John Provis

Let the booting begin!

"Academic" is just a fancy job title for Elsevier's content creators.

That’s Elon Musk, Fellow of the Royal Society, I’ll have you know. Because the Royal Society can only seem to come up with throat-clearing noises as a response to these sorts of statements instead of actually throwing him out.

...tweaking the abstract of a paper to try to catch the attention of the editor of VeryShinyJournal...

At an academic conference, it is inevitable that the worst talk will be by a late career Professor who not only think the rules don't apply to them, but will have not even noticed the rules in the first place.

This -official Conservative policy - is essentially identical to the Reform policy that the Prime Minister described as "racist and immoral" and would "rip out country apart".

Would be good if media and politicians pointed this out .

This is known as a false dichotomy, friends.

There’s also “I learned a lot about this tool, I tested various versions on things I was an expert on, the results were highly dubious, & that’s before we even address the mental, ethical & environmental injuries it causes.”

Hi, I’m an Early 2010s Tech CEO I wear the same T-shirt every day, and I have a relatably unkempt haircut. I remind you of the smart kids from high school, so I give you hope that...

"I support things like civil rights, access to education, and medical research. You could never imagine me sitting in the front row at the inauguration of a far-right ruler who promised to destroy those things."

Just to be clear, an English degree - learning to critically assess texts - is actually one of the most dangerous for people such as Badenoch.

An educated population, able to bring hundreds of years of context to statements in a dawning age of AI slop and attention-seeking dishonesty is also vital.

Gee Australia must be glad to have spent so much money (and burnt so many other relationships) in support of AUKUS, when our "closest friends" do this...

The Ghost of Suppressed Protests Past.

I'd also be very surprised if it were impossible - at least in a technical sense. Whether unwillingness to act makes it impossible in practice may be another question entirely, though...

I'd fully support this concept.
Actually I've tried in the past to get a journal to do exactly this - but apparently "the setup of the journal's website system" wouldn't let it happen. I will leave the #academicsky community to ponder whether this is due to a lack of capability, or a lack of will..

Robotaxis will be the Sputnik Moment for a declining Europe A slow-motion car crash on Europe’s roads

Other than the tedious tone of "USA good, Europe bad", this article misses the key point: we mainly don't have "robotaxis" here because we don't want hundreds of them bumbling around the place like the idiotic car equivalent of a Roomba..

www.economist.com/europe/2025/...

Escape Room Challenge: Your European Airbnb Welcome to this tiny fifth-floor Airbnb, your home for the next four days in a major European city. Can you escape without incurring additional fee...

"In this bedroom are fourteen light switches. Ten of them do nothing. One turns on the television. One sounds an alarm in the home of your grouchy next-door neighbor who hates Americans and will let his French bulldog poop on your doorstep. Can you choose the right one in time?"

Very well put!

The same is true for an engineering degree, with the added consequences that the roof of the restaurant may also fall down on your head while you're in it.

As we seem to be talking ECHR again, here’s my Venn Diagram from more than a decade ago.

Oh no - how sad. Anyway...

I believe this is what chemical engineers describe as "chemists discovering that chemical engineering is a properly difficult thing to do"...

(we often say that chemistry is making the first gram of something; chemical engineering is making the next hundred tonnes)

Why should I write better when a machine can do it for me? Because actually no one can do it for you, because your voice is unique among all the people on earth. Siri never petted a horse's neck. Alexa has never been ghosted by the captain of the football team. But you have lived, your heart is beating, you have suffered, and you have something important to say. It's a human's job, to use words, and whatever job you give to a machine, that part of your brain goes dark. Maybe it's worth it when it comes to remembering phone numbers and directions, but when that part of your brain that uses words goes dark, that's a vast area that's very close to your soul. Don't let some internet platform convince you that what you have to say and create isn't worthwhile. Words are the echo of your soul. Honing that echo matters.

this iconic advertising copywriter named Kathy Hepinstall Parks died over the weekend and I wanted to share something from her website I thought Bluesky would like

Sadly our idea of charging people £7.99 for a blue tick to put on their experimental results didn’t pan out

I'm not exactly sure how many people are making decisions on purchasing a new XRF spectrometer based on seeing ads in Youtube videos... but at least their algorithm has figured out that it seems a better match for my interests than either perfume or funeral plans?

Machine Gun Kiss On The Cheek

Australia Admits All Those Animals Made Up SYDNEY—Saying the ruse began as a harmless prank about the continent’s mammals having pouches, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese admitted Tuesday that all those animals like wallabies, numbats, quokkas, and bandicoots were completely made up. “We just assumed everyone would have caught on by now, because these creatures are clearly imaginary,” said Albanese, adding that […]

Australia Admits All Those Animals Made Up
theonion.com/austral...

FAST COMPANY Article: While retirement typically occurs, after completing a career and saving and investing for it, a new trend is emerging among Gen Z career professionals called "micro-retirement." Micro- retirements involve taking a one to two- week break from work every 12 to 18 months. Gen Z is using micro-retirement to avoid burnout, find greater fulfillment in their work, and enhance their overall well-being. However, it's not just Gen-Z:

'Vacations.'

The word is 'vacations.'

By the way, this is the paper 🧪: doi.org/10.1617/s115...

Approximate translation of the news screen (in German) - PSI researchers search for sustainable cement recipes using AI (photo credit - it's not mine, someone sent it to a colleague who sent it to me)

There are various milestones in a scientific career🧪:
PhD✔️
Permanent job✔️
PhD student graduates✔️ several
Paper published✔️ several
Paper in Science/Nature... not yet
Paper featured in the media✔️a few
But the pinnacle of it all: Paper featured on the news screen on the bus ✔️
(translation in alt-text)