis Theroux's delve into the Manosphere, but I have the niggling sense that the whole panic around it is a bit of a fantasma. The prevalence of misogyny among young men is no higher now than in 2015. The worst you can say is it's stopped shrinking. What am I missing here?

Almost exactly ten years ago @henrymance.ft.com had lunch with Nigel Farage www.ft.com/content/864c.... It remains legend. Quite a lot has happened over the subsequent decade so we sent him back in. as.ft.com/r/edeac2c6-0...

39 Sudanese Chevening Scholarship finalists ejected this week from consideration for the scheme, for being Sudanese.

'some creative arts graduates don’t appear to earn a significant graduate premium, but the UK’s creative industries are worth £125bn a year or, to put it another way, more than £1 in every £20 in the UK economy – a larger proportion of the nation’s wealth than almost any other country on earth.' 1/3

If plant-based foods must be more honest, let’s do the same for meat – fancy some ‘cow muscle’? | Deirdra Barr

kind of goes without saying but the punctuation in Cormac McCarthy is not a mistake

My experience with GenAI in a work capacity is the roll-out often involves people "saving time" by producing poor quality documents (of whatever) that then require people with expertise to resolve the issues; so the "efficiencies" are just outsourcing the quality issues to people who care.

AI companies are hiring people to produce data for practically any job you can imagine: chefs, management consultants, archivists, private investigators, rental-counter clerks. It is, as one industry veteran put it, the largest harvesting of human expertise ever attempted.

Awful fire, and to read it's because of a vape shop only makes it worse. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

If a manuscript contains "Click or tap here to enter text" (perhaps in another language) does this mean the authors have used a template, or perhaps GenAI or similar?

Call for Papers: hybrid conference on Archives and Ethics (online and at @astonuniversity.bsky.social ! Experts from all fields welcome! padlet.com/dturner2_23/... Deadline: 13 April 2026

1908: the Lancet, one of the most respected scientific journals, calls for 18 age limit on reading in bed amidst a moral panic surrounding children becoming "addicted" to novels, which were "designed to keep kids hooked" and destroy their attention/mental health

The easiest analytical assumption to make whenever Trump does something is that he hasn't thought it through at all. And yet everytime commentators contort themselves into believing there's some kind of strategy.

Very much this.

We (@lawrencemckay.bsky.social @williamlallen.bsky.social) have data on this stretching back to 2012 for a forthcoming report on the current academic job market in Politics - and let me just say it's unprecedentedly bad at the moment!

Way too many on the Left laughed off GB News as a joke, a money-loser sure to fail, not worth worrying about. Completely missed the point. It was a foothold for the international far right on the mainstream British media scene. No price is too high for that

🚨 It looks like the UK government is gearing up to upend copyright law in favour of AI companies, legalising the theft of their work. This is despite creatives' huge protests, and despite previous proposals being roundly rejected by the public. Please spread the word. 🧵 1/4

Response from @sciencecampaign.bsky.social says ‘the statement that curiosity-led research is over 50% of the total budget risks looking disingenuous when a big chunk of it is QR funding.’ www.sciencecampaign.org.uk/analysis-and...

This loss of talent will have long term consequences for our national research base. Government and funders should do something about it.

AIs can’t stop recommending nuclear strikes in war game simulations Leading AIs from OpenAI, Anthropic and Google opted to use nuclear weapons in simulated war games in 95 per cent of cases www.newscientist.com/article/2516...

It's not a popular message, but that there are as few as 185 people earning 100k at a big, serious uni like Cardiff is actually a signal of how low UK academic salaries are, and how much professorial salaries, in particular, have eroded comparatively. www.timeshighereducation.com/news/top-ear...

Fascinating interview by @siennamarla with Reform UK's Danny Kruger - who (among other things) tells her political parties have a "limited but important" role in undoing the sexual revolution and UK is suffering from a "totally unregulated sexual economy". www.politicshome.com/news/article...

Shocking news. Obviously one doesn't know the ins and outs, but it's hard to comprehend how such a large and weathy university as UCL finds itself unable to support a cutting-edge humanities research institute. Solidarity with everyone affected. www.ucl.ac.uk/institute-of...

I'm not convinced by the case for here - GenAI can't think, and writing is part of the thought process / refinement of ideas. Outsourcing all the "thinking" to GenAI leaves a gap where the core intellectual endeavour must be.

Goodness