iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Dr Katie Twomey @k2mey.eurosky.social · 28/09/2026

This is quite cool. My university is the first organisation in the world to force Microsoft to allow us to turn off copilot summaries in Word 365, after a backlash against it from staff (including, very vocally, me). That cannot have been easy for our heroic IT people so hats very much off to them!

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Michael Lobel @mlobelart.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

I've talked to a few journal editors who are concerned about similar problems re: anonymous reviewers. If a peer reviewer wants a little help & feeds your unpublished submission into an AI system, they've just shared your proprietary work & broken confidentiality. A nightmare to think about

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c0nc0rdance @c0nc0rdance.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

The obvious conclusion (to me): if you have proprietary research & you upload it into the Plagiarism Nexus, it's not YOUR proprietary research anymore. Behave accordingly.

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Benjamin Braun @benbraun.social · 10/08/2026

Same argument always, and always wrong. The private sector is *never* in a better position to buy and operate not-for-profit assets because its cost of capital and, therefore, required returns are always—always—higher than the state's. Which means higher user costs and/or lower service quality.

"Britain has only a handful of for-profit universities and Senhaji said the scepticism towards the model in the sector was “a hurdle to overcome” in much of Europe. But he argued that private capital was better placed to invest than a financially stretched public sector."

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Alexander Knebel @knebelalexander.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

I have a position to fill as soon as possible for a DFG funded PhD project on optical modulation of MOF-glasses. If you are interested please send me your (non-AI generated) documents and describe your experience. An official job opening is coming later this months.

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Anthony Phillips @aephillips.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

Delighted to be hosting the latest edition of the LGBTQ+ STEMinar at Queen Mary later this year. Abstract submissions are still open – we really want to hear from you, so don’t miss out!

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Mark Berry @boulezian.eurosky.social · 26/05/2026

Very good, if extremely depressing, piece by Stefan Collini to explain what has been and is being done to this country’s universities. If interested to find out, I recommend reading it.

lrb.co.uk

Stefan Collini · Squadrons of Pigs: Bonfire of the Universities

The problems with Britain’s universities are systemic and deep-rooted, not just local or contingent. Yet political and...

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Natalia Cecire @ncecire.bsky.social · 14/05/2026

Academic departments deserve to be saved, supported, resourced, allowed to grow even if they're not "best in the country," "first in the REF," "top-ranked," "at a Russell Group uni," or whatever other austerity-brained nonsense senior managers have been using to flimflam you out of solidarity

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John Scalzi @scalzi.com · 14/05/2026

It's always cool to see amazing people get attention for their awesome books (gift link) www.nytimes.com/2026/05/13/s...

nytimes.com

A Physicist Who Thinks in Poetry From the Cosmic Edge

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Andrew S. Rosen @andrewrosen.bsky.social · 14/05/2026

The Rosen Group at Princeton University is accepting applications for a postdoctoral researcher interested in developing and applying machine learning interatomic potentials to model the dynamics of inorganic, solid-state materials. Apply at apply.interfolio.com/186022 if interested!

apply.interfolio.com

Apply - Interfolio {{$ctrl.$state.data.pageTitle}} - Apply - Interfolio

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Joel Suss @joelsuss.ft.com · 06/05/2026

“Someone who cannot criticise the actions of the Israeli government without suggesting that British Jews should be punished for those actions is, at a basic level, incompetent.” Hear, hear @stephenkb.bsky.social as.ft.com/r/a0177a88-e...

as.ft.com

Row over Green candidates’ comments lays bare party’s real danger

Criticism of social media posts will not decide elections — but the quality of vetting matters for competency

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Dr Dave Hitchcock @davehitchcock.bsky.social · 06/05/2026

We know, but I'm typing anyways: Doing well in the REF will not save our programmes. Being good at teaching students will not save our programmes. Being diligent and agile employees will not save our programmes. Merging into the intellectual equivalent of hospice care will merely delay matters.

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New-Cleckit Dominie @ncdominie.bsky.social · 06/05/2026

I'm not getting any less convinced that the main current driver of British politics, showing up in various ways and to various extents across the spectrum, is people's desire to be told "Here is a category of human beings whom it is legitimate for you to hate".

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Daniel Sugarman @danielsugarman.bsky.social · 06/05/2026

.@jewishnews.bsky.social has just published polling done by @moreincommonuk.bsky.social. While it's important to focus on the (relatively) positive, as the headline does, I would urge readers not to miss this deeply, deeply disturbing statistic in the polling. www.jewishnews.co.uk/uk-voters-mo...

Excerpt from the piece:

"Worryingly, however, a plurality of voters (40%) say that Britain would be neither better nor worse off if Jews left the country because of antisemitism. 32 per cent say Britain would be much worse off, just 4 per cent say Britain would be better off, and 24 per cent say they don’t know. The “much worse off” view is strongest among Conservatives (47%) and Reform voters (44%), and among older Britons. It is weakest among 18-24s (22%) and 25-34s (29%) – the youngest cohort is significantly less likely to see Jewish departure as a national loss."

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Margot Finn @eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 28/04/2026

'Rather than a lack of effort from individual universities, the report identifies a “structural gap” – there is no effective system to coordinate action across a region, leaving institutions to tackle shared problems in isolation.' Well, marketise the system and it will try to work like a market.

timeshighereducation.com

‘Unaddressed’ cost pressures undermining university access work

London-based institutions failing to respond to risks outlined by regulator and setting fewer access-related targets, report finds

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Margot Finn @eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 28/04/2026

'In a social media post on 27 April, UKRI said that from 2028 to 2029, “funding will focus on fully open-access publishing and will no longer be available for hybrid open access”.' If releasing such major changes on LinkedIn is @ukri.org 's new comms policy, we need to talk about 'open' comms.

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False Knees @falseknees.bsky.social · 20/04/2026

How To Live A Good Life #oldknees

The first panel shows a crow with the title "How to live a good life". The second panel shows a crow cawing at itself in the mirror with the subheading "Make friends". The next panel says "Explore" and shows a crow looking into a commercial waste bin. The next says "Try new things" with a crow eating something vile. The next one says "Be curious" and shows the crow grabbing a hissing cat's tail". The final frame says "Get a hobby" and shows the crow looking closely at a book of matches.

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Tom Hulme @tomhulme.bsky.social · 26/04/2026

mind boggling response from a Labour MP. She either: does not have a clue how important universities are to the local economy; knows but doesn’t care because of some sort of ‘anti-elitist’ brainworm; or knows but is too worried to admit it lest it upset Reform voters. none reflect very well on her!

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Glen O'Hara @gsoh31.bsky.social · 26/04/2026

(1) An entire generation of HE leaders are drenched in the language of markets and competition. They will destroy everything else to protect their own bottom line. That can't be changed overnight. (2/4) observer.co.uk/news/columni...

observer.co.uk

Why saving universities is far more than academic

Modern Britain needs young people with degrees – here’s how to make sure they still have somewhere to study them

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Emmett Macfarlane 🇨🇦 @emmettmacfarlane.com · 15/04/2026

It's remarkable how most of the world's English-speaking democracies seemed to have gotten together and decided "let's destroy the main thing that led us to unprecedented prosperity: our systems of higher education."

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Alison @finger-post.blog · 18/03/2026

Use of the word "ethical" - e.g. "the ethical use of genAI" - does not magically make the use of genAI ethical. See also: adding the word "strategic" to every sentence does not magically turn your document into a strategy. #CommsLife

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Peter Tennant @pwgtennant.bsky.social · 25/02/2026

This recent RCT of an "AI stethoscope" claims the technology "shows promise" for diagnosing cardiovascular conditions. It does not. It is a textbook example of the risks of conducting unprincipled 'per protocol analyses'. Once again, peer review at a major medical journal has failed. 🧵 1/

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Grumpy Philosopher @stevecooke.org · 22/02/2026

Bridget Phillipson on Kuenssberg is saying she wants student finance to be fairer, which is odd given Labour has just made it much less fair. She also says she wants to improve access for people from poor backgrounds, which sits badly with bankrupting the universities those students typically go to.

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Glen O'Hara @gsoh31.bsky.social · 21/02/2026

This is causing despair in academe. (1) We were forced to close during Covid. We had no choice! (2) We're not service providers like a restaurant, we are institutions of state. (3) We did everything we could. (4) This will cripple current students' education. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

bbc.co.uk

The students claiming uni Covid compensation 'for the principle'

Dozens of universities have received legal letters over what students say they missed out on during Covid.

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Lucy Pearson @lrpearson.bsky.social · 04/02/2026

When people talk about the idea that some universities must go under, there’s a certain tendency to behave as if these smaller local campuses are negligible- regrettable casualties perhaps but not ‘real’ universities. This report does a great job of illustrating why that’s wrong.

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New-Cleckit Dominie @ncdominie.bsky.social · 29/01/2026

In which we learn what happens when you combine the effectiveness of online learning with the efficiency of UK government, the academic rigour of management consultancy, and the fundamental honesty of purpose of ChatGPT.

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ARCA @arca-artcrime.bsky.social · 21/12/2025

Despite frequent remonstrations from digital archivists, Persephone never accepted that she could not photocopy a whole book in one go.

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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 16/12/2025

In my case, this painstaking labor in the process through which the science gets done. Science isn't measuring stuff in a lab. It's thinking deeply, extracting the heart of idea from the soup of thoughts running through my mind, molding it, and finding a way to communicate that idea to others.

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Marina @marstrina.bsky.social · 16/12/2025

And to me, the question here isn't how Jews feel about this, but how do you feel about it? As a British person, how does it make you feel that one of the smallest minorities in your country needs armed guards to celebrate its holidays? Are you aware of this? Are you comfortable with it?

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Marina @marstrina.bsky.social · 14/12/2025

The first blessing on the first night of Hannukah is for the mitzvah of candle lighting; the second is for God's miracles; but the third is שהחיינו - "blessed be God for saving our lives, and for keeping us, and for letting us come to this time." 2,000 years of that, motherfuckers.

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will pooley @willpooley.bsky.social · 02/12/2025

all academic applications should have consolation prizes. doesn’t have to be much, like a mug that says “i applied for leverhulme 2020” or a t-shirt “UKRI reject 2023”

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The Ferret @theferret.scot · 30/11/2025

🔴 NEW: The University of Edinburgh has quietly paid more than £750,000 to a controversial consulting firm amid job cuts - staff say bosses ignored "repeated" questions about its role. Read more about 'Nousferatu' 👉 www.theferret.scot/p...

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Robert McNees @mcnees.bsky.social · 22/11/2025

Journalist challenge: Use “Machine Learning” when you mean machine learning and “LLM” when you mean LLM. Ditch “AI” as a catch-all term, it’s not useful for readers and it helps companies trying to confuse the public by obscuring the roles played by different technologies. 🧪

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Dr Andrea Laybourn @andrealaybourn.bsky.social · 24/11/2025

📢PhD available in our group focusing on "Synthesis & optimisation of stimuli responsive MOFs in flow" Based in Sch Chemistry & iPRD @UniLeeds. Start date: 1st Oct 2026. ⏰️App deadline 30th Jan. Please repost to spread the word 🙏 #chemsky #phdjobs Come join us! www.linkedin.com/posts/andrea...

linkedin.com

Synthesis and Optimisation of Stimuli Responsive Metal-Organic Frameworks in Flow | Andrea Laybourn

Interested in #flowchemistry? #crystallography? #MOFs? 📣 Fully funded PhD available in our group 📣Title: Synthesis and Optimisation of Stimuli Responsive MOFs in Flow Based in the School of Chemistr...

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Grant Gibson @drgrantgibson.bsky.social · 23/11/2025

I’d love to see UUK, UCU, UCEA, the Russell group, the funding councils, research charities, hell pretty much every university stakeholder to stand together and say to the Govt in one voice - Stop fucking around with our universities. You are destroying us, and you will miss us when we’re gone.

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Anthony Painter @anthonypainter.bsky.social · 23/11/2025

To be clear, this is a tariff on our own exports. Yes, it will raise money - tariffs do. The question is whether it will also cut exports from one of our core economic strengths- HE.

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David Ho @davidho.bsky.social · 18/11/2025

As @glenpeters.bsky.social says, we're way off target for any 1.5°C scenario. To see how far off, each of the red/green bars represents the decrease in CO₂ emissions during COVID. Even if we achieved that from now until the end of 2030, we would still miss our 1.5°C target by a significant margin.

A line chart titled “Global Emissions CO₂” shows global annual carbon dioxide emissions from the year 2000 to 2100. The vertical axis ranges from –10 to 40 gigatonnes of CO₂ per year (GtCO₂/yr). Historic emissions from 2000 to 2025 are shown as a thick black line with white circular markers, rising steadily from just under 30 GtCO₂ to nearly 40 GtCO₂ before flattening. From the most recent year onward, give short trend segments (green and red) extend downward, representing how much CO₂ emissions dropped during COVID.

Dozens of thin blue lines fan out from the near-present into the future, depicting modeled emissions pathways from the IPCC AR6 scenarios database. These pathways generally decline steeply between 2020 and 2050, then taper downward more slowly, with many crossing below zero emissions later in the century. A shaded beige area below the horizontal axis is labeled “net-negative global emissions,” indicating the region where emissions fall below zero. Along one of the central blue pathways, white dots mark decadal points.

A vertical dashed line marks the year 2030. A red callout arrow points to the intersection of this line with the emissions pathways, labeling a red circled point at 20 GtCO₂/yr. The annotation reads: “1.5 °C target for 2030: 20 GtCO₂/yr.” At the bottom of the figure is a small attribution note: “©Data: AR6 Scenarios Database hosted by IIASA.”

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Jorge Villa-Vélez @jurgenvilla.bsky.social · 18/11/2025

Wishing you all a happy International Day of LGBTQIA+ People in STEM #LGBTQSTEMDAY #LGBTSTEMDAY 🏳️‍🌈⚛️🔭 Visibility is very important for our colleagues who cannot be out :D ... Very happy to join the @cern.bsky.social celebration this afternoon. prideinstem.org/lgbtstemday/

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Peter Spackman @crystalexplorer.net · 13/11/2025

I've got a post-doctoral research position available at Curtin University (Western Australia) starting 2026. The project involves computational prediction of crystal structures, their growth, and their properties for organic minerals on Titan (moon of Saturn). staff.curtin.edu.au/job-vacancie...

staff.curtin.edu.au

Job vacancies, employment opportunities, academic and professional positions - Careers at Curtin | Curtin University, Perth Australia

Our mission is to transform lives and communities through education and research. Curtin employees form a unique and diverse community committed to innovative research and student learning. Find out a...

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Philip Ball @philipcball.bsky.social · 03/10/2025

You might imagine that an event celebrating 75 years of the Turing Test would be all "Wasn't he prescient, and look, now we really do have machines that think!" Mercifully, this event yesterday was close to the opposite. /1 royalsociety.org/science-even...

royalsociety.org

Celebrating the 75th anniversary of the Turing Test | Royal Society

An event celebrating the 75th anniversary of the Turing Test, held at the Royal Society on 2 October 2025.

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Ernesto Priego @ernestopriego.com · 17/09/2025

Simply astonishing. Maybe Lecturer A should not have to mark over 100 essays in a two-week window in the first place? Invest in qualified staff and reduce impossible workloads FFS www.kcl.ac.uk/about/strate...

Screenshot. King's College London page. Examples of effective practice

The following scenarios follow the above guidelines and offer insights into ways that academic staff can use AI transparently and in an assistive capacity, always ensuring human oversight and judgment remain central.
Scenario A – Scaling feedback while maintaining quality

Lecturer A is responsible for marking over 100 essays within a two-week window.

Conscious of the limitations this workload places on the depth of individual feedback, they adopt a hybrid approach using their university’s approved or supported LLM tool, Copilot.

Without ever uploading student work directly, Lecturer A composes an anonymised summary for each student, noting which marking criteria were met and the approximate percentage achieved for each. They input this summary alongside the official rubric into Copilot, prompting it to generate supportive, criterion-referenced feedback. This feedback is then carefully reviewed, adapted, and personalised before being uploaded to the marking platform.

Students are made aware of this process in advance and shown a demonstration, reinforcing transparency and trust.

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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 14/09/2025

1. What does a Cold War-era game theory problem known as the silent duel have to do with high-risk research strategies, publication in Cell/Nature/Science glamor journals, and the academic job market? Kevin Gross and I tackle these questions in our latest arXiv preprint: arxiv.org/abs/2509.06718

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Anthony Phillips @aephillips.bsky.social · 05/08/2025

Two very different opportunities are currently open for postdoctoral researchers to join my group in London. First, I’m looking for a materials chemist or physicist to come work with us on materials for environmentally friendly cooling and refrigeration: qmul-jobs.tal.net/vx/appcentre...

qmul-jobs.tal.net

Postdoctoral Research Associate in Barocaloric Materials - QMUL Jobs

ID: 6980. Title: Postdoctoral Research Associate in Barocaloric Materials. Application Deadline:

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Hugh Burton @hughburton.com · 05/08/2025

New PostDoc opportunity in #CompChem at @uclchemistry.bsky.social Join our exciting research to develop novel wavefunction theory for open-shell ground and excited states in molecules. Find out more about our group at www.hughburton.com Please share widely! www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DOE518/r...

jobs.ac.uk

Research Fellow in Theoretical Quantum Chemistry at UCL

Apply for the Research Fellow in Theoretical Quantum Chemistry role on jobs.ac.uk, the top job board for academic positions in higher education. View details and apply now.

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scanlond81.bsky.social @scanlond81.bsky.social · 04/08/2025

PLEASE REPOST: We have a 4-year, fully funded PhD studentship focussed on using computational chemistry to find new and improved oxides for X-ray detection, to start in October 2025. findaphd.com/phds/project.... This is open only to UK nationals.

findaphd.com

Computational discovery of novel oxide-based X-ray detectors at University of Birmingham on FindAPhD.com

PhD Project - Computational discovery of novel oxide-based X-ray detectors at University of Birmingham, listed on FindAPhD.com

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