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Will Tattersdill

@tattersdill.bsky.social
1.4K followers 273 following 437 posts

Writer and teacher. Literature and science, dinosaurs, fantasy/sci-fi, alternate history, worldbuilding, periodicals, museums, etc. Fiction as W. J. Tattersdill. He/him.

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Reposted by Will Tattersdill
Becca Harrison @beccaeharrison.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
If I were running a university where staff spent weeks and weeks of time putting grant proposals together only for UKRI to feed them into LLMs without informed consent—effectively theft of the time and work—I’d be taking serious action to defend those staff. But I’m not running a university, so
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nick @unionnick.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
On the *same day* the Cornell Seven drugged and raped Jane Doe, Cornell banned four students (including the President of Cornell JVP) from campus for three years for nonviolent, pro-Palestine protests. The same Cornell officials let the rapists off with apology essays.
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Guy Shrubsole @guyshrubsole.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
The size of *one* of the AI data centre buildings proposed for Great Torrington in north Devon, versus Exeter cathedral 🤯 From this useful piece profiling the local campaigns against it: www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...
A diagram comparing the size of one of the AI data centre buildings proposed for Great Torrington in north Devon, with Exeter cathedral. Source: Guardian piece linked to in post.
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Will Tattersdill @tattersdill.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Alison is too kind and it's so exciting to see one's work being used so deftly (after a decade of it all just being in my head)!
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James Butler @piercepenniless.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
When was the last time our Secretary of State for Culture displayed anything approaching this degree of public enthusiasm for our world-class arts industry? Has she been seen anywhere? Given impending charter renewal... did she even bother to visit a single prom?
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Cllr Dr Alex Powell @apowelllaw.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
So, just to be clear, Daniel Thomas was: 1- Carrying a knife contrary to section 139 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 2- Used that knife to commit criminal damage (Criminal Damage act 1971) 3- likely engaged in the criminal offense of endangering Life at Sea (Merchant Shipping Act 1995)
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Will Tattersdill @tattersdill.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Obviously it's complicated, but the "point of no return" for a country is probably roughly when the idea of a lifeboat becomes controversial
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Will Tattersdill @tattersdill.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
@lukekennard.bsky.social AAAAAAA!!
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Prof. Dimitra Fimi @dimitrafimi.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Wonderful #Tolkien news! Westminster Abbey has announced that J.R.R. Tolkien will be honoured with a memorial in Poets' Corner. I've known about this project for some years + was privileged to be consulted during its development. Great to see it made public! www.westminster-abbey.org/abbey-news/a...
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REwadent Evil @ewacat.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
if you ever struggle with names when worldbuilding just remember there's a whole massive mountain range called The Rockies
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Paul Bernal @paulbernal.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Thousands of university jobs lost too, and barely a peep either.
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Will Tattersdill @tattersdill.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
This is still something I wish "normal" British people knew more about. Migrating here is unbelievably and unjustly expensive
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Clarkesworld @clarkesworldmagazine.com · 21/09/2026
And... By far, the greatest danger with short stories is that people conclude too early that they understand them.
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Clarkesworld @clarkesworldmagazine.com · 21/09/2026
No company is going to survive in the future without understanding short stories. Short stories are about amplifying human potential, not replacing it. If you don’t have an short story strategy, you’re going to die in the world that’s coming.
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Clarkesworld @clarkesworldmagazine.com · 21/09/2026
Updating the "AI" community's own words for short fiction marketing: Short stories won’t replace humans, but humans who read short stories will replace those who don’t. The true power of short stories lies not in replacing humans, but in working alongside us to achieve what neither can do alone.
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Xero now with 100% more 🎃 @artificer-ind.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Still patiently waiting to be "left behind" by AI rather than it chasing me across every damn space like a slasher in a low budget flick.
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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 19/09/2026
When we talk about the costs that LLMs impose on society we should not forget the fact that nothing works anymore because everyone is so scared of getting their shit scraped. I can't even use google scholar from my university or starlink because they send too much traffic.
Google	
Sorry...
We're sorry...

... but your computer or network may be sending automated queries. To protect our users, we can't process your request right now.
See Google Help for more information.
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Ian Carrillo @iansociologo.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
In this class we're in the middle of reading about ways that AI has already harmed real people in its actual applications. There are so many examples (and that list is growing everyday) that it's not possible to cover them all. arstechnica.com/health/2023/...
arstechnica.com
UnitedHealth uses AI model with 90% error rate to deny care, lawsuit alleges
For the largest health insurer in the US, AI's error rate is like a feature, not a bug.
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headfallsoff @headfallsoff.com · 19/09/2026
also. the thing people hate is not ‘the technology’ it is the tech industry. they hate move fast and break things. they hate having everything they say tracked and processed while companies do whatever they want. they hate every single ideological value that animates silicon valley
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headfallsoff @headfallsoff.com · 19/09/2026
on some level, you have to accept that yes, people are reacting emotionally without doing detailed research but really you can’t blame them or stop them. this was some bullshit not a single one of us had to think about three years ago and now it’s making shit worse in like most daily interactions
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headfallsoff @headfallsoff.com · 19/09/2026
people are always saying anti-AI arguments don’t understand the full nuances of the technology. which is correct. but only because it stole everyone’s work, exists solely to get you fired, has made the entire internet unusable and has been forced on everyone without consent
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David Veevers @davidveevers.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Think of the combined CENTURIES of expertise lost here, the creativity, the knowledge, the depth and breadth of cultural learning and understanding, the generations of minds enriched and enlightened, the sheer weight of history that led to the establishment of these programmes. Purged. Destroyed.
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Felicity Callard @felicitycallard.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
The brutal reality of universities' suppression of wages (in KPMG's report for DfE on cost of undergraduate provision in England) assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6aabfa...
Table 1 – Cost increases since the last study by cost type
Actual % increase
between 2016-17 and
2019 study cost groupings
2023-24 weighted
average unit cost
Staff costs 14%
Non-pay costs 46%
Indirect departmental costs -24%
Centrally allocated indirect costs 29%
Estates costs 40%
Sustainability adjustment -2%

Source: Analysis of Data Returns
Table 1 shows that costs have not increased equally in the time between the two costing studies. Non-pay costs have increased slightly ahead of inflation and estates costs have increased in line with inflation. Universities have managed staff costs significantly below inflation, increasing only by 14% compared to the 41.2% increase in RPIX. By contrast, indirect departmental costs have reduced by 24%, but this may be due to differences in the universities participating in the 2019 and this study. The movement in MSI is reflective of changes in financial performance rather than any inflationary impact.
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Dr Thomas Halliday @tjdhalliday.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
🎉🎉🎉🎉
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Will Tattersdill @tattersdill.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
This is the kind of headline opportunity which only comes along once or twice in a subeditor's career
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Joseph Rezek @rezekjoe.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
BREAKING: 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.edu
New Learning Outcomes Announced | English
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Will Tattersdill @tattersdill.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
Stunningly good points from soup to nuts here, everyone teaching in higher ed needs to read this www.insidehighered.com/opinion/care...
insidehighered.com
Students as Conscientious Objectors to Gen AI (opinion)
We should listen to them—and treat their objections with respect.
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Will Tattersdill @tattersdill.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
I'm reminded of @bengoldacre.bsky.social's line about what to do if you're worried you might be a bad person: look in the mirror and ask yourself, "am I currently suing Médecins Sans Frontières?"
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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshks.org · 06/09/2026
We keep discussing ”strategies” for teaching in the age of AI to avoid talking about resources. It’s so boring!! The strategy is invest $ to hire people, lower class size, support research-engaged learning & stop measuring the worth of disciplines in relation to # of enrollments and majors.
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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshks.org · 06/09/2026
We know how to teach books in the age of AI: small classes, close reading, research-engaged learning (which is how you ’let students see you struggle’). The issue is nobody will hire and pay the requisite # of faculty to offer this.
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Will Tattersdill @tattersdill.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
The Two Working Days A Week Of The Mind wonkhe.com/blogs/studen...
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Ada Palmer @adapalmer.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Chinook salmon have recolonised 88% of their historic range on the Klamath River, with more than 13,000 fish passing the old Iron Gate Dam site in 2025, up from 7,700 the year before. Two years after the dams’ removal, it’s going better than anyone predicted. buff.ly/pToC9gB #ShareGoodNewsToo
nature.com
Rewilding the upper Klamath River Basin: rapid recolonization of Chinook salmon following the world’s largest dam removal - Scientific Reports
Scientific Reports - Rewilding the upper Klamath River Basin: rapid recolonization of Chinook salmon following the world’s largest dam removal
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🇬🇾🗽Sydette The Dreaded Gorgon🗽🇬🇾 @blackamazon.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
This this THIS RIGHT HERE
The worst case scenario isn’t “AI goes rogue and makes disastrous mistakes,” but a bunch of people at at AI startup over-promising what their systems can do, get handed access to critical systems, write sloppy prompts, code, and configurations, trigger a disaster, then trying to dodge responsibility by screaming about the Singularity and AGI, and flooding technically illiterate regulators with a massive tsunami of technobabble.
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Will Tattersdill @tattersdill.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
"I believe that most people are continually harmed by their daily lives, as most people’s daily lives are on the computer or their smartphones, and those lives have been stripped of dignity." www.wheresyoured.at/never-forgiv...
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Catherynne M. Valente @catvalente.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
I think about this essay a lot. About the low-level stress & aggravation literally everything is now designed to incite & maintain. What this constant emotional histamine response to our digital-logistical environment does to us, how it degrades our days. www.wheresyoured.at/never-forgiv...
wheresyoured.at
Never Forgive Them
In the last year, I’ve spent about 200,000 words on a kind of personal journey where I’ve tried again and again to work out why everything digital feels so broken, and why it seems to keep getting wor...
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James Hell Brooks @kleinman.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
For the past two years I've been tracking every bill proposed in state legislatures across the country to figure out what Republican plans for the future are. The answer, based on these 1,182 bills, is that they want to repeal the 20th Century heartlandsignal.com/2026/09/09/b...
heartlandsignal.com
Proof from the states: the right wing attempt to repeal the 20th century – Heartland Signal
Republicans are in Dallas this week making the case that the other side is the extreme one. We read the legislation they introduced in all 50 states and built a searchable record of what we found: 1,1...
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Marijke Valk @marijkevalk.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
I'm excited to share the CFP for this year's BSLS Winter Symposium, which I'm absolutely thrilled to be organising with @thebsls.bsky.social! Occult Science: Disenchantment, Re-Enchantment, and the Persistence of Wonder Abstract deadline: 31 October 2026 Full CFP: www.bsls.ac.uk/2026/09/bsls...
bsls.ac.uk
BSLS 2026/27 Winter Symposium Call for Papers – The British Society for Literature and Science
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Julia Laite @julialaite.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
Anyone working in the sector already knows, but still good to see it in black & white. Professional services *people*--not just interchangeable hubs of administration--are essential to a good university. Their institutional knowledge has been consistently undervalued & their loss is catastrophic.
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Dave Levitan @davelevitan.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
Increasingly convinced this is the most important post
Twitter post from January 24, 2019, from @Merman_Melville reading

"Being a billionaire must be insane. You can buy new teeth, new skin. All your chairs cost 20,000 dollars and weigh 2,000 pounds. Your life is just a series of your own preferences. In terms of cognitive impairment it's probably like being kicked in the head by a horse every day."
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Jeremy Noel-Tod @jntod.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
Nobody: Universities: what if we kept trying to expand while having fewer and fewer staff
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Jim Pickard @pickardje.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
we are keeping tabs of what Andy Burnham says vs what Andy Burnham actually does www.ft.com/content/4371...
ft.com
Andy Burnham’s summer of quietly backing away from radical pledges
From Thames Water to electoral reform, the prime minister seems to be diverging from his campaign rhetoric
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An Unofficial Hugo Book Club Blog @hugobookclub.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
There are only two stories that won a Hugo whose screen adaptation also won a Hugo. “All Systems Red” is the second one. The other is “Dune” Congratulations @marthawells.com.
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Denny Carter @dennycarter.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
amazing stuff
"This government hates us and wants us dead," Kathleen Hanna remarked during Bikini
Kill's set. "They don't give a shit about anybody's healthcare. They don't care if we're dying in parking lots of curable illnesses.
They don't give a shit. They don't care if our rights are taken away. They're ripping people off the streets. I'm not gonna tell you all the bad things! But I am gonna say it makes it hard for me in my body sometimes to have a good time. 'Cause it's hard to turn it off. And I was thinking that on the way here. I was like,
'What a gift.' What a gift we have to be able to play for you. What a gift Olivia has given all of us to do this festival.
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Will Tattersdill @tattersdill.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
Post your getaway vehicle
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M. Belanger @sethanikeem.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
“How will we ever replace them?” FUND. THE. ARTS.
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Microplastics Sommelier @leastactionhero.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
RIP to a legend
rob dubbin @robdubbin

MY MAN: (comes home)
ME: (nervous) how was the store
MY MAN: fine
ME: oh thank g-
MY MAN: ran into jolene
ME: oh no
MY MAN: she mentioned you left kind of an intense voicemail

12:50 AM • Jul 29, 2019
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Glen O'Hara @gsoh31.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
British universities are now gripped by the ultimate madness. Some unis are bankrupting everyone else accepting students they can't even take and have to leave in limbo... While putting everyone on redundancy notice! It's crazed. Still no-one will intervene. thetab.com/2026/08/24/u...
thetab.com
University of Exeter offers deferred places following shortage of student accommodation
The university said it has not been able to offer accommodation to all students
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#StupidSuez @diplomatofnight.com · 24/08/2026
New York Magazine says in response to criticism of its latest issue that “genocide” is “an accurate description of the atrocities in Gaza [...] and that accusations of antisemitic intent were in fact obfuscating an overwhelming ­scholarly consensus, and that its use would be allowed in our pages”
Some objected to the magazine’s use of the term genocide to describe Israel’s actions in Gaza. Close readers will recognize that this was not a decision specific to this series. This past fall, after an extensive review of genocide scholarship and interviews with multiple experts in the field of genocide studies, the magazine’s editors decided the term was an accurate description of the atrocities in Gaza, that accusations of antisemitic intent were in fact obfuscating an overwhelming ­scholarly consensus, and that its use would be allowed in our pages.
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Will Tattersdill @tattersdill.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
I'm so wildly pumped for this one
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Will Tattersdill @tattersdill.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
So here we go then: the result of many years thinking about how dinosaurs make science and the imagination work together. It's written for both literary critics and scientists and my dearest hope is that it will help foster an academy where we talk to each other more
Photo of a copy of 'The Social Dinosaur', out now from Bloomsbury omg
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