"Engagement and enragement" is such a useful phrase

It's called bullshit, and it should be called bullshit by journalists who refuse to popularize industry bullshit

I think it'll also be looked down on for "functional uses" where the person using it is doing so to avoid doing their job properly, and hence claiming to be more competent / attentive / eloquent than they are (or at least, the reader cannot tell). I certainly fully intend to look down on this.

Looking forward to this, Ray — I enjoyed Municipal Gothic and Intervals of Darkness very much, and this looks amazing!

apologies for grumpiness 😅

Isn't the point of doing this kind of research to learn about a subject, to follow up ideas and links to fields you don't know, to stumble on glimpses of human experience from others, across time and cultures, to find patterns? But no, we did a keyword search of exactly the terms we already use. 5/5

...the poetry, the fiction, the films, the indigenous knowledge, the lived experience of real people, and indeed also researchers from other fields who have described similar ideas but using different words. (Of course it's even worse when they've just outsourced doing it to some AI slopmaker.) 4/5

And so if you do lit revs by this kind of keyword search (we searched Scopus for the phrase "biomimicry OR biomimetics AND design" (or whatever)) and treat that as the total of human knowledge about a subject, you will always miss the interesting things, the perspectives from outside, the art...3/5

I can't think of a single topic or concept I've come across in all my time in academia where someone in another field hasn't written, often from a different perspective rooted in different experiences, about a similar phenomenon or idea, but called it something completely different. 2/5

Reviewing a paper just reminded me why I'm always so disappointed when people just do keyword searches on certain terms (often only within a defined set of journals or conferences) as a way of doing a literature review of a subject, and conclude that they have thoroughly reviewed the literature 1/5

ABUSE OF POWER COMES AS NO SURPRISE

The Ephemera of Petroliana Figure 1. A selection of receipts, 1950s-1990s, from British petrol stations. Most of these brands have now disappeared from our roads. I was a child who did

Remembering the age of oil through ephemera: ephemera-society.org.uk/the-ephemera... #petrocultures

The Usborne Book of the 2020s What if we’d grown up with The Usborne Book of 2020s instead of The Usborne Book of the Future?

Hi I have a very particular set of skills.

medium.com/@hondanhon/t...

Most people, when confronted with a survey question and asked if they strongly agree, strongly disagree or are somewhere in between will say “well, that depends, like, doesn’t it?”.

Revisiting publishing revenues for a chapter on public history and I'm reminded of the astonishing statistic that UK consumer publishing has annual revenues of £2.5 billion while academic publishing, the bit aimed at the tiny percentage of us working in research, earns £3.5 billion.

Designing Sustainable Worlds: Art and Architecture of Reimagining Futures Guest speakers: Josie Chambers and Sarah de Villiers. Online and in-person in Norwich.

Join us on Thursday 2 April for our next Designing Sustainable Worlds hybrid seminar at Norwich University of the Arts—we'll be joined by @jochamb.bsky.social from @futuresstudiouu.bsky.social, and Sarah de Villiers from Architecture at Norwich

Everyone welcome! www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/designing-...

A poster for the event. The text reads: Designing Sustainable Worlds Edition 2 Art and Architecture of Reimagining Futures Josie Chambers Urban Futures Studio, Utrecht University Sarah de Villiers Norwich University of the Arts Thursday 2 April 2026 15.00-16.00 BST

Our two speakers will share, via their own international work, how artistic methods and architectural practice can intersect with imagination through a critical justice lens.

Please register to get the Teams link, or if in Norwich, join us in person!

Designing Sustainable Worlds: Art and Architecture of Reimagining Futures Guest speakers: Josie Chambers and Sarah de Villiers. Online and in-person in Norwich.

Join us on Thursday 2 April for our next Designing Sustainable Worlds hybrid seminar at Norwich University of the Arts—we'll be joined by @jochamb.bsky.social from @futuresstudiouu.bsky.social, and Sarah de Villiers from Architecture at Norwich

Everyone welcome! www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/designing-...

Fig. 1 for the ages

Can't help feeling like the #REF2029 criteria have directly led to this kind of Procrustean idiocy

How would you like to explore this book? Key Takeaway: provides a concise overview of what the text in the chapter is communicating to help you quickly evaluate it's relevance to your research Important Concepts: extracts concepts discussed in the text of the chapter, defines them, and explains why they are important. It can help you understand terms that may be unfamiliar. Note: there may be times when these features can't be generated due to the length of the original text.

Great. Love that my students will have to actively decline this option.

Very excited to have this little @nightjarpress.bsky.social story out in the world nightjarpress.weebly.com/halls-of-res... — sitting alongside three other new Nightjars. Thanks @nicholasroyle.bsky.social!

1973 board game Alaska Pipeline: The Energy Crisis Game was blatant pro-pipeline propaganda that mocked environmental concerns. Pipeline objections are given by a nosy, old woman & countered with "fact" cards. Exxon Valdez oilspill was 37 years ago today. #alaska #alaskahistory

what do you think?

When I was promoted from Assistant to Associate Professor at TU Eindhoven, in the ceremony they gave me a certificate signed by the rector, on which I glimpsed—during the handover photo—that I'd apparently been promoted to Full Professor. I kept quiet about that 😅

It's just... like... HOW do you get people to understand this? Research isn't just an inconvenience so you can get to the end result. It's how you learn and grow for this and future products, and understand the topic better than you can even put down in the paper you're writing.

This confirms all my prejudices, and I will not be critically evaluating its claims or evidence at this time.

Great new Senior Academic Futures Role at Cardiff University.
Closing date 3 April.
krb-sjobs.brassring.com/TGnewUI/Sear...
@rachelahandley.com @cityofsound.bsky.social @mgorbis.bsky.social @allisondman.bsky.social @danlockton.com @seremiru.bsky.social @lynj.bsky.social @joakimskog.bsky.social

PhD studentship: For the Public Good This PhD project will explore the power of community engagement, co-production and innovative creative practice at the Museum of Norwich.

... exploring the power of community engagement, co-production and innovative creative practice around collecting.

If you're interested, we have information sessions in April (online and in-person) — more details at the link. norwichuni.ac.uk/research-and...