Mike Fowler

@gregproops.bsky.social has some great gags about San Carlos.
Well, two gags. But they're so great he repeats them at every opportunity!

I am using the full range of marks available. Outright fail, to borderline fail.
What do you mean do I remember a 20th Century Northern Irish comedian's catchphrase?

a baboon is sitting at a desk looking at a laptop computer . ALT: a baboon is sitting at a desk looking at a laptop computer .

Marking Lit Reviews is hard work, but the fact that so many have the same (AI-generated) structure is really twisting my melon, man. Text is jargon heavy with no definitions, yet generic with no depth.
And they all identify there are "major gaps in the literature" regardless of the review topic 😢

📣We will be back soon with a new series of online theory seminars!

As ever, free and open for all via Zoom. Follow us on here, or join our email list (iite.info/seminar-emai...) for details.

In the meantime, all our past talks are on Youtube: www.youtube.com/@theoretical...

See you there!

Source: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/glenn-vowles-a6b61a388_see-the-reply-from-my-mp-in-bristol-activity-7416987108285947904-_yYD/

A friend pointed me to a post on social media of a letter by Kerry McCarthy MP (Labour, Bristol East) about a request for a televised emergency briefing on the #ClimateEmergency

I was stunned by how casually the idea & its urgency were dismissed. Let’s unpack why this response is so wrong-headed 🧵

Hand-written essays introduce other issues (for staff and students), and doesn't avoid gen-AI use unless it's under exam conditions, which has even more issues.

If so, we are just embedding further financial inequalities in higher education outcomes.

Unless we have proper tools and guidance for dealing with AI-related issues.
(This assignment allows AI-use for brainstorming, but not writing. How do we check this without massively increasing workload?)

Marking Lit Reviews. Consecutive submissions have strong whiff of AI generation.
1st is practically unreadable: generic, bland. Also has a very low similarity score (unusual for entire pages to be original text).
2nd one has much better writing, + many high similarity chunks.
Is 2nd paid-for genAI?

YouTube video by RHINO Aztec Camera - Somewhere In My Heart (Official Music Video)

Just to show how good Roddy Frame was in the 1980s, another stone cold banger.

Not sure why there are 2 drummers in this video. The one playing the electronic kit looks much happier for some reason. Not sure why, I've heard those Simmons pads could break your wrist.

youtu.be/2w1Q8ZkXZ1Q?...

YouTube video by RHINO Aztec Camera - Good Morning Britain (Official Music Video)

...and another worm for the other ear.

Whole of the Moon is apocryphally about Roddy Frame (a teenaged maestro), who was phenomenally productive at the time (see next message too).

I've read that Mike Scott has denied this, but he liked the the story behind it.

youtu.be/3_QSMTtUQYY?...

YouTube video by Chrysalis Records The Waterboys - The Whole of the Moon [Official HD Remastered Video]

Ear worm
youtu.be/sBW8Vnp8BzU?...

Hundreds of jobs at risk at major Welsh employer Swansea University is looking to save £30m with the loss of 55 academic posts from a pool of 204 posts

www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-n...

Plaid Cymru MS calls for "urgent action" to protect the higher education sector in Wales Ella Groves A Plaid Cymru MS has called for the Welsh Government to take “urgent action” to protect the higher education sector in Wales. The call follows announcements that another redundancy round h...

@ucu.org.uk
nation.cymru/news/plaid-c...

But it is only a 5 minute job (for the person who takes five minutes to ask/tell you to do it).

No organisation existing solely to eliminate trans people should be a charity. #DeregisterSexMatters

Shit, I just assumed they stored it all in their face-penises.
Just goes to show that the system works. Science truly is self-correcting!

Rubbish paper "Is Pee Stored in the Balls" with broken diagram, broken, table, and bullshit text.

So initial experiments with Open AI's vibe-coding science tool Prism are going about as well as expected.

Edinburgh. Aberdeen. Dundee. Strathclyde. Different campuses same reality. Staff are stretched, students lose out.
#SaveOurUniversities #UCU #Scotland #HigherEducation

When it rains, it now rains more.

For those experiencing the flooding in south-west England, it is worth remembering that rainfall in winter has increased by about 25% overall.

And, the rainfall has also become more intense: when it rains, it now rains more, increasing the risk of flooding.

Expert‐led priorities for a response diversity research agenda in ecology Response diversity describes variation in ecological responses to environmental change. Response diversity is expected to drive ecological stability since a wider variety of responses to one or more ...

🚨The #ResponseDiversityNetwork (RDN)'s first publication is out!
Response diversity still sails in muddy waters, with researchers disagreeing on definitions, applicable scales and how it relates to ecological stability. These and other findings will guide #RDN innitiatives and work.
Stay tuned!

Out now! Ecological #ResponseDiversity research priorities @nordicoikos.bsky.social 🌍🧪
Key findings:
Ecologists don't agree (I could stop there) on definitions (& there...) of #ResponseDiversity scales & dimensions but see conceptual value
Our network must diversify. Join us!
doi.org/10.1002/oik....

Most of the time, research-acronyms are garbage (I don't know if I coined the term "acronons" in this context, but I'm claiming it).

However, this one gets 100% for creativity, insight and accuracy.

Chef's kiss. No notes.

Less than a month to apply to join the BES editorial board as an Associate editor!🌳🌍 📖

If you're interested in contributing to any of the BES journals, check out the link below 👇

buff.ly/6ymRGcB

Out now! Ecological #ResponseDiversity research priorities @nordicoikos.bsky.social 🌍🧪
Key findings:
Ecologists don't agree (I could stop there) on definitions (& there...) of #ResponseDiversity scales & dimensions but see conceptual value
Our network must diversify. Join us!
doi.org/10.1002/oik....

I see it every year in M-level reports. I suspect those who put legends underneath are not reading enough to get the point/develop the habit.

I'd go with the same explanation I give for p = 0.05.

Convention.

There's enough of it out there that you need to be prepared for it. You (they) can attempt to change your (their) approach once they discover and understand the reasoning for it, and persuade everyone else to change behaviour too.

A screen shot of a slide containing the word "Confidential" in red, surrounded by a red box, hovering above a university shield logo and the top half of the name of the university, with the bottom half cropped out. The university name rhymes with G'won-see ballooniversity. That's funny, y'see, because it's run by a bunch of balloons. Which is slang for incompetent, out-of-touch idiots. I probably should've gone for buffooniversity.

Wonder if I'll get into trouble for sharing this?

New paper is out 🔓!
We reconstructed the 145-myr diversity of sharks & rays using deep learning, unveiling hidden patterns:
- modern diversity levels by the Cretaceous 📈
- small decline in the K/Pg 🤏
- a peak in the Eocene 🌄
- a long-term decline towards the present �
www.cell.com/current-biol...

A Systems Perspective: How Social–Ecological Networks Can Improve Our Understanding and Management of Biological Invasions Abstract. Reversing biodiversity loss and the sustainability crisis requires approaches that explicitly consider human–nature interdependencies. Social–eco

Biological invasions aren’t just ecological, they’re social too. 🌱🤝
If you missed it, last year we published this paper in BioScience, showing how social–ecological networks can transform how we understand invasion pathways, impacts & management decisions. Open access!
doi.org/10.1093/bios...

I can lend you both some of my marking if you need a distraction?