Card from the autumn "suit" of the Astronomia playing card deck, 1829. Featuring 3 other seasonal suits the pack was used to play two games — Conjunction and Combination — which were trumps-based, similar to Whist. More images of the cards here: publicdomainreview.org/collection/a... #autumn

😵‍💫😵‍💫😵‍💫

hey colleagues, want to feel old? 18 year olds starting university this year are -younger than YouTube and Twitter -younger than the song “Bad Day” -and never knew Pluto as a planet (don’t worry tho, to make us all feel better about it they dress like it’s 2003)

the shower is out of order. AND there are roadworks right outside my office. might just get on the train and never come back

EGG HEAD - “Skibadee, skibadanger! I am the rearranger!”

my 9am seminar is in the basement room next to the good shower! note to self: send xmas card to timetabling

“my job can’t be replaced with AI, because [examples of things AI will never do/is bad at]” “oh, my sweet summer child. no one said the AI would do the jobs COMPETENTLY”

The jaggedness of AI remains even as models have rapidly come to exceed human abilities in many of the hardest timed math & science contests. Yet there is much less progress on good puns. True AGI would be figure out our limits in more than calculus (sorry, but also seriously).

Me in December 2024 referencing my work from earlier in 2024 www.wheresyoured.at/godot-isnt-m...

Reading papers is a basic skill (and dare I say duty?) of scientists, and I include medical doctors in that group. Keeping abreast of the literature is a foundational part of our professions. There aren’t good shortcuts. In any case, reading papers regularly is fun. arstechnica.com/ai/2025/09/s...

scary to think about my possessive ex who became a sculptor famous for large metalworks, including one of me. think they might still have an iron me

december 2019, or as i like to call it “the christmas before nightmares”

“who needs engineering departments and degrees in architecture when i can just ask chatGPT to design me this infrastructure?” -- guy who is absolutely going to die in a bridge collapse

there may be several causes at work here, but lol if you think the most important is that readers don’t like what the media are selling. as about half the replies to this skeet point out, everyone in journalism can point to the exact moment google AI summaries choked traffic

“i used to journal, but now i save 15 mins every day by having chatGPT do it for me” - some guy probably

‘“I’m gonna be honest with you: Once you use ChatGPT, you don’t want to think for yourself anymore,” she said.’ 🫠😶🫥

#AHistoryOfEnglandIn25Poems on BBC Radio 4 next week! Tune in from Monday!

one school i know of has the following rather sweeping prohibition in the new “parents contract” (let’s hope i don’t get called in to the headmasters office for posting this) “School's back - and the parent WhatsApp groups are very online” - www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

1/At Macquarie Uni we are losing 50% of our units in my faculty. This is on top of cuts in 2020. We estimate by next year my faculty will be teaching 80% fewer subjects than pre Covid. Disciplines being cut do not have declining enrolments. @jennaprice.bsky.social @michaelwestbiz.bsky.social

Shannon, a third obituary may seem like too much. It's not. This one is written by her son. And, it's so good. Gift link to WSJ.

NEW FOLLOWERS: you MUST have a profile pic (not neccessarily of yourself!) and/or a header image, a biog + a couple of posts or I'll assume you are a bot/troll/bad faith person and block you. Please do the *minimum* to show you're not a scammer!

"As a First-Generation student...I’ve remained defiantly stubborn in the face of seemingly insurmountable obstacles throughout my life, but I’ve had to accept the sobering reality that I am statistically likely to run out of road in academia sooner or later" 🫩

Ah, the hallucinating spires

I haven't posted an update on the petition for a while 👇 Over 3600 signatories to date Folk are still signing Thank you

- 400 jobs to go at Lancaster University - 1 in 4 people will be made redundant But where's the financial evidence for this extreme action? Please read 👇 Sign the petition 👇 chng.it/7F52bThYqn

let’s be real, what it says is that LSE said “no”

A plagiarism on both your houses!

it’s friday evening and now is as good a time as any to remind you all to JOIN A UNION

But I love the thought of advising students on how to """"ethically"""" use AI (which I, of course, have the expertise to do) and gradually degrading the discipline to a series of AI tools talking to each other. That sounds fantastic and not at all likely to backfire in any way.

I'm proud to be from a country where students go to university to explore research and knowledge, and I actually think society needs *fewer* crypto-hustling drop-shippers who aspire to live in Dubai

“For the large majority [of the Harper’s Letter signatories,] Trump’s reign of terror has apparently been less objectionable than the irritating undergraduate and entry-level scolds of the 2010s.”

Non-zero chance that Your Party never polls above Change UK

finally! the recognition i crave in my field

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'

On Tuesday 7 October the team from @nfsengland.bsky.social will be giving a free presentation at 7.30pm about the National Folklore Survey for England at Crediton Library in Devon. Come and learn about the project and chat with others. Refreshments available Free tickets from bit.ly/flaevents

This is a great cover.

This may seem cute but if you do this too much the cyclists may become reliant on cars feeding them, disrupting the delicate roadway ecosystem

Follow this thread for more on ECR environment @willpooley.bsky.social

What a deranged country. Are we gonna have this as the number one headline for each *person* we remove? A cruelty spectacle.

ok but the word “overdetermined” was right there surely

Antifa Professor, member of a Major Terrorist Organization

Just read a reference to working in archives as the 'second oldest' profession. am imagining the world where there are only two jobs on offer: sex worker or archivist

Very much enjoying the culture of trust and respect implicit in the installation of room usage monitoring devices on academics' office doors today. Imagine my shock on discovering that managers' doors remain unsullied…

Whenever I go to Heathrow and see 'The Queen's Terminal', I always think, Aren't we all, ducky, aren't we all.

FFS if we’d known about this in 2002, we could have just decanted another one

Concerned by this #UKHE -wide drive. It clearly is a way of removing representation from governance structures (a Department has a voice, committees, & governance structure, a 'subject area' does not), however much consultants/HR deny it is. Would be good to know how people protect representation.

oh, they tried with us! Turn us into 'subject areas'. We pushed back a lot and were told that it was a decided fact. Until the new head of the merged School came in and said that we're going to keep Departments, don't be silly.

do you work in a university/faculty/school in the UK that abolished “departments”? willing to share experiences (by DM if preferred)? RTs also appreciated