The article echoes what I’ve seen and heard from peers: AI makes it easy to produce slick but shallow work that looks plausible on the surface, yet riddled with errors or bad assumptions underneath. Your coworkers end up having to fix or redo it. It’s workslop, and it’s spreading fast.

Lib Dems Party Conference passed a motion urging the British government to pursue closer ties with the European Union, as part of the party’s long-term objective of seeing the UK rejoin the bloc and take its ‘rightful place back at the heart of Europe.’ #LibDems🔶 #EU🇪🇺 politicsuk.com/lib-dems-par...

History curious? You don't need to be in London (or the UK) to attend many Institute of Historical Research seminars, although if you're in Bloomsbury you'll enjoy doing so. Most are hybrid (online/in person). They're free, usually fortnightly and open to the public. Starting this week:

Utterly absurd that the US has gone from >125,000,000 prescriptions in a single year for opiates alone, to "maybe women shouldn't be allowed painkillers" in 18 months.

Please know that this is Trump scaremongering. There is no good scientific evidence linking paracetamol (Tylenol) to autism. A 2024 Swedish study of 2.4 million births found no relationship whatsoever between exposure to paracetamol in utero & subsequent autism. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

We already know it’s dangerous: a mind killer and a planet killer. And yet our Western institutions stay legitimizing and normalizing it for short-term financial gain.

Confessions of an Early Career Researcher. We've released a new 'warts and all' podcast, in collaboration with @leverhulme.ac.uk which might be of interest to anyone thinking of starting a career in research www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/news/confess...

BBC Sounds has now been switched off outside the UK. It’s just the latest loss—the BBC has been cut by more than 30 per cent since 2010.

What strikes me as most important about this British opinion survey is that even young adults are becoming transphobic. Anti-trans measures by the UK govt, reflect the ignorance & brain-washing of the public, by the British media & far right lobbyists. The tipping point has now been reached:

Where have they gone?

These idiots can't handle anything that's a teeny bit complicated, can they! Trans people have always existed and always will. Banning the pride flag is just stupid. Sex is NOT binary, and neither is gender.

Yes. At least Ed gets it.

But crypto is crime, isn't it?

This. 💯 this.

What I want to know is why Ed Davey and the LibDems are the ones who are calling out Reform like a proper Opposition should, while the Government and HM Opposition are just trying to be like Reform.

For 56 minutes Sky News and BBC News interrupted everything else and carried a Reform UK feed live, uninterrupted, unchallenged. The stream spluttered, froze, pixelated - dozens of times - still they stuck with it. FOR ONE HOUR. This is an editorial choice. No other party gets this coverage. ~AA

It is genuinely absolutely bonkers that one year into a massive new government majority, all the discourse is about what will happen under the allegedly inevitable majority by another party. Much of it is the govt’s fault but not all - this very much has not happened under past unpopular govts!

Worth remembering yet again how deciding to be aggressively antitrans elevated KS from a complete provincial nobody to a national newspaper columnist and international rightwing celebrity, & how she's steadily leant into every dimension of that role.

I presume that means he plans to deport his own foreign girlfriend - you know, the one who may or may not have helped him avoid £44k of tax?

The economic disruption alone would be ***huge*** The social disruption even more so. Does he really think that 1) The mental health impact will be zero? 2) Scenes similar to ICE in the US will help the tourism & conferencing industries? 3) That people will lie back & take it?

It would be good if the only political pushback against Nigel Farage's plans to mass deport hundreds of thousands of our neighbours, friends, family and colleagues didn't just come from a handful of backbench MPs and one regional mayor

Spineless.

#PalaeographyPuzzle! "Uice... what?" Any help much appreciated.

The true question right now is whether you believe in the moral character of the British public. If you do, you'll want to have the fight with Reform. You'll believe that the public will hate the idea of breaking up families, spying on & deporting people who've worked here for years.

You want growth? Rejoin EU. Retrofit housing. Build wind farms. Cover all public buildings in solar panels. Make bus travel free. Make rail cheaper. But no. Let's burn more oil www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Next election: bought. Did anyone say "mafia state" www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Note how we’ve moved from concerns about people arriving irregularly in small boats to wrecking the lives of people who are by definition here entirely lawfully

2 years of default urban/village 20mph in Wales has resulted in over 1,000 fewer killed or injured. The data shows a 25% reduction in casualties on the 20/30mph roads. Drivers gain with damage risk, crashes and premiums down. Well done Wales. bit.ly/4ppl030

👀 on.ft.com/4pzVCI2

Conferences offering either in-person or online attendance is so 2021, surely there should be a third option where you can just send an AI avatar who will say the sort of stuff you would have written in your paper if you'd written it yourself

Anyone shocked that Reform plan to deport immigrants with Indefinite Leave to Remain hasn’t been paying attention. Next it will be stripping citizenship from dual citizens, then deporting them. Who do you think Reform are? This. This is who they are.

Yet, on a personal level, most people don’t feel negatively impacted by immigration So how come they feel that it is such a massive issue at Government/ National level (at least right now)? (Staring hard at the media and Farage and Labour’s stupidity at feeding their toxic messaging)

On most issues, most of us disagree with Farage: Brexit, leaving ECHR, paying Taliban for refugees, Trussonomics, tax breaks for the wealthy, huge welfare cuts, binning NetZero, scrapping workers’ rights, arselicking Trump… Our politics should reflect us, not him. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

www.ft.com/content/9b07... Not sure I completely agree. Nevertheless, this is an interesting piece.

As we keep saying: when the humanities are in trouble, the sciences are, too; generally, at UK universities, the sciences are cross-subsidised by the arts and humanities. www.theguardian.com/education/20...

"Democracies risk falling into a doom loop, in which restrictions on immigration mean ever greater demands on the purse of the native-born population and ever worse services, which in turn deepens opposition towards immigration" @stephenkb.bsky.social calls for honesty. www.ft.com/content/43da...

Methinks Mr Shorten has become too enamoured of nominative determinism. Seriously, though, this kind of thinking discriminates against students who have to work, limits their full development potential, & ruins thinking time. What's more, it will increase staff burnout & reduce quality output. 🤬🤬🤬🤬

"Academia.edu has created a robot replica of you based on your published papers. Expect a knock at your door. Expect a new you."

Universities that do this have ended any pretense to be interested in knowledge production, in which case what purpose do they serve anymore? 1000 years was a pretty good run, I guess.

An actual quote from the Secretary of State for Business and Trade Too often people go to university to ‘explore research and knowledge’ Look forward to Wes S saying 'too often people go to hospital to have operations' or Heidi Alexander saying 'too often people go to the station to catch a train'

Hi @cathamclarke.bsky.social! Your fame, and perhaps the roots of your eventual fortune, have reached the very edge (some might say well beyond the edge) of civilisation! Book spotted in @waterstones.bsky.social Boston today!!! Any news on a paperback edition?

What's the point anymore? We seem to be doomed. University leaders have been seduced by flashing lights and gimmicks.* I shouldn't be this miserable on a Friday, but this is so depressing. #SayNoToAI

This is so frightening. Make it stop!

Right. My students working two part time jobs and/or having an hour and a half commute to uni because they have to live at home due to the cost of student accommodation lack drive and vigour. Sure thing, Peter. The UK Govt still haven't a clue about the realities of universities today.

Depressing - we need the arts now more than ever www.theguardian.com/stage/2025/s...

🔴Peter Thiel’s Race Science Network Extends Its Reach Into Reform UK, Conservatives and Labour A Byline Times investigation can reveal how Donald Trump’s key backer is now exporting discredited race science into mainstream politics in the UK bylinetimes.com/2025/09/18/p...

This is what fascist scholars mean when they say "don't give them an inch."

At least the EU gets it right.

Madness. Should we check for lead in the HoC water pipes again? They've all lost it.

Charlie Kirk called for the execution of Joe Biden in 2023.