In every academic book there is a secret second book hiding in the footnotes. Sometimes it is the first draft that had migrated there to escape the revisions. Sometimes it is the author's tortured secret rebuttal of their own claims, and sometimes it is the incipient form of the their next book.

Woah. Just came across this article written by a doctoral student... in 2008 👀

The entire Cal State system has been severed from Instructure completely as of 5/7. Chancellor's Office now dealing system wide. That's 500,000 students who were about to walk into finals week starting on Monday after mandates 2 yrs ago that every class is required to use Canvas 💁🏻

I greatly enjoyed this morning's e-mail saying "Nobody panic but you all need to download and back up your course material RIGHT NOW ok bye."

Best film adaptation of The Odyssey, wrong answers only

Anyone else feel like we should arrange another meeting?

Bingo! Do I win a prize now?

One of the fascinating details in this bizarre story is that Chomsky travelled to Paris to collect a prize from an organisation he can't possibly have heard of, because it didn't exist. The senior-academic energy is very, very strong here. www.theguardian.com/world/2026/m...

Fake it until you make it. Obviously this looks like misconduct but I'm also impressed by the sheer audacity.

Help me I have a problem

At least someone makes an effort to appease the Old Gods.

Love me, love my minor publications.

I wonder whether the perception of AI consciousness is related to how consistently polite the bots are. They meet all middle-class social expectations even when talking nonsense.

Pro-tip. Don't use dates in the file names of your manuscript drafts because when you unearth them many years later it makes the process of revision and updating much more painful to contemplate.

"I bite the head off one live bird a day. Don't let the doctors lie to you about disease risk. It's kept me healthy all these years. They should be teaching this in school."

Why are they releasing a sim about running a record shop when I have all this work to do. I might have to book some gaming leave.

Data breach at Canvas, one of the most common university LMS platforms. Good luck to them if they're trying to find any useful information because I struggle to even with a work account.

What would happen if Higher Education made its priority the welfare and training of students rather than chasing research impact and international prestige? Here's an example from France:

Great news! Botswana has decriminalised homosexuality with the repeal of its colonial-era sodomy law. 🏳️‍🌈🇧🇼

It's Bandcamp Friday, when a greater proportion of your purchase goes directly to the artist. It's also the day that Kneecap's new album Fenian is released. I invite you to make a connection between these events.

How are Hollywood films going to keep car chases exciting when electric vehicles don't explode in the same way?

Another motorist asked me whether I felt safe plugging in my electric car in the rain, and I was compelled to ask whether he felt safe with sixty litres of explosive liquid sloshing around in the back of his car 🤷

Great ethnobotanical trolling by @profaliceroberts.bsky.social here. Once cut, hawthorn releases a sickly-sweet scent reminiscent of a decaying corpse. Bringing it into the home was thought to invite death.

Ireland: So ye cut some white thorn off that wee tree in the middle of the back field, did ye? And ye thought to bring it across the threshold, did ye? And ye stuck them branches in a jug of water, did ye? Oh holy God. We’re fecking doomed. What were you thinking, ye fecking eejit?

The idea that decolonial praxis leads to intellectual homogeneity is so utterly disingenuous. If anything, it should lead to more diverse and nuanced ways of understanding complex issues!

Our paper on decolonising field ecology was featured on a new BBC documentary as an example of how woke has gone too far on university campuses. Needless to say, I'm thrilled. This is impact! @biotropica.bsky.social 🌍 1/6

There's nothing quite like a large pile of marking to convince me that it's time to complete all those online CPD courses instead.

Trees in trees! New paper by Gotsch et al. (2026) shows how woody plants adapt when they become accidental epiphytes. 🌲🌳🌏🧪 esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

The Irish Vegetation Classification (IVC) is the product of many years of work by BEC Consultants' Dr Philip Perrin. You can now download the 'Handbook for the Irish Vegetation Classification' from the NBDC website. #NatureConservation #IVC biodiversityireland.ie/app/uploads/...

Peter Raven RIP. Almost all work in plant biodiversity and conservation has been influenced in some way by his contributions to the field. 🌏🧪🌐

(Yes) info.orcid.org/how-should-o...

I had no idea this was such a contentious topic, and I didn't expect so many people to be wrong. Come on now.

At a research meeting today it turned out that everyone pronounces ORCID differently. Which do you think is correct? 1️⃣ "Orchid" 2️⃣ "Ork ID" 3️⃣ "Or Sid" 4️⃣ Something else 📊 Show results

This last weekend a neighbour accused me of 'parking like a Protestant'. Apparently reverse parking is Prod behaviour because it's delayed gratification. #SpeirGorm

When the jaws on your eel are pharangeal That's a moray...

I'd not really thought of this. If AI submissions swamp public consultations, then they will either require massive additional effort to overcome, or else we will have to largely do away with them. Neither outcome represents progress.

Researchers: We built this thing for [target group] but they're not using it! We should do a survey of [target group] to find out why. Later: Why aren't [target group] filling in our survey? We need to post more on social media.

Researchers: We built this thing for [target group] but they're not using it! We should do a survey of [target group] to find out why. Later: Why aren't [target group] filling in our survey? We need to post more on social media.

I didn't think I was prepared to turn 50 but reading this has comforted me. This is my time.

If our post-grads babysat for me and the kids came back drawing CSR diagrams and telling stories about panbiogeography then I'd have to disown them. The kids and the post-grads. All of them.

Time to roll out my favourite botanist-trolling meme.

Species are just vibes written in latin

Reposting without the embarrassing mathematical error. Applicants bear most of the cost of funding applications. Probably best to go to the original source: f1000research.com/articles/15-...

Historic Environment job with Forestry England www.civilservicejobs.service.gov.uk/csr/jobs.cgi...

Calculating biomass of trees with LiDAR depends on calibration from laborious destructive measurements, which are very scarce in the literature. This new paper by Dong et al. provides data from 68 trees, which is an enormous effort. 🧪🌏🌲🌳

I would like to think these calculations would make my school maths teachers proud.

Job opening: Science Lead in Trees & Forestry Division at DEFRA in the UK. 🌲🌳 www.civilservicejobs.service.gov.uk/csr/jobs.cgi...

How many people on the planet are farting at the same time? This was the important question my 7-year-old son asked me. It's time to do some research. 1/6 🧪

Man, I remember those days. Scoring some Lyapunov exponents off a dodgy geezer in a pub; gathering at midnight on a disused airfield, five thousand strong, to bifurcate and bifurcate until the feigenbaums kicked in... It sounds so sordid now, but we were young and it was beautiful.

Several REF cycles in UKHE taught me this lesson. Once the submission has made everything is up for renegotiation. The REF protects no-one.