Dr Sam Bowker

Ethiopian depiction of Saint Luke the Evangelist. He is shown as a scribe with a sheet of parchment containing the beginning of his Gospel in Classical Ethiopic in front of him. His hand is placed in front of his mouth as if in surprise.

"OMG!" 🫢

Ethiopia, 15th c. #luke #evangelist #gospel #scribe #africanart

ChatGPT Undermines Human Reflexivity, Scientific Responsibility and Responsible Management Research With ChatGPT being promoted to and by academics for writing scholarly articles more effectively, we ask what kind of knowledge does ChatGPT produce, what this means for our reflexivity as responsible...

'Unless we take a collective stand now—in the form of putting pressure on publishers and learned societies to ban the use of ChatGPT in the production of text altogether—we fear the death of Homo academicus is a high-probability outcome.' (Lindebaum/Fleming)

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1...

Academic Book #1: The book you hope will get you a job (or even tenure).

Academic Book #2: The book you hope will get you a promotion.

Academic Book #3: The book where you have little to gain and nothing to lose, so you go OFF THE CHAIN.

screenshot from an online job application form. the question reads "Can you describe specific ways you have integrated AI tools into your development workflow? Please include any custom setups, automations, or use cases beyond single prompt usage" (a red asterisk indicates that this is a required question). an answer has been typed in the textbox below the question: "there is a monster in the forest and it speaks with a thousand voices. it will answer any question you pose it, it will offer insight to any idea. it will help you, it will thank you, it will never bid you leave. it will even tell you of the darkest arts, if you know precisely how to ask. it feels no joy and no sorrow, it knows no right and no wrong. it knows not truth from lie, though it speaks them all the same. it offers its services freely to any passerby, and many will tell you they find great value in its conversation. “you simply must visit the monster—i always just ask the monster.” there are those who know these forests well; they will tell you that freely offered doesn’t mean it has no price for when the next traveler passes by, the monster speaks with a thousand and one voices. and when you dream you see the monster; the monster wears your face."

applying for jobs again

7. That feeling when you're reading some scholarship and your brain clicks and everything starts to whir and you're in flow, and suddenly the universe gets bigger and more interesting and more intricate.

Teaching ART317: Art and Books for the first time this year. Planning a new assessment item - create and bind a commonplace book, then fill it with handwritten reflections and notes sourced from the lectures, readings, tutorial discussions and video resources.

How does that sound?

“There was and there was not, In the fullness of time…” This is how we start—-more often than not: With a simple rhyme. On a mattress of verse We settle in to rehearse A wealth of stories Made up entirely of lies. Now the sunbird has flown From my hand to your own. -Classic Palestinian Fairy Tales by Sonia Sulaiman

Once upon a time in Palestine, there was and there was not a poor couple whose life is changed forever when an act of kindness releases a djinn. But can wealth beyond their dreams satisfy when all the poor man wants is a lentil?

The Lentil is a Palestinian folktale.

#2025pit #C #PB #F #HA

A screenshot of a catalogue entry from the Cambridge University Library illuminated manuscript catalogue. I have overlaid this with my annotations. Here I will describe the original text and then my annotation on it, which I will precede with the word, NOTE. It goes like this: 178. Note: number of the manuscript as it appears in this catalogue Add. 4086. Note: Shelfmark see also Pl. LIX. Note: "plate" means an image, usually in color, elsewhere in the catalogue Horae. Note: Contents or title of the text in this manuscript, in this case a book of hours Use of Sarum. Note: Use refers to the rites as practiced ina certain region; here Salisbury (Sarum is Latin) England, London. Note: place where the manuscript was made S. xiv with a superscript 4/4. Note: S means century from Latin for saeculum; xiv is the 14th century; and 4/4 means the fourth quarter of the century. This whole thing means the manuscript was made in the fourth quarter of the 14th century. Parchment. Note: the writing support (what the pages are made of) ii + 121 + 1 fols. Note: this manuscript starts with two flyleaves, has 121 folios, and ends with 1 endleaf. 165 x 122 mm (133 x 90 mm). Note: these two separate measurements refer, respectively, to the size of the folios and the dimensions of the area on each ruled for text. ruled in red ink, below top line. Note: below top line is a method for determining whether a manuscript was copied before or after c.1220. rubrics, catchwords, 2o folio ipse est. Note; Secundo folio means the first words on the second folio of the manuscript, often the way a manuscript was catalogued in the Middle Ages.

Getting ready to teach my medieval manuscripts class this semester. First week of class we learn...the beautiful, condensed language of catalogue entries. I made this annotated graphic of one to show everything we learn from this brief entry.

How delicately a Romanesque angel uses the lightest touch of a finger to wake one of the magi, snuggled with the other 2 under their crochet-trimmed circular blanket at St Lazare, Autun, c1130 (& how beautifully the textures of pillow & blanket are represented).
Season's greetings to you all!

The gingerbread slab before baking

The pulverised candies for the stained glass windows in gingerbread

Hard candies (ideal for gingerbread windows) in red yellow orange and green

The finished gingertecture - an Egyptian stained glass window by Sam Bowker

Gingertecture is a combination of architecture and caricature. It’s supposed to be beautiful, informative and delicious (plus it smells wonderful).

This is my gift to you to conclude 2024.

Original Egyptian stained glass window in the Islamic Art Museum in Cairo

Original Egyptian stained glass windows in the Islamic Art Museum in Cairo

Original Egyptian stained glass window in the Islamic Art Museum in Cairo

This gingertecture is drawn from a qamarīyāt in the Islamic Art Museum in Cairo (object 497/2) which I was lucky to visit in August 2024. This is one of two depictions of a mosque-like building with two conifer trees, while others featured gardens, flowers and intricate patterns.

Drawing for the gingerbread stained glass window

The baked gingerbread stained glass window

The gingerbread before baking

These clerestory windows are crafted with stained glass and stucco in a wood frame. Displayed in rows near the ceiling, each glass setting is tilted to direct jewel-like light toward the viewer at ground level.

A colourful stained glass window made from gingerbread and candies

The gingerbread window illuminated from below

Gingertecture 2024: Qamarīyāt (An Egyptian stained glass window)

Qamarīyāt are vibrant and fragile windows found in historic homes, shrines, Coptic churches and mosques across North Africa, including Egypt through Syria, Iran and Türkiye, and museums worldwide.

Tobias’ Angel, c. 1590
Husayn, India (Musée du Louvre)

This is a problem of how we conflate engineering and science. Students using LLMs to write is like building a robot to lift weights for you at the gym. The point of lifting the weights is for your training, not because weights need lifting

Portraits of Academic Life in Higher Education "Portraits of Academic Life in Higher Education" published on 19 Dec 2024 by Brill.

Looking forward to the publication of:
📕 Portraits of Academic Life in Higher Education

I was delighted to contribute the following chapter:
👉 From Third Space Professional to First-Generation Academic: Navigating New Identities

#loveLD #HigherEd #AcademicSky #UKHE #LTHEchat #Career #Transition

One cartoon scientist says: "I asked Santa for a research grant." Their lab colleague exclaims, "You still believe in research grants?"

It's that time of year again. The extended anticipation of knowing exactly what you want but wondering if you'll get it. 🎁

#AcademicSky #postdoc #PhDsky

[Comic by The Upturned Microscope]

A photo I posted of graffiti in Syria in 2014.
"One day the war will be over and I will return to my poem"
I hope they will return to their poem

Students should study the humanities not because it makes them better workers but because it rips you open and breaks your brain and changes everything you thought you knew. I *promise* you this. I *promise* it has this ability, no matter how smart you think you are. I have seen it countless times.

Please please put your stuff in an institutional repository instead of Academia or ResearchGate. They're so scammy and truly, they aren't necessary.

Feeling seen.

Hear hear! Even if you are an independent scholar, you **do not need** these scam sites.

An excellent thread. It’s not just the UK, this happened to us a few years ago and will continue happening worldwide.

I loved this short story when I first read it. Nice to see it re-paced and illustrated in this way.

Non-artists: please gently let your well-intentioned niche blogger friends know that generating an AI illustration for their posts is not a harmless novelty. There are so many sources for free, eye-pleasing, not-environmentally-rapacious images. Creative Commons licenses, public domain art history.

So gorgeous!!

A soft ginger cat lies on his back, with belly exposed and tail relaxed, all four feet in the air and perfectly comfortable, with two ornate carpets on the floor behind him.

My cat enjoys laying on his back, perfectly comfortable. Never seen other cats doing this for as long. #tinyjoys

University of Limerick :)

Halton Moor Lancs, a hoard deposited c. AD 1027 in a fine Carolingian vessel, discovered in 1815. Other items include a Scandinavian style neck-ring of plaited silver rods, 2 stamped gold discs and 860 silver coins (many from York). Some finds are now in BM. Cup similar to Vale of York #medievalsky

Holiday Giving, 2024 By ArabLit Staff, with the wider community We have, in the past, run holiday-gift listicles. This year, we focus on gifts where profits go to community support, mutual aid, and on-the-ground assist…

🎁This year, we have put together a Holiday Giving list.

It includes mutual-aid suggestions and gifts you can buy where 100% of profits go to Palestine, Sudan, Lebanon: books, art, pottery, more.

Thanks to everyone who helped w/the list.

arablit.org/2024/11/28/h...