Every time I go to the supermarket in the run up to Christmas they have removed one of my lactose free staples in place of lactose full Christmas produce.

Last nights vivid duloxetine induced dreams were especially frenetic and wild. I am not functioning this morning because I used all my energy whilst sleeping.

I’ve been reading the BMA doctors' testimonies about physician and anaesthesia associates. Too many stories about non-medically qualified people being able to act like doctors. I don’t want to be diagnosed or treated by someone who hasn’t gone to medical school. www.bma.org.uk/media/p13lea...

I know there are lots of people at fault here, but the fact that such an obviously unethical article got published is another illustration of how publishers have completely lost control of what they're publishing in the push for APCs.

This is why I’m on my soapbox everyday at work and being loud about AI and academic integrity “LLMs are poisoning the entire information ecosystem. You can't even necessarily trust that the citations in a published paper are real (or a search engine's descriptions of them).”

Ooh my book chapter from Library Pedagogies: Personal reflections from library practitioners has had its best year of downloads yet. Makes me very happy that 5 years on people are still downloading it from our repository.

Universities should demand versions of JSTOR, ProQuest etc. that haven't had ecocide-plagiarism-psychosis slop machine companies all over them. Only they won't, because the (often) spineless incompetents who become senior administrators are enablers. buttondown.com/surekhadavie...

How to make a Christmas cake if you have executive function problems. Leave fruit soaking in a whisky bath for 4 weeks. Eventually make cake at 7pm on a Thursday night with improvised ingredients.

Just another normal day at work today getting opinionated about technology

Whenever someone explains what copilot does, all the useful bits seem to be functions that don't need LLM involvement. Automation existed before the current excitement for genAI, and it usually worked a bit more consistently...

New! Boulean! Logic!

Feel very unlucky to have two trips by train delayed by over 3.5 hours in the last 9 days.

Today I tried to seek assistance from LNER about announcements whilst extremely anxious and distressed. Should start wearing my sunflower lanyard to travel. I know train crew are stressed but I was sobbing and shaking yet received no reassurance.

Last week I was trapped at Crewe for many hours due to a signal outage. Today I’ve been sat on a train at Leeds since 1045 whilst the chaos of a signal outage plays out.

“Scholarly effort is in decline everywhere as never before. Indeed, cleverness is shunned at home and abroad. What does reading offer to pupils except tears?” this guy has his finger on the pulse amirite www.history-uk.ac.uk/history-in-p... 🗃️

Late to the game sharing this: Stage 1 of #CALC26 CfP is out and we're accepting submissions The Critical Approaches to Libraries Conference is for anyone with research, projects, perspectives on all things using critical practice in libraries and information studies sites.google.com/view/calccon...

Feel like I can sense the signs of burning out. Went for my monthly GP appointment to check in on mental health and review medication. Grateful for this level of care but it’s a reminder of being unwell. Work was draining today too and I feel very out of sync with routines at the moment.

On AI and research: “Something without a brain scrabbled around and found stuff that looks like content but isn’t, because it wasn’t chosen, analyzed, and written by a person. Frankenstein’s monster copy-paste jobs from a bunch of different places? That’s not a summary. That’s word salad.”

Apologising in advance to everyone in my office because all I’m going to talk about on Tuesday is how much I loved the Paddington musical. I’m not even that much of a Paddington fan but that was stunning theatre.

“We analyzed 47000 conversations that people had with ChatGPT. We’re pretty sure we don’t have consent for a lot of them. So we are reproducing screenshots here.” www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...

No no no begs every archivist. You are never going to be able to find anything. Please don’t start using emojis in file names. Who asked for this? What fresh hell is next?

Excellent cloud inversions on today’s lunch break walk

Everything is a remix but I don’t think this is a good explanation of the concept of postplagerism and how it might translate from art to academic writing.

🚨NEW PAPER ALERT 🚨 @tamigraph.bsky.social @briana-v.bsky.social and I discuss wellness chatbots, their labor implications, & "private vibes" vs "privacy". We call for critical human-AI communication scholarship that takes into account context & political economy: link.springer.com/article/10.1...

We will be closing our representation statistics survey at some point in the next month, and we have already heard from more than 1000 neurodivergent librarians! #librarians #neurodiversity lancasteruni.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...

Every morning people look so upset and hard done by on the train when I ask for bags to be moved so I can have a seat.

If you’ve spent any time with me over the last few months you will be aware that I’m hyper focused level obsessed with mushrooms. Tonight I’m going to see Merlin Sheldrake talk about mushrooms. Very excited!

Duloxetine must be working magic on my brain. I just sat down and wrote a 500 word conference abstract in one go and then sent it to my supervisors. Minimal anxiety, fretting, overthinking or procrastination.

I haven’t touched my thesis since 22nd September according to the last saved date of my thesis documents. Today’s task might just be getting familiar with it again.

This. 💯 #ADD #ADHD

One of many reasons why I’m stuck in a state of chronic stress. Universities shrinking and library work shrinking. I try to imagine possible alternative career paths but I’m not sure what else I’m good at.

Hello autumn term exhaustion. Every year at this time I fear I will never pick up my PhD work ever again. I am too tired. This year I feel extra stressed because I should be making progress with writing up.

Should be thesis writing today as I don’t work on Mondays. But I was off sick for a day last week and feel so behind on teaching prep that I’m logging on to make PowerPoints. Autumn term workload can get in the bin.

Mandatory online training to access a system for taking on disability support in the library. Except I’m struggling with the training and it’s making me frustrated to be dyslexic. Not sure if I should ask if there is an alternative way of proving I’m capable of using the student records system.

My jaw hurts. My teeth hurt. My executive function has all gone. Nurse says blood pressure too high. Dentist says I need fillings replacing Had a little cry. Pulled myself together and sweated away my feelings with circuits class.

I live under a flight path regularly used by RAF military aircraft. Extremely loud and fast fighter jets are sounding very busy today.

Reservoirs are filling back up and the mushrooms are fruiting

I'm one of those 21,000 patients to get the gamma knife at Sheffield. Now whenever I'm on campus for my PhD days I see the hospital and always think of that time in my life. I'll spare you all the polaroid photo they took of 17 year old me to document the experience.

My WhatsApp media and camera roll is approx 90% fungi at the moment. Mushroom spotting is my current hyperfocus obsession but turns out it’s very good for helping bad mental health.

One of those days where I feel broken and tired so I turn into an extra clumsy person. Dropping stuff, knocking things over, splashing and spilling, banging my head. Lots of exclaiming. But I made good food!

Finally! 🤩 Our position piece: Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia: doi.org/10.5281/zeno... We unpick the tech industry’s marketing, hype, & harm; and we argue for safeguarding higher education, critical thinking, expertise, academic freedom, & scientific integrity. 1/n

"We are told that AI is inevitable, that we must adapt or be left behind. But universities are not tech companies. Our role is to foster critical thinking, not to follow industry trends uncritically." www.ru.nl/en/research/...

@nlisn.bsky.social is attempting to assess the proportion/spread of neurodiversity across across all UK library sectors. If you identify as neurodivergent, with or without a formal diagnosis, or suspect you may be - please fill in our short survey! Reblogging/signal-boosting much appreciated!

My latest cartoon for @newscientist.com p.s. this week I am on a USA/Canada tour with my new book. Details and preorder links at tomgauld.com

Key word in this article is 'probably'. 'Probably generated by large language models'. There's no way to prove it. All the supposed tells - em-dashes, repetitive language, use of certain words, rhetorical phrasing - are present in AI because people have been writing that way for centuries!

Woke up feeling tired, sore and grumpy. But 4 miles of running, mushroom spotting and wild swimming with good people has transformed me. Love how happy I look in this photo.

AI is the digital equivilant of the drunken bloke in the pub who insists on butting into every conversation to overly explain everything to you, including making shit up if he doesn't know it so that he can claim to be the bar brain. And we hate it just as much.

I'm in a very different context, but the idea of phantom pain where your colleagues should be rings so true - job cuts hitting where unmanageable workloads were already a problem.

Rail replacement bus is early. Shocking.