Steve Riddle

Is AI good for education? That's the question being considered in this recent From Newcastle podcast, with School of Computing's Phillip Lord and Dean of Postgraduate Research David Kennedy from @sagencl.bsky.social.

🎧 lnkd.in/eYmwuHfA

#ArtificialIntelligence #FromNewcastle #HigherEducation

A photo of an ice cream machine with a sign reading, "Anything is possible with ice cream." Beneath that is a hand lettered sign reading, "No ice cream".

2026 basically

My favourite movie line. Thank you Rob Reiner.

Thanks - punchline to a very old joke (why do the french never have 2 eggs for breakfast). Always, dare I say, cracks me up.

Ah, I did wonder. Do I have the energy...

PS right, so that's who just appeared in the train seat beside me. I might offer them some peanuts.

Quick posting question Neil - are you using something like buffer for cross-posting to fedi and bluesky? I have my fedi account bridged but it has its disadvantages..

Oh, also nice deployment of the 5-syllable Nyarlathotep there :-)

thanks! I agree, 20 years from now it might be a curiosity, still so raw now.

Got my copy now. Gorgeous isn't it... thanks for the prompt!

A man with a spectacular 1970s mullet, wearing big wellies and a v-neck jumper over a T-shirt, looks at camera as he stands on a boat which is itself standing on the muddy bottom of an empty canal. He is holding up an enormous wooden plug on a long chunky chain

Today is the 47th anniversary of this clearly unimprovable photo, from a story so absurd that it shouldn’t be true, but is: the day a team of workers from British Waterways pulled the plug out of the Chesterfield Canal, and all the water emptied out

Google search for “all you can eat buffet near me” Al Overview To find an all-you-can-eat buffet near you, you can use online search engines like Google or Yelp, specifying "all you can eat buffet near me". These searches will typically provide a list of nearby restaurants offering buffet-style dining, including their addresses, contact information, and customer reviews. You can also refine your

The singularity is awesome

Microsoft Study Finds Relying on AI Kills Your Critical Thinking Skills Researchers from Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon University warn that the more you use AI, the more your cognitive abilities deteriorate.

Study shows that relying on generative AI kills off your critical thinking skills.
https://gizmodo.com/microsoft-study-finds-relying-on-ai-kills-your-critical-thinking-skills-2000561788

#DailyHaikuPrompt - lush

Howway bonny lad
Ham pease pudding, that's ma bait
Geet lush stotty cyek

#haiku

Happy Geordie cliché haiku Friday

View across undulating clifftop towards a promontory with a lighthouse at the end. A bay beyond this, with land rising on the horizon. Blue skies, blue sea. Yellow gorse flowers adorn the clifftop merging together into middle distance.

Yellow gorse in foreground gives way to cliffs dropping sharply into a cove, seabirds nesting in the cliffs. Blue sea beyond, and a ferry on the horizon heading towards the port at Dun Laoghaire

Sneaking in a few days in Dublin before heading back to work next week. Beautiful weather today for a train trip to Howth, walking on the cliffs for a couple of hours. The smell of that gorse..
#dublin #howth #cliffs #lighthouse #walking

Amazing and yes, I've had to go back and listen again. Mostly because of how, after you put all the toys back in the box by giving us the cast list, you did a massive rug-pull with the final few words of the Loudburst ad. You cunning devils. Just what I wanted to hear..

Rico: “They’ll never know we exported anything from their science love shack.”

Julian: “If the Albatross find out, this will blow back”

Rico: “I say we green light.”

Howard Lutnick: ….

Rico: “We are currently clean on Opsec”.

I have tariffed
the penguins
that are on
Heard Island

and which
you were probably
assuming
did not export goods

forgive me
they were taking advantage of us
so cunning
and so cold

Damn right. I'm not going to recount all the shit from those times that I'm still dealing with, but yeah no cosy nostalgia thanks

This was beautiful and devastating, Alex, and just like episode 1 it'll be getting a few repeat plays during the week.

Passing on a plug from my federated alterego...

A promotional banner for a British Science Week event at Newcastle University. The left side features a photograph of Dr Anne-Marie Imafidon, a social entrepreneur and computer scientist, wearing a yellow dress and a blue beaded necklace. She is holding a stack of books titled 'She's In Ctrl' and smiling at the camera. The right side has a dark blue background with white text providing event details: 'In conversation with Dr Anne-Marie Imafidon,' scheduled for Thursday, 13 March at 5:30 PM in Curtis Auditorium, Herschel Building. It includes a call to book a free place at www.ncl.ac.uk/events/public-lectures. The Newcastle University logo is displayed at the top, and the 'INSIGHTS' logo appears at the bottom right.

🚀 Join Dr. @aimafidon.bsky.social this week at our #PublicLecture as she explores the future of tech, innovation, and diversity in STEM!

Don't miss this inspiring talk from a leading voice in technology and education ➡️ tinyurl.com/3kwebtze

#WomenInSTEM #TechInnovation

Oh brilliant! (in an Arthur Shappey sort of voice).

As my friends say, "so middle class, the rest of us just get plagued by pigeons"

Peacock, male, colourful blue chested, standing in garden and staring into house through glass door

I'll see your parakeet and raise you...

AI, compassion and the future for HE Higher Education continues to face thorny challenges thanks to AI, as outlined at this week’s QAA Insights Conference. In one of the breakout groups titled “compassion in education” two speakers pr…

Snippet from QAA Insights Conference focused on AI featuring great insights from Prof Mary Davis (Oxford Brookes) and Prof David Webster (University of Liverpool) 🤖 bilt.online/ai-compassio...
#artificialintelligence #AI #highereducation #academia #qaa #academicintegrity

Condolences and, having just spent the weekend in Deal, yes it does.

Today's university in crisis is Kingston, which is cutting all the departments and subjects below, a savage retrenchment that won't even make them half of the £20m savings they need. Every day will be like this until something is done.

An old friend will call
Listen and remember then
Book on the next train

#DailyHaikuPrompt - friend
#haiku #senryu

Spydere man Spydere Man
Doth al things a spydere kan
Sondrye webbes he kan weaven
Thieves lyke flyes he kan cacchen
Lo, anon cometh Spydere Man

WEEKEND READING: Matt Goodwin's 'Bad Education' isn’t good scholarship, but does that matter? - HEPI In Bad Education, Matt Goodwin makes the argument that Western universities have moved ‘sharply and radically to the left’ (p.51) over the last six decades, to the extent that diversity is now deemed ...

This is an extremely helpful review on @hepi-news.bsky.social of a book I didn't want to read before and definitely do not need to do so now. As @profstevenjones.bsky.social sharply observes "Why is it that only ‘cancelled’ academics seem to have media agents?"

www.hepi.ac.uk/2025/02/15/w...