So when you get LLM output with links or citations to scholarly work: those citations aren't there because the model consulted them and they actually represent the source of the information. They were included because they look like what should appear near that kind of text.

This mass courtship event typically marks the beginning of Waymo mating season, and the general public is advised to avoid approaching them or their young and maintaining a safe distance at all times as they can get even more unpredictable in their behaviour towards humans at this time

I had a job interview recently where they asked me: where do you see yourself in 5 years? I told them I was pretty sure we’d still be using mirrors.

Edge Users are made by where you choose to stand

Watching a show where an academic is running a cannabis farm in order to fund his university research lab, including staff and equipment. I just love the idea of the finance dept going “ah, professor, you’ve been awarded another giant bag of cash I see!”

I get very fed up with the lack of solidarity with HE staff from other professional groups (most of whom will have got those professional jobs via attending university…). The level of thought is stuck at “I remember my lecturer only worked one hour a week”. Come the fuck on now.

This is prompting memories of a painstakingly planned event at Houses of Parliament which saw all the carefully corralled ministers disappear after five minutes because Rishi decided to stand in the rain…

2,700 in limbo for months, with more than 600 expected to lose their jobs. Having been at risk of redundancy last year, I can’t imagine the impact of so many feeling so insecure and devalued. Cruel and destructive. Solidarity to all.

Being off sick with a puppy who does not understand your medical need to lie on the sofa watching cosy British murder mysteries is tough.

I am once again begging people who state LLMs will not help in their field to stop adding “but it will no doubt be valuable in medicine/history/education/any field which I am not in, don’t understand, and perhaps should wonder if LLM claims in those fields are similarly misleading“

1. Don't snitch-tag. 2. Don't explain to people what they just said. 3. Don't "correct" people's jokes. 4. Don't respond seriously to silly little posts. 5. Don't respond trivially to obviously serious posts. 6. Don't "jocularly insult" people you don't know. The rest is commentary.

A characteristically inspiring talk yesterday from @rachelcoldicutt.bsky.social at #CampDigital encouraging us all to recognise the power we have, particularly when used collectively. Join the Society of Hopeful Technologists if you’re down with that. buttondown.com/society-of-h...

I need to do a straightforward but timeintensive and dull extraction of a specific phrase across my qual data set. This should be exactly the kind of task that AI does for me! instead it’s returning nonsense, claiming no such data exists, and offering to write a report on the main themes instead.

Lost count of how many times I've said this, but: It is possible, if not bleakly common, to have perfectly good mental health and functionality, and still be an absolutely awful person. "Being a thundering arsehole" is not, and never has been, a recognised diagnosis.

I'm always saying this!

I have a cut on my palm and put my hand into a packet of salt and vinegar crisps, please pray for me

My mission statement: We are not here to empower, harness, unleash or delight people with digital public services. We are here to Stop Pissing People Off. No extra clicks. No unnecessary repetition. Their time matters. This is gods work.

A UX specialism that I don’t think exists but should is some kind of ‘design historian’. I think a challenge for people who like agile and innovation is they dislike looking backwards. What didn’t work and why. What did work and still didn’t get funded. What approaches are we just relabelling

Back on my soapbox that implementation science would be an excellent fit with a lot of user centred design. Behavioural science is recognised but imp sci not as much. Genuinely wondering if calling it something like ‘context engineering‘ would make it more appealing?

I recommend Lego figures even if you can’t do the full serious play setup. Used them in tabletop modelling with patients and it was instantly insightful when they chose figures in army fatigues to represent patients, because it felt like fighting to get to the treatment you need 🤯

“Baby flap” and “Government Pig“ were not on my #CampDigital bingo card

“Don’t be a research vampire, going in and sucking out what you want from the community” @rochellegold.bsky.social Reminds me of patient involvement group who coined “we want to be at the table, not on the menu” 🧛 #CampDigital

Codesign is more than a workshop, post it notes and good intentions. It means building relationships, confronting uncomfortable truths, and being willing to learn both ways. ❤️❤️❤️ @rochellegold.bsky.social #CampDigital

“With not to” in codesign - I think the harder bit for lots of user centred folks, in my experience, is “With not For or About”. We might spot when things are Done To, but we’re also used to speaking For or talking About, “voice of the user” stuff. #CampDigital

Preach!! It’s not what you do (method) it’s how you do it (collaborative? sharing decisions?) (The Bananarama Rule of codesign. If you know your 80s pop you know) #CampDigital

We have so many digital tools in the NHS. People need other people, not more [email protected] Reminds of work in Probation, where I think our job is to get out of people’s way. People doing their jobs is ’what works’. The tools need to not burden, bother, disrupt them #CampDigital

Not a dig at neighbourhood care as a mode, but sigh at the way so much health policy is about reduced service demand, rather than making people healthier. They’re not always the same thing. Also, my standard moan that we apply supply-induced demand to hospitals but not motorways in this country.

Woohoo normalise thanking your therapist in acknowledgements 🙌🏻

I would really heartily encourage people to check out the white supremacy framework. Culture is what we don’t have at home… lots on that framework about urgency, resisting/suppressing tension, authority focused on their own discomfort #CampDigital

I suspect lots of folks feel gut punched by recognition with this talk on burnout. Jobs are tough right now. But I think it’s a really good partner to the talk on hope. If a call to hope feels like yet another demand, that‘s worth noticing. if exhaustion has left no space for opitimism #CampDigital

"Resilience feels like success. It's not, its compensation, filling the gap for what's not there that should be." Himal Mandala on burn out #CampDigital

“It’s armour made of competence. It’s performing“ i’m in this talk and I don’t like it (I love it) #CampDigital

I am going to be a dissenting voice about young people being our “hope” because in my coproduction work with teenagers they repeatedly told us they shouldnt be expected to be responsible for the future. They have lives to lead! We’re the ones still on shift guys. #CampDigital

“I’m here for pubs and moaning” babe don‘t threaten me with a good time #CampDigital

YESSSS we really need to stop thinking and talking about the power we don’t have as digital professionals and acknowledge we do have authority, legitimacy, often relative safety, we are in the rooms where decisions are made. These are all kinds of power! @rachelcoldicutt.bsky.social #CampDigital

“Every january they say we’ll have AGI by the end of the year and we don’t and people keep giving them billions” @rachelcoldicutt.bsky.social I stand firm on my assessment that AI is primarily, maybe exclusively, a marketing phenomenon #CampDigital

🙌🏻 I wish we were seeing more ‘public education’ about how AI works and its risks and limitations, rather than “training people in AI so they don’t get left behind”. #CampDigital

This talk is optimistic, but won’t lie I’m glad we’re acknowledging the harm that digital tech is doing in the world right now. I‘d like us to care less about ‘delightful‘ experiences and more about ethical impacts, responsibility and accountability as people putting digital into the world.

Rachel Coldicutt kicking off talking about hope and how it’s not talked about enough. at Probation Digital we tried to focus on hope re digital impacts people on probation. Not sure we landed it amongst the product KPI focus tbh #CampDigital hmiprobation.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/document/hop...

Reminder that we make treatment decisions in context of uncertainty all the time. Whether that uncertainty is tolerable or not is a value judgment. Enforcing risk perceptions from one group which I would argue are prejudiced - “you’ll regret this later/its a phase/it’s unnatural” is utterly wrong.

I’ve endured plenty of men who won’t accept anyone with different views as real people, so it’s no surprise those types will project personhood onto things that do agree with them. (Dawkins. Fuck that guy.)

On this day in 1933, Nazis raided the Magnus Hirschfeld library in Berlin. The world’s greatest collection of LGBTQ books and scientific papers were looted and later burned, erasing decades of research into sexuality and gender identity. ‘Where they burn books, in the end they will burn humans too’.

Had a bad dream last night that various people I worked with in academia were telling me I‘d let them down by leaving and should have tried harder. Which I thought I was totally over, so thank you very much brain for popping that record back on 🫠

At a food festival that has, for its own reasons, live country music. I didn’t think you could commit human rights violations against music but what that man and his guitar just did to Proud Mary will haunt me until death.

I am spending the whole day coding some qualitative data. It makes me so happy. All the popups telling me the AI assistant could do it instead can take my thematic analysis from my cold dead hands 😊

Multiple UK universities took down their policies relating to trans inclusion after the OfS's unprecedented fine of Sussex over its wholly anodyne approach to discouraging transphobia. Today is a very good day to demand to know when those policies will be going back up.

“We assert that consent is not complex or challenging and that it is not appropriate or lawful to film individuals in their bedrooms and share video footage with an external company” 🔥 #StopOxevision #StopLIO #MadSky

Kate and I, sat on the sofa eating buttered crumpets, judging the people prepping for the London marathon. “People who wear their cap backwards, and then sunglasses. Thoughts?”

Going after Parkrun – a non-competitive event which has no changing rooms – perfectly illustrates that it's never been about fairness in sport, women's safety or anything else. It's about bullying and demonising trans people, hounding them out of public life in every space possible. It's disgusting.