Beck Heslop

We Let AI Run Our Office Vending Machine. It Lost Hundreds of Dollars. An AI agent ran a snack operation in the WSJ newsroom. It gave away a free PlayStation, ordered a live fish—and taught us lessons about the future of AI.

"Profits collapsed. Newsroom morale soared."

Amazing piece from @joannastern.bsky.social

www.wsj.com/tech/ai/anth...

👏 looking forward to reading the report

Pokemon is a great one, doesn’t require quick reflexes or anything, you progress quite quickly, and they are open world so you can choose whether to explore or strictly follow the story

We need a film depicting the process where the historian uses Google Scholar, clicks on the desired article, finds that it is paywalled, goes to uni library website, logs in, goes back to article page again, downloads PDF into a folder with 500 other unread PDFs, and repeats the process for 120 min.

I'm not sure how many of my fellow historians are poker players, but that's a game that's tailor-made for us.

Sitting at a table for long hours, drawing out one disappointment after another and then finally getting a holy shit holy shit this is amazing and then another three hours of boredom ...

Do any historians of Britain know whether there was a Highway Enigneering and Traffic Control Department in the Ministry of Transport during the 1960s?

I am trying to decipher the acronym HETCD ...

🗃️ #skystorians

headspace is sending a message to historians to consider an alternative career path

Fully reasonable response tbf

Screening of Frozen, when Hans is revealed to be a villain with the line “oh Ana, if only somebody loved you”
Shocked, a grown man whispers: “bastard”

Seeking contributors to a zine to hand out at Labour Party conference, about disability and current state of things. 120-350 words per topic.

Seeking contributors to a zine
to hand out at Labour Party conference,
about disability and current state of things.
120-350 words per topic.

@hpsvanessa.bsky.social for Digital Friday?

It's #DigitalFriday ! This is my routine appeal to #skystorians and all other academics prepping for teaching to share any software, hardware, online resources (primary, secondary, teaching tools, blogs) tips and tricks that they've found useful this week! #AcademicSky 🗃️(pls boost to relevant feeds)

Very niche, but there is an American radio ham who has collected, catalogued and scanned thousands of QSL Cards if anyone wants to find somebody by their call sign, or is interested in radio ham history! www.oldqslcards.com

As a side note this is some APPALLING tactile paving here.

1. Wrong colour (red should only be used for controlled crossings)
2. All the way across the footpath (difficult to walk on, gives no directional indicator)
3. Paving goes up the sloped kerb, not just at the flush part (risks falls)

We wrote a thing! About a thing we did! 🗃️♿️

Disabled Leaders, part one 34000 bc to 1185 AD Disability Action Research Kollective

Disabled Leaders - Part One: 34,000 BC - 1185 AD
FREE HERE:
libcom.org/article/disa...
Subscribe or see more here : linktr.ee/disabilityark

Once I got the DIRTIEST look during a conference panel when a facilities manager asked me if technology gave me hope for the future. I said ramps are older than old and we still can’t get those put in, so no, it doesn’t.

Tech is only as good as the people doling it out.

As someone who generally does not watch football, I have spent the evening with my heart in my mouth and am legitimately tearing up at this win 🖤⚪️

Image features a black-and-white historical photograph of Adolf Hitler performing the Nazi salute. Text reads: IS THIS A NAZI SALUTE? FOLLOWING both Elon Musk and Steve Bannon, Nazi leader Adolf Hitler has now insisted that his infamous “Nazi salute” delivered at the Nuremberg Rally in 1937 was nothing of the sort, and was in fact a sort of “Roman salute”. Elon Musk took to X to back the Nazi leader, saying, “You can’t even be the leader of the Nazi Party these days without being accused of being a Nazi.”

Added alt text

Blind date: ‘I was hoping to meet a total babe. She was a total babe’ Gráinne, 31, a software engineer and musician, meets Alexander, 34, a civil servant

Read this and the world will seem a better place. www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...

These plans have been presented with the Board’s now-regular use of mashed-up AI images and photos of open-plan spaces “stolen” (another quote) from other institutions. For the rest of the university, parallel administrative plans include centralisation of all administrative staff, and new roles – “learning designers”, “academic developers”, and “instructional technologists”. Some of these non-academic, non-specialist roles might be for the Executive’s new campus in Kazakhstan. The text is taken from an article about the redundancies at the University of Cardiff.

Just adding alt text for anybody who uses a screen reader

📌

Well thank you, I have a new favourite song now

Black and white photo of a beautiful medium haired white cat standing on a chair with its forepaws up on a table, investigating a place setting. A full cup of coffee sits nearby but sadly the plate is empty.

Waiting for breakfast. Photo from my collection, 1961.

An orange and white cat is laying on a magazine, unfortunately turned to a page about a plane crash but what am i going to do, not use this picture? He looks phenomenal! His facial expression indicates no thoughts at all

he's in your zoom meeting and he is about to say the dumbest thing you've ever heard

I promised you guys more of these. Here is one that I find particularly great.

Materials: plastic, metal, wiring, and human tears. (See ALT text for full transcript of the sign).

It was a fun little exercise!

Recent research on digital literacy indicates the importance of critical evaluation skills to deal with a growing volume of online content.

Chip the soft toy seagull wearing a black t shirt that reads ‘Emotional Support’. He stares blankly into the camera, nonplussed by his important role.

Have I shown off Chip’s new t-shirt yet?

you are completely right, I’m just sad about it 😔