Nik Gunn

Net replacement rates in unemployment for a single homeowner on average wage without children (%, 2024) - pink dot is at month one of unemployment and blue dot at month 60. UK rates are low by international standards

Even if AI doesn’t hit jobs in a big way, unemployment is starting to re-emerge as a policy issue. So it’s good that @sarahoconnorft.ft.com reminds us how low our unemployment benefits are, and how this can lead to people taking jobs below their skill level
www.ft.com/content/771a...

Good news that the digitised Beowulf manuscript has survived the digital equivalent of the Cottonian Library fire, the British Library cyberattack of 2023

Newcastle pubs ban AI art from breweries to protect local creatives As two pubs in Newcastle ban AI art, artists discuss the impact it can have on creatives.

"If I was to use ChatGPT for my designs rather than our designer Sean, that's taking money out of the local area into the hands of a multibillionaire ... removing value from the local community and local artists [and] into the hands of some of the richest people in the world."

#AIslop #refuseresist

Are we falling out of love with nonfiction? In the early 2020s, readers flocked to books to explain political turbulence. But is the world now too grim to read about – and are podcasters taking the place of authors?

my view on this is that publishers should stop it with the 80k wordcount obsession, so many contemporary non-fic books are obviously 40-50k pieces of work stretched to the extent that they become very boring to read - just let people write cheaper, shorter books! www.theguardian.com/books/2025/d...

I feel like David Graeber really captured something about lefty academia because the concept of “bullshit job” is very resonant and has a lot of intuitive appeal but his exploration of it is totally hamstrung by the fact that he’s never left campus and is very vague on the mechanics of actual work

I once taught Old Norse to the re-enactors at the Jorvik Viking Centre.

"You wont find runes as interesting when you realise most inscriptions are thoroughly mundane or post conversion!"

me looking at a comb that says comb:

Taught a class on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion today, and every one of my students said they've seen content on TikTok that comes directly from it, without knowing before today what the source was.

Macro photo of a brown stink bug in face view on a leaf, guarding a tightly-clustered bunch of eggs that are shaped and colored exactly like a full tray of dark beer with foam on top.

Finally, the bug is back with a round of the Guinness.

Warm glow and clearing skies

25th February 2026 07.07

English majors were mocked for years. Now they're gaining momentum in the AI job market. For years, English majors were mocked as useless. Now, AI is giving them some momentum in the job market, while computer science grads get disrupted.

"it's time for ideas, people, and critical thinkers to flourish. That means that, after years of mocking, English majors are finally getting recognized for their usefulness."

www.businessinsider.com/ai-job-marke...

Karen Ashe The Sound of an Iceberg Calving It’s not the crack you expect. It’s more a soft whump, then an elegant leaving, like a grand piano dropped from a silent-movie window, a slow-motion school bus over a soap-opera cliff, Falling Man falling forever on prime-time news then the kettle clicks to a rapid boil as a small finger presses a button, the screen flickers and blurs, and the iceberg is replaced by slimming ads and payday loans, super-fast fibre-optic wifi, high-speed trains, and the tea bleeds into the water and milk delivered unseen in early hours from cows in distant misty pastures stays fresh for nine days in fat plastic bottles that go in the recycling and the baby shudders inside half a month from completion and the buy-now-pay-later sofa is wobbly in the leg already and the interest-free 42-inch telly is frozen on an ad for wonga.com and the dunked biscuit dissolves in the tea in the time it takes to change channels and in some faraway dark cold country of slavering bears and wandering herdsmen the iceberg is still calving.

It’s not the crack you expect.
It’s more a soft whump,
then an elegant leaving, like
a grand piano dropped
from a silent-movie window…

—Karen Ashe, “The Sound of an Iceberg Calving”
in SOUND OF AN ICEBERG: New Writing Scotland 37 (ASL, 2019)
#poem #poetry
asls.org.uk/publications...

Gorillaz are back so time to resurrect the greatest of all music tweets. We're all out here tryna be The Quietus and she just walks up and zeroes in on the essence.

Such a good piece today from @jburnmurdoch.ft.com which shows that the declining graduate premium is very much a UK problem rather than a general (or inevevitable) consequence of more people going to uni www.ft.com/content/649d...

Matching sounds to shapes: Evidence of the bouba-kiki effect in naïve baby chicks Humans across multiple languages spontaneously associate the nonwords “kiki” and “bouba” with spiky and round shapes, respectively, a phenomenon named the bouba-kiki effect. To explore the origin of t...

“Humans across multiple languages spontaneously associate the nonwords kiki & bouba with spiky & round shapes, respectively...We tested the bouba-kiki effect in baby chickens. Similar to humans, they spontaneously chose a spiky shape when hearing a kiki sound & a round shape when hearing a bouba.”😲🧪

If you don’t read old stuff you’ll never discover that people in the olden days had the same thoughts and feelings and dreams and anxieties you do, sometimes articulated differently, sometimes exactly the same way. You are never truly alone in anything and old writings are a neon sign telling you so

We have to stop calling some jobs ‘low skilled’ Freeing ourselves of these labels might help young people to think more creatively about the future

Terrific column by @sarahoconnorft.ft.com:

Shattered dreams: Why the battle for Sunderland’s glass centre has turned into a political flashpoint Custodian University of Sunderland says renovation costs of £45m are too high and building must be pulled down. Not without a fight, say locals, who believe they’re being taken for fools

Bad for culture, bad for heritage, bad for the north east.

My partner trained as a glassblower here. At the time, studying at the NGC via Sunderland Uni was the only way she could figure out how to get into glass (apprenticeships being few and far between).

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

🧪🏺 Update - authors have new paper showing how useless gen- #AI is for archaeological illustration.
All 400 images were multiply inaccurate (physically, socially, technologically, environmentally), even with improved prompts.

JUST USE HUMAN EXPERTS & ARTISTS

www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Black and white line illustration of a wide eyed figurine wearing a grotesque style gold torc.

Beautiful line drawing of a Scottish gold torc (Netherurd, @tessmachling.bsky.social ??) by Keith Henderson in Piggott’s 1958 Scotland Before History (thanks to @gjmichaelson.bsky.social for reminding me of this book!)
#FindsFriday

"everyone has to get back to the office because the important thing about business is human interaction" is dying, but "white collar jobs will be replaced by AI agents within 18 months" cannot yet be born; in this interregnum a variety of morbid symptoms appear.

Reading and writing can lower dementia risk by almost 40%, study finds Cognitive health in later life is ‘strongly influenced’ by lifelong exposure to intellectually stimulating environments, say researchers

The study points to using libraries and visiting museums as bringing these enormous brain health benefits ... who would have thought? Well, librarians and museum folk for a start ... www.theguardian.com/society/2026...

Bowel cancer screening | Bowel Cancer UK Learn about the different screening programmes currently in use across the UK and what tests are available.

Colonoscopy is the gold standard for diagnosing bowel cancer, but a very helpful home test is also available — the FIT test is normally done as part of screening after age 50, but you can ask your GP for it if you have any changes in your bowel movements

www.bowelcanceruk.org.uk/about-bowel-...

Gods this is bad.

Radbod from the Middle Ages to Modernity Introduction Last time on “Project Radbod” I provided a brief overview of what we do and don’t know about Radbod based on the earliest sources that mention him. My intention was to continue by look…

More ramblings about Radbod! This time I delve into the later traditions surrounding him.
longhairedkingsblog.wordpress.com/2026/02/11/r...

Rain hammering down. What a winter it has been! If this carries on much longer we may need an ark. It is peak snowdrop season here & the 'Candlemas bells' wear their water droplets well 🌱

Just a reminder that I’ve taken to recording all my blog posts.

So if you’re doing the dishes and want to listen to me recite Beowulf in rhyming couplets, well, have I got just the thing for you:

i heard both of these today:

"what are we solutioning here"

"we don't have a solve for that"

nouns and verbs, two ships passing in the night