The university system in the UK is in trouble:
Over the last two weeks, more than 1,000 redundancies have been announced by just four institutions, sparking concerns about the long-term health of the sector. With institutions cutting courses to make savings, questions are being raised over the ability of universities to train enough people with the research skills the country needs.
The new(ish) government needs to act, as every round of cuts threatens the UK’s long-term competitiveness.
Beautifully written and conducted interview with James May from Top Gear/The Grand Tour. Love the final line:
James May is the eternal combustion engine that never combusts into anger, the Grand Tourist more likely to write a poem than raise a fist, a bloke, but one suited to the age of the electric car.
Why Ewan is going back, as far as is practical, to the Web 2.0 era.
A very graceful exit to @coreint, @danielpunkass and @manton. Thank you.
The nice thing about podcasting basically just being spicy RSS is that I can just leave that feed subscribed, just in case…
Pub dinner with my daughters before a school performance.
Monday night really is a dead night for the hospitality business.
Worth keeping an eye on: The LLM bubble might be about to burst (but not for the reason you think)
Good luck on writing that five year business plan, folks.
(Says the man deep in writing a feature about the office of 2030…)
It’s normally late February or March before we dig the bikes out, but today was such a lovely, mild sunny day, we dragged them out of the garage, pumped the tyres and went for a cycle up and round the fort.
A winged maple seed fell from a tree, landing on the page of the book I was reading. The world was going about the work at hand. Survival and renewal were literally in the air.
From the introduction to Visualizing Nature edited by Stuart Kestenbaum 📚
Started reading: Visualizing Nature by Stuart Kestenbaum 📚
Picked it up cheap in an Islington bookshop. Looking forward to it.
Rebecca Solnit: How to Comment on Social Media:
Also you have the right to check their papers, as in to demand they prove to you their commitments and beliefs, and their unwillingness to do so on demand is a sign of culpability too. Have they properly condemned the recent something or other? It is not your job to find proof; it is this complete stranger’s obligation to offer it up, and there is no reason they would not if they were not guilty as charged. Condemn them for insufficient condemnation issuance.
This is amazingly funny, but you’re a better person than I if you don’t wince, too.
I’ll start sounding like a broken record but, at this point, I don’t care: social media was and still is a mistake. Enough people all bunched together in the same space with the ability to quickly interact with each other will produce more harm than good.
I’m not saying AI is Apple’s achilles heel.
But…
55% of respondents to the question ‘What do you use Bluesky for?’ said it was a mix of three research-related activities: to connect with other scientists, keep up to date with other research or researchers, and promote their own research