Absolute queen shit

A Sharon Begley byline, almost 5 years after her death. Upon hearing the news James Watson had died, a STAT reporter said in our Slack, "I wish I could read what Sharon would have written." Incredible news: Sharon in fact did pre-write a Watson obit. And it is masterful and excoriating. 🧪🧬🧫

You cannot run the basic infrastructures of a functioning society- healthcare to education-on systems that cut out human empathy & negotiation. So we have to reassert over and over again that the problems aren’t glitches or errors—even big ones. The problems are fundamental, systematic, endemic.

Why is it always like, "applied craniology" or "the empire was good actually" with these people. A question asked and answered by their t-shirt, at my guess.

This is great actually, in the sense that the AI is also wrong about the nature of historical reasoning in this quote. It describes causal reasoning as schematic, they are not the same thing to a person, but seem to be for the model. That explains a lot of the stuff I see produced by it.

I am honestly sick of being told — at a university FFS — that we need to ‘embrace’ this profoundly unethical and irresponsible technology.

Look, I'm sure much of this is good and that many of the worries expressed in this piece are broadly shared across our profession, but, can we PLEASE stop blowing smoke up the collective (*) of the "AI" industry. Any such "AI loop" is a series of human choices to use an AI. Don't bury agency!

The historian has fucked it, I repeat. The historian has fucked it.

Really pleased to announce the launch of the all-new, all-dancing, London Lives website - www.londonlives.org It has been thoroughly re-engineered to facilitate more types of search, and redesigned for phones and tablets. The team very much hopes peope like it. 1/

Hoping this helps our colleagues across the industry

dawg not the steakhouse wedding font

"The next stop is city hall" indeed, but I don't think it's the last.

@lsangha.bsky.social omg this world series is getting good. Obviously I am rooting for the Jays. Could be in six!

I’ve written about the return of The Witcher.

We should just add that Goodwin was a laughing stock when he was an academic as well. That guy cooked his findings and p-hacked his numbers like he was "Chef Pollardee".

Genuinely delighted to download a PhD thesis from a university repository where the author has neglected to remove the words "BITCH THIS IS YOUR THESIS" from the filename.

I’m crying www.semafor.com/article/10/2...

Now do Canada.

I have been charged in a federal indictment sought by the Department of Justice. This political prosecution is an attack on all of our First Amendment rights. I’m not backing down, and we’re going to win.

First time in 1000 entries I've seen this (a clear descriptor of a vagrant Black person). This man (very likely) was thought to be about 70 years of age, and found in Wednesbury in the West Midlands in 1832.

Always check the original scans, never just lazily scrape the transcription data if there's a photo image to check. Doing it right takes ages but the overall quality of your dataset will be so much better.

That’s Elon Musk, Fellow of the Royal Society, I’ll have you know. Because the Royal Society can only seem to come up with throat-clearing noises as a response to these sorts of statements instead of actually throwing him out.

The only thing reliably Growing at the moment is everyone's singular disgust with the people in charge of our education and research funding systems. I can definitely demonstrate Growth in that area for the reviewers.

Betting on a new REF2029 box: "In 200 words, demonstrate how this research project/unit/petting zoo Drives Growth".

“Sorry Timmy, no Educational Dinosaur Playtime for you - it no longer aligns with the growth mission. Don’t cry, you can still do the Authentic Mining Experience. Here’s your hard hat and pickaxe”

"I DON'T NEED YOU TO FUCKING REWRITE WHAT I'VE JUST WRITTEN!"

Every time discover a new piece on the dangers of LLMs, particularly for research and teaching, I add it to a Zotero library. I figure that I might as well share it, so here's my library of Cautionary AI Tales: www.zotero.org/groups/62758...

🎉We are pleased to announce new Applied History Fellowships in partnership with @royalhistsoc.org & @findmypast.bsky.social. Join us on the 19 November at our launch event to find out more about the Fellowships and how to apply: www.history.ac.uk/news-events/...

Greens in position to absorb the entire (very considerable) volume of "two fingers to this" voters on the left; all of us bitterly disillusioned by just how bad this iteration of labour has been. If they want to keep that vote they need to flesh out quite a programme broadly across UK politics.

Teaching the histories of slavery and keen to inform your students with insights from the most recent research? Just a month to go before @uclpress.bsky.social publishes this open access (free to download) expert volume. uclpress.co.uk/book/teachin...

statistically, about 24% of television adverts in the UK should feature at least one publicly disgraced member of Reform/UKIP

Reforming external examining and introducing progression measure risk standardising university curricula and treating them like schools, warn @paulashwin.bsky.social @davehitchcock.bsky.social @profstevenjones.bsky.social www.timeshighereducation.com/news/risk-st... via @julietterowsell.bsky.social

50% of all UK universities have closed one or more courses. Almost 50% have cut a range of optional modules. Even this vastly underestimates the volume of reduction. All this warmed over government language about distinct strengths really just refers to reduction: which hits specialisation!

I’m old enough to remember when everybody agreed that higher education was a “market” and offering “choice” was how the universities were meant to grow on.ft.com/3WTwBue

It is quite something to me how bad celebrities, actors, a historian, etc, are at playing werewolf.

So I've been reading the Post-16 Education and Skills White Paper. There's some good things in there. But when it comes to universities there's very little to cheer. The situation is very tough and will get worse. The last chance to preserve what we've got has passed. Let me explain why. (1/?)

My colleague crunched the numbers and got a success rate for AHRC large grants of 9.6%

For UK academic folk, in case you don’t know about this service, the AHRC does publish all panel outcomes, with figures for numbers of applicants, numbers of successful awards etc. There is a lag, though, so the most recent info is from January 2025.

Correct, fun to read, and hey look, advice that Labour should follow like right now if they want to continue to exist as anything other than a sick joke about UK elections.

Yeah this is important to understanding the current (and broken) research-to-policy ecosystem. Money as savings or money as growth or money as productivity have become the only drivers of basically anything. That actually reduces the effectiveness of the whole system at producing real innovations.

Wrote a thing on the hot summer of uni AI adoption for @defector.com A huge thanks to @nathankhensley.bsky.social and @anniemcc.bsky.social. @brandyjensen.bsky.social is a legend. And anything smart in hear is thanks to hours of discussion, texting, and draft reading by @smosment.bsky.social

This is the current reality of the Higher Education sector. Set this literal "P & O Ferries nuke pensions from orbit and put all staff on worse conditions" behaviour against the white paper, and you know why I'm so angry with the government.

The homelessness crisis among the youngest New Yorkers is a moral stain on our city, the wealthiest in the world. When I’m Mayor, we will not ignore it any longer.

"Exploring what radicalised these individuals into contributing to this volume is as informative as asking an iron filling why it responds to a magnet." You have to love that sentence, you just have to.

I wrote about the stupid white paper. In summary, with these people in the driver's seat and apparently unbothered by consequences, we're so cooked.

The absolutely desperate search for a platform to Make It Stick continues apace, I see.

What can you expect to find at #HistDay25 our celebration of history collections with @senatehouselib.bsky.social? Come along and find out on 4 Nov. Book your free space here www.sas.ac.uk/news-events/...