This is an utterly, pointlessly cruel policy and cis folks need to do whatever we can stand up against it. Solidarity with our trans and NB siblings 🏳️‍⚧️ 🏳️‍🌈

This is a failure of journalism, on a really basic level, but it is also a failure of political leadership. It was going to fall simply in the basis of what the previous govt did. But Starmer somehow conspired to actively spread the impression it was rising.

Good piece by Jefferson Pooley on how LLM-powered “research” tools like Google’s “Deep Research” and Elsevier’s “AI Discovery” likely strengthen the “Matthew effect”: highly-cited authors are amplified while undercited (often female) authors are increasingly ignored: blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsoci...

So much of the response to this BARE MINIMUM OF RESEARCH expectation being laid out by arXiv is depressing.

anyone but Wes Streeting, please.

20 years today since this masterpiece permanently damaged the personalities of millennials everywhere ♥️ youtu.be/uE-1RPDqJAY?...

the genuinely evil JD Vance here just outright announcing what is, of course, already very obvious from everything he has done in office - that his politics are entirely devoid of morals of any kind.

oh hey that's me! tldr; the US is really stable and fine and normal right now, don't even worry about it

MCP connectors for academic research really give off the vibe of an abusive boyfriend who'll only let you see your friends as long as they're also present to supervise. "What's that, you want to see your buddy PubMed? Sure, how about I talk to him for you and tell you what he says 🙂"

just gets worse and worse. The lying and the sheer stupidity is staggering. "the investigation was prompted by their discovery of Men Who Hate Women, saying: “the content was inappropriate for children and even challenging for adults to access”. www.indexoncensorship.org/2026/03/grea...

I loved being a Guide. This move makes it a less safe space for everyone. It's typical of anti-trans policies generally, which are never about protecting girls, but about imposing misogynistic limits on who we can be, what we can do, and what we can achieve. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

They asked an AI to determine which books were inappropriate and among many other dumb outputs it flagged Reni Eddo-Lodge and Michelle Obama because their books deal with racism.

recently had the joy of reading the Undermind creators' whitepaper on benchmarking the tool. It is absurd. "Because Undermind is likely truly exhaustive, if Undermind provides no relevant results, one can be reasonably certain nothing exists on the topic." Pardon?? www.undermind.ai/whitepaper.pdf

words fail me www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

So if using AI actually does erode human cognition the way studies suggest, then it's a feature instead of a bug? The world is gross enough without "take away people's ability to think so we can sell it back to them" being on the list.

Well at least we've got the Ides of March to look forward to.

Announce ☺️

Great article on how to un-garbage-ify google. Would also recommend putting -ai after your searches to get rid of the irritating AI summaries too. open.substack.com/pub/cardcata...

Hey, I'm doing a webinar for the CILIP info lit group on Information Literacy, data and evidence removal in the US, with a particular focus on healthcare research. It'll be super fun and not at all depressing, honest www.tickettailor.com/events/cilip...

February is LGBTQ+ History Month! Borrow any book from the displays at Forum & St Luke's Libraries and discover more via the LGBTQ+ History Reading List: bit.ly/ExeterUniLibLGBTQHistoryList. Recommend books you'd like to see in the Library via the form on the Libguide: libguides.exeter.ac.uk/lgbtq

Now I don't wish to alarm anyone, but it seems that it's currently not (as far as I can tell) (at this precise moment) (external confirmation needed) (could be wrong) raining????

Friends I fear this endless rain may be starting to render me Somewhat Unusual

You know you're totally one of the good guys when you're actively trying to (and let me quote here) "narrow the definition of 'inhuman and degrading treatment'". www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

diabolical that in order to be able to find where you've put your glasses, you must be wearing them so that you can see to search. Truly the world is unjust

🎯

I have now got all 20, though there was googling and some heavy hints on a couple from a friend. This was necessary for my blood pressure because some of these answers are utterly unacceptable and because I am a very impatient person full of hate hiddenbooks.nationalbooktokens.com?competition=...

From the German National Library of Medicine, beta version of site for tracking additions and deletions to PubMed now available #medlibs

the vampire community continues to bombard me with unsettling little messages

🚨NEW🚨 from DAIR: Today we are releasing "Driven Down", a new report on how workplace technology enables Amazon to steal wages, hide labor, intensify poor working conditions, and evade responsibility. Read the full report here: drive.google.com/file/d/1yBxy...

Seems bad, but at least we can use PollutionBot3000 to summarise this article with questionable accuracy if we can't be bothered to read it though, eh. Must make sure to consider both the pros and cons www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Today I cheerfully said to a class full of slightly dazed-looking students, "I appreciate it's Monday morning, so you're probably all a little tired". Blank, befuddled stares followed. Lads, turns out it's not Monday. I'm fine.

oooh. Bookmarking this! "How to turn off AI tools in Apple, Google, Microsoft, and more." Step-by-step instructions from Consumer Reports.

AI 🤝 fascism

got some lads working on some scaffolding on our house, having some very sweet conversations, including but not limited to such lines as: "Mate you're a great scaffolder - you just need to have more confidence!"

Tracking Shutdown Impact and Changes at PubMed There's been some panic about PubMed again, since a notice on the website warned it could be out of date because of the US government shutdown. Shutdown is dreadful, in so many ways. But that notice doesn't mean PubMed has been de-funded, or that it's…

Had a great time at Titus Andronicus at Hampstead Theatre this weekend, highly recommend. Leaned effectively into the fact that the play as written is objectively hilarious. Also I got given a blanket to protect against all the blood sprays 😊

Genuinely have seen circulating entirely serious suggestions to use AI generated people for library focus groups. Because finding real participants is too hard.

#medlibs #pubmed

"“AI isn’t magic; it’s a pyramid scheme of human labor,” said @adiod.bsky.social , a researcher at the Distributed AI Research Institute based in Bremen, Germany. “These raters are the middle rung: invisible, essential and expendable.” www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

IMPORTANT 🧵 We've been seeing how RFK Jr & anti-vax lobby has been steadily and effectively reducing access to vaccines in the US. But it could happen in UK too. It's a threat worth considering given Malhotra's speech at Reform conf & big overlap between anti-vax and RW populsim. Read on! 1/11

They've got it backwards: autistic people take more paracetamol due to all the headaches caused by neurotypical people constantly spouting nonsense takes* *obligatory disclaimer that paracetamol and autism have nothing to do with each other, and we live in a hell world

This is the lead story in the New York Times. If you're in the business of communicating, whether through journalism, commentary, or art, this is the five-alarm fire. People are going to remember who spoke up and who stayed conveniently silent or postured about "neutrality."

Co2 and electricity use aside, here's some fun facts! Data centres can consume 5 million gallons of *drinking water* a day, while approx 2/3rds of post-2022 data centres have been placed in areas already experiencing drought or water stress.

it’s time, if you haven’t already done so, to shut down your twitter account, and tell the institutions you are part of to leave too. there’s no way any UK museum, university, politician or any of us should still be on that far-right platform

I am begging you people to stop describing concerns about or objections to generative AI tools as "fears". I am not scared of AI. Now, the fascist-enabling, Trumpian, amoral tech CEOs who you are cheerfully allowing to dictate to you the information you have access to. They're scary, yes.

Do it. Search your name. Take their money. It’s yours anyway.

I compared current pages with wayback machine equivalents from Jan (I'm fun). Can't see any big changes to actual scope/policy, except for no longer accepting print journals, and complete removal of LSTRC with its named members, substituted with references to "external, expert consultants".

Day 1 in our new house and we are being BURGLED IN BROAD DAYLIGHT

Hey we've noticed that u take showers sometimes lol. Can u not though because we need literally all of the water available in order to power our big machine which takes your art and rips it up and stitches it back together wrong so that we can pretend it's our own work. This is super necessary"

"you can't possibly comment on how good a generative AI tool is unless you've used it" -> "you can't possibly comment on how stress-relieving it is to walk around whacking strangers on the head with a comedy-sized saucepan unless you've tried it"