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

Consider applying for one of 5 tenure-track positions! Note it is not only computing faculty but basically any field that can be argued to fit in "Environment and Information Studies" (an extremely broad faculty that includes music scientists like me and Shinya Fujii).

submitted 17 hours ago • 0 comments

My latest: AI Stone soup, a fable about AI as cultural technology and method for extracting information from others. From the marvellous Simons center. simons.berkeley.edu/news/stone-s...

submitted 168 days ago • 0 comments

A vision of the UK’s future: “Legislation from previous governments had already made resistance more difficult. The Conservative government of 2019-2024 had reduced the independence of universities through the Higher Education Freedom of Speech Act in 2023”

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

BREAKING: Edinburgh University will axe more staff and will consider selling buildings amid a major funding crisis, employees have been warned

submitted 2 days ago • 1 comment

📰 Identical front page on every UK paper today, with homepage takeovers too. Only 2nd time this has happened. As editors and reporters, we fear for the future of quality journalism - with unlawful scraping of content (theft) by AI firms. #MakeItFair inews.co.uk/opinion/made...

submitted 2 days ago • 2 comments

Job offer! 3-year PDRA studying archaeological content on social media from a cultural evolution perspective. Based at Edinburgh, supervised by @chiara-bonacchi.bsky.social and myself -project "Weaponised Pasts: The Evolution Of Heritage-based Hostility On Social Media’. Please share! bit.ly/3QCXUFS

submitted 2 days ago • 1 comment

When the autocratic past becomes frighteningly relevant: Vera Kempe, one our panelists at today's workshop on Science under Autocracy www.scibeh.org/events/works... has recorded her experiences in USSR and East Germany here: substack.com/home/post/p-.... She offers some recommendations, too.

submitted 2 days ago • 3 comments

My new drawing finally done. Made using robot pen plotter, ballpoint pens, a drawing algorithm, and a photograph of lichen I picked up at the Carbeth hutter’s community. This was about 24 hours of drawing time and at least a couple of miles of ink.

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

Here’s the video of Lara’s astounding performance. (Turn. It. Up.) youtu.be/sHww-6yzezM?...

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

#OnThisDay in 1871, Charles Darwin published the seminal "Descent of Man" which includes this beautifully succinct distillation of why human spoken language is such a fascinating subject for scientific enquiry.

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

To my friends who are part of the scientific community, please consider signing. This is not a time to quietly acquiesce to threats to enlightenment values posed by the emerging autocracy.

submitted 4 days ago • 0 comments

There are now over 3000 signatories to my letter asking the Royal Society to explain why it has taken no action and said nothing about evident contraventions of its code of conduct by Elon Musk FRS. forms.gle/dBGaHk7SYUNA...

submitted 8 days ago • 1 comment

Two Weeks In The Death Spiral Of Cardiff University, by an anonymous academic. This is truly shocking read. The Cardiff executive board should hang their heads in shame. voice.cymru/two-weeks-in...

submitted 6 days ago • 31 comments

Today's extract from Serving the Reich. What makes it worse is that I don't even need to add any explanatory comment, do I?

submitted 5 days ago • 4 comments

This is how it’s done.

submitted 6 days ago • 2912 comments

And yet everyone is getting pushed into fully utilising generative AI in their business and governance processes ASAP so they don't get left behind.

submitted 5 days ago • 0 comments

The crash is beginning in academia.

submitted 6 days ago • 19 comments

It matters that scientists speak out against what is being done to US science. Staying silent is neither "objective" nor "staying out of politics". Silence now is political - it supports the status quo, says "nothing to worry about". We need to sound the alarm. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

submitted 6 days ago • 34 comments

#OTD 94 years ago, Ursula Bellugi (1931-2022) was born 🎉 Her research centred on the biological foundations of language. She was an expert in the neurolinguistics of the so-called Williams Syndrome and in American Sign Language. #WomenInLinguistics #Histlx #LinguisticBirthdays

submitted 6 days ago • 0 comments

It's taken just a month for the Republican administration to trash eight decades of US leadership in science and technology. TRIGGER WARNING: reading this article (by my esteemed colleagues, who have stronger stomachs than I do) made me feel physically ill. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

submitted 6 days ago • 6 comments

What a spectacular set from the wonderful @larajonesmusic.bsky.social at Wavetable tonight. Cathartic and transformative as needed in these challenging days. Listen to it when it’s up on YouTube in the next few days… but listen to it LOUD. (Thank you a million fold for coming up again Lara!)

submitted 7 days ago • 2 comments

Join us! Science Homecoming helps scientists reconnect with communities by writing about the importance of science funding in their hometown newspapers. We’ve mapped every small newspaper in the U.S. and provide resources to get you started. Help science get back home 🧪🔬🧬 🏠 sciencehomecoming.com

submitted 9 days ago • 44 comments

🚨 New paper! 🚨 by Yoolim Kim, @helenamiton.bsky.social, Marc Allassonnière Tang, & myself, in Journal of Memory and Language. We tried to do for letter shapes what phonologists did for speech sounds. doi.org/10.1016/j.jm... A 🧵 (1/14)

submitted 8 days ago • 1 comment

It's here! It's the second #WeekOfSound in #Edinburgh @edinburgh-uni.bsky.social And there are still some tickets left for tonight's amazing opening concert featuring @amsouth.bsky.social, Una MacGlone, humpback whales and velvet swimming crabs! digital.eca.ed.ac.uk/weekofsound/...

submitted 10 days ago • 0 comments

Reminder of this #culturalevolution starter pack go.bsky.app/6mZJyQq

submitted 13 days ago • 2 comments

For those who missed the @culturalevolsoc.bsky.social conference in Durham last September, the recorded talks are now freely available to watch here: underline.io/events/456/l...

submitted 15 days ago • 3 comments

I was just told that I have to remove “climate” from the title of an ongoing grant if I want to keep it. And publications from that grant cannot include “climate” and other forbidden words. I can’t believe I’m writing this from the United States of America. #AcademicSky

submitted 17 days ago • 402 comments

A very timely publication from our @edinburgh-uni.bsky.social colleague, as we gear up for the opening concert of the #WeekOfSound, featuring humpback whales and some of their smaller neighbours 🐋 🐟 🦀

submitted 16 days ago • 0 comments

Labour - out-cruelling the Tories To be fair that was what they promised. Join an anti-deportation campaign and support organisations like Right to Remain and Just Right Scotland don’t for a minute think that a Labour Govt can’t dog whistle - they are whistling www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

submitted 16 days ago • 0 comments

Reading about Vance/Musk about obeying or firing judges? This is what happened when Netanyahu tried to push through “judicial reforms” that threatened the independence of the judiciary.

submitted 17 days ago • 1 comment

I love that.

submitted 17 days ago • 0 comments

Expert takedown of latest burst of Neuralink hype, from ever-reliable @garwboy.bsky.social. So frustrating that media keep falling for this, especially at a time when Musk & co are in midst of vandalizing the science research infrastructure of the US, damage that will reverberate across the world. 🧪

submitted 18 days ago • 4 comments

5-yr position in computational humanities with @oliviermorin.bsky.social and @jbcamps.bsky.social in Paris! Original deadline has passed but search is ongoing. Details here: cognition.ens.fr/en/job/junio...

submitted 19 days ago • 0 comments

Tell me you’re insecure without telling me you’re insecure. You. Can’t. Erase. Us. Dude. Take pictures down. Burn books. Ban knowledge. We’ll continue doing meticulous science. You can’t erase curiosity, our integrity, our drive for knowledge & excellence. It’s our nature -not yours, we know.

submitted 18 days ago • 2 comments

Unquestionably, major policy changes, edicts and directives handed down by the new Trump administration will upend lives. But I've also been struck by the widespread efforts to erase/whitewash history. Stick with me for a pretty shocking series of events from just the past few weeks.

submitted 19 days ago • 79 comments

submitted 19 days ago • 4 comments

Yup.

submitted 19 days ago • 0 comments

The regime's anti-"DEI" crusade in action: A comprehensive effort to re-segregate elite spaces, purge women and people of color, and destroy any evidence that members of marginalized groups may have deserved their place. Once complete white male domination is restored, they call it "meritocracy."

submitted 19 days ago • 2 comments