Mercedes Durham

imagine being such an incompetent researcher that you think an llm can write your literature review

2 Camembert rounds on plates, standing vertically, with a section cut out so it looks like a mouth and a tuft of hair on top One is labelled "Camembert", the other is labelled "Camemernie", like th3 characters from Sesame Street

Doomscrolling break...

Cartoon by Emiel Stevenhagen (emielscartoons)

"Camembert"

a cat is sitting in front of a laptop computer asking for advice ALT: a cat is sitting in front of a laptop computer asking for advice

Please signal boost 🙏 Neurodivergent PhD students: What reasonable adjustments and accommodations do you have for your studies? My
PhD is in English Literature, I have ADHD (combined type), and I’m struggling. I would like to make changes, but I don’t know what might help.

Renaud generally makes me feel bad for all the non-French speakers who can't enjoy his awesome slang and lovely 'tournures de phrase' (see Mistral Gagnant) but this song is new to me.

It is not because you are Renaud YouTube video by Frédéric Courtois

(Everything is awful, I know)
But for the weekend have a gorgeous example of (staged) French-English code switching.
Renaud - It is not because you are
Pondering how my students will react if I use it in class 😂
#linguistics #franglais #renaud
www.youtube.com/watch?v=lw1p...

🎉 🎉 Enjoy your break!

When someone says „Scientists do not want you to know“ you can dismiss everything from there on. Scientists want you to know. They are desperate that you know. They can’t shut up about what they found out and want you to know.

Street name "Prince Andrew Court" with the last part crossed out and changed to "caught".

cot-caught-court on a British high street ;-) #linguistics

Noone who voted for Labour to give Kier that massive mandate they keep harping on about voted for anything that looked even vaguely like this.

Clear points about why AI-generated summaries are problematic despite claims by some that they're supposedly less problematic than other genAI use.

Can I summarize this long text for you? NOPE, NOPE, NOPE

Pâté chinois - Wikipedia

Definitely a case of Quebec French is very different from European French - had to check it out on Wikipedia cos it was completely new to me en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P%C3%A2...

Currently reviewing an RCUK grant and AI is indeed not allowed for that. Otherwise... 😭😭

Sign on wall (of soon to be opening coffee shop) showing picture of dog snuggling with words: “Pontcanna, we’ll be there now in a minute…”

#WelshEnglish side project:
Shops in South Wales using ‘now in a minute’ to advertise they’re opening soon. #enregisterment #commodification #nowinaminute
(Separate study - why the quotation marks)

So I just found out that a cheeky term for a teacher in the Regency period was “Haberdasher of Pronouns.”

I love the image of someone selling pronouns like buttons. Do we need to bring this back?

Bunch o' (socio) linguistics/language ideologies happening right here

How many times, in how many contexts, in how many ways am I going to have to say that this is what "AI" does— what it fundamentally *is*— before it sinks in? That all Bullshit engines do is statistically correlate training data & inputs via their weights to produce outputs you are likely to accept…

UK is handling badly (as usual though) cos afaik most countries do let you in on their own expired passport for example (if you have another one that allows you to board first) - but maybe visas make that harder

You can switch passports on airline (though right now I usually just put uk down and show Swiss passport in Geneva). In practice I’ve always shown most relevant passport at border. Probably because US has always required their citizens to show american passport to enter country.

three panel webcomic 1st panel: one man says to another "we invented a robot that answers questions" 2nd panel: he continues "we just have to feed it 10 baby giraffes a day" 3rd panel: the other man asks "but it answers the questions correctly?" and the first man replies "oh my goodness, no. no no no no no."

It's Mandatory Monday and AI is clearly the future.
mandatoryrollercoaster.com/post/8081046...

I don't know if it's really clear, outside of coverage of Mpls and pockets of organizing elsewhere, that hundreds of thousands of people are actively and at every level of society fighting our government as it abducts and imprisons and torments our neighbors.

In the last few years we lost Luke Perry, Shannen Doherty, Michelle Trachtenberg, Malcolm-Jamal Warner, now James Van Der Beek. I’m sure I forgot someone but it hurts seeing so many names I grew up with leave us at such a young age.

AI is built on stolen labor and powered by data centers that are and will be placed in Black communities to poison us. It's really clear.

I know we're all busy but if you live in the UK and have 20-30 mins (maybe less if you don't go into detail) to respond to the government consultation about settlement, please do (I'm going to try do it tonight or tomorrow morning). The attached guide with a link to consulation is very useful.

Reform is threatening Bangor University over a student society’s decision. The society isn’t Bangor University—but this is a neat preview of how a Reform government would work: public money for supporters only. Trump-style politics, UK edition.

Authoritarian reflex is already working just fine.👇

AI Chatbot That Only Responds ‘Huh’ Valued At $200 Billion PALO ALTO, CA—Hailing the new product as a “game changer” in the development of large language models, Silicon Valley insiders confirmed Tuesday that an AI chatbot that only responds “huh” had been va...

The onion remains undefeated in delivering the most accurate news.

theonion.com/ai-chatbot-t...

I don’t want to laugh at a small business but also VERY funny

Oral history is a history built around people. It thrusts life into history itself and it widens its scope. It allows heroes not just from the leaders, but also from the unknown majority of the people. It encourages teachers and students to become fellow-workers. It brings history into, and out of, the community. It helps the less privileged, and especially the old, towards dignity and self-confidence. It makes for contact - and thence understanding - between social classes, and between generations, And to individual historians and others, with shared meanings, it can give asense of belonging to a place or in time. In short it makes for fuller human beings.

I've been reading about oral history today and as something I've built a lot of my work around, and something I'm intending to bring into my research, I just loved this paragraph by Paul Thompson that articulates some of how I feel about it.

'It makes for fuller human beings.' Lovely.

Straight into next year's sociolinguistics lecture

In the UK academic recession, you will be at one of these stages since many unis buy the same cuts model from the same consultancies. It is always the same process:
*Talk of belt-tightening
*Incidental savings (e.g. printing, refreshments)
*Travel budgets cut
*Promotion freeze (1/4)

Cardiff and Essex post deficits after big spend on severance pay Financially troubled institutions pushed further into the red, with Aberdeen, Robert Gordon and Sheffield Hallam also losing money

Many days I get told awful news from universities that isn't even being reported now. That's... a bad sign. No-one has a plan, no-one's in charge, no-one knows what to do, no-one's even got reliable data. So little left to say or do if I'm honest.
www.timeshighereducation.com/news/cardiff...