More than a dozen kittens from the Bitty Kitty Brigade, a no-kill rescue, took part in their sixth annual field trip to SEA LIFE at Mall of America.

I should probably turn this into a LinkedIn post when I have a little more brainpower, but here we go. Some quick thoughts/speculation on the announced Taylor & Francis-Informa split alongside the £2.24bn Clarion Events deal, after a quick browse of the numbers and reports 🧵

This goes for UNISON members too. Absolutely disgusting that Brighton would derecognise the only voices for staff at this prestigious organisation.

University and College Union (UCU)@ucu.org.uk · 2mo ago

UCU members at Brighton University face the threat of derecognition. We have called an emergency rally tomorrow at 1:15pm. It would be amazing to see as many #TUC26 delegates as possible in attendance. 58-67 Grand Parade, Brighton and Hove, Brighton BN2 0JY

Riddle me this. If somebody donates £36 million to a political party and £5 million to its leader, how is the £5 million not political? Asking for a parliamentary standards commissioner.

We are devastated by the loss of Professor Megan Povey, our much loved and respected comrade, friend, activist, former branch President, NEC member, negotiator, long serving committee member. She dedicated her life to social justice alongside a truly impressive science career. We remember her here:

@leedsucu.bsky.social · 2mo ago

We are devastated by the loss of our much-loved Megan Povey who died yesterday. She was stalwart member of Leeds UCU, and AUT before it, with decades of commitment to social justice, our union, and our wider movement. We opened this post to share memories of Megan: www.leedsucu.org.uk/megan-povey/

One day on a TPE train and I instantly remember why I moved house to get away from them.

Something something ziptying nannies at protests, something something those who work forces...

Unofficial BBCNews (UK) Bot@bbcnews-uk-rss.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Masked protesters block access at Port of Dover

Nigel Farage saying he's done nothing wrong is like Fred West wondering why the police are digging up his garden

🚨Update: Our analysis of global APC expenditure has now been expanded to cover more publishers (7 -> 14) and more years (2019-2025). We estimate $15B in APCs paid over seven years, $3.7B in 2025 alone. Elsevier crosses the $1B threshold by itself in 2025. arxiv.org/abs/2608.16322 #ScholComm

Eric Schares@eschares.bsky.social · 2y ago

🚨 Preprint! We combine our recent open dataset of #APC prices with the article counts per journal-year from #OpenAlex to estimate how much the academic community has paid in APCs over the last 5 years. A. $8.349 billion ($8.968 B in 2023 USD) $2.5B in 2023 alone. arxiv.org/abs/2407.16551 #metasci

Is anyone aware of a recent academic or grey literature article on the effects of the BL cyberattack? I am writing about fragility of digital infrastructure in libraries and lack of experience in knowing what to do in data loss situations...

In case you are an academic who is currently being gaslit into believing that you're a caveman who wants their students to be jobless if you resist allowing AI in your classrooms... I present to you Berkeley Law's response, which can be summarized as "Fuck off directly into the sun."

Artificial Intelligence Policy

Effective Summer 2026 Purpose Future lawyers may need to use artificial intelligence (“AI”) fluently. But the current state of the technology requires that AI use be coupled with the cognitive […]

law.berkeley.edu

Meta's smart glasses aren't just for perverts! They are also for the most aggressively annoying people on the internet

I think it's bad that the UK press can escalate what is essentially a workplace matter into national news ahead of the fucking country being on fire and then get away with hounding their victim until they die.

What a nightmare PBS broadcaster loses access to 50TB of data comprising 70 years of TV history after contracted cloud storage vendor goes defunct — public TV channel sues Iron Mountain data center, which hosts archival materials, to ensure preservation | Tom's Hardware share.google/ExvNkuiN1bIl...

PBS broadcaster loses access to 50TB of data comprising 70 years of TV history after contracted cloud storage vendor goes defunct — public TV channel sues Iron Mountain data center, which hosts archiv...

This wouldn't have been an issue if the organization bought a $1,000 NAS and populated it with a few hard drives.

share.google

I'm not suggesting I occasionally receive frustrating emails, but I'm currently wishing someone would strangle me till my eyeballs shot across the room.

Sometimes I lament not being an influencer because then I could post things "A horse would go crazy for a strawberry shortcake matcha" and it would do the rounds.

Nothing quite as heartbreaking as realising the jousting is on a moving day.

There's a woman with a RELX t-shirt and 'Gentle woman" handbag in the matcha store and I wonder if this is what it's like meeting one's natural predator.

World cup this, world cup that. I think I need some time off after the shambolic Silverstone GP ending. What was that? Can I fight the FIA in a B&Q carpark?!

Sigh. A call for papers on the legacy of Aaron Swartz. A most worthwhile topic. But ACM charging APCs for this special issue? Is that in keeping with AS's legacy? In any case, I will not write for it, as I cannot afford the APCs. I will choose a diamond venue instead. dl.acm.org/pb-assets/st...

Against my will, I've been reunited with my long-term enemy: the JIF. This time around, does anyone know about _legitimate_ writing on JIF variance / impact on it? I've been suspecting it's all just reading tea leaves, BUT I'll try and do my research and not jump to conclusions!

My brilliant colleagues did a thing! With special thanks, applause and admiration for @joemull.zirk.us.ap.brid.gy who did most work on this! janeway.systems

Janeway

A platform for digital publishing that helps you manage manuscript submissions, including review, copyediting, typesetting and publication.

janeway.systems

Open Library of Humanities@openlibhums.org · 6mo ago

🚨 Big announcement 🚨 @janewayolh.bsky.social launches new website and brand design! www.openlibhums.org/news/938/ The redesign reflects Janeway’s identity as an open-source, community-driven platform, combining academic expertise, accessibility, innovation, and a distinctive retro sci-fi aesthetic.

“What must be protected, finally, is not simply identity, but interpretive integrity: the fragile, contested, and necessary capacity for qualitative data to speak truthfully to human experience.” Fantastic recent article on qual data stewardship by Elizabeth Green ⬇️ doi.org/10.29173/iq1...

This is why I will always bang on about open metadata, persistent identifiers, interoperability, and funding infrastructure. There is absolutely no need to rely on LLMs to tell you if an article is retracted or not if you can easily check the DOI of a paper against the Retraction Watch database.

Retraction Watch@retractionwatch.com · 6mo ago

"Based on titles and abstracts, in over 80% of cases the LLMs claimed that a retracted article had not been retracted (GPT OSS 120B: 82%; Gemma 3 27B: 84%; DeepSeek R1 72B: 88%)."

New from me: Why funders shouldn’t withdraw money from open access publishing www.samuelmoore.org/2026/04/14/w...

Why funders shouldn’t withdraw money from open access publishing

Cancer Research UK’s decision to stop funding article processing charges marks a significant shift in how they approach open access. In its April 1st announcement (not an April Fool), the org…

samuelmoore.org

So long, and thanks for all the fish!

Open Library of Humanities@openlibhums.org · 7mo ago

We’re sad, but not too sad, to share the news that we’ll be sunsetting the Open Library of Humanities & @janewayolh.bsky.social. After a decade of innovating & modernizing publishing with open-source technologies, we’ve decided to relocate to the Bahamas to focus on our new vibe coding business.

In light of some of the talks at #uksg26 on open infrastructure, OA and similar - the following may be of interest ;) (And if you're talking new products are UKSG, maybe keep this in the back of your mind!)

Open Library of Humanities@openlibhums.org · 7mo ago

Infrastructure Landlords: The Rentier Capitalism of Commercial Academic Publishers This piece explores how major academic publishers are becoming “infrastructure landlords”, not just publishing research, but owning the systems around it. 👉 www.openlibhums.org/news/931/ #OpenAccess #ScholComm