Joanna Tai

First giggle of the day.

Comparison of 2025 and 2026 caps - for each university the first number is their 2025 cap, the 2nd number is their 2026 cap, and the % figure is the annual increase Federation University Australia 1,100 1,800 64% Charles Sturt University 1,000 1,600 60% The University of Newcastle 1,600 2,050 28% Charles Darwin University (CDU) 2,200 2,650 20% University of Canberra 1,500 1,800 20% The University of Western Australia 3,000 3,550 18% Western Sydney University 3,400 4,000 18% Curtin University 3,500 4,100 17% La Trobe University 4,100 4,800 17% Macquarie University 4,500 5,250 17% Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology 6,600 7,700 17% Southern Cross University 1,300 1,500 15% Deakin University (Deakin) 5,700 6,550 15% The University of Notre Dame Australia 700 800 14% The University of Queensland 7,050 8,050 14% The University of Melbourne 9,300 10,500 13% University of the Sunshine Coast 1,200 1,350 13% Victoria University** 3,600 4,050 13% Australian Catholic University 1,700 1,900 12% University of Technology Sydney 4,800 5,350 11% Murdoch University 3,500 3,900 11% Australian National University 3,400 3,750 10% Griffith University 3,600 3,950 10% The University of New South Wales 9,500 10,350 9% Adelaide University 6,750 7,350 9% Monash University 10,390 11,300 9% Queensland University of Technology 4,500 4,750 6% Central Queensland University 3,000 3,150 5% University of Southern Queensland** 1,000 1,050 5% Edith Cowan University 3,600 3,700 3% University of Wollongong 3,600 3,700 3% University of Tasmania (UTas) 2,200 2,250 2% Flinders University 3,000 3,000 0% James Cook University 2,200 2,200 0% Swinburne University of Technology 4,500 4,500 0% The University of Sydney 11,900 11,900 0% University of New England 700 700 0% Total 145,190 160,850 11%

2026 public uni international student caps have been released. Federation Uni & Charles Sturt Uni will be very pleased by their increases, while 5 unis chose not to apply for an increase. Student accommodation places & SE Asia links were criteria for higher caps
www.education.gov.au/download/197...

A bus stop ad for a wearable AI device called Friend. The device looks like a white necklace with a large round pendant. The ad reads: Friend [frend] noun Someone who listens, responds, and supports you Below is the website for the product (friend.com) Someone annotated the ad by crossing out the word "Friend" and writing, "Your real friends have souls."

Today alone, I drove by four ads for Friend, a wearable AI device that is actively being marketed as a companion. Someone decided to #annotate one of the ads. They crossed out "Friend" and wrote "Your real friends have souls."

Mic drop.

#AI #ArtificialIntelligence #Friend #FriendAI

But yes. My kingdom for a good copy editor!!

... And there are also crazy (tasty) alterations like High Cheese which is served at dinner time!!

www.westinmelbournedining.com.au/highcheese

I think the working class Aussie use of "tea" is very contextual - "come over for tea" might mean arvo tea or dinner, "tea break" could be morning or afternoon but not lunch or dinner. High tea now definitely more like the UK cream tea but there's a whole round of savoury plus sweets plus scones

The ARC’s commitment to provide zero comms on anything (remember the last LP round release-dates chaos?) is probably its most dependable achievement.

It's mid-October & ARC haven't updated us since mid-July on the Brand New Grants System.

When will we be told?

What schemes will even run?

ARC "paused" (cancelled?) the only Indigenous scheme, plus Laureates & all Industry Fellowships, and so far there's no replacements.

ARC? Anyone?

Two of the students I supervised returned to our doctoral group to talk about life post PhD last week (their suggestion!) and they're all doing cool things that interest them. The job market is as always a challenge, though it's got a lot worse.

And yes, obviously still in academia. Very lucky that things worked out so far.

The department I did my PhD in doesn't exist anymore but I do occasionally do things with its successor, am on a project with my main supervisor (we work at different institutions now) & do professional society things with my 2nd supervisor.

Collections: Life, Work, Death and the Peasant, Part IVe: The No-Rest Of It This is the fifth dish of the fourth course of our series (I, II, IIIa, IIIb, IVa, IVb, IVc, IVd) looking at the lives of pre-modern peasant farmers, who made up a majority of all of the humans who…

No, you don't work harder than a Middle Ages Peasant, and you sure as fuck are nowhere near as hardworking as the women in the Middle Ages peasantry.

acoup.blog/2025/10/10/c...

How AI bias could undermine inclusive education The promise of personalised learning masks very real risks that demand careful attention from educators and policymakers

Now generative AI is producing new bias challenges. One is the underrepresentation of children with additional needs, which "may result in technologies that misunderstand, overlook or pathologise neurodivergent and disabled learners"
schoolsweek.co.uk/ai-bias-pose...

Comment by Tom Diettrich on a linkedin post reading: "You can't "test-in quality" in engineering; you can't "review-in quality" in research. We need incentives for people to do better research. Our system today assumes that 75% of submitted papers are low quality, and it is probably right (I'll bet it is higher). If this were a manufacturing organization, an 75% defect rate would result in bankruptcy. Imagine a world in which you could have an AI system check the correctness/quality of your paper. If your paper passed that bar, then it could be published (say, on arXiv). Subsequent human review could assess its importance to the field. In such a system, authors would be incentivized to satisfy the AI system. This will lead to searching for exploits in the AI system. A possible solution is to select the AI evaluator at random from a large pool and limit the number of permitted submissions. I imagine our colleagues in mechanism design can improve on this idea." Original: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7381685800549257216/?commentUrn=urn%3Ali%3Acomment%3A(activity%3A7381685800549257216%2C7382628060044599296)&dashCommentUrn=urn%3Ali%3Afsd_comment%3A(7382628060044599296%2Curn%3Ali%3Aactivity%3A7381685800549257216)

Here's a rule of thumb: If "AI" seems like a good solution, you are probably both misjudging what the "AI" can do and misframing the problem.

>>

It's just a transport pass in your google wallet. But yes you have to put money on it first to use it.

Well, you could have tapped your phone if you had an Android device 🤷🏻‍♀️

Are you a university staff member? Tired? Stressed? Overworked? It will only take 5-6 mins to help independent researchers shine a light on the state of wellbeing in our universities. Results will be published and responses anonymous. Please help by adding your voice: nteu.info/census

wikipedia has a good page with information on how they detect signs of AI writing

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikiped...

When you first heard me speak against this genocide, you heard my words as betrayal. But they were meant as love | Sarah Schwartz Not speaking would go against everything I was taught to honour: the righteous among the nations – those who refused to be bystanders to injustice

A letter to those who taught me my Jewishness, and who now sit on the other side of a deep chasm.

When you first heard me speak against this genocide, you heard my words as betrayal. But they were meant as love

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

University caught out using AI to wrongly accuse students of cheating with AI An Australian university has accused thousands of its students of cheating with artificial intelligence. The problem? Many have done nothing wrong.

Each day the upper management of different unis seemingly find new ways to disappoint those of us working at universities. I love what I do, it breaks my heart what's been allowed to happen to unis in recent decades. www.abc.net.au/news/2025-10... Robodebt for university academic integrity? WT!

Too lazy to use a mixing bowl for tomorrow night's pizza dough, did it directly in a 1.5L plastic container. What could go wrong?

Erin Patterson mushroom murders inspire new book by Helen Garner Co-written with Chloe Hooper and Sarah Krasnostein, The Mushroom Tapes is inspired by their experience attending the headline-grabbing trial earlier this year

The disrespect to Sarah Krasnostein & Chloe Hooper! Literary version of Daily Mail celeb culture. 'Helen flaunted her semi-colons during Brunswick fashion week'. (Alt faulty: Guardian headline says 'Mushroom murders inspire new book by Helen Garner'.) www.theguardian.com/books/2025/o...

There’s… a lot going on in this story

I just saw someone use the abbreviation “AI;DR” and I’ll be laughing for a while.

Major data breach as up to 3,000 flood victims' details loaded to ChatGPT The NSW Reconstruction Authority says the breach occurred in March and involved the personal data of applicants to the Northern Rivers Resilient Homes Program.

Breach? Sounds like people gave their data to the government on a promise of disaster support, the government gave their data and our money to a contractor on a promise of service provision, and the contractor gave their data to a tech business on a promise of slop.

www.abc.net.au/news/2025-10...

‘Can’t afford Sydney’: The uni with a problem (and a plan that might fix it) Sydney University ranks worst in NSW for student experience. Can this plan fix it?

“The rent is favourable compared to Scape properties nearby, he says, but warned any new housing should not be run by a private provider…noting the building was intensely hot in summer, some kitchen appliances did not work, and the water temperature in the showers was temperamental.”

Dear computer boffins please stop trying to fix problems I don’t have | First Dog on the Moon I don’t want AI in anything and certainly not everything please stop asking

Another cartoon where I complain about technology? Yes please! www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

... But now I know the bar is low for how long it takes. The bus driver is incredibly patient.

Bus is 10 mins late because an old man on a mobility scooter 1. Struggled to get up the ramp and onto the bus then 2. Struggled to manoeuvre the scooter into the designated bay.

It's got to be a combination of design problems - I also experienced them with getting my pram on board some buses...

My Thoughts on the Riyadh Comedy Festival I’ve been asked for my opinion on the Riyadh Comedy Festival and rather than answer the same question 23 times, I’ll just put this out here. Oh, and I should preface this with the fact that I was not ...

Why not just link to the blog post?

officialdavidcross.com/blogs/press/...