@davidhiggins.bsky.social
Professor of Environmental Humanities at the University of Leeds, UK. Working on culture and environmental crisis. Writing a book about birds, loss, and restoration. Worried parent. Luddite. Opinions my own. Reposts ≠ endorsement.
This evening my small daughter has been entertaining herself by doing quite scary “karate dancing” to the Mission Impossible theme music while occasionally stopping to flex her muscles and boast about her “100 pack”.
Assisted dying is a very complex issue & I have some complicated feelings about it myself - but I want to pick up on a couple of the points raised in this review, which are presented as things all right-thinking people should be worried about.
A short-ish chat covering fun stuff like why LLMs are a cyberattack on higher education and why we should interpret AI as a diagnostic for a deeper underlying crisis of legitimacy.
Just had a mild existential panic when I saw that the publisher of my debut book is advertising '5 copies or fewer' left.
Please watch this and consider writing to your MP about licensing Grouse Moors. A skydancing #HenHarrier is a wonderful sight that sadly very few people ever get to see. @friendsofthedales.bsky.uk
#raptorpersecution
#Skydancer
youtu.be/0zNIzsNAwNY?...
New followers, new intro! 👋 I am a third-year PhD candidate at Radboud University, studying our historical relationship with insects and other small creatures 🐜🪱🪳🪰 I am also editor for @womenshistory.bsky.social
My interests include #envhist, #entomology, #gardening, and of course #cats 🌱👩🌾🐱
I just got an email pushing a new book, and ... I'm not going to call out the book itself, cause I don't wanna ruin anyone's day, but ... I am going to subtweet it.
It's yet another book on how the problem with climate change is ... the way we talk about it! "Framing"! "Messaging"!
Admin complicity has been kind of heartbreaking
> Many universities’ administrations are embracing AI for instruction, research, and evaluation. In some cases, AI has guided decisions about which programs to cut at times of austerity in the education sector.
www.theguardian.com/technology/n...
My employer asks me to complete a survey on AI usage for which this is the first question (required):
There we go. The kind and wise @davidgooda.bsky.social swooping in to nudge us over the £1k line. Bloody hell. Thanks so much, everyone. ONWARDS.
Hero!
I was in Tehran this time last year. I want you to see how beautiful my city is. I want you to see the city the US/Israel is trying to wipe off the face of the earth
Quality stickers
I initially read that as the band The Offspring and could not parse the sentence!
Just heard from a potential PhD student based in Iran. I had written to arrange a meeting, before everything kicked off. Their reply calmly explains that we can't meet because they are facing a total blackout and severe instability. What awful and unnecessary chaos to inflict on ordinary Iranians.
Good to see some mainstream journalism questioning the economic hype around AI.
www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
A reminder that humans in cars - notably omitted from this thanks to motonormativity - kill 1.2m people every year
Shamefully, I don’t know the Lorca!
Wheldrake Ings
178 Whooper Swan with 45 landing & the rest NW)
12 White-fronted Geese
780 Pink-footed Geese (inc 383 NW)
4 Great Egret
21 Little Egret
531 Black-tailed Godwit
238 Golden Plover
275 Pintail
161 Tufted Duck
17 Goldeneye
6 Chiffchaff
1 Otter
@ldvnnr.bsky.social @yorkbirding.bsky.social
I know they’re all terrible but somehow Hegseth seems to have tapped into the purest concentrate of dickhead energy. You would not want to see him in charge of a kids’ football team and yet here we are…
A little bit obsessed with all the nut clusters currently ‘ashamed to be British’ because Starmer didn’t sign us up to this shit show.
It’s strangely beautiful though
Could be a decent list!
No one else at tennis today so my son is getting personal coaching on the cheap. His forehand already looks better than mine.
Birds in nearby trees, including redwings, greenfinches, mistle thrushes, and siskins. Red kite in the distance and I just heard a great spotted woodpecker drumming.
& reed buntings flickering out over water & back to tapers in rushy shallows, a sky clear & deep - & over the Solway, thin snow on fells
If this is true, and it seems very likely that it is, the US knowingly sunk an unarmed vessel and then left sailors to drown so that Pete Hegseth could boast about how manly & powerful it is to murder people.
The Tommy Lee Jones of Peacock butterflies. Or possibly the Edward James Olmos.
Thanks — that sandwich was helpful!
In the latest in a succession of unsuccessful working days, I got to the office early, started some teaching prep, developed a migraine that could not be banished by painkillers, realised I had no sumatriptan, cancelled my teaching and meetings, went home, and went to bed. Monday I try again…
I am looking forward to reading!