David Higgins @davidhiggins.bsky.social · 14hWithout wanting to let poor management off the hook, this is at least partly a result of HE policy from successive governments, which can be summed up as “let’s starve unis of funds and see what happens” 0183
Reposted by David HigginsOnni Gust @onnigust.bsky.social · 05/10/202641% staffing cuts in the Faculty of Arts at UoN. We're entering a wilderness of creativity and critical thinking. 1616382
David Higgins @davidhiggins.bsky.social · 05/10/2026I fucked up something at work today and part of it was me being an idiot and part of it was the increasingly confusing and dysfunctional array of devices, apps, and platforms that university education seems to require these days 4180
Reposted by David HigginsJohn Scalzi @scalzi.com · 05/10/2026This is your occasional reminder that generative "AI" in particular could have been developed on public domain materials and/or licensed and compensated works but the major players intentionally, methodically and systemically chose to steal labor from working creative folks instead 10287172725
Reposted by David HigginsJames Murray @james-bg.bsky.social · 05/10/2026The pitch here seems to be, ‘we’ll build the houses and infrastructure we failed to build during the 14 years we were in government, but we’ll do it in the most damaging and lowest quality way possible’. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...theguardian.comTories to pledge to scrap Environment Agency and Natural EnglandShadow chancellor will also promise to scrap affordable homes regulations as part of strategy to refocus on growth 761350425
David Higgins @davidhiggins.bsky.social · 05/10/2026Doing some Important Writing this morning: criticising a fen that I don't like very much. 2131
Reposted by David HigginsJ. R. Carpenter @jrcarpenter.bsky.social · 02/10/2026SCORES FOR WALKING, a new digital text piece launching at Light Night, Leeds 28-29 November openup.leeds.ac.uk/events/light...openup.leeds.ac.ukLight Night Leeds: Scores for WalkingJourney through the Yorkshire Dales like never before with J.R. Carpenter’s Scores for Walking; a... 1124
Reposted by David HigginsDave Borthwick @borthwickdave.bsky.social · 03/10/2026coastal. far low tide & everything distant. raptors (kestrel, buzzard) sweep scrub & merse. such geese that are on the flats (barnacle) occasionally spill themselves to settle. common darter with glitched eye buzzes you. butterfly a comma, the thin daymoon. 0292
David Higgins @davidhiggins.bsky.social · 03/10/2026Beautiful day in Adel. Watching pied wagtails on the cricket pitch while my son has his tennis class. Distant chiffchaff calling. Occasional arrow thwack from the local archery club. Later, I will head to campus for an open day. Calm before the storm! 091
Reposted by David HigginsClare Kelly @clarekelly.bsky.social · 02/10/2026Sick to the back teeth of people in academia passing papers, reports, emails etc. through an LLM, ostensibly to improve readability or whatever but actually just transforming human writing into repulsive, staccato, marketing-speak that has a veneer of validty but little-to-no actual fucking meaning 1267
David Higgins @davidhiggins.bsky.social · 02/10/2026Years ago, I used to spend a lot of time walking and running on Woodhouse Ridge in Leeds. I was back there this afternoon and reminded of what a haven it is within a busy urban area. Particularly picturesque Constable-style cloudscape today. 0201
David Higgins @davidhiggins.bsky.social · 01/10/2026Reading some student work that is pretty flawed but I love it because it is idiosyncratic and interesting, and has not been within a million miles of an LLM. 0320
David Higgins @davidhiggins.bsky.social · 30/09/2026Definitely — I had been awake for hours anyway — birthday insomnia! 120
David Higgins @davidhiggins.bsky.social · 30/09/2026Birthday birdwatching on the Yorkshire coast. Yellow-browed warbler heard at Bempton but rarities proved elusive. Much seabird movement and thrushes and smaller birds making landfall. Something emotional about watching an exhausted chaffinch drop to the ground in the middle of a heavy squall! 6323
David Higgins @davidhiggins.bsky.social · 29/09/2026Planning some truly debauched celebrations for my birthday tomorrow (i.e. getting up at 4.30 am to go birdwatching) 8360
David Higgins @davidhiggins.bsky.social · 29/09/2026wow: that is some quality venting! I see similar issues with "humanities and AI" roles and grants 021
David Higgins @davidhiggins.bsky.social · 29/09/2026AI companies are doing some of the most irresponsible shit in human history and universities are responding by partnering with them. It's great to see colleagues, individually and collectively, pushing back. But too many academics either have their heads in the sand or are enabling this imposition. 1183
David Higgins @davidhiggins.bsky.social · 29/09/2026Solidarity Hannah! All the best to you and your colleagues. 110
Reposted by David Higginshannah @hannahkateboast.bsky.social · 28/09/2026I'm on strike for the next five weeks with @ucuedinburgh.bsky.social because management continues to threaten mass compulsory redundancies. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...bbc.co.ukEdinburgh University lecturers begin five-week strike over cutsMembers of the University and Colleges Union are walking out in part of a long-running dispute over job and course cuts. 711850
David Higgins @davidhiggins.bsky.social · 29/09/2026How I feel in the first week of teaching as I approach a middle-aged birthday while being surrounded by students emanating youthful energystatic.klipy.comFalling Skeleton in a Room.Alt: Falling Skeleton in a Room. 3290
David Higgins @davidhiggins.bsky.social · 28/09/2026New version just dropped: Cannibal snakes! Cannibal snakes! We eat each other like cakes! Just like the humans do Oooo-oooo-oooo [other lyrics redacted as too disturbing] 0120
Reposted by David HigginsProf Bill McGuire @profbillmcguire.bsky.social · 28/09/2026The UK has no strategic food reserves, imports more than 40 percent of its food, and grows most of the rest in parts of the country most prone to serious drought in the years and decades to come We are not - to say the least -in a good place www.theguardian.com/business/202...theguardian.comMost of UK’s essential food supply grown in drought-risk areas, report warnsKeys crops such as cereals, potatoes, sugar and oils grown in areas with moderate to very high risk 49233
David Higgins @davidhiggins.bsky.social · 28/09/2026Day one of the teaching term. Prepping while listening to the Twilight Sad: a band who somehow manage to be gloomier than their name promises. 170
David Higgins @davidhiggins.bsky.social · 28/09/2026More plausible I think than large language models reaching AGI! 110
David Higgins @davidhiggins.bsky.social · 27/09/2026Gen AI has come with massive opportunity costs. Think about how all the ingenuity and £££ blown on chatbots could have been used more constructively. For example, as an allergy sufferer, I would welcome serious investment in nanobots that can hunt and kill dust mites. 182
Reposted by David HigginsBen Williamson @benpatrickwill.bsky.social · 26/09/2026The Department for Education's AI tutoring initiative is getting pounded with criticism from both sides. Some critics have launched a call to pause this initiative docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...docs.google.comOPEN LETTER: PAUSE THE NATIONAL ROLLOUT OF AI-MEDIATED TUTORING IN ENGLAND’S SCHOOLSOPEN LETTER To the Rt Hon Andy Burnham MP, Prime Minister, and the Rt Hon Lucy Powell MP, Secretary of State for Education The Department for Education has announced plans to develop, what it calls, “... 2209
David Higgins @davidhiggins.bsky.social · 26/09/2026Whatever you do, dont participate in any of the footie yourself. Injury and/or humiliation guaranteed (I speak from bitter experience) 020
David Higgins @davidhiggins.bsky.social · 26/09/2026Really enjoyed this excellent and informative book. Glad I didn’t let the blurb from climate change denier Matt Ridley put me off. 0111
David Higgins @davidhiggins.bsky.social · 26/09/2026Based on my neighbourhood WhatsApp, there are a lot of them and they seem to believe any old nonsense they see on Facebook 010
David Higgins @davidhiggins.bsky.social · 26/09/2026I hate those AI nostalgia images so much — there’s always something creepy and nauseating about them. But they are clearly (and depressingly) effective with some demographics! 140
David Higgins @davidhiggins.bsky.social · 26/09/2026Just saw an intelligent post with 1K+ likes; part of a thread on a serious and important topic. But, because I am a horrible pedant, I was unable to engage beyond being annoyed by the mixed metaphor in its second sentence. 140
David Higgins @davidhiggins.bsky.social · 25/09/2026It’s really sad that we’re still in this situation in 2026. I think some improvements have been made at my uni but financial pressures don’t help. And of course we’re seeing a lot of smaller unis that traditionally have a more diverse intake pulling programmes and making staff redundant 010