This is so fucked. If an author feels they must use AI, then the onus is on them to check that the facts *the author appears to be writing* are actually true. Publishers need to get a grip and see the wood for the trees.

Catherine Fletcher@catherinefletcher.info · 2w ago

Publisher in this piece says “If an author has used AI to help support their research for a nonfiction book, that’s fine. But… that means that we now need together to apply another layer of human research to make sure that the facts are actually true.” So it’s not fine really, is it?

Great piece here by Rebecca Solnit on the erasure and resistance of Indigenous peoples: ‘cultural survival is . . . achieved by steady practice of that culture’. Diary www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4.... Especially appreciated as I have just finished reading Willa Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop

Rebecca Solnit · Diary: Before 1776

In 1848, the US seized the northern half of Mexico, from California to New Mexico, and imposed American law and the...

lrb.co.uk

Best banana-based art I’ve seen. Forget Warhol and Maurizio Cattelan.

MiMi Aye@meemalee.bsky.social · 4w ago

Why would they do this to me?

Great news everyone. Our Reform-led county council has solved the problem.

It’s wild that publishers are asking authors to opt in to AI licensing, not because they’ve reached an agreement with AI companies but *in the hope* that a regulatory framework *might* one day exist that remunerates authors for the use of their work by LLMs

New Job: Bookbanks North East Regional Lead - Bookbanks More here ⬇️ jobs.thebookseller.com/career/29094... #PublishingJobs #JobsInBooks

Bookbanks North East Regional Lead - Bookbanks -

Bookbanks North East Regional Lead - Bookbanks - Charity - Operations, Communications, Other Publishing -

jobs.thebookseller.com

Important thread on the UK government’s continuing abnegation of its environmental responsibilities.

Prof Phoebe Barnard@phoebebarnard.bsky.social · last mo.

Surreal being in the UK -with its quintessential nature & abundant water- to observe how this breeds complacency on a sm island of c70m people in a world of 8.3bn people, declining agricultural predictability, snowpack & soil fertility 🧵 @fionaharvey.bsky.social www.theguardian.com/global-devel...

This is surely a thing. I once worked on a publication in America that was to be called Technology Update for Executives Only. Really. Not just a working title. Never made it to launch.

Dmitry Grozoubinski@explaintrade.com · last mo.

I call this phenomenon "CEO skim-read Forbes in the Business Class Lounge" and once you notice it you can't stop seeing it everywhere. Open plan offices, beanbags and pool tables, everything-must-be-blockchain, everything must be in the cloud, outsource everything, AI everything...

You arty types may think you know what a private view is. But here in Norfolk, it seems it’s something a bit different.

I don't know how Keir Starmer can wake up in the morning, see that pogroms have been taking place under his watch, that they are being fuelled by literal illegal activity on social media, and not make it his entire purpose to stop it. We know you're no politician, but are you not a lawyer?

Ah yes, Escher, whom my last agent hadn’t heard of, and completely blanked me when I suggested a biography. (There is none in English – only one in Dutch.)

The Guardian@theguardian.com · 2mo ago

MC Escher review – hallucinatory insights from the master of the mind-bending staircase

So happy birthday ‘In our country you're free And so you're born And so they say you're free So happy birthday And even if you're born to lose Even if you're a complete wreck when you were born You might still grow up to be president Because you're free’ (that lyric’s sure gained an extra frisson)

Nonesuch Records@nonesuch.com · 2mo ago

Happy birthday, Laurie Anderson! 📷: Wolfgang Tillmans

The gov's absurd rhetoric about nature "blocking" development continues when of course wild species are (sometimes illegally) destroyed every day by building work. This latest case is tragic. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Noted swift nesting site destroyed by contractors in peak season

Campaigners say builders’ demolition of nest site highlights weak protection of wildlife from development

theguardian.com

“Content” also insidiously shifts significance and validity to the platform, not the substance — content is contained, what defines content is the existence and form of the container

Josh Gondelman@joshgondelman.bsky.social · 2mo ago

My crankiest old man take is that referring to all art/entertainment/journalism/criticism/comedy/advertising as “content” helped pave the way for broad-ish acceptance of AI slop.

Anna Maria van Schurman’s The Learned Maid (1659), a treatise on women’s right to education, written by an exceptional polyglot: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/the-learned-maid/

This is lovely. So many things floating around in the sky named after Dutch astronomers! The Oort cloud, the Kuiper belt, Hanny’s voorwerp, de Sitter’s universe, the van Allen (US, but NL descent) belt, as I mention in Dutch Light.

Marco Langbroek@marcolangbroek.bsky.social · 3mo ago

1/x It is with much pleasure that I may announce that, on my suggestion, the Working Group on Small Body Nomenclature (WGSBN) of the @IAU_org has approved the #asteroid name: (585349) Eeuwes ...after the Dutch amateur astronomer Astrid Geurts-Eeuwes

Everything in the world may be borne, but for a succession of fine days. – Goethe, West-Eastern Divan

I WISH I WAS DEAD

Kevin Potter@kevinmpotter.bsky.social · 3mo ago

So let’s review the last two days: -The Commonwealth prize winner likely used AI to compose their short story -The Nobel Prize-winner admits to using AI to come up with ideas -An author of a book about truth and AI has now admitted to using AI to concoct fake quotes. Why bother with anything at all

love that contraption! Here’s my bit on it from Dutch Light:

Dr Bram van Leuveren (𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺/𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘮)@bramvanleuveren.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Indeed! It was a real crowd puller as well; how cool would it have been to see all these princes and princesses racing along the beach

This Guardian 100 books list is a compilation of opnions, and therefore an average. Reminds me of Francis Galton’s attempt to identify the ‘criminal type’ by layering photographs of assorted Victorian felons. He ended up with the blandest looking composite.

I hope this isn’t true. There are times when it’s more important to put country before party. This is one of them. Burnham’s longstanding commitment to a fairer voting system could transform our democracy & counter the dire threat of a Reform UK government elected on a minority of the vote

Greens suggest they will properly contest byelection in blow to Burnham

Statement follows speculation party would not field candidate in Makerfield or barely fight seat

theguardian.com

May 1690, Christiaan Huygens to his brother Constantijn, who is serving in England as secretary to William III: ‘One has to admit that the English are difficult to govern, for one hears talk at every turn of such discontents and mutinies . . .’

Fascinating figure, he studied alchemy in his attempt to uncover the secret of Chinese porcelain, and died in the Bastille for his Huguenot faith at the age of 79

Dr. Peter Paul Rubens@peterpaulrubens.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Platter with snakes, lizards, frogs, fish, turtle & more, all cast from real specimens by slightly fanatic French renaissance ceramicist Bernard Palissy. It’s his day today.

Was there ever a book about the race for total synthesis of taxol between the Nicolaou and Horton groups? Perhaps there should be - though it might just consist of the PIs shouting at the postdocs to Go Faster! I did write about the Woodward/Eschenmoser B12 total synthesis long ago.

Greens should respond by saying they'll build Colleges of Further Education in Reform council areas.

I gather Kit was on Start the Week today discussing his new book on alchemy, which seems a good reason to give it a shout out. It's hugely enjoyable as well as deeply researched. profilebooks.com/work/the-age...

The Age of Alchemy - Profile Books

profilebooks.com

Tried to book trains to Torino from London. No problem booking, but impossible to pay nearly £1000 for two people round trip. We are flying and we really don't want to. The subsidies should be paid to rail not air travel.

Matthew Whitfield@matthewwhitfield.bsky.social · 4mo ago

seems incorrect to me - is there anything Trainline/RailEurope can’t book? Cal me mad but isn’t it the eye-watering cost that’s the drag here? www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Which is more ominous: flood, or the ebb? Falstaff dies “just between twelve and one, ev’n at the turning o’ th’ tide.” But at the end of Moby-Dick, Captain Ahab tells Starbuck: “Some men die at ebb tide; some at low water; some at the full of the flood.” lithub.com/on-the-irres...

On the Irresistible Pull of Tidal Metaphors

When did the tide come to be imagined as a moral force as well as a physical one? Why should a blameless cycle of nature be chosen as a metaphor of punishment and mortality? The sun and moon do not…

lithub.com

2026. A brutal war between an authoritarian regime of religious fanatics violating human rights and international law and threatening nuclear annihilation. And Iran.

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 4mo ago

Hegseth: "God deserves all the glory. Tens of thousands of sorties, refuelings, and strikes, carried out under the protection of divine providence. A massive effort with miraculous protection."