Dr Rhiannon Easterbrook

I am proposing for TalosCon 2026 that part of our conference budget is hiring an artist to help create speaker slides

We will ask speakers to not use AI and have an artist available to brainstorm images and create them

I’d love to do this for Kubecon and @socallinuxexpo.bsky.social too

#noAI

So tired I just started talking about Christmas baking with “marmozan”, which I can only assume is a portmanteau of marmoset and marzipan or is maybe is marzipan made out of marble?

Here's the DfE consultation document on international student fee levy, just gone live.

"Providers will pay a simple flat fee of £925 per student per year, which will not be introduced until 2028/29."

consult.education.gov.uk/internationa...

Looking forward to this tonight!

Brought to you by tofu 💚

Just have the need to share that I achieved new PBs for squats *and* bench press yesterday

Yes! It reminded me about how sheltered I am as a white person and not working in that environment. I was so shocked by it and had no idea they were dealing with it so frequently — not that the staff are unaffected psychologically of course. I wonder what the stats are though

It was at a rail station, so I think the normal area of responsibility is BTP but I guess HR must be involved. I spoke to a colleague the next day, who is of the same background, because I wanted to ask him if he’d be comfortable with me reporting, but I get the impression it happens all the time

😬🫣🤪

If you witnessed a hate crime against a member of staff but the victim said they weren’t going to report it because they said it wouldn’t be taken seriously, what would you do? Asking for me.

Can I quietly ask we stop talking about what "AI" *could* do in education and identify instead what's actually happening with AI in education? I'll start...

The so-called “Strike Papyrus” written by Amunnakht The scribe Amennakht is the author of this papyrus in the hieratic script. It is a report concerning a strike held during the reign of King Ramesses III in the village of Deir el-Medina. The workers protested because they had not received their regular food rations, which constituted payment for their work in the Valley of the kings. “Year 29, secondo month of the Inundation, day 10. Today the work squadron passed the control post shouting “we are hungry!” It is 18 days this month that (the men) go and sit at the back of the funerary temple of Tuthmosis III”. Despite various attempt at conciliation, the protest lasted a number of days. To the officials who tried to persuade them to return to work, the workers replied: “We are here because of the famine and thirst. We are not accustomed to not having unguents, fish, and greens. Write to the pharaoh our perfect lord, take note of our words, and write to the vizier, our superior, because we are in need of our provisions”. Inv. no. : Cat. 1880 TPOP Material: Plant fiber / Papyurs Date: 1187–1157 BCE Period: New Kingdom Dynasty: Twentieth Dynasty Reign: Ramesses III Provenance: Egypt, Luxor / Thebes, Deir el-Medina Acquisition: Purchase Bernardino Drovetti, 1824 Museum location: Museum / Floor 1 / Room 06 DEM / Central wall Selected bibliography: Andreu, Guillemette (a cura di)-Andreu, Guillemette, Gli artisti del faraone: Deir el-Medina e le Valli dei Re e delle Regine, Milano 2003, p. 187. Cline, Eric H.-O'Connor, David (ed.)-Cline H., Eric-O'Connor, David, Ramesses III: the life and times of Egypt's last hero, Ann Arbor 2012, pp. 67, 112, 118, 120–122, 136, 141, 352. Edgerton, William F., “The strikes in Ramses III's twenty-ninth year”, Journal of Near Eastern Studies 10 (1951), pp. 137–145. Gabler, Kathrin, “Methods of identification among the Deir el-Medina workmen and their service personnel: the use of names, titles, patronyms and identity marks in administrativ…

November 14, 1152 BCE: the first recorded workers' strike occurred in ancient Egypt under Pharaoh Ramses III. Artisans and laborers working on the royal tombs at Deir el-Medina stopped working in protest of delayed and insufficient rations, a form of wages. collezioni.museoegizio.it/en-GB/materi...

"What is certain, and felt instinctively by almost everybody, is that things cannot go on in their present way" – The Times, May 1975

“It is difficult to imagine a previous period when such an all-pervasive hopelessness was exhibited at all levels of British life” – Professor Stephen Haseler, 1975

[Scene is a kitchen - a middle aged woman called JANET is boiling peas at the stove. A younger more colourfully dressed woman named LIZ approached her.] JANET: Ugh... LIZ: What's up? JANET: I am so bored of cooking peas! LIZ: Have you tried... AI peas? JANET: AI peas? LIZ: They're peas with AI! [Liz holds up to us a packet of peas labelled: Pea-i AI - Peas with AI]. LIZ: Al-powered peas harness the potential of your peas JANET: What LIZ [Now a voiceover as we cut to a whizzy technology diagram of peas all connected by meaningless dotted lines] Why not take your peas to the next level with Al Peas' new Al tools to power your peas? [Show a techno diagram of a pea with a label reading 'AI' pointing to a random zone in it] LIZ: Each pea has Al in a way we haven't quite worked out yet but it's fine [Show Janet and Liz now in a Matrix-style world of peas] LIZ: With Al peas you can supercharge productivity and make AI work for your peas! JANET: What LIZ: Shut up LIZ: Our game-changing Pea-Al gives you the freedom to unlock the potential of the power of the future of your peas workflow From opening the bag of peas to boiling the peas to eating the peas To spending millions on adding Al to the peas and then having to work out what that even means. JANET: Is it really necessary to- LIZ [Grabbing Janet by the collar]: THE PEAS HAVE GOT AI, JANET [Cut to an advert ending screen, with the bag of peas and the slogan: AI PEAS: Just 'Peas' for god's sake buy the AI peas. [Ends]

Every ad now

Took such pleasure in sitting under a berry-laden tree while a busy squirrel dropped half-eaten fruits on me. So nice not to be inflicting problems on the more-than-human world, but instead be mildly inconvenienced by animal enjoying autumn fruitfulness.

Want a younger brain? Learn another language A vast study suggests that being multilingual can slow down cognitive ageing.

'people who are multilingual are half as likely to show signs of accelerated biological ageing than are those who speak just one language.'

Good thing that schools, universities and governments are so actively promoting modern languages then, isn't it? 1/2

A post on Mastodon by small cypress (@small_cypress@indieweb.social): As an art teacher I was worried AI would come up as an issue of "why should I learn how to draw when I can use AI instead." But the real issue is that my middle schoolers CONSTANTLY believe all art I show them is AI. Digital art. Photography. Oil paintings from the Western canon. "A human couldn't do that" Being convinced that humans can't make great art is kind of terrifying

I spotted this on Mastodon and I find it horrible, not least for the speed with which this has happened.

Was feeling really rubbish and tired and grumpy and foggy earlier but it turned out all I needed to do was deadlift 90kg for the first time in months and now I am a New Woman.

me at the end of class: here's a little speculative exercises; imagine you wake up from cryosleep in 2085. what's the kind of tech-society r/ship you'd like to see around you?

students: no AI

I honestly think students' views are missing from the 'should AI be integrated in classrooms' discussion

Yes, it killed a lot of men in my family and left him with lifelong health issues.

Onedrive I do not have time for your jests. I need to access my files!

Call for (post-PhD) historians and cultural scholars for the pod! We have a specific wishlist of scholarship we’re looking to add to the lineup:
- ancient & medieval history
and/or
- histories of anywhere other than the US and UK, preferably outside Europe

Pitches to: podcast@thisguysucked.com
🤗🤗🤗

My grandad getting on the post-war Emergency Training for Teachers scheme and leaving the coal mines was the best thing that happened to my family; it literally saved his life.

The back cover of a copy of Edward Said’s memoir Out of Place. The blurb includes the sentence: “Said writes with great passion and wit about his family and his friends from his birthplace in Jerusalem, schools in Cairo, and summers in the mountains above Beirut, to boarding school and college in the United States, revealing an unimaginably rich world of colorful characters and exotic eastern landscapes.”

Whoever wrote in the blurb for this edition of Edward Said’s Out of Place that the book reveals “an unimaginably rich world of colorful characters and exotic eastern landscapes” desperately needs to read some Edward Said

I was so happy when I saw that the next season is on its way!

I will never look at pink paint in the same way again.

The driver "managed to contact the control centre at Network Rail and get the train diverted onto the slow line", Calder says. "That was absolutely crucial because this train was scheduled to be travelling through Huntingdon station on the tracks with no platform at 125mph." "It didn't stop in the middle of nowhere, which would have been very difficult." Calder thinks this was handled in the "safest possible way" thanks to the "incredible professionalism from the driver and the police". Train drivers are trained on how to take appropriate action, he adds,

Next time someone tells you that train drivers "just push buttons" show them this from the BBC

A movie you have seen more than 7 Times with a GIF

Last chance to turn it off.

On Monday, November 3rd, Microsoft will start using your LinkedIn data for AI training. And remember, you're opted in by default.

To toggle it off 👉 Account - Settings & Privacy > Data privacy > Data for Generative AI Improvement.

Seeing young people out this evening and I’m not sure if they are wearing their usual clothes or doing Y2K as Halloween fancy dress. Either way, I’m being haunted by my youth.

So I’ve just seen that the new Lanthimos film is called Bugonia and features BEES. I guess a classical reception trip might be in order.