When you use AI, consider this: the massive energy demands of AI data centers are driving up electricity costs. As well known, the use of water for cooling is also huge. The costs are socialized, the revenues go to the companies. www.pbs.org/newshour/sho...

Our campaign for the rights and interests of authors in the face of big tech companies using copyrighted work to train their generative AI models continues. Read our views on Bloomsbury offering its authors an opt-in licensing deal with a 20% revenue share. societyofauthors.org/2025/08/07/b...

This report looks beyond the atomised approach to judging the value of university education to individual graduate earnings and includes wider benefit to society. www.acu.ac.uk/news/new-acu...

Registration is now open for our online conference: basr.ac.uk/2024/01/11/b... Registration is free - we hope to see you there.

A nice, scary graph to show how hot it's getting in different regions of the world

My impression is people are not taking the issue of water consumption seriously when using AI frivolously or in place of other tools or skills that don't use AI.

At an airport chatting to an older man about our delayed plane. I gave him updates from my phone. He said he had a long layover next, so wasn't worried. We were wearing masks because it was Covid. Later I saw his name - Manilow - and found he'd been performing in the city the night before.

The latest edition of the BASR Bulletin is now live! Reports, book reviews, conference reports, and more! basr.ac.uk/2025/05/29/b...

Can we ever have a fair society when the wealthy are too powerful and tear down whoever might challenge them? When the BBC over-reports on a minor right-wing party leader? When people on the Left blame the Left, saying we're out of touch/don't have a narrative? Corbyn was, did. Look what happened.

I wanted to be a palaeontologist

Most hills on the Isle of Wight are TuMPs, under 99 metres. However, if you Google 'TuMP height' you get 1.9 metres. That would be a very small hill. But, Google, there is no 'r' in TuMP!

The Isle of Wight has three rivers: Yar ('river'), Yar ('river') and Medina ('middle one')

📢 #BASR2025 CfP is open! Theme: Religion, Space and Place. This year’s online, one-day BASR conference (hosted by @OpenUniversity) runs alongside #IAHR2025 in Krakow. Submit by June 9: [email protected]

As is our usual custom in an IAHR year, we will be running our annual conference for 2025 over a single day. This year we have also chosen to run the conference online, in the hope of widening participation. The theme will be Religion, Space, and Place. #basr2025 basr.ac.uk/2024/01/11/b...

The latest issue of our journal, JBASR, on the theme of Environmental Endings and Religious Futures has just been published, with a lead article by Catherine Wessinger @thebasr.bsky.social www.jbasr.com/ojs/index.ph...

Spring has truly sprung when the blackthorn flowers. In Otley it started earlier in March and now it's at its peak.

Here's part of what I saw

I was up walking near Hebden, North Yorkshire, when I investigated these odd grey symbols on the OS map. The area appeared to be full of earthworks (maybe old quarrying?) now covered in heather. Just above Garnshaw House.

Interesting study of Christian, Muslim and Hindu views of the environment in the UK. Despite beliefs that we should care for the environment, Christians don't translate this into action as much as others. Hindus do the most. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/m...

Using a find a course website (WhatUni), I can only find two Religious Studies ones - Edinburgh and Open University. The latter has two - one as Arts and Humanities (RS) and one as Social Sciences (RS), so they seem to be within broader subject areas, leaving Edinburgh as the only place in the UK.

The British Association for the Study of Religions is now on Bluesky! 🦋 Stay tuned for more updates on our conferences, projects, bulletin and academic journal. All available here: www.basr.ac.uk

Wassailing revivals to bless orchards (esp apple) are part of efforts to connect with nature due to the loss and separation of modern lives with the natural world. This was at East Riddlesden Hall on Sunday with toast hung from trees.

While my sister and her friends were watching slasher films, my friends and I sat in a dimly lit room watching Eraserhead. David Lynch was one unique filmmaker.

You have the power to get small press books YOU want to read into your local* library. *If you still have one. Use 'em or lose 'em.

Tree defenders at the Tittybottle Oak today, keeping the tree safe.

I've a chapter in this volume, too, on 'Studying "Religion" in Indigenous Cultures', which has a sizeable bit on the politics of refusal - rejecting colonial terms like 'religion'.

There's a chapter on the background to this in Pagan Religions in Five Minutes (Equinox 2024).

Crucial few days for the oak in Tittybottle Park, Otley - 24-hour watch to protect it from felling by #LeedsCityCouncil

Wonderful presentations at the Community Religions Project at Leeds. Kim Knott spoke on why studying the local and particular matters and CRP (nearly 50 years old) was early for getting the study of religion away from normative text-focussed 'world religions'- based approaches.

Know of this @dralyal.bsky.social ? Seems to have involvement from Uni of.

One of our students, Olive, created a philosophy D&D game using philsophers as characters. Here seen with Dave. Richard was the staff lead on this 'co-creation' project. Olive will be the lead author in the co-authored article on this.

I did the best that I could

Tree is still there at lunchtime. No protesters, no police, a rearranged cage and a couple of contractors.

Today, this oak tree in Tittybottle Park, Otley, is due to be felled. This morning I saw contractors, machinery, a police car and just under a dozen protesters who were standing near the tree. I took this photo yesterday.

Chevin walk this morning, which was both medicinal and - at a stretch - fieldwork. Sort of.

One more week before the Tittybottle Oak in Otley is felled to put machinery in to fit a temporary footbridge.

You just shouldn't be able to cut down any tree over 100 years old, unless it's already falling down and is dangerous. Like, why isn't that already a rule? People like old trees, that's not controversial

Planners should have seen this type of protest coming, but they didn't. Alternative plans have been put forward by a campaign group but it's probably being ignored. Save the Tittybottle oak (yes, the name means what you think it does). www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

I'm ready to head to campus for the Open Day but the cat says no. It's suppose to get warmer soon.

One to add to my list of human-tree relations

Nice sunset seen from Bayton Lane on the way home from work. What little snow we did get in this part of Leeds is almost gone now.

We had an online book launch for Pagan Religions in Five Minutes (#EquinoxPub) this eve, and my cat was pacing behind the laptop and leaping about the furniture but, unusually, she never came into view on camera. We did see another contributor's cat, though.

By the way, my co-edited book - Pagan Religions in Five Minutes - just got published with #EquinoxPub. Had an on-campus launch for it yesterday with a few of the contributors. Use the code RELIGION for 25% off when ordering here www.equinoxpub.com/home/pagan-r...