Here a compilation of stupid things library consultants have said to me in solidarity with library pals at Lambeth Libraries where genius consultants has decided that a qualified head of library service post isn't really essential.
Carol
@beilinglaoshi.bsky.social
Higher Education, GenAI in education, English for Academic Purposes, gardening/environment and personal stuff. Based in Wolverhampton, England. Same handle on Twitter and Mastodon
Instead of shooting stars this month, will we get showers of falling cheese?
@silentpartner1.bsky.social · 8h ago
Whatever your feelings about AI, we invite you to consider the Peer & AI Review + Reflection @pairrfeedback.bsky.social approach. Students build skeptical AI literacy by engaging with AI feedback alongside human feedback. We'll share our materials and invite input in a free webinar August 18. +
Super intriguing that my university's head of tech today asked AI users to use Qwen running on institutional infrastructure instead of commercial LLMs ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini that "incur token based charges" in order to "significantly save money." US big tech LLMs getting too pricy for HE now?
I recently met with a group of migrant care workers at the Church of St Chad and St Mark to hear first-hand about the challenges they're facing after their employers lost their sponsorship licences.
Today is Venn Day, in celebration of the mathematician John Venn, born on this day in 1834. To commemorate the occasion, here’s a poem in the form of a Venn Diagram.
Approval of east London datacentre labelled ‘slap in the face’ for local democracy www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...
Approval of east London datacentre labelled ‘slap in the face’ for local democracy
Campaigners decry Angela Rayner’s backing for Brick Lane project that has only 11 affordable homes
theguardian.com
Definitely the case here. In two weeks we find which 9 of 12 in my group will be gone. The other 3 will then have a month to prepare and find hourly-paid replacements for all the classes across two degrees. And supervise 25 PhDs. Plus admin and pastoral care and research. Management doesn’t care.
Glen O'Hara@gsoh31.bsky.social · 4d agoIf you're arriving at uni this autumn, or maybe dropping your kids, remember that there could be a ghostly phalanx of absent redundant staff, lost modules and degraded degrees making it a very unhappy place. It may *look* the same, but it won't *be* the same. www.ft.com/content/e5b0...
Moving www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...
Notes from a nursing home: ‘Our books told of who we were. The story of us. Then the movers came and asked what should go’
Pencil marks in the margins of books gathered over a lifetime was proof of a life lived. So when it came time for Andrew McKean to move into aged care, leaving his books behind made the self thinner
theguardian.com
‘There’s no nurdle fairy’: thousands mobilise to clean up plastic spillage in north-east England www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...
‘There’s no nurdle fairy’: thousands mobilise to clean up plastic spillage in north-east England
Volunteers painstakingly gather plastic pellets washing up on beaches after ship collision on 19 July
theguardian.com
If you're using AI agents to vibe code through your local machine, please make sure it's protected. A Reddit user has shared how access to his local machine was shared to various Russian users, who could approve permissions, one of whom asked it to build a GTA-style game #techethics
‘Swifts, swallows and Canada geese’ Artist: CF Tunnicliffe What to Look for in Summer, 1960
NEW: after our coverage of this company's little scheme to use printed books to train AI, it calls it a "test of the market" and walked the entire thing back: www.404media.co/ai-company-t...
Company Offering Printed Books to Train AI Stops After 404 Media Coverage
Citing backlash, ISBNdb removed its webpages about training AI, denied ever buying, scanning, or selling a book for AI training, and said the site was a "test of market interest."
404media.co
A new AI data center can be up and running in a year. Building new energy infrastructure to power it could take a decade.
Data Centers Are Easy to Build. Powering Them Is Complicated, Slow, and Expensive
A new AI data center can be up and running in a year. Building new energy infrastructure to power it could take a decade.
404media.co
Harvard dismisses the Writing Center director and the Writing Project director and gives no reason other than "consolidation"? Very troubling. And after all of @janerosenzweig.bsky.social's important leadership around AI and writing questions?
Mary Lewis@profmarylewis.bsky.social · last wk.It‘s quite possible that with this move, @harvard.edu could become the only Ivy League university without a writing center. www.thecrimson.com/article/2026...
Set up a Linkedin account two weeks ago and now it won't let me in unless I share my passport (that's not going to happen). Apologies to anyone who's messaged or followed me back! Does anyone else get this problem?
i know genai is degrading society in general but this is shameful and can't be normalised
Al Jazeera English@aljazeera.com · last wk.Canadian politician Bill Oliver has gone viral after he appeared to accidentally read AI-generated editing instructions aloud, not once, but twice, during a speech to lawmakers in early June.
‘Great Inventions, 1961’ Jodrell Bank Radio Telescope Artist: Robert Ayton
NEW: A glimpse at how AI image generators are used. Researchers set up a fake image editor on Hugging Face and within a week received 1,000 prompts. 73% of them were sexual and 83% of those were asking for people (women) to be “undressed”. Around 6% of the sexual requests also targeted minors
Hugging Face Has a Deepfake Nudes Problem
Researchers tested top image editing models on Hugging Face and found they could easily create explicit deepfakes—and 1,000 image editing prompts show how people use the software.
wired.com
Spies in the sky: how worried should we be about the arrival of AI-enabled smart lamp-posts? www.theguardian.com/world/2026/j...
Spies in the sky: how worried should we be about the arrival of AI-enabled smart lamp-posts?
The new breed of camera-equipped streetlights has the potential to fight crime and track down missing persons. Or will it just take Britain one step closer to a surveillance state?
theguardian.com
Shadow use of genAI as a reviewer is shitty because you're putting someone else's work into the machine w/o consent, and as an author I'd rather hear Reviewer 2's bad attitudes than LLM platitudes. But if you sanction reviewers you'll just have no reviewers. It's a lose-lose situation.
Margot Finn@eicathomefinn.bsky.social · last wk.'IOP Publishing...does not allow the use of AI in its peer review policy, but it believes that generative AI use has skyrocketed nonetheless. As a result, the publisher is trying out a new system that sees reviewers receive a warning where AI use is suspected.' 1/3
“As our lives become increasingly digital, we’re seeing customers ... reconnect with the joy of making" www.theguardian.com/business/202...
Liberty embraces sewing boom with craft classes as it expands fabrics section
London store also plans bigger haberdashery area, where it will hold autumn workshops for crafters
theguardian.com
