Orian Brook

"By using AI, tasks like essays that used to take hours can be completed in minutes!" Sure, like how if I arrive at the gym and immediately go for a shower, my workout is done in record time. And if I throw my sandwiches straight in the bin, I can finish my lunch in under 10 seconds.

James Blunt and Ross Kemp can SAS all they like, Jerry Hall was married to Rupert Murdoch. There’s only one boss here

All day Piddington's womminfolk have been telling news how they will be terrified of "hundreds of young men nearby, free to come and go as they please." NOT ONE JOURNALIST has asked: "How did you cope when it was an army base? Who came and went then? Nuns?" Soon as you ask that, all becomes clear.

There is something off about this NYT photo on AI development that I can't quite put my finger on.

The irony, an Atari chess AI continuously beat modern AI in chess, because Modern AI kept trying to make illegal turns and justify it by halucinating their own rules for chess.

But nothing beats the obstetrics textbook wherein one of the authors made his wife do the index, so she slips this one in:

This is pretty funny tbh. The US gov wades in with its big bully boots to protect the 'academic freedom' of this scientifically illiterate weird little racist, who actively opposes the academic freedom of others, for a 1 yr postdoc on a subject he shows no track record for. Well done all concerned.

Relevant again, as always

This is astonishing.

Quakers were a big part of supporting me and my friends when it wasn't even less safe to be a queer young person - in the 90s - they paid for me to go to the LGB & not-yet-T March in DC in '93. (I was 16.) And here they are being good again when it's not politically easy. I'm a big fan of Quakers.

Think we should stop letting teenagers do mickey mouse subjects like maths, physics and chemistry and force them to take serious shbject like media studies, sociology and philosophy.

White professor ‘ MattGPT ‘ whose most recent book contained fabricated quotations, non-existent source references, & left ChatGPT URLs accidentally embedded in footnotes is sad about Jason Arday’s death but still wants Arday & all black academia held to higher standards than his own writing .

Look, put simply, people should not be comfortable saying that in public and the way to fix society runs directly through making them afraid to say it again.

Well this is interesting! Some needs to do an analysis of names with the steepest social gradient

The day I will pay attention to politicians guffing about "parity of esteem" is the day one of their children goes to an FE college.

New books on the to read pile - some of which I’m overdue catching up on! Excited to read @suzannerblack.bsky.social, @sjartt.bsky.social, @shannonvallor.bsky.social, @ruha9.bsky.social, Shoshana Zuboff, and the new edition of @drdaveobrien.bsky.social, @orianbrook.bsky.social & Mark Taylor’s books!

‘Homer’s original’ 🤣🤣🤣🤣 I will never understand why anyone ever mistook Musk for a genius. The man has the intellect of a towel rack.

Ok, talking about class in vox pops is now banned until it starts making any sense.

No.10 North is a good example of a symbol: it works literally and figuratively at once. As I wrote last week: "Perhaps Burnham the English Lit graduate grasps that politics needs to be conducted in metaphors and symbols as well as metrics & stats." www.newstatesman.com/comment/2026...

I'm stepping down to a new role in the autumn to try to get a bit more "life" in the "work - life balance" thing, so there's a vacancy to do my job: overseeing the research and policy output of RF. What a fab job for someone.

It's rare that a newspaper says this out loud.

I love giving talks and standing up and talking off the cuff from my own brain (usually with a few planned bullet points). I cant imagine anything worse than reading out a talk written for you by AI. I did wonder during covid if my skillset was redundant, if we'd ever have audiences again. We do!

90% of MPs went to University compared to 19% of the working age population. It is real time that MPs started acknowledging the role that Education has played in their career success. www.suttontrust.com/our-research...

Something's up with Google Scholar - related to ChatGPT? The following article has recently been added to my profile but it .. doesn't exist. Not slightly wrong, or wrong authorship, the entire article is made up by GS says it has 80 citations..

Job! Creative Manchester Research Associate (Maternity Leave Cover) www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DRV865/c...

Funding! An amazing UKRI Policy Fellowship at Department for Culture, Media and Sport: Freelance careers in the creative industries fellowship. Info here www.ukri.org/wp-content/u... and the general scheme to apply is here www.ukri.org/opportunity/...

Reform UK civil service plan ‘would sack more planning officers than exist’

Struggling today. Everything seems so broken. Everyone is over capacity, miserable. It was confirmed today that our contracted research time at @edinburghuni.bsky.social is being cut because we can get a sabbatical. But we are not guaranteed sabbaticals. So they squeeze staff even more. Well done. 😿

I think it's worth people knowing that Enfield has a Labour MP and a Conservative councillor who are *both* called Bambos Charalambous.

👌

Live webinar: What just happened?📢📊📝 Join us on Monday to reflect on the election results and what happens next. 🗓️ 11 May, 1pm - 2pm With @kezdugdale.bsky.social, @profnicolamcewen.bsky.social @markmcgeoghegan.bsky.social and @cjcarman.bsky.social 🔗 www.eventbrite.com/e/what-just-...

"The Department of Sociology, Social Policy & Criminology seeks to appoint one permanent Lecturer post with expertise relevant to criminology and/or critical social policy to join our department in the School of Law and Social Justice at the University of Liverpool." www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DRJ047/l...

It's so irritating that for all the money we're spending cosplaying as Germany we could be having a Higher Education boom as we scoop up all the researchers and students that the Americans don't want any more. But fewer chances for politicians to pose in hard hats I guess

Priceless post from the official White House social media

Creative PEC's flagship State of the Nations research series has been shortlisted for the @artsprofessional.co.uk Awards, in the category Excellent Research or Policy Intervention. View the full shortlist: shorturl.at/mbN7x And find out more about the State of the Nations series: shorturl.at/lnOeq

Some good news!: New Carnegie Masters Grants to support fair access to postgraduate study in Scotland carnegie-trust.org/new-carnegie...

Mad fact... 42% of Labour Prime Ministers have had to fire Peter Mandelson.

I hope whoever wrote this headline (click to see) took the rest of the week off www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Well well well