ptwiddle.bsky.social - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

Really important research from Hannah Yelin’s project. Current project I’m involved has initially shown that despite encouraging public engagement, very few Universities have anything in place to support staff and that most responses to online abuse focus on institutional reputation.

submitted 81 days ago • 1 comment

Once any space becomes less than 40% male, (straight) men tend to cede it entirely while shouting about how it “went woke”. Fascinating read:

submitted 83 days ago • 179 comments

This made me curious about the history of bubbles, want to read about tulips. Crypto feels like it keeps popping and reforming, whereas NFTs aren't as big anymore? What's the difference? Much easier for me to see AI popping and lunching on zombie-like than breaking like a fever.

submitted 84 days ago • 0 comments

I think this is the best thing anybody has written about ChatGPT or AI by @davidrussellmoore.bsky.social for @flaminghydra.com flaminghydra.com/sam-altman-a...

submitted 86 days ago • 12 comments

It’s likely that you’ll have some bits of card or paper knocking about after Christmas, and here’s a great way to use up some of it: simply trim a piece to the right size and stick it on your screen to block out Google’s “AI Overview” results

submitted 86 days ago • 13 comments

Playing “the zoo game” with four kids 3-6. One wants constant attention for how scary their animal is, one wants constant attention for how pretty their animal is, one wants to sit in a corner loudly saying ‘Gooba’ nonstop, and one just wants to lick everything. This is vampire larp all over again.

submitted 89 days ago • 1 comment

Ali Smith's The Accidental completely getting the measure of Love Actually

submitted 91 days ago • 0 comments

I love Xmas & also find it tricky. I thought it might be useful if I explain my experience as some of it might apply to autistic people in your life (or you!). None of these things are universal. Some might apply, some won't. But some people have said my explanations helped them understand.

submitted 91 days ago • 1 comment

Spoilers for Perec's Life: A User's Manual.

submitted 92 days ago • 0 comments

R: wait, where is your fancy kazoo? L: in my pocket. R: your pajamas have a pocket?!

submitted 92 days ago • 1 comment

Can be hard to find a boardgame that 1) the 8y.o. can understand well enough I'm not grinding my teeth 2) has the ineffable magic of art and theme to snag the 13y.o. 3) has enough interesting decisions to keep me there But grabbed Dorf Romantik on a lark (did I see it here?) and so far it's great!

submitted 92 days ago • 4 comments

This assertion that AI will only get better is a strange one to me because, let me ask a question. Did Facebook get better? Did Twitter get better? Did Social media get better?

submitted 94 days ago • 33 comments

If I were Labour I would appoint at least one person to a top job who really understood what extremism, conspiracy theories and the internet are doing to politics

submitted 93 days ago • 39 comments

Birthday books! "Oh, I follow @antonhur.com on Bluesky!" Scotch and chocolates and socks not pictured.

submitted 94 days ago • 2 comments

Up on the rooftop, what's that NOISE It's Old St. Nick and the Beastie BOYS

submitted 95 days ago • 5 comments

I've worked in tech policy since 1999 and every single time a politician talks about "getting the balance right" it means they're about to absolute ratfuck you.

submitted 95 days ago • 7 comments

Amazing place; I have trekked down to London to hear @ethaniversonpiano.bsky.social play, and then he's playing in a gig at this neighborhood venue just up the hill from me...

submitted 96 days ago • 0 comments

In 2010, anti-copyright activist Aaron Swartz hanged himself after being prosecuted to the full extent of the law for making copyrighted academic publications freely available. Today, academic publishers are insisting those copyrights be lifted to feed the corporate AI slop machine.

submitted 97 days ago • 48 comments

Is anyone running online asynchronous seminars? Perhaps with talks happening as pre-recorded Youtube videos, and Q&A in the comments or so? Examples from any field welcome, I am looking for a format to replicate #academicsky

submitted 97 days ago • 2 comments

Smugly confirming my biases. But also: discussion in comments about percentages being multiplicative and so it makes sense to plot them on a log scale as done here -- going up 100% is doubling, down 50% is halving, and they're given equal weight.

submitted 97 days ago • 0 comments

I’m an optimist

submitted 98 days ago • 24 comments

I once said Joey and Kermit was my Tom Holland Umbrella, the video I couldn't scroll past without reposting. So...

submitted 98 days ago • 1 comment

I know nothing, but I can't help thinking that a True Criming YouTube video show with Katie Porter doing charts and shit to illustrate how GOP fraud and crypto are gonna coalesce, with guest appearances from AOC and folks, would do numbers and focus attention and debate nicely.

submitted 98 days ago • 1 comment

Most recent sign I'm stumbling exhausted across the finish line of this term: listening to Sufjan Stevens Christmas and a kid asked what song The Friendly Beasts was, and looking it up got me thinking about how the nativity story foregrounding common shepherds and animals and: verklempt!

submitted 98 days ago • 0 comments

people argue whether mathematics is a social product or is free from human contingencies. here is a sense in which maths is a social construct. this 1920 book of log & trig tables has values for an important trig function, the haversine. yet you've probably never heard of it. #MathSky

submitted 98 days ago • 3 comments

I left Sheffield in 2021 but already then the Student Lifecycle was a disastrous and unfunny joke, the subject of repeated emails about delays to the launch and the all too frequent appointment of yet more staff to try and salvage it. If ‘senior leaders’ had listened to staff at the beginning…

submitted 98 days ago • 0 comments