Look, seeing an otter in the wild remains one of the most exciting moments and best memories of my life. Bridgewater, 2 years ago. 🦦 🦦
This obviously comes from someone who has never had to write a research grant application with a c. 7% success rate. Can only be done on unfunded research time, which is far less in reality than on paper. I have a note of how long my last one took as I was doing the Time Allocation Survey.
NEW
Land and Expand - how Palantir captured the Ministry of Defence
What a close reading of public domain documents tells us about two concerning contract awards
Detailed post by me, following-up on my FT column
emptycity.substack.com/p/land-and-e...
A brilliant short, punchy, persuasive because truthful comment. Anyone who knows anyone who works in e.g. TV knows that at most levels the pay and security are really poor.
This is awful.
Hmm. The idea that police take the display of flags supporting proscribed organisations seriously would be news to many in NI. The PSNI seem to think they need a new law just to take them down. See e.g. www.irishnews.com/news/norther...
"Palantir CEO Alex Karp says his AI technology will lessen the power of “highly educated, often female voters, who vote mostly Democrat” while increasing the power of working-class men."
Just saying it right out loud now.
newrepublic.com/post/207693/...
... I learned from mine yesterday, about Gen AI! They genuinely prefer Sir Philip Sidney). Govt after govt are sticking their heads in the sand over this stuff.
... Because that's seen as a key to future productivity? So fund it directly! Otherwise you're demanding student loans subsidise Britain's industrial strategy. If students are paying so much for their degrees over their lifetimes, they also want to study what they choose (which is not...
...public, community, social, research, knowledge exchange, and industrial roles that universities perform on regional and national levels and a fair funding system that doesn't seek to offload these costs onto grads. Ditto for employability training. You want us to teach students about AI...
... Withdrawing financial support for an important part of the local and regional creative economy. But not enough people asked why student fees - rather than general or local taxation- were ultimately paying for so much of it in the first place. We need an honest conversation about the vital...
It needs to be about funding, not just the fees system. The Sunderland Glass Centre is a good concrete example of a problem no one is taking seriously: that student fees have been contributing £ to wider public goods, not just benefitting graduates. People went mad about Sunderland Uni...
Older people who read and write for traditional newspapers going mental over removal of Churchill from banknotes while younger people, mostly oblivious, occasionally ask 'what is a banknote?' tells us a lots about where we are now.
We can all agree that I'd look fantastic on a £5 note
I still think about this a lot.
'Teaching-only staff at Sheffield Hallam University are set to be moved into a subsidiary firm, leaving research intensive scholars the only academics still being employed directly by the institution.'
Utterly inequitable & betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the teaching/research nexus. 1/3
Very excited to get up and running with this one: awarded £1.5m AHRC Standard Grant for Landscapes of Catastrophe, a project examining the context and impact of the Great Irish Famine www.qub.ac.uk/schools/NBE/...
#EnglishCreates: Futures
'What can poetry offer to policy makers?'
Today, Prof Nicky Marsh (University of Southampton) - the curator of this month's series on 'Communities' - asks how literary practice can help us to think about the 'pride in place' agenda: universityenglish.ac.uk/how-does-lit...
I hadn't seen this but it does indeed look nasty. One thing I would say is that every year for the last 3 years I have asked thirds year students whether they used NSS or Discover Uni to help choose their university & course. They almost all say no. The problem isn't a lack of information.
Terrific essay on inter-generational fairness from John Lanchester, that brings up some of the discomforts of the past but still broadly accepts the problems now faced. www.theguardian.com/inequality/2...
Whenever I see this woman's name a Ross Kemp style voice in my head shouts 'Leave it aht!'
'conversations about AI sound fundamentally different in Africa....There, debates about technocratic issues such as innovation, productivity, regulation and “safety” – the anxieties of the designer and the proprietor – are inseparable from histories of extraction and epistemic violence.' 1/2
WANT THIS NOW
#EnglishCreates: Futures
Today, Prof Stephanie Jones (Uni of Southampton) reflects on the process of shaping an interdisciplinary, cross-sector community:
'Shared language is powerful, possible and necessary for inclusive action.'
universityenglish.ac.uk/subtle-and-s...
#EnglishStudies
A sickening society is clear in these statistics
So why is it not in the news?
Powerful wake-up call from @chakrabortty.bsky.social www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
Mary Wallopers cameo in How to Get to Heaven from Belfast - excellent!
#EnglishCreates: Futures
Today, Prof Will May (Uni of Southampton) reflects on the stories that poets tell about the people who make them poets:
'Understanding that poetry is a plural, collaborative process is also a way of reaffirming its inclusivity.'
universityenglish.ac.uk/practicality...
Jansen Ganesh is on fire in this column on the UK’s role in the Iran conflict
www.ft.com/content/eaee...
FT comments section this morning - saying what everyone else is thinking, right?
People can debate AI all they like, but surely we can all agree that anyone who owns or uses a pair of the pervert glasses that secretly record people should be ostracised immediately and totally from our society? I'm sorry but your pervert glasses prove you're a pervert! Get out of town!
