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wherearethebooks.bsky.social
What is life without bookshelves?!
@wherearethebooks.bsky.social
1.4K followers 3.1K following 190 posts
Promoting #OpenScience practises (in the Arab States) & #LordByron (everywhere else). Ravenous bibliophage lurking in the desert (with cats)

Chief Academic Officer, Knowledge E | Director, The Byron Society | Director, Forum for Open Research | BARS Exec
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Reposted by What is life without bookshelves?!
drsurekhadavies.bsky.social
As I wrote a while back, AI systems are "digital vultures bloated on stolen books which they churn together and vomit out in imitations of words from actual thinking, feeling brains."
2/3
buttondown.com/surekhadavie...
Basement adventures showed me why ChatGPT can only ever be garbage.
In The British Library. Photo by Surekha Davies. Hallo readers, First, a news flash: Join me for a virtual book launch for HUMANS: A MONSTROUS HISTORY...
buttondown.com
November 25, 2025 at 11:22 AM
Reposted by What is life without bookshelves?!
hpsvanessa.bsky.social
Oh. But, I guess, yay that UUK finally discovered they had a voice and could actually use it to mention, politely, in passing, the utter destruction of one of the UK's major industries. Decade too late but ho hum.
eicathomefinn.bsky.social Margot Finn @eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 2d
'Ahead of the autumn budget on 26 November, Universities UK (UUK) has calculated that funding per student for teaching in 2025-26 is at 64 per cent of the level it was in 2015-16.' 1/3
University teaching income ‘£6.4 billon less’ than 10 years ago
UUK says shortfall in teaching money is ‘baked in’ to higher education funding system as institutions brace for new tax in upcoming budget
www.timeshighereducation.com
November 24, 2025 at 8:09 AM
Reposted by What is life without bookshelves?!
justinsalhani.bsky.social
Israel just struck Beirut’s southern suburbs for the first time in months and first time since last year’s war without a warning.

Reports saying it was an airstrike in Haret Hreik. Though such attacks usually are struck by drone
November 23, 2025 at 1:06 PM
Reposted by What is life without bookshelves?!
eicathomefinn.bsky.social
'It is notable that in the last Research Excellence Framework exercise the Department of American Studies at Nottingham was ranked third in the Area Studies unit of assessment and was one of the top-performing units across the whole of the University of Nottingham.' 1/2
hlmurray.bsky.social Dr Hannah Murray @hlmurray.bsky.social · 14d
RED ALERT: the University of Nottingham is threatening to close its Department of American Studies, putting all staff at risk of redundancy, and ending any American specialist knowledge in the Faculty of Arts.

Sign the petition here to save jobs:
www.change.org/p/save-ameri...
Sign the Petition
SAVE AMERICAN STUDIES TEACHING AT THE UNIVERSITY OF NOTTINGHAM
www.change.org
November 23, 2025 at 1:38 PM
wherearethebooks.bsky.social
Ahh the joy of coming home to complaints that this gorgeous monster invaded a neighbour's garden, attacked and devoured a large gecko, and (outraged when the neighbour tried to wrestle the carcass away) strategically vomited clearly identifiable bits of barely digested gecko all over her garden...
Black cat sprawled, asleep, on a comfy chair
November 23, 2025 at 1:15 PM
Reposted by What is life without bookshelves?!
olivia.science
Finally! 🤩 Our position piece: Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia:
doi.org/10.5281/zeno...

We unpick the tech industry’s marketing, hype, & harm; and we argue for safeguarding higher education, critical
thinking, expertise, academic freedom, & scientific integrity.
1/n
Abstract: Under the banner of progress, products have been uncritically adopted or even imposed on users — in past centuries with tobacco and combustion engines, and in the 21st with social media. For these collective blunders, we now regret our involvement or apathy as scientists, and society struggles to put the genie back in the bottle. Currently, we are similarly entangled with artificial intelligence (AI) technology. For example, software updates are rolled out seamlessly and non-consensually, Microsoft Office is bundled with chatbots, and we, our students, and our employers have had no say, as it is not considered a valid position to reject AI technologies in our teaching and research. This is why in June 2025, we co-authored an Open Letter calling on our employers to reverse and rethink their stance on uncritically adopting AI technologies. In this position piece, we expound on why universities must take their role seriously toa) counter the technology industry’s marketing, hype, and harm; and to b) safeguard higher education, critical thinking, expertise, academic freedom, and scientific integrity. We include pointers to relevant work to further inform our colleagues. Figure 1. A cartoon set theoretic view on various terms (see Table 1) used when discussing the superset AI (black outline, hatched background): LLMs are in orange; ANNs are in magenta; generative models are in blue; and finally, chatbots are in green. Where these intersect, the colours reflect that, e.g. generative adversarial network (GAN) and Boltzmann machine (BM) models are in the purple subset because they are both generative and ANNs. In the case of proprietary closed source models, e.g. OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Apple’s Siri, we cannot verify their implementation and so academics can only make educated guesses (cf. Dingemanse 2025). Undefined terms used above: BERT (Devlin et al. 2019); AlexNet (Krizhevsky et al. 2017); A.L.I.C.E. (Wallace 2009); ELIZA (Weizenbaum 1966); Jabberwacky (Twist 2003); linear discriminant analysis (LDA); quadratic discriminant analysis (QDA). Table 1. Below some of the typical terminological disarray is untangled. Importantly, none of these terms are orthogonal nor do they exclusively pick out the types of products we may wish to critique or proscribe. Protecting the Ecosystem of Human Knowledge: Five Principles
September 6, 2025 at 8:13 AM
wherearethebooks.bsky.social
I might be 7 months' pregnant and the size of a house, and diabetic to boot so all tasty cakey things are forbidden - but all things considered there are worse ways to celebrate one's 40th birthday...*

* relaxing on a man-made (faux-Caribbean) island with a stack of books off coast of Dubai
November 23, 2025 at 5:30 AM
Reposted by What is life without bookshelves?!
booksofm.com
If you use GMail, AI (Gemini) was turned on yesterday by default and now scans all of your content for machine learning. To turn off, go to Settings>General and scroll down. Uncheck the box for "Smart features."

There's other "Smart" add-ons as well, but that's the one that reads your content.
November 20, 2025 at 5:32 PM
Reposted by What is life without bookshelves?!
forumforopen.bsky.social
Reminder❗This month's community development activity is only a few days away👀

Join us on 24 November & learn how to make #InstitutionalRepositories more open, discoverable, & impactful🔍

🕐13:00 GST |📍Online

🔗Register now: shorturl.at/qkfcf
#OpenScience #FORM4Open #Community4Open
Transforming Institutional Repositories into Fully Open Science Databases - Forum for Open Research in MENA
This workshop will explore how institutions can enhance their repositories to align with Open Science principles, particularly green open access, ensuring
shorturl.at
November 21, 2025 at 9:51 AM
wherearethebooks.bsky.social
The newest member of my family is so fricking adorable. It's hard to believe he'll be 200 pounds and the size of a large coffee table one day...

Meet Carthage, my baby Sulcata tortoise, having a little breakfast treat
November 21, 2025 at 9:28 AM
wherearethebooks.bsky.social
Once again a quick reminder- still time to submit a proposal for the conference and an application for the bursary!!
wherearethebooks.bsky.social What is life without bookshelves?! @wherearethebooks.bsky.social · 18d
You just need to submit a proposal for the @bars.bsky.social conference before 30 Nov and write a *short* application note to apply for the bursary.
Of you're a historian, filmmaker, lawyer, architect, consultant, teacher, librarian - or anything else - share your new #romanticism insights with us!
wherearethebooks.bsky.social What is life without bookshelves?! @wherearethebooks.bsky.social · 18d
Also a reminder that @bars.bsky.social are offering a new conference #bursary this year, for professionals outside academia (not only teaching, heritage, alt-ac but any job) who are interested in #Romanticis and want to present their research.

Details on BARS website

#funding #IndependentScholars
November 18, 2025 at 12:43 PM
Reposted by What is life without bookshelves?!
daphnao.bsky.social
My kid just had an exam in school that involved being assigned some chapters, summarizing them, then having an open-book test on the details. The teacher encouraged them to use AI to prepare. This paragraph does a great job explaining why I found it so disturbing.
www.ru.nl/en/research/...
Screenshot from an article, reading: There are absolutely important differences between an LLM and a calculator, notably the second is not stochastic outside, for example, the battery running out or a cosmic ray flipping a bit. Contrary to an LLM, under normal conditions, a calculator performs pre-specified functions reliably (for rel- evant analyses, see Guest 2025). But — and herein lies the rub — we ban calculators when teaching children addition and other basic arithmetic operations for a reason (cf. Lodge et al. 2023). Other- wise, they would not learn these arithmetic operations, and calculators do not help to understand the basic mathematical rules. For the same reasons, we also do not allow the use of spellcheck software for children learning to spell, or keyboard typing when learning to write by hand (Ihara et al. 2021; Lambert 2024; Longcamp et al. 2005; Mueller and Oppenheimer 2014; Rascoe 2024). The same rea- soning applies to banning AI products in education (cf. Bond 2025; Forbes and Guest 2025; Guest 2025; Weatherbed 2025):
November 9, 2025 at 10:25 AM
Reposted by What is life without bookshelves?!
bars.bsky.social
BARS 2026 First Book Prize: Calls for Nominations
Awarded biennially for the best first monograph in Romantic Studies, this prize is open to first monographs published between 1 January 2023 and 31 December 2025.
Deadline: 12th January 2026.
More info: www.bars.ac.uk/blog/?p=6174
October 10, 2025 at 3:59 PM
Reposted by What is life without bookshelves?!
claireconnolly.bsky.social
A reminder that pg researchers and ECRs working in Romantic Studies in the UK are invited to apply for a Stephen Copley Research Award (valued up to £500)

The late Stephen Copley supervised my PhD and I appreciate seeing his name live on like this

#Romanticism

www.bars.ac.uk/main/index.p...
Stephen Copley Research Awards – British Association for Romantic Studies
www.bars.ac.uk
October 17, 2025 at 8:52 AM
Reposted by What is life without bookshelves?!
samfordsaunders.bsky.social
Very excited for BAVS to come to Liverpool next year, and very pleased to see our CfP out! No specific theme, we are open to any exploration of the multifaceted nature of 'the Victorian' - have a look at the call here: victorianist.wordpress.com/2025/10/20/c...
CFP: BAVS 2026 Conference Liverpool
BAVS Liverpool 202627 – 29 July 2026 Keynote Speakers: Dr Alison Chapman (University of Victoria, BC), others to be confirmed. The Centre for Modern and Contemporary History (CMCH) at Liverpool Joh…
victorianist.wordpress.com
October 21, 2025 at 4:47 PM
wherearethebooks.bsky.social
You just need to submit a proposal for the @bars.bsky.social conference before 30 Nov and write a *short* application note to apply for the bursary.
Of you're a historian, filmmaker, lawyer, architect, consultant, teacher, librarian - or anything else - share your new #romanticism insights with us!
wherearethebooks.bsky.social What is life without bookshelves?! @wherearethebooks.bsky.social · 18d
Also a reminder that @bars.bsky.social are offering a new conference #bursary this year, for professionals outside academia (not only teaching, heritage, alt-ac but any job) who are interested in #Romanticis and want to present their research.

Details on BARS website

#funding #IndependentScholars
bars.bsky.social British Association for Romantic Studies @bars.bsky.social · 25d
Reminder: CfP closes for BARS 2026 'Romantic Retrospection' at the University of Birmingham, UK, and online on 30 November.
Details below:
www.birmingham.ac.uk/events/arts-...
November 8, 2025 at 8:27 AM
wherearethebooks.bsky.social
Also a reminder that @bars.bsky.social are offering a new conference #bursary this year, for professionals outside academia (not only teaching, heritage, alt-ac but any job) who are interested in #Romanticis and want to present their research.

Details on BARS website

#funding #IndependentScholars
bars.bsky.social British Association for Romantic Studies @bars.bsky.social · 25d
Reminder: CfP closes for BARS 2026 'Romantic Retrospection' at the University of Birmingham, UK, and online on 30 November.
Details below:
www.birmingham.ac.uk/events/arts-...
November 8, 2025 at 3:05 AM
wherearethebooks.bsky.social
Not long left... If you have a great #Byron essay, please do share with us soon!
livunipress.bsky.social Liverpool University Press @livunipress.bsky.social · Aug 11
OPEN FOR SUBMISSIONS 📣 The Byron Journal Essay Prize
Deadline for submissions: 1st December 2025
Prize: £150 and publication in the journal
Find out more information and how to submit via the LUP blog: bit.ly/BJEssayPrize 🥇
@bars.bsky.social @wherearethebooks.bsky.social
November 6, 2025 at 6:01 AM
Reposted by What is life without bookshelves?!
livunipress.bsky.social
OPEN FOR SUBMISSIONS 📣 The Byron Journal Essay Prize
Deadline for submissions: 1st December 2025
Prize: £150 and publication in the journal
Find out more information and how to submit via the LUP blog: bit.ly/BJEssayPrize 🥇
@bars.bsky.social @wherearethebooks.bsky.social
August 11, 2025 at 9:01 AM
Reposted by What is life without bookshelves?!
goodlawproject.org
Chanting at music festivals is not the actual problem. Israel's genocide is. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/j...
‘They’re skin and bones’: doctors in Gaza warn babies at risk of death from lack of formula
Doctors say Israel is blocking deliveries of formula urgently needed as mothers are either dead or too malnourished to feed their babies
www.theguardian.com
July 5, 2025 at 9:58 AM
Reposted by What is life without bookshelves?!
georgemonbiot.bsky.social
Today the order banning #PalestineAction as "terrorists" came into effect. But they are not terrorists. They are protesters trying to stop a genocide. This is a "first they came for ..." situation. Unless we stand in solidarity against this assault on our freedom, they will pick us off one by one.
July 5, 2025 at 6:12 AM
Reposted by What is life without bookshelves?!
glamateurhour.bsky.social
How is this anything other than blatant censorship? Our national broadcaster deciding, preemptively, that some artist may hold certain views and refusing to broadcast their performances in case they express said views.
scotnational.bsky.social The National @scotnational.bsky.social · Jul 3
NEW: The BBC has said it will no longer broadcast or live stream performances it deems 'high risk' following Bob Vylan’s Glastonbury set
BBC drops 'high risk' live performances following Bob Vylan Glastonbury set
www.thenational.scot
July 3, 2025 at 12:55 PM
Reposted by What is life without bookshelves?!
theserfstv.bsky.social
But Bob Vylan and Kneecap are the bad guys for calling this out apparently

www.thestar.com/news/world/m...
Strikes kill 94 Palestinians in Gaza, including 45 people waiting for aid, authorities say
Airstrikes and shootings killed 82 Palestinians in Gaza overnight, including 38 while attempting to get much-needed humanitarian aid
www.thestar.com
July 4, 2025 at 5:06 AM
Reposted by What is life without bookshelves?!
henklooijesteijn.bsky.social
Ondertussen in de West Bank: o.a. 15-jarig kind en 66-jarige vrouw doodgeschoten, kolonisten vallen Palestijnen aan om ze te verjagen. edition.cnn.com/2025/06/26/m...
Israeli forces kill 15-year-old Palestinian boy after settlers attack West Bank towns, officials say | CNN
Israeli forces shot dead a Palestinian teenager in the West Bank on Wednesday, Palestinian health authorities said, as settler violence against Palestinians surged in the occupied territory.
edition.cnn.com
June 30, 2025 at 3:44 AM
Reposted by What is life without bookshelves?!
vanhollen.senate.gov
We should all be disgusted by the flood of anti-Muslim remarks spewed in the aftermath of Zohran Mamdani’s victory in the NYC mayoral primary — some blatant, others latent.

Shame on the members of Congress who have engaged in such bigotry and anyone who doesn’t challenge it.
Attacks on Muslims flood mainstream after Mamdani win
Openly racist rhetoric has become normalized at the highest levels of American politics.
www.axios.com
June 29, 2025 at 1:54 PM