Sarah K

She is so far entirely indifferent to the cats which I think is good? Max is annoyed but otherwise sticking to his normal routine, Tilly has retreated upstairs entirely but hopefully will relax with more time!

An exceptionally adorable golden retriever puppy burying her little sandy head in a blanket

New house floof just dropped.

Heal Minds Gaza: empowering Palestinian children who were in detention Palestinian children in Israeli occupation prisons face severe psychological violence that deeply impacts their sense of safety, identity, and community after their detention. The Heal Minds Gaza…

This project is trying to help children formerly in occupation prisons not fall through the cracks. And you can help.

Workshops and more for these kids' mental health and social reintegration. For the next month, we're getting this funded. Join in: chuffed.org/project/hmg

"It’s good to have a healthy body, but it’s not a moral requirement to be healthy" is such an important sentence

Why is "they're going to use it anyway so we should teach them to use it well" being applied to GenAI in the classroom while a very opposite point is being made about young people and social media. (and in neither case is the existing evidence or critique apparently of concern.)

Exactly! The current “sell it by pushing the AI features” will pivot to “sell it by pushing it’s not using AI features”

this has struck me in calls to make sure inequalities don’t play out through ‘excluding people from AI’. It seems the opposite is much more likely, the inequality with be whether you can afford contact with a person or are given the default mass produced equivalent of a LLM chatbot.

Too many websites are built to look good projected behind a guy talking about the successful redesign of the website, rather than built to actually do the job you visit the website for.

😂😂😂

I didn’t get past “the feminisation of males.” 🙄 weirdos.

Also, MAKE READING HAPPEN AGAIN

and how this is framed as “human in the loop, researcher keeping control” rather than “your job is information assistant to support the AI researcher to make fewer mistakes”

Feel like I’m going round the bend with all the “here are the steps and checks to make best use of AI in user research” advice that surely is just “here’s how any time you might save with AI in user research is lost through need for extra checks and prep.”

The Ghost Map is one of my favourite science reads! How understanding the living day to day reality of people was key progressing the science.

Definitely. I remember also the underlying threat of “your materials must all now be available online and by the way we own them and technically we won’t need you for them later…”

As so often with these things, what I remember of other staff is how kind people were trying to be, and how exhausted everyone was. It‘s at a top tier organisational level and a financial level that the disregard happens.

I‘d started off reflecting on how rubbish it is that the hard work lecturers were doing gets forgotten - didn’t meant to ‘well actually’ as non-teaching staff’! I guess in summary we all struggled and it’s not fair to ignore that for any sector or role.

If I’d known I’d be required to apply for promotion again I would have thought twice. At the time it seemed like a temporary compromise to stay employed.

Well it wasn’t technically an extension as the original post had finished. One of those situations where you’re bouncing across short term funding pots while department tries to get funding for a post. Of course pandemic hit and no new posts were being allowed.

oh god I know. I set up two new projects assuming we wouldn’t get NHS access for the existing one. Then we did get NHS access, so the decision was cool do the original And the replacement stuff at the same time.

The 18 months btw is because the promotions open once a year, I think it was a January application, decisions made in July, take effect in October. 🫠

It sucked. Seeing people leave senior roles at other places and have the opening advertised at the grade below was very common. Once it was two seniors leaving and only one RF post then opened!

I wasn’t a lecturer, but research staff obv had their own woes as funds were cut. I got a contract extension but on a lower grade. Told it would be ‘corrected’ but actually had to just apply for promotion *again*. Spent 18 months still working at senior level whilst applying to be senior level.

This feels like a bigger gut punch though because yes there was so much labour involved in moving courses online, but people were doing so much emotional and social labour with their students as well. Plus, you know; they also were living through a pandemic.

The compensation claim for pandemic teaching is latest example of a society having no insight into a workforce, a sector, a group of people struggling. This was always apparent during strike action. People refuse to see lecturing as anything but cushy. ”I’d love a job that was an hour a week!”

The comments about transition as influenced by social media and an overreaction to ‘normal’ variation are utterly irresponsible. Completely ignores the evidence base on expectations and impacts, and the lived experience of trans people. Ignorant dismissals that have come to dictate access.

Pavel you have nailed this one

Why is this still a genre of post ffs 😭

We’re busy doing proper couply things, like calling the bastard helpline when the bastard EV charger on the bastard motorway won’t work 🥰

Kate’s so infected by the sunshine she requested my 90s Summer playlist, then said “what’s this?” when Mona by Craig McLachlan came on. She’s younger than me, she doesn’t know the deep cuts.