Marianne O'Doherty @marianneodoherty.bsky.social · 23hThey pretend that crumbs from the table are gold dust. 010
Marianne O'Doherty @marianneodoherty.bsky.social · 02/10/2026It's good to belong to the first UK university to have the guts to walk away. But the point in this that all our universities and their sector groups did nothing to prevent or protest predatory AI companies from stealing *our* work stands. I'd like also to see bans on students sharing our work... 110
Marianne O'Doherty @marianneodoherty.bsky.social · 30/09/2026I went to the opticians and my prescription has not got worse. However, my eyesight is still really shit. Pitying things about slow focus, weak muscles holding the right one in place, dry eye, and indicators of raised cholesterol were said. Basically they shrugged. 000
Marianne O'Doherty @marianneodoherty.bsky.social · 30/09/2026Intrigued by the Fairford stuff which some local news sources are now more firmly suggesting was fuel siphoning. The 999 call complicates this, but it would be pretty funny if a few low-level crims from LDN decided to nick red diesel from one of the most securitized areas of farmland in the UK. 010
Reposted by Marianne O'Doherty Leonie V. Hicks @lvhicks.bsky.social · 30/09/2026As the Normans are everywhere all at once, here are my reading suggestions for those who want to know more normanlandscapes.wordpress.com/2026/09/03/l... #medievalsky #skystorians 2238
Marianne O'Doherty @marianneodoherty.bsky.social · 29/09/2026Fancy autocorrect people 1; terrifying super intelligence people 0. Terrifying fancy autocorrect people 3. 000
Marianne O'Doherty @marianneodoherty.bsky.social · 26/09/2026Why haven't members of the government actually dead from sheer embarrassment? 010
Reposted by Marianne O'Doherty Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 26/09/2026Does my Speak-n-Spell feel pain when I type O-U-C-H? The jury is out. Philosophers and neuroscientists say that's fucking stupid, but I called a guy from the Center for Pretending that Household Electronics Are Sentient and he said there's no way to know for sure. 5843431192
Marianne O'Doherty @marianneodoherty.bsky.social · 25/09/2026Weston-super-Mare sea front now has an artisanal gelateria. That is all. 130
Marianne O'Doherty @marianneodoherty.bsky.social · 25/09/2026I am reserving judgement on Burnham's plans but the problem with the 'crap schools' idea is that in that case there must be just... so many of them! The data tell us that we have a very high proportion of unhappy children. Personally, a really high proportion of my school friendship group... 101
Reposted by Marianne O'Doherty Ed Morrish @edmorrish.com · 24/09/2026funny how the government is considering jailing parents for the crimes their kids commit, but not jailing tech ceos for the crimes their ai agents commit 015447
Reposted by Marianne O'Doherty BeijingPalmer @beijingpalmer.bsky.social · 22/09/2026something has gone very, very wrong with the UK 1143334751
Marianne O'Doherty @marianneodoherty.bsky.social · 22/09/2026I find all this so infantilizing. It's pathetic, actually. The techbros are trying to turn us into giant babies who can do nothing without it. It's not extending human capabilities; it's diminishing them 000
Reposted by Marianne O'Doherty Jay Rayner @jayrayner1.bsky.social · 21/09/2026On the BBC News Katya Adler has just described Germany, where the far right AFD keep winning elections, as entering 'uncharted political territory'. Hmmm. Where Germany is concerned I think that territory is pretty well charted. 563910736
Reposted by Marianne O'Doherty Nick Harkaway @nickharkaway.com · 19/09/2026I’ve worn a grubby RNLI cap for decades. I sound London, but I was born in Truro and I was a basically feral (Gen X) kid wandering the coast path with a dog until sunset for a lot of my early life. The lifeboats are in the fabric like trawlers and farms and pasties and fish and chips. 341531329
Reposted by Marianne O'Doherty Smooth Dunk @smoothdunk2.bsky.social · 20/09/2026when ai leaves u behind 75257189637
Reposted by Marianne O'Doherty Alice Roberts @profaliceroberts.bsky.social · 09/09/2026I’ve reached the point - well actually, I reached it a while ago - where I’m militantly anti-AI. Fine - use it in bioscience labs and radiology where it might help analyse data more effectively. Use it sparingly for systems engineering. Everywhere else, it can fuck off. 1553153716
Marianne O'Doherty @marianneodoherty.bsky.social · 18/09/2026It could just not choose to effectively shut down loads of universities just by neglect. 010
Marianne O'Doherty @marianneodoherty.bsky.social · 18/09/2026'We found it in a garage full of Tom Baker era Doctor Who props that the BBC was flogging off to make a few quid'. 020
Reposted by Marianne O'Doherty Ennius @enniusredloeb.bsky.social · 18/09/2026The autumnal equinox is only a few days away and here's what Stonehenge looked like in the 16th century. BL Add MS 28330; Lucas De Heere, Corte Beschryvinghe van Engheland, Schotland, ende Irland; 1573 CE-1575 CE; England (London); f.36r @blmedieval.bsky.social 112357
Marianne O'Doherty @marianneodoherty.bsky.social · 18/09/2026*Endless screaming.* Will historians look back at the chatbot-prompted wars of the late 2020s, or will we not be that lucky? 000
Reposted by Marianne O'Doherty Hetan Shah @hetanshah.bsky.social · 17/09/2026Helpful points from @jburnmurdoch.ft.com here on what AI solving big maths problems might mean for the future of the maths community www.ft.com/content/c947... 25118
Marianne O'Doherty @marianneodoherty.bsky.social · 17/09/2026I feel this shittiness deserves the widest possible audience. 010
Reposted by Marianne O'Doherty Joseph Rezek @rezekjoe.bsky.social · 16/09/2026BREAKING: Boston University's English department (my dept) recently voted to approve new learning outcomes for the English major, including an anti-AI provision that requires students to “craft and revise writing that is sustained, original, and generated without the assistance of AI."bu.eduNew Learning Outcomes Announced | English 402366471
Reposted by Marianne O'Doherty Vauhini Vara @vauhinivara.bsky.social · 16/09/2026I profiled the startup behind Pangram, the AI detector everyone’s talking about. It works really, really well. I wanted to understand how they did it. and also: why people still don’t trust them. (also, news: Penguin Random House is using it.) gift link! ✨bloomberg.comThe World’s Most Reliable AI Detector Has a Human ProblemArmed with a near-perfect detection tool, Pangram is fighting to convince the public AI cheating can be caught. 68342
Marianne O'Doherty @marianneodoherty.bsky.social · 17/09/2026What did you include in your training data? 021
Reposted by Marianne O'Doherty Lizzie Dearden @lizziedearden.bsky.social · 16/09/2026While Piddington dominates the news, at Leicester Crown Court this man was sentenced today Ivan Jennings, a former Conservative councillor, called for terror attacks on small boat migrants and Muslims and shared target ideas, telling fellow white supremacists to kill as many “subhumans” as possible 24864571
Reposted by Marianne O'Doherty Dmitry Grozoubinski @explaintrade.com · 16/09/2026The lesson from this week is that most of the UK media thinks Hot Fuzz is a horror movie about a woke city cop destroying a perfectly admirable local community. 1240465
Marianne O'Doherty @marianneodoherty.bsky.social · 13/09/2026Oh my Days! Rachel Stirling's All About My Mother is so good, and the audio book so well read! Every nuance of Rigg's rich voice comes through when Stirling quotes her. And I was today years old when I found out that Diana was educated at the Moravian school in Fulneck, Leeds! 130
Marianne O'Doherty @marianneodoherty.bsky.social · 13/09/2026This piece is wrong in so many ways. Only National museums in the UK are subsidised to allow free entry. Most others already have to charge everyone, including small, volunteer run places. This means foreign tourists already pay to go to, say, Salisbury or Devizes museum if they want to see... 32512
Reposted by Marianne O'Doherty Marc Morris @marcmorris.bsky.social · 13/09/2026I would like to amputate 10% of Jared Kushner. If he wanted to concede those bits of his anatomy, then we could have a deal tomorrow. But right now he does not want to do that. 04710
Marianne O'Doherty @marianneodoherty.bsky.social · 13/09/2026Another fantastic thread that tells you in detail why the things you suspected couldn't be true (about the hugging face hack) indeed weren't. Hype designed to make you fear; fear designed to make you lose your reason. This tech is still asking me if I want it to summarise my train ticket. Every day. 000
Marianne O'Doherty @marianneodoherty.bsky.social · 13/09/2026Read whole thread, but good to understand what's behind this. 020
Marianne O'Doherty @marianneodoherty.bsky.social · 13/09/2026Read the whole thread, but this is perhaps a key part. 000
Reposted by Marianne O'Doherty Robert Saunders @robertsaunders.bsky.social · 12/09/2026A serious democratic society simply cannot allow this. That's £72 million from just two men. (Both, until lately, based overseas). The average UK earner (full-time) would have to work for over 1,800 years to raise that much. It's a nuclear strike on any pretence at the equality of political power 431410562
Marianne O'Doherty @marianneodoherty.bsky.social · 12/09/2026Minded to agree on distraction, but there is a wrinkle in the UK results that calls into q the roles of both systems & distraction. Scotland and NI both have reading scores higher than Northern England's. NI also slightly outperforms N England in Maths. Scotland only just lags N England... 174
Marianne O'Doherty @marianneodoherty.bsky.social · 11/09/2026OH's family going to Poole tomorrow to see where Grandfather's name will be on a new lifeboat, following a substantial donation of funds raised at his funeral. He'd have no truck with this. I hope his spirit gives them hell. 031
Reposted by Marianne O'Doherty The Empty City @davidallengreen.bsky.social · 11/09/2026NEW Why holding a placard is a terrorist act, while causing disruption in a balaclava is not The mess caused by ministers and the police not taking terrorism law seriously By me at @prospectmagazine.co.uk www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/ideas/law/th... 321420631
Marianne O'Doherty @marianneodoherty.bsky.social · 10/09/2026Peter Apps' book Homesick reminds us that it was part of the great council house plan of the 80s that the housing benefit bill would rise to cover increases private landlord costs. A certain Jeremy Corbyn pointed it out in Parliament. The Tories acknowledged it. 021
Marianne O'Doherty @marianneodoherty.bsky.social · 10/09/2026Asked about how her housing benefit plans would make children homeless Kemi Badenoch just reassured Emma Barnett that that pensioners would not be affected. Barnett doing a good job largely but missed this. 030
Reposted by Marianne O'Doherty Sam Wetherell @samwetherell.bsky.social · 07/09/2026My latest post: On the deindustrialisation of the university. And on being "in defence of history" at a time of extinction. thehistoryfactory.substack.com/p/the-histor...thehistoryfactory.substack.comThe History Factory 2: The Deindustrialisation of the UniversityA few years ago, my employer, the University of York, commissioned a civil engineering firm named Tilbury Douglas to build a new nursery for the children of its employees and students. 42622
Reposted by Marianne O'Doherty Stephen Bush @stephenkb.bsky.social · 07/09/2026"It is hard not to draw the conclusion that the police and Home Office seem to be incapable of an appropriate response to the threat of far-right activity and violence."nicklowles.substack.comDid Kent Police ignore a 999 call?Contrary to their public statement, HOPE not hate can exclusively reveal that Kent Police were tipped off about the Patriot Platform mobilisation – and seemingly did not act on the information. 26710282
Marianne O'Doherty @marianneodoherty.bsky.social · 08/09/2026I booked recently to go to see the Pogues with Lisa O'Neill in Portsmouth. We thought we'd see the historic dockyard too. Now I'm wishing we hadn't. I'm scared of these wannabee paramilitaries. I am not scared of bedraggled people coming here fleeing persecution or just looking for a better life. 011
Marianne O'Doherty @marianneodoherty.bsky.social · 29/08/2026Everyone interested in this should watch last night's BBC Points West. They followed an ambulance crew. In 10 hrs they managed 4 calls, spending most of the time driving across the county. Not one needed an ambulance. In one instance an elderly man had accidentally... 110
Reposted by Marianne O'Doherty The Empty City @davidallengreen.bsky.social · 28/08/2026Terrorism law is that special body of law which provides for rights and obligations over and above the general law of the land. Terrorism law should be credible and taken seriously. The ever-expanding nature of ‘terrorism’ offences is not taking it seriously. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...theguardian.comSeven charged with damaging Trump’s Scottish golf course accused of ‘terrorist connection’Course at Donald Trump’s Turnberry resort was painted with words ‘Gaza is not 4 sale’ and clubhouse was sprayed with graffiti 17384114
Marianne O'Doherty @marianneodoherty.bsky.social · 29/08/2026Look, why don't we just get a big bell and shout 'oyez, oyez, oyez'? 010
Marianne O'Doherty @marianneodoherty.bsky.social · 27/08/2026If you want to know how the AI revolution is going, husband sat on the train home next to a woman writing a legal document. She opened up chat GPT and instructed it to 'add some caselaw to this'. What could possibly go wrong? 020
Reposted by Marianne O'Doherty Alex Prichard @profalexp.bsky.social · 26/08/2026A thread on the dispute at Exeter Uni. #ucu #defendexeteruni @ucu.org.uk On 15 June HR called Exeter UCU into a confidential meeting and informed us they would be putting over 500 colleagues at risk of redundancy and expected to loose around 200 staff. The number of c.150 you’ll have seen is FTE. 4130120
