I remember being stuck rush-hour in traffic in Manchester one time. I realised suddenly that I could run the 10km journey to work faster than it was taking me to drive it. That was the day I decided to buy a bike.

I expect to find out that Starmer has made Morris Minister of State for Universities some time next week.

Some thoughts on this guy, who says that peer reviewed research isn't even “in the rear-view mirror” of frontier science.' 1. He's flogging a crappy AI search engine (of course he is) 2. He has no research or university experience, 3. the purpose of universities isn't to be 'economic powerhouses.

Before we fully abandon peer review, I need to hear from the guy who made Angry Birds.

If there was effective regulation against systems that have known harmful effects on humans and human environments would an AI company's valuation of nearly USD 1 trillion be possible? Discuss.

I need to stop agreeing to review books, I am not cut out for it. I just don't like strongly disagreeing in a review, even when it's warranted.

Please, please start putting iced buns on lampposts

It‘s that invisible, Ofcom feels like it‘s is being run by Lisa Nandy.

After having seen mediocre scholars from so-called top universities and top scholars from so-called mediocre universities, I can say that this is the way: University of Zurich withdraws from international university ranking. www.swissinfo.ch/eng/educatio...

Bracing for the World Cup crime reports. Record number of arrests for such things as illegally trying to walk to the stadium, booing the US team, and asking for vegan food.

I reckon the net effect of AI "saving time" will be zero in all forms of admin and governance (maybe business too). It now bears no cost at all to create and submit all sorts of bogus applications, complaints etc. Much (most) of our resources will start to be consumed by vetting this material.

Lot of questions about Bovino‘s wardrobe being answered this weekend.

So, they‘ve only targeted civilians then? What an admission.

Brilliant.

When they said these products would save time, they didn‘t mean for everyone. Mostly, it saves time for cheats & shysters and costs time for everyone else.

Incredible piece, but it needs to be said explicitly: these people are dangerous eugenicists. They want the "wrong" people to be exterminated and replaced by AI. That's abhorrent and you can't pretend otherwise.

“Making Government Meaner.” Put that on your juvenile red hat, finally some truth.

Wtf Wordle?! Wow.

No, @zackpolanski.bsky.social , you must *not* listen to Reform voters’ concerns. The opposite. You must challenge them. Fight them. Oppose them. Stand up for the truth and for what’s right. Don’t make the same mistake Labour did. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

“the very idea of ‘student satisfaction’ is in tension with genuine education since real learning requires intellectual pressure and challenge, which does not always produce satisfied customers. Yet it is satisfaction, not learning, that tends to be measured and rewarded.”

This excellent piece by @jennykleeman.bsky.social on 30 year old entrepreneur Cathy Tie who is keen on modifying human embryos has a red flag in almost every line! Just to pick out a few 🧵 www.theguardian.com/science/2026...

If anyone wants to read more, I can recommend 'The Case for Epistemic Reparations' in the Oxford Handbook of Social Epistemology (and Lackey has a new book entirely on this topic):

Not ‘despite‘, ‘because‘.

I spoke to a graduate recruiter last night. He said he places a much higher premium on someone’s degree achieved before 2022 than after (i.e. pre ChatGPT). This is something universities have done absolutely nothing to counter.

‘The region currently has capacity to detain around 627,000 people without overcrowding — almost one in 40 of the local population — making it the world’s largest detention system relative to population’ Shocking piece on the treatment of the Uyghurs in China www.ft.com/content/119d...

The last decade of British politics has been the older, wealthier section of society making stupid, narrow-minded decisions, pretending they‘ve been a great success, & then forcing the younger, poorer section to bear the burdens.

A new TOP FIVE has just dropped. The @ukri.org TOP FIVE shortest timescales from call opening to closing. And you won't believe the winner 👀

If only there was a government that had promised to care about education. Chasing Reform votes is more important.

An entire class of people that seem to be hired based more on their willingness to protect a balance sheet than protect the underlying purpose of their institutions, the sector or employees.

If I hear one more university leader say they're making "tough decisions" about redundancies or worsening our employment conditions, I will scream. They are not making tough choices, they're making the easiest decisions in the world. Tough decisions would be fighting the inevitability of job losses

Where are my fellow editors in the humanities? I am writing about journal submission volume, AI, and the humanities. If you are an editor, I'd love to know if you are seeing a lot of AI-generated submissions-- or a lot of submissions in general. Or if you have the problem of low submission volume.

It has now been 10 weeks and three days since Nigel Farage last turned up to vote in the House of Commons

This is the environment in which people are still absolutely perplexed by the idea racism is central to the current reactionary project.

I am really tired of the BBC‘s The Context USA format. Every week day they compile a panel of a couple of journalists, a Democrat spokesperson, and a completely delusional propagandist clown in the mould of Comical Ali representing the Republicans. Pointless.

Peter Thiel fleeing to Argentina seems a bit too on the nose.

Won’t be long before Silicon Valley is telling us that the vast majority of human beings have an evolutionary moral duty to die out to leave the field clear for AI, and 50 tech bro billionaires and their in vitro harems.

I hear Trump is in his situation room making the final decision on the US-Iran ceasefire. I‘ve managed to gain access to the folder containing the draft of the decision.

Today's work avoidance behaviour involves pretending I can still remember any of my former life in IT while I mull creating a database tool to track & record my journal submissions.

If I were the government, I simply would not be directing eyeballs and the political conversation to a website run by a guy who has explicitly said he opposes the PM and is visibly fighting an information war against me.

I'm excited to learn from this that German has a verb form of hypocrite. Every day is a learning day, Schritt für Schritt.

So it's all a big GoogleDocs fiasco

You would have thought that by now BBC Question Time would have exhausted all the possible reasons not to watch it, but no, there is still the very bottom of the barrel to be scraped.

#philsci Kristin Andrews on finding patterns in whale songs & whale culture

Okay I've been stewing about this for the last day, but as one of BSky's resident Luddites, I need to say: this isn't an AI Special as the BBC are presenting it, it's a *pro*-AI Special. There isn't even a hint of a sceptical voice in there. Where are the unions? Where are the creative industries?

Killing the universities at a time of increasing youth unemployment is remarkably un-joined-up thinking.

"Good news, boss: the dodgy money stories aren't cutting through!"

This is such a weak, imprecise, and shabby argument from Blair.

Tragic that Happy has had to die in a zoo rather than in a sanctuary, where she should have been moved to.

Obviously, my sympathy lies with the snakes, but I also think Kennedy should keep practicing this, preferably in Rattlesnake territory until we are all sure he has got it right.

Rats fleeing the ship they’ve sunk themselves: The NYT says Peter Thiel has quietly bought property in Buenos Aires and is meeting frequently with President Javier Milei. He sees Argentina as both an ideological fit and a Plan B outside the US. 1/2