Marianne O'Doherty

China intimidated UK university to ditch human rights research, documents show - BBC News Sheffield Hallam University apologises to Professor Laura Murphy for restricting her academic freedom.

Pretty extraordinary story here
www-bbc-co-uk.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.bbc....

Let's just take a moment to reflect on the self-sacrifice and hope this person embodies - not the evil, hateful monsters thirsting for violence.

I've been getting back into the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series after many years, and the most relatable part is how everyday objects like doors and elevators have been imbued with artificial intelligence and it just makes them obnoxious and frustrating to use and everyone hates it.

Too much social media gives AI chatbots ‘brain rot’ Large language models fed low-quality data skip steps in their reasoning process.

'Artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots are worse at retrieving accurate information and reasoning when trained on large amounts of low-quality content, particularly if the content is popular on social media1, finds a preprint posted on arXiv on 15 October.' 1/2

All this endless testing does is make kids hate education. A friend told me recently that her daughter came home distressed because the teacher shouted at the class that they were one of the worst she'd taught and were going to screw up their sats. How does this help anyone?

Final reminder for National Trust Members to vote

Detail of a black mosaic with a white skull, the boney arm of the skeleton raised, and a few ribs.

Mosaic with black background, reclining skeleton with cup of wine in hand with two loaves of bread and an amphora upright in a stand.

Happy #Halloween!
A wonderful 2nd century AD Roman mosaic found near Antioch, Turkey showing a skeleton, cup of wine in hand, reclining on the floor of a dining room in a house reminding guests to enjoy life: ‘ευφρόσυνος’

There is a legal case for King Charles III to resume his status as monarch of the Americas—but it is strewn with obstacles

I'll wrap my ears around that while cooking later!

‘The nuns were convinced they were possessed by demons’: goth and metal stars select the scariest music ever made Forget the Monster Mash. For the ultimate Halloween playlist, reach for horror soundtracks, 1940s kids’ music and Russian darkwave – all chosen by Sunn O))), Creeper, Diamanda Galás and more

Ministry of Wolves sadly overlooked here as a scary soundtrack - music from a Brothers Grimm production by Alexander Hacke, Mick Harvey, Daniella Di Picciotto and Paul Wallfish. When we saw them in Bristol a woman yelled out 'you're scary, and I've seen shit!'
www.theguardian.com/music/2025/o...

Please join us on 22 November to discuss Women and Knowledge. We cannot wait to listen to and engage with all presentations 😁

This event is free to attend, but prior registration is required through this link: us02web.zoom.us/meeting/regi...

Thank you! We look forward to seeing you there!

This is actually a hell of a kick in the arse in royalspeak. Can't help but think, though, about how this sits with the allegations about Charles' favourite uncle widely reported and discussed in Ireland that somehow never quite land in the UK.

Indeed...

These terrifying bats are looking forward to #Halloween 🦇🦇🦇😱
Bodl. Library MS. Ashmole 304; 13th century; England, St. Albans; f.47v @bodleian.ox.ac.uk

What is it with the Techbros and Tolkien?

Another fun booking experience with the University's chosen travel management system, which seems unable to confirm, even given 20 days, whether my booking includes breakfast. Apparently this is more efficient than us booking stuff ourselves.

We have zero plans to put AI in LibreOffice, of course. Our focus is privacy and letting you control your data. Some users want AI features and they can get them via optional extensions made by the community – but we won't put it in the app itself.

Wind power has cut £104bn from UK energy costs since 2010, study finds Reduction comes from energy generated from windfarms and lower cost of gas owing to lower demand

UK wind power benefits and costs 2010-2023 :

Lower energy bills through avoided gas: £14.2bn
Avoided infra & new gas generation: £133.3bn
Subsidies paid to wind power: - £43.2bn

Overall benefit to UK economy **£104bn**

Don't believe the wind power haters

www.theguardian.com/environment/...

a screenshot of two X posts by Chris Lesinski (@lesinski) the first, posted at 7:14 PM EDT on Oct. 25, 2025, says: Quite an epic AI typo in The Journal today. The Paramount exec is named Cindy Holland and they wrote “Cindy the Netherlands” The post also includes a photo of the print newspaper featuring the passage in question. The second X post, a threaded reply from @lesinski, was posted 17 hours ago, and says: Spelling this out a little more: 1) yes, this is real, WSJ Sat/Sun edition this weekend 2) they probably do some form of AI copy editing and the style guide says “we don’t use the informal ‘Holland,’ instead use ‘the Netherlands’”… … it’s just that this is a very obvious exception a human should have caught.

oh my GODDDDDDDDDDD

(apologies for screenshotting the hellsite, which I no longer use; I saw the link in CNN's Reliable Sources newsletter)

In Southampton yesterday there was a national call (via Turning Point, Tommy Robinson, etc) for an anti-migrant rally.

Very happy that even at short notice that march was outnumbered by about 50%.

We had Nick Cave-Aged Cheddar and, for the vegans, Robert Plant-based Mature Cheddar alternative.

Brava @cathamclarke.bsky.social ! Great listening on 6 Music this morning on A History of England in 25 Poems! We enjoyed Half Man Half Biscuit, and I have had to explain the rest of the Wife of Bath's Tale to Tim, following that cliffhanger!

Yes, very much looking forward to this.

This is really important. Policy driven research which then influences policy risks falling into a blinkered feedback loop.

A venue I frequent in Bristol has recognized this and just changed the signs to Gender Neutral (urinals) and Gender Neutral (Cubicles only). Everyone looked confused for about a minute, then carried on self-sorting as before.

will be in attendance today'. A real world where when the men's toilets at a local theatre flooded they were told to use the women's (we coped). The reality is that these have never been strictly single sex spaces, but spaces into which we self-sort by social convention for convenience.

Wrote in similar terms to our equalities lead and union on day one after the judgement. It was bloody obvious that it was unimplementable with no connection to the real world. That's a real world where the women's changing rooms at my spa regularly have a sign on the door saying 'a male cleaner...

Plaid won - great! But why then am I listening to another effing Reform interview on R4 Today? Well, not listening now, coz I turned it off.

Bloody hell!

I really quite like UK planning laws.