David Bartram

image of the cover of Christopher Browning's book "Ordinary men"

Affinities here with Christopher Browning's "Ordinary Men":

Weak-minded men unwilling to think for themselves...

They are being explicit about turning corporate media into state propaganda.

It's a variant of the Kavanagh stop -- women will be able to resume voting after a "brief encounter".

This is an insightful take on LLM's "co-authoring" papers, but I would take it even farther. The current output levels for *legitimate* scholarship is too high. We need to fundamentally rethink how much research we really need, how we should collaborate, and how results should be summarized.

This proposes a way of using AI agents to produce research. Ok. But this bit is a pipe dream: "And human scientists should retain authority over — and responsibility for — framing the question, validating the path and signing off on conclusions." Here's why...
/1

Speaking generally: I'd love to have a "wiki" website maintained by journal editors that documented/shared dodgy research activities carried out by authors.

I keep a spreadsheet (e.g. AI manuscripts, plagiarism) for my own journal. But no doubt the authors just move on, try to work over other eds.

The paradox of inequality that isn’t: rising economic inequality depresses and polarizes citizens’ belief in meritocracy Abstract. This study examines how rising income inequality has been impacting individuals’ belief in merit-based success, using three decades of survey dat

🔍 How does economic inequality impact beliefs in meritocracy?

Using comprehensive survey data from 39 advanced capitalist democracies over more than three decades, Markus Gangl & I examine how rising economic inequality has been shaping citizens' belief in meritocracy.
🔗 doi.org/10.1093/ser/mwag016

In case you were wondering how the Chancellor of the Exchequer should balance the budget.

On a cheery pink background, the line: "this Purim I'm going to get so drunk that I can't tell the right-wing antisemites from the left-wing antisemites".

a (Jewish) friend just sent this to me and it has made me laugh and laugh and laugh. Happy Purim everyone!

I still don't understand how AI is supposed to be able to do analysis. It can't understand theory, nor connect observations to theory, nor generate abductive analysis of phenomena that are not especially clear.

The critique of unmeasured confounding is often levied in a lazy/broad way. It is trivially true in any observational study. But if the critic can't think of a plausible such confounder and posit a reasonable direction/magnitude of its bias then they're not doing productive science.

I genuinely wish I could go for a visit.

Have I got this right? Farage bemoaning the Greens win as a result of "family voting" means he thinks loads of Muslim women wanted to vote Reform but their husbands stopped them 😂

Leave big tech behind! How to replace Amazon, Google, X, Meta, Apple – and more A handful of companies monopolise the web, with unprecedented access to our data. But there are many more ethical – and often distinctively European – alternatives

www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Philosophy #FAQ Ontology: what the fuck? Causality: why the fuck? Epistemology: how the why the fuck? Phenomenology: the fuck.

British dual nationals risk imminent refusal of travel to UK, Home Office affirms Government ignores pleas for a grace period before new rules come into force on Wednesday

This is just so bizarre.

The only way someone is "in scope" for denial of entry here is if the Border Agency *knows* they are a UK citizen.

But if the BA already knows, then why insist on production of a UK passport? What *added* info is provided by a passport?

www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Another manuscript submitted to @socialindicators.bsky.social that has obvious AI ref hallucinations.

Why obvious? Because one of them was to an article by me -- except that it's not something I wrote.

Likewise with an "article" by colleagues I know well.

If it's the refs, it's likely the paper.

Jim Ratcliffe accused of hypocrisy after saying UK ‘colonised’ by immigrants Manchester United co-owner, who lives in Monaco, faces growing backlash for using ‘far-right narratives’

"colonized". What a putz...

Would love to see protesters outside his Monaco home holding placards:

"We are here because you were there."

www.theguardian.com/business/202...

Sure -- no anti-Semitic *bone*

But his *mouth* on the other hand...

In which Jeffrey Epstein, who laundered money for the Russians, explains how Donald Trump was doing exactly the same thing, and how this accounts for most of his wealth.

1. It was not an accident.
2. It was not a staffer.
3. While the president may have dementia his racism is not due to dementia.
4. He isn’t sorry. He means every racist thought he shares.
5. His base agrees with him.
6. He will do it again.
7. No one in power will hold him accountable.

Donald Trump is:

- Openly racist
- Covering up evidence he may have sexually abused children
- Directly responsible for the murder of US citizens by masked agents of the state
- Openly looting the treasury and taking bribes from foreign leaders
- Polling at 38% amongst the American people

UCU elections 2026: recommended votes. All information is available at https://ucucommons.org/election26/

From tomorrow, Friday 30 January, ballot papers will start to arrive by post for VP (HE and FE), and several key positions on our NEC.

We're supporting our own @markpendleton.bsky.social for VP (HE) and independent @suzitoole.bsky.social for VP (FE) & lots of other great people. Please share! #UCU

For the very wealthy, "happiness is probably best achieved by having a sense that you've done some good in the world, and that you've treated people around you with care and kindness. It's not exactly rocket science."

FA with the editorial page.

FO what happens with the rest of the newspaper.

Any reader with the least bit of empathy will end up caring about the main characters.

Learning objective achieved...

In my own view: my course on International Migration is greatly enhanced by having students read The Year of the Runaways by Sunjeev Sahota.

It helps "humanize" immigrants -- they (we) are not a generic category, they are of course human beings.

They want people to stay home so that doing it on Zoom insulates them from the anger.

So much cowardice...

Universities try to woo Reform as party gains ground Serious lobbying efforts under way, with right-wing party expected to be more sympathetic to elite universities than rest of the sector

Before anyone gets too angry about this, several things. (1) Universities in the UK, unlike the US, are pretty much under the financial and admin control of central govt. If RefUK moves to wipe them out, as they will, then some will choose life. (1/3) www.timeshighereducation.com/news/univers...