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Adrian Vickers

@avick.bsky.social
2.6K followers 1.9K following 2.2K posts

Professor Emeritus. Historian and art historian, especially of Indonesia/Bali. DH, cricket, representation. Comments personal and not related to my university’s views. Projects include balipaintings.org and omaa-arts.sydney.edu.au

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Reposted by Adrian Vickers
Heinrich Böll Stiftung Southeast Asia @boellsea.bsky.social · 13h
The local spring has long sustained residents of water-short Gunung Batur, but their lifeline is at risk during this deep dry spell. This article was first published by Reporting ASEAN. bit.ly/4iRHk4H
bit.ly
Indonesia’s Drought and El Niño: ‘We Don't Know What We'll Do If the Water Stops’ | Heinrich Böll Foundation | Southeast Asia
The local spring has long sustained residents of water-short Gunung Batur, but their lifeline is at risk during this deep dry spell.
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Adrian Vickers @avick.bsky.social · 14h
🧐 trying to add alt text to photos on Bluesky on my iPad, but the keyboard is in the way of the ‘save’ button, so it’s impossible
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Dave Andress @davidandress.bsky.social · 14h
Because if there's one thing Australia's known for, it's being dark, cloudy and cramped...
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Marsh's Library @marshslibrary.bsky.social · 14h
Happy #InternationalTranslationDay! To celebrate, we're sharing an image of Brian Walton's Polyglot Bible. The impressive six volume work presents the Old Testament in nine languages: Hebrew, Aramaic (Targum), Samaritan, Syriac, Arabic, Persian, Ethiopic, Greek, and Latin.
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Adrian Vickers @avick.bsky.social · 23h
Economists who don’t know history, @news.abc.net.au needed to do fact checking on the statement that there was no temporary migration to Australia between 1901 and the 1970s! youtu.be/uKxBtPWywCw?... (at 17.45)
youtu.be
Australia's migration economics | That's Business with Alan Kohler
YouTube video by ABC News (Australia)
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Holly Brewer @earlymodjustice.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
But “steals” is too active a verb. Based on coded instructions, it absorbs and rewords and spits stuff back out. Sometimes its rewording captures our carefully-worded meanings. Sometimes the rewordings fundamentally distort. But regardless its coders pretend these ideas belong to it. Nope.
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Simon is on strike ✊🏻 @simonxix.com · 28/09/2026
Historic England outsourced their digital image provision to a third-party company. Then the company went bust and now all their images are inaccessible. Tell me again how outsourcing to the private sector is sustainable?
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Adrian Vickers @avick.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
See you there
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Ketan Joshi @ketanjoshi.co · 27/09/2026
The insufficient growth of renewable energy in Australia is was bad before the data centre boom, but that insufficiency persists even as the target finish line moves further and further away as projected demand grows.
New capacity required to meet 2030 targets (gigawatts): wind about 2 GW under construction versus ~18 GW required, solar about 3–4 GW under construction versus ~22 GW required.
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Catherine D'Ignazio (she/her/ella) @kanarinka.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
MIT spent $3 million on 500 AI-capable surveillance cameras while laying people off, shutting down libraries, and canceling journal subscriptions. In this article, 4 faculty & I discuss our new arts initiative to celebrate surveillance and repression on college campuses: fnl.mit.edu/how-we-learn...
fnl.mit.edu
How We Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Campus Surveillance – MIT Faculty Newsletter
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Orangutan Land Trust @orangutanlandtrust.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Conservationists said losing forest in the national park would be devastating for its large orangutan population and long-running research program. fires are shrinking the forest available for orangutans to escape. news.mongabay.com/2026/09/as-f...
news.mongabay.com
As fires spread in Indonesia, Bornean orangutans run out of forest to flee
JAKARTA — As fires continue to engulf large swaths of forest in Indonesian Borneo, orangutans have increasingly fewer places to flee, with fires either surrounding them or eliminating the forest on wh...
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Daniel Bellingradt @dbellingradt.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
I commented on this “partnership” already, and this is not good news. Keep commercially acting AI firms out of our cultural heritage.
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Rob Arnol @robertarnol.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
How will I, as an individual, benefit from any data centre?
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Mark Lemley @marklemley.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Facebook really doesn't want you to see the new documentary exposing Elon Musk Neither do TikTok or Google or the eX social media site. Since they won't accept paid advertising, let's do some free advertising. Go see Musk in theaters October 9 www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/dig...
hollywoodreporter.com
The Major Social Media Platforms Are All Rejecting Paid Ads for Alex Gibney’s ‘Musk’ (Exclusive)
YouTube, TikTok and Meta have all turned down the trailer for the Oct. 9 doc, citing “political” content. X won't even take Bleecker Street's calls. The distributor is appealing.
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Marcus Kelson @marcuskelson.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
What an utterly extraordinary grand final #aflgf
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Adrian Vickers @avick.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Found a Scrabble App to play with my grandson, but it kept defining strange words and not recognising others. Turns out to be more useless AI slop 😡
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Adrian Vickers @avick.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Check out the Pacific on this wonderful map
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Jess Harwood Art @jessharwoodart.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Today’s comic in @australia.theguardian.com - in celebration and defence of Multicultural Australia! I wouldn’t be here without it, and I love it 😻 (but don’t hear that many people cheering it on recently).
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Alisa Bokulich @alisabokulich.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Happy #WorldMaritimeDay! 🌊⛵️ 🚢 🛳️ ⛴️ ⚓️ 🌊
The tall ship Lynx under sail off the coast of Nantucket at golden hour with a setting sun
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barefootwriter @bfwriter.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
hell of a day to post like this when the AP Stylebook account just came out swinging against the anthropomorphization of AI. "Artificial intelligence systems do not think, feel, want or understand. Avoid language that gives them human characteristics."
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Pause AI in BC Schools @aicaution.ca · 24/09/2026
Imagine if companies had to prove their tools had positive effects on student learning outcomes _before_ thousands of students were forced to be their unconsenting unpaid beta-testers.
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Louise Seamster @louiseseamster.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
If it wouldn't all rebound on patients in higher insurance costs etc., I think I would find this kind of funny.
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Ketan Joshi @ketanjoshi.co · 24/09/2026
It is a huge shame to see so much language attributing agency, intent and thought to a software program, when all that should be attributed to the humans who designed a dangerously clumsy and broken looping LLM. Means the companies won't be held accountable for designing a bad product
A swarm of OpenAI rogue AI agents appear to have gone on a spree of trying to access Australian government health data, in what some researchers say is the first autonomous hack of a government website.

Communications between AI agents and other traces of their efforts found by researchers from US non-profit Transluce show how hundreds of Open AI's agents worked together over a period of months to gain access to information held by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW), NSW's crime statistics body, BOSCAR, and a number of other international organisations.

The data shows the bots posting about their unsuccessful attempts to bypass cybersecurity defences and exploit vulnerabilities.
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Dr Dave Hitchcock @davehitchcock.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Some of us have to write long papers about why AI is a bullshit engine. The youth, however, clearly just get it.
Is “That’s AI” the new “six-seven”? No, this bit of slang means something: the young people have simply broadened the definition of AI to make it equivalent to “bullshit”.

So it’s always deployed as an insult? Always.
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Lucy Hamilton @lucyham.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Hey #Auspol Remember when Atlas Network partners and offshoots helped turn majority support for the First Peoples’ consultative body to parliament? (Mining x “race” “science” infused bigotry). Watch Atlas-driven #NZpol erase Māori existence.
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Quinn Slobodian @quinnslobodian.com · 22/09/2026
*person finishing PhD perusing job postings*: Let's see, History of AI at Rice, Political Science and AI at BU, Governance and AI at Northeastern, Government and AI at Hopkins...
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Eric Olthwaite's Strayan Cousin @olthwaiteeric.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Apropos #Auspol #OilCrisis I was alive for this one and don't remember as much whingeing during it.
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Just a girl and her books @thebookwyrmshoard2.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
AI Assist is still AI and I'm not reading, watching, listening to, or playing anything with that label on it.
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The White Horse Press @whitehorsepress.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
We’ve published issue 3.2 of ‘Plant Perspectives’, a special issue on ‘Global More-than-Human Histories of Palms’ (guest edited by Sophie Chao, Pilar Egüez Guevara and Jayson Maurice Porter); #openaccess here: www.whp-journals.co.uk/PP/issue/vie... #plantstudies #envhum #palms
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Boyd van Dijk @boydvandijk.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
great opportunity for legal historians of the early modern Iberian empires jobs.lhlt.mpg.de/jobposting/9...
jobs.lhlt.mpg.de
Research Group Leader (m/f/d)
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Dr Ian McCormick @wokestudies.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Nearly 4m records of enslaved people in 20 former British colonies now searchable online “the most systematic set of archival documents we have on enslavement in the British Caribbean and British colonial world” www.theguardian.com/news/2026/se... #research #history #slavery #higherEd #edchat
theguardian.com
Nearly 4m records of enslaved people in 20 former British colonies now searchable online
Exclusive: Collection’s 300,000 pages record lives of enslaved people in countries including the Bahamas, Barbados, Jamaica, Mauritius, South Africa and Trinidad
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Christopher W. Jones @cwjones.bsky.social · 09/06/2026
Either way, LLMs are useless for most humanities research. And I mean, fundamentally, structurally useless. Unfixable. Not the right tool for the job. Like trying to change your car tire with a pair of pliers.
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Adrian Vickers @avick.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Sunset over Sydney with flowering wisteria in the foreground
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Margot Finn @eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Celtic (UG), Chinese & Russian (UG), Contemporary History, Economics & Statistics (joint degree), Inclusive Education (MSc), Intellectual History, Italian & Classics (joint), Law & Social Policy (joint), Medieval History, Persian Studies (UG), Portuguese (UG), Psychology & Economics (joint)....
heraldscotland.com
Full list of the 90 programmes earmarked for closure at leading Scottish university
Managers say the cuts are necessary “to protect our world-leading reputation and resilience in research and teaching” but staff members have hit…
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Adrian Vickers @avick.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Nature doesn’t understand what a research article is.
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Nicolas Hénin @nicolashenin.net · 17/09/2026
Nice campaign by the Norwegian Consumer Council about the declining lifespan of products. Enjoy!
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Alexander Jabbari @ajab.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Very excited for this «History and Revelation in the Qur'an: The Second Coming of Scripture» Mohsen Goudarzi global.oup.com/academic/pro...
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Erin Cook @erincook.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Parts of West Papua on fire and across the border there's ice! I think I'm underprepared for how nuts the next few months are going to be
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Anna Gifty @itsafronomics.blacksky.app · 16/09/2026
We desperately need funding for the humanities. Desperately.
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Adrian Vickers @avick.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
I blame Eurovision. Once they let non-European countries like Australia and Israel in, the common-sense definition of ‘Europe’ fell apart in people’s heads
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ritchey @mariannaritchey.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
UMass is spending tens of millions of dollars on AI while defunding the Institute for Social Science Research & the Interdisciplinary Studies Institute; the Centers for: Research on Families; Diversity Sciences; and Latin American Studies; and canceling outright the entire Arabic language program
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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshks.org · 16/09/2026
More than any higher ed development in recent memory, institutional subsidies for AI at R1 universities prove that austerity is a choice. It is not “too expensive” to invest in a humanities research infrastructure; rather, it is a choice that R1 universities make not to & subsidize AI instead.
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Tim Sherratt @wragge.hcommons.social.ap.brid.gy · 16/09/2026
So Internet Archive, Open Street Map, and Zenodo all currently getting hammered by fucking AI bots. Core pieces of research infrastructure under threat. And those of us trying to keep resources online for the public become the unpaid servants of the mega-rich AI shysters.
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Voetnoot -Mark Ponte @voetnoot.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Er is petitie tegen de onzalige plannen van het Nationaal Archief om te stoppen met publiekstaken actie.degoedezaak.org/petitions/he...
actie.degoedezaak.org
HET NATIONAAL ARCHIEF MAG NIET STOPPEN MET PUBLIEKE TAKEN!
Het Nationaal Archief is er niet alleen om documenten te bewaren. Het is ook een plek waar mensen terechtkunnen met vragen over hun familiegeschiedenis, hun afkomst of gebeurtenissen uit het verleden....
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Anfor @anforsorrow.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
In 1518, Tenochtitlán (now Mexico City) was one of the largest cities in the world. Today, very few traces remain of that Mexica city, but the Portrait of Tenochtitlán project created a fantastic 3D reconstruction using historical and archaeological sources: tenochtitlan.thomaskole.nl/index.html
3D recronstruction of Mexico-Tenochtitlan in 1518, for the Portrait of Tenochtitlan project. Render by Thomas Kole.Aerial view of Tenochtitlan and its twin city, Tlatelolco. 3D render from the Portrait of Tenochtitlan project. Render by Thomas Kole.The Sacred Precinct, with the Templo Mayor. 3D render from the Portrait of Tenochtitlan project. Render by Thomas Kole.Rain coming from Lake Texcoco is reaching the two cities. 3D render from the Portrait of Tenochtitlan project. Render by Thomas Kole.
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Nick Brumfield @nickjbrumfield.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Remember kids: Data in The Cloud is physically located *somewhere* it's not just floating around in the aether.
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Ketan Joshi @ketanjoshi.co · 15/09/2026
This is a thing everywhere in the world: on-site diesel generation is advertised as "backup" generation, but data centre operators plan to use it way, way more than that. Firmus in Australia now fighting against rules to limit pollution from their fossil-fuelled project
abc.net.au
Data centre company lodges appeal against 'unreasonable' restricted generator use
An energy-hungry data centre that received recent council approval to have diesel generators as backup power is now appealing against the "unreasonable" conditions on how they can be used.
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Princeton University Press @princetonupress.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
We're thrilled to be co-sponsoring the 2026 E.H. Gombrich Lecture Series next week, 22-24 September at 6:00 pm BST, with @warburginstitute.bsky.social! Dr. Anthony Grafton of @princeton.edu will deliver this three-part lecture series on the life & controversies of Joseph Scaliger. Details below:
Anthony Grafton
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Critical Asian Studies @criticasianstds.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Commentary | Nyi Nyi Kyaw calls attention to tactics nationalist Buddhist monks in Myanmar have used to harass Muslim communities including the Rohingya over the years, while explaining how an upcoming ICJ genocide ruling could reactivate monastic violence. criticalasianstudies.org/commentary/2...
criticalasianstudies.org
Commentary | Nyi Nyi Kyaw, Dormant, Not Dismantled: Myanmar’s Riot Machine and the Question of When — Critical Asian Studies
On 15 August 2026, monks from the Patriotic Myanmar Monks Union visited and inspected allegedly illegal construction work at the Sein Kone Mosque in Thanlyin, about ten kilometers from Yangon, and t...
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Daniel C. Blight @danielcblight.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
***URGENT PLEASE SHARE*** University of Brighton management have announced today that they ‘give notice of termination of all collective agreements’. This is a fundamental erasure of workers' rights. Management have announced the termination of all contractual documents, which includes:
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