Please give the horse all the cake that is safe for them.

Screenshot of ‘Triste Animal’ by Lou-Adriane Cassidy in Apple Music.

Screenshot of ‘Poussière d’or’ by Stephan Eicher on Apple Music.

I used to do travel music posts back in the day but not recently… in the mood to do one (looking at you @fuzzydinosaur.bsky.social in case you missed the music posts!). Two terrific and quietly powerful Francophone (mostly!) albums from Lou-Adriane Cassidy and @stephaneicheroff.bsky.social

Controversial but - students *perceive* they have been failed when what has happened is they have failed to understand information retrieval is a skill requiring effort. I don't believe a zero friction experience is realistic or desirable in learning, actually.

Probate inventory listing of six cows not only with values but names. I’m particularly curious about Mad Pitt.

Fun to see these six cows recorded with their names in a probate inventory… captured for all time and not just anonymous. (William Worcester, Essex Co MA, 1662)

I get yelled at for saying this but for many hundreds of years people went to university not to get diplomas or be employable but because immersion in the humanities was considered foundational to a good life, and school must return to its original purpose: the joy of learning.

Einstein would probably say that my spending nights and weekends with actual books and articles - writers’ intellectual property THAT I WILL CITE - is useless. But I persist in thinking that the old-fashioned engagement with knowledge in the pursuit of genuinely mastering it is worthy of my time.

Terrific game this afternoon, and yes, the other games have been super even though the outcomes weren’t so super.

When OpenAI released ChatGPT, it was trained on pirated books.

This finally came to light in a lawsuit three months ago, but it has gone essentially unreported.

🧵 1/5

To major yn the humanityes ys to take beautye seriouslye, and such a powerful choice ys much needed yn this worlde.

I feel like Chaucer sees right through me…

The ‘my library card is older than the checkout staffer’ day finally arrived… and felt exactly as you might expect. Checking the mirror for new wrinkles now.

Thank you for making this available virtually - I joined from Pennsylvania and enjoyed it immensely. I’m appreciative of your making that possible.

Pile of books about early modern society and families, particularly in England and France.

Plenty to keep me occupied in the coming snowpocalypse even if the power fails… #alwaysreading #alwayslearning

We have traveled to Canada a number of times in the last year and have only ever experienced welcoming hospitality and kindness… I think you’ll be fine!

Stop callinge them "data centers" and starte callinge them "slop peripherals"

If I’m spending my money on an education, I’m spending it to learn the material and to gain expertise, not to learn how to shortcut my way to the answer. Education is about developing actual skills, and universities should be the places that foster that mindset, not discourage it.

‘“Will we, as scientists, no longer respect sources, where ideas come from? A university should value and prioritise intellectual property.”’

If I can’t confirm veracity and accuracy of sources, how can I ethically use them? And if I don’t read them myself, how do I know I understand the context?

HOW WILL WE LEARNE THINGES?
Uh, what about bookes, filmes, teachinge, educacioun?
HOW ABOUT WE MAKE A MACHYNE THAT DOTH KNOWE STUFFE
Uh, what about bookes, filmes, teachinge, educacioun?
AND IT DOTH STEALE & HURT THE EARTHE
Uh, what about bookes, filmes, teachinge, educacioun?
YEAH THE MACHYNE

"The thing is, even if you're just thinking in terms of fiscal value, having gone through a degree program and being able to put it on your resumé/CV isn't the most significant return on your investment: the way you have further developed your mind is."

AI is Destroying the University and Learning Itself Students use AI to write papers, professors use AI to grade them, degrees become meaningless, and tech companies make fortunes. Welcome to the death of higher education.

It’s supremely distressing to me how education is being pitched as the quick acquisition of moneymaking skills rather than the process and journey of learning how to think critically, ask deep questions, and cultivate lifelong curiosity. www.currentaffairs.org/news/ai-is-d...

Introduce yourself with five concerts you’ve seen.

Daniel Bélanger

Blue Rodeo

Elliott BROOD

Joel Plaskett Emergency

Sheepdogs

Pounce in the gutter of an eighteenth century Quarter Session docket book

Stains on the index tabs of an eighteenth century government record book, from the fingers of the clerks who consulted it.

Soot from an eighteenth century Indictment Roll from the Court of King's Bench

Wax Seals on a charter included in a seventeenth century Star Chamber court record.

I'm no Luddite - far from it - but the ways in which in this development has been spoken of seem blind to, or completely uninterested in, what cannot be machine read and searched for: the pounce, sweat marks, soot, or wax; the non-semantic yet semiotically rich substrate that OCR strips away.

Dispensing false information in a confident tone, rather than offering no answer when none is readily available, is a major flaw of generative AI, experts say. An audit of the top 10 generative AI models including ChatGPT, Gemini and Meta’s AI by the media literacy non-profit NewsGuard revealed that the non-response rates of chatbots went down from 31% in August 2024 to 0% in August 2025. At the same time, the chatbots’ likelihood of repeating false information almost doubled from 18% to 35%, NewsGuard found. None of the companies responded to NewsGuard’s request for a comment at the time.

www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

I assigned Douglas Egerton’s book “Gabriel’s Rebellion,” which tells the story of the thwarted rebellion of enslaved people in 1800, and asked the students to describe some of the author’s main points. Nothing too in-depth, as it’s a freshman-level survey course. They were asked to use either the suggestions I provided or to write about whatever elements of Egerton’s argument they found most important. I received 122 paper submissions. Of those, the Trojan horse easily identified 33 AI-generated papers. I sent these stats to all the students and gave them the opportunity to admit to using AI before they were locked into failing the class. Another 14 outed themselves. In other words, nearly 39% of the submissions were at least partially written by AI.

There is something intensely bleak about students using gAI in an assignment asking them to respond to a text about enslaved people--so sad.
Students are being misled into stripping themselves of the ability to read, write, think by our own universities and Big Tech
www.huffpost.com/entry/histor...

When did Arkansas start using British-style signs?

[Scene is a kitchen - a middle aged woman called JANET is boiling peas at the stove. A younger more colourfully dressed woman named LIZ approached her.] JANET: Ugh... LIZ: What's up? JANET: I am so bored of cooking peas! LIZ: Have you tried... AI peas? JANET: AI peas? LIZ: They're peas with AI! [Liz holds up to us a packet of peas labelled: Pea-i AI - Peas with AI]. LIZ: Al-powered peas harness the potential of your peas JANET: What LIZ [Now a voiceover as we cut to a whizzy technology diagram of peas all connected by meaningless dotted lines] Why not take your peas to the next level with Al Peas' new Al tools to power your peas? [Show a techno diagram of a pea with a label reading 'AI' pointing to a random zone in it] LIZ: Each pea has Al in a way we haven't quite worked out yet but it's fine [Show Janet and Liz now in a Matrix-style world of peas] LIZ: With Al peas you can supercharge productivity and make AI work for your peas! JANET: What LIZ: Shut up LIZ: Our game-changing Pea-Al gives you the freedom to unlock the potential of the power of the future of your peas workflow From opening the bag of peas to boiling the peas to eating the peas To spending millions on adding Al to the peas and then having to work out what that even means. JANET: Is it really necessary to- LIZ [Grabbing Janet by the collar]: THE PEAS HAVE GOT AI, JANET [Cut to an advert ending screen, with the bag of peas and the slogan: AI PEAS: Just 'Peas' for god's sake buy the AI peas. [Ends]

Every ad now

Today is a day when arts degrees are worthless, but the product of those degrees is so valuable it would kill an entire industry if they were made to pay for it.

A Saturday night at home sampling Berlin Philharmonic concerts online - first up, Argerich and Barenboim in Beethoven, then orchestra members in the Trout Quintet (a piece I’d love to hear live in person). #classicalmusic

Cover of Strauss, Four Last Songs (Schwarzkopf/Szell)

Not much listening time this week but this was a bright spot last weekend - I think I would listen to Elisabeth Schwarzkopf in just about anything… #classicalmusic

Easing some of the pain of this week with Mozart from this box (which I bought partly due to @loveinner.bsky.social’s inspirational box set threads). Soothing for the soul.