Emma Merkling

Are AI-generated summaries suitable for studying and research? Despite didactic, ethical, and environmental concerns, the use of GenAI is on the rise in academia. For most applications, the jury is still out on whether and how they will benefit education and rese...

This is one of the most reasoned & persuasive arguments for not allowing LLMs anywhere near reading & writing intensive classrooms. We can 100% choose not to outsource our reading & writing labor to a bot, and model for our students why they should do the same. #EduSky

www.tue.nl/en/our-unive...

‘Unbelievably dangerous’: experts sound alarm after ChatGPT Health fails to recognise medical emergencies Study finds ChatGPT Health did not recommend a hospital visit when medically necessary in more than half of cases

Study finds ChatGPT Health did not recommend a hospital visit when medically necessary in more than half of cases. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

A good day to live in Manchester! 💚💚

Actually, the left is winning the AI debate But it does need to get organized.

“In fact, the left appears to be so successfully engaged in matters related to AI that one can’t help but wonder if allegations about its supposed ignorance of the technology are motivated by a desire to change the very terms of the debate.” - @bcmerchant.bsky.social

🔔🔔🔔

Gorton and Denton constituency poll results VOTING INTENTION Opinium for Forward Democracy 16-24 Feb 2026 30% 25% 20% 15% 10% 5% 30% 28% 28% 0% - Green Reform Labour Independent Lib Dem WHICH PARTY PEOPLE WOULD VOTE TACTICALLY FOR Opinium for Forward Democracy 16-24 Feb 2026 70% 60% 66% 50% 40% 30% 41% 20% 10% 0% т LD & Lab willing to vote Green LD & Green willing to vote Labour FORWARD DEMOCRACY StopReformUK.VOTE

Full details of the final opinion poll in Gorton and Denton.

Greens ahead and more likely to be the choice of tactical voter to keep out Reform.

Share. Everywhere.

These are “low enrollment” majors but the classes are regularly at capacity. They changed the funding structure a few years ago here, switching the allocation from course enrollments to majors then blamed these departments for a structural, top-down change. This is entirely a political choice.

Fore-edge painting depicting a view of Venice (gondolas, lovely architecture, a colourful gold, red and yellow sky with clouds)

Fore-edge painting depicting a view of Venice (gondolas, lovely architecture, a colourful gold, red and yellow sky with clouds). Seller's hands holding the book to display the picture are in the image.

Just LOOK at this gorgeous fore-edge painting from Gaetano Polidori's 1919 'Traduzione del lament di Tasso di Lord Byron'. @preraphaelitesoc.bsky.social 😍

🚨Job klaxon 🚨
Come and be my colleague at York! We're looking for an Associate Lecturer in Modern British History and Public History. Two year post - apply by 19 March. 🗃️
More details here www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DQO971/a...

If you’re a fan of the pod or just looking for a small gig, pls help us out with some new (spooky, fun) music! Pls share widely

Four dental phantoms sitting on stands with square bases. The tops of these dental phantoms are polished, shiny silver, with the denture-like false teeth, mouths wide open, framed by pink or orange-pink gums.

As part of the new special issue on "The Intersection of Humanities and Ethics in Dentistry," you can now read open access my article "The Dental Phantom as a Tool for Exploring Fear, the Face, and Dental Education." 🦷

Hoping to turn this into a much bigger project!

commons.ada.org/cgi/viewcont...

When we model giving feedback, setting up in-class workshops, and splitting students into different pair and group dynamics, these are the forms of community we are seeking to instruct them in. Not every task has a carrot or a stick. Some are just about the complicated work of being together.

Calling all Thomas Hardy scholars - I bought a book for an obscure Algernon Blackwood story only to discover that it appears to be inscribed by Hardy. Can anyone confirm? And who is Caroline (‘Sammy’)? 🧐

3 weeks to decide, 9 months salary to choose to leave - almost certainly forever - the industry you've dedicated most of your adult life to.

You can completely uninstall/disable copilot on Windows. Your system and local search will run faster afterward. www.howtogeek.com/how-to-rip-o...

THREE lectureships available in the Music Department @kingscollegelondon.bsky.social @kingsmusic.bsky.social — see advertisements in the thread below.

CALL FOR PAPERS: PERFORMING EVIL: the mediation and display of diabolic spectres, 1700-2000'. 4 & 5 June 2026, Leuven. This conference explores the tangled histories of supernatural, diabolic evil and all kinds of spectral apparitions in the last three centuries – Walter Scott’s ‘malignant and unhappy beings’. Specifically, it is interested in how and why ghosts, spirits and related apparitional phenomena were framed as diabolic, demonic or malign manifestations from the afterlife. Diabolic connotations of ghosts and spirits did meaningful cultural work. They were mobilised to discredit ghost beliefs and spiritual practices, to delegitimise competing beliefs, or to invest doctrinal arguments with occult authority. They could also function as tools of scepticism and ridicule as well as triggers of wonder, fear and religiosity. Put differently, the nexus of ghosts and evil is deeply historical. And it was often articulated through performative means: in gestures and expressions of (dis)belief, in visual and textual representations, in séance rooms, on the stage and on the page. Emerging from this nexus are theatrical spirits of evil, staged, embodied, and made legible through mediation and display. In this sense, every ghost is a theatrical ghost. Through the focus on the construction and staging of diabolic spirits, this conference aims to develop a methodological framework for studying historical forms of occultism and demonology more broadly in terms of performance.

Exploring how the relationship of spectrality and evil has shifted in shape over time and across different cultures, the conference invites contributions that can consider a wide range of historical actors – clerics, mediums, ghost-hunters, debunkers, necromancers, stage performers, eyewitnesses. This conference aims to study cultural intersections and interactions to arrive at a more granular understanding of discursive, practical and material connections between spirits and evil. At the same time this lens zooms out, making visible broader dynamics of knowledge construction in specific historical moments. How, for instance, did hauntings and possessions shape communities and audiences? How did religious or folkloric ideas about the devil inform spectral encounters? We hope to bring together historians, art historians, theatre and literary scholars, folklorists and anthropologists from every stage in their career around the above questions. We welcome 20-minute papers on topics that include but are by no means limited to: - making spectral evil visible: performance, arts, media, technologies, popular cultures - making spectral evil invisible: popular and occult knowledge circulation - performing (un)belief: practices and rhetoric, summoning and debunking on the stage (from popular stages to the lecture hall and the laboratory) - materiality of spectres: the function of bodies and objects - diabolic spirits and (intellectual, vernacular, theological, folkloric) ideas about morality, mortality and temporality - occult performance and ‘cultural scripts’ of ghost encounters (from necromancy to poltergeists) - affect and emotions: fear, grief, trauma… and hope Send abstracts (c.250 words) and bios (c.100 words) to kristof.smeyers@kuleuven.be before 21 March 2026. Please do get in touch if you have any questions.

Hi everyone, I'm organising a conference in Leuven, 4-5 June, and you're all invited*! It's called 'Performing evil: the mediation and display of diabolic spectres 1700-2000' and here is the call for papers (get in touch if you'd like a pdf!). Please share widely!

*to submit an abstract before 21/3

When engineered scarcity & competitive entrepreneurialism become defining features of intellectual life, terms for understanding material struggle tend to metastasize into tokens of prestige accumulation & self branding. This should be resisted.

www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1...

Catchy I like it

For anyone interested in our 18-month post in British Studies please follow the link below. @ihr.bsky.social

www.jobs.london.ac.uk/Job/JobDetai...

The front page of the Daily Graphic newspaper published Saturday 25 August, 1917, featuring portraits of 'Women in the Order of the British Empire', including Lady Byron, the honourable Mrs Alfred Lyttelton, Her Majesty the Queen.

Apply for our PhD placement scheme to get involved in extraordinary research at the Library. There are eight available placements exploring a variety of themes including war poetry, 21st-century digital tools, illustrated newspapers and decarbonisation.

Find out more: link.bl.uk/PhDPlacements

Ok this makes so much sense, I was struggling all day

Image source here: https://www.loc.gov/resource/cph.3g05734/ This is a grey-and-sepia-toned watercolor depicting a building made up of many odd towers and elements, along with several tall smokestacks belching a lot of dark grey smoke into the grey sky. The building is reflected in the water surrounding it.

Gave a little talk today for a colleague's class on historic images of mills & factories and was surprised again by the fact that this image is from 1881. It's a watercolor by Joseph Pennell depicting Bethlehem Steel Works in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, a place I called home for a few years.

A table from the Pall Mall Gazette showing the list of votes for 'Best Living novelist'

Best novelist in PMG's 1885 '10 Greatest Living Englishmen' poll throws up more surprises, for a paper of the London clubland. Wilkie Collins on top (346), only just ahead of William Black, & Walter Besant. Hardy a distant 9th (a mere 20 votes), Meredith (9). 5 in desperation for the dead Trollope.

Jacket design for Darwin and the Queer Origins of Life: A History of Sex and Science by Ross Brooks. It features a historic, drawn image of a gynandromorph gypsy moth, with distinctive female patterning on its left side and male on its right. Against a black background, the image and text (title and author's name) are brightly rendered in a spectrum of colours resonant of the Progress Pride Flag.

My first book, Darwin and the Queer Origins of Life, will be published by Yale University Press on 11 August (UK) and 8 September (US). Please help spread the word! 🙏

UK: yalebooks.co.uk/book/9780300... @yalebooks.bsky.social 🏳️‍🌈📚🐵

US: yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300... @yalepress.bsky.social 🏳️‍⚧️ 🗃️🦋

!! This looks brilliant

Very indebted to Jonathan Smith’s excellent work (& Gillian Beer, & many more!)

My essay 'The Sticky Sundew: Plant Carnivory and Queer Erotics' is out! Musings on Darwin’s writings on his 'beloved' Sundew & the erotics generated by his encounters w this carnivorous plant—making visible forms of relation in which pleasure & pain, desire & disgust, life & death stick together

OpenAI’s president is a Trump mega-donor Greg Brockman said he started “getting involved politically” in 2025.

OpenAI’s president is a Trump mega-donor

The Legislation Upon winning a general election, a Reform government under Prime Minister Nigel Farage will: 1) Leave the ECHR 2.) Repeal the Human Rights Act and replace it with a British Bill of Rights. 3.) Pass The Illegal Migration (Mass Deportation) Bill: This Bill will: Create a legal duty to remove illegal migrants for the Home Secretary The Bill opens with a blunt obligation for the Home Secretary: "The Secretary of State shall ensure the removal from the United Kingdom of each person who does not have extant leave to remain and is not an Irish citizen or otherwise protected by regulations made under this Act." The following parts of the legislation are introduced on an emergency basis, with an in-built sunset clause after 5 years: Disapply the 1951 Refugee Convention, the UN Convention Against Torture, the Council of Europe Anti-Trafficking Convention (ECAT) Derogation is justified under the Vienna Convention doctrine of state of necessity: Britain faces a national emergency in which uncontrolled illegal migration undermines public order. These treaties will otherwise be used by activist judges to frustrate deportations, even after the repeals of the HRA and ECHR. Create Detention Power Without Hardial Singh Constraints This means illegal migrants can be detained until they are deported. Activist lawyers routinely use Hardial Singh to secure their client's bail, after which the client absconds. If you came to the UK illegally, you are ineligible for asylum. End of story All asylum claims will become inadmissible if made by a person within the Act's scope. If you came to the country illegally, you are ineligible for asylum in the UK. This strips the Home Office, the immigration tribunals and the higher courts of jurisdiction to even consider claims. A claim that cannot be considered cannot suspend removal and therefore, cannot delay a flight. Re-entering after deportation and destroying ID becomes a serious criminal offence Re-entry after deportation will be…

The Operational Plan We will create an enforcement unit called UK Deportation Command, including an Illegal Migrant Identification Centre - harnessing cutting edge data fusion A Reform government will create a cutting edge enforcement data centre to relentlessly identify and detain all illegal migrants in the UK. Using powers granted by the new legislation, it will automatically share data between the Home Office, NHS, HMRC, DVLA, banks and the police. It will power bulk warrants, including mandatory biometric capture during any police encounter. Each power addresses a failure mode observed over the past decade - for example, banks and GP surgeries unaware of a customer's status, or overstayers slipping through because a warrant covered only a single property. Secure Immigration Removal Centres (SIRC) will be built rapidly to detain up to 24,000 Detention capacity for up to 24,000 will be created within 18 months. The Home Office will build Secure Immigration Removal Centres. This will be modular accommodation built in remote parts of the country. Conditions are basic but not punitive: prefabricated two-person rooms, canteen catering, on-site medical suites. Robust perimeters and internal movement controls prevent escapes. This enables detention-on-arrest: no more bail. This capacity would allow for up to 24,000 illegal migrants to be deported per month. Initial Voluntary Return Window A six-month Assisted Voluntary Return window precedes large-scale raids. Illegal migrants will be offered a financial incentive to self-deport. An app will be launched to facilitate this. The Deportation Flights The Home Office will scale up charters to 5 flights per day. To guard against last-minute aircraft unserviceability, the RAF will keep one Voyager aircraft on six-hour 'hot-spare' readiness. If a commercial charter breaks down, detainees can still be flown out that night, preserving operational integrity. The legal reset will mean activist lawyers will no longer be able preven…

The UK version of “Project 2025” by the Reform party includes a British ICE, a concentration camp for 24,000 people, mass surveillance and withdrawing from refugee, anti-torture and anti-trafficking conventions.

It’s on their website. That’s how comfortable fascists are in the UK today.

Tattoos, ‘Deviant’ Signs, and Surveilled Skins Season 3, Episode 4 ‘Human skin with tattoos of two women’s heads and a sailor’, French (1880–1920), Wellcome Museum Collection (The Science Museum, London)Gustave Caillebotte, &#…

Definitely. Gemma Angel and Matt Lodder have written a lot about them. (We all did a podcast episode about it a short while ago! drawingbloodpod.com/tattoos-devi...)