Plashing Vole
@plashingvole.bsky.social
Mild-mannered lecturer by day…mild-mannered lecturer by night. Welsh lit, politicians’ fictions. Fencer, cyclist, UCU. Dysgwr Cymraeg; tá gaeilge agam. Barnau fy hun.
Read books; join unions; block cookies.
Read books; join unions; block cookies.
Great #budget news for Cymru/Wales: it’s going to be a playground for plagiarising hallucination machines powered by nuclear waste that will poison the earth for thousands of years!
November 26, 2025 at 12:58 PM
Great #budget news for Cymru/Wales: it’s going to be a playground for plagiarising hallucination machines powered by nuclear waste that will poison the earth for thousands of years!
I know I’m harping on, but making it ever cheaper to fuel a massive SUV (and encouraging more North Sea oil and gas) is not my idea of tackling a climate *emergency*.
Another Budget, another attempt to pretend that endlessly frozen fuel duties will be raised at some point in the future
November 26, 2025 at 12:27 PM
I know I’m harping on, but making it ever cheaper to fuel a massive SUV (and encouraging more North Sea oil and gas) is not my idea of tackling a climate *emergency*.
Gotta put a ring on it, as the lady sang.
Happening this evening. I can promise some absolutely gratuitous shots of dendrochronologists in action. Bookings will remain open until 7pmGMT.
www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/dating-anc...
www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/dating-anc...
November 26, 2025 at 12:22 PM
Gotta put a ring on it, as the lady sang.
Curious that in a climate emergency, the BBC thinks it’s fine to have a helicopter hovering above central London for 2-3 hours solely to get shots of a car travelling 750 metres. Absolutely no news value, just burning carbon to full time. To whom do I complain?
November 26, 2025 at 11:46 AM
Curious that in a climate emergency, the BBC thinks it’s fine to have a helicopter hovering above central London for 2-3 hours solely to get shots of a car travelling 750 metres. Absolutely no news value, just burning carbon to full time. To whom do I complain?
Reposted by Plashing Vole
Which window in the HE advent calendar will have the going bust chocolate?
November 25, 2025 at 11:04 PM
Which window in the HE advent calendar will have the going bust chocolate?
Reposted by Plashing Vole
Juries are not perfect.
Many of the worst miscarriages of justice have followed jury trials.
But the merit of juries is not so much the power they have, but the power they prevent others from having.
They mean a judge cannot just nod-along with prosecution evidence and give a guilty verdict.
Many of the worst miscarriages of justice have followed jury trials.
But the merit of juries is not so much the power they have, but the power they prevent others from having.
They mean a judge cannot just nod-along with prosecution evidence and give a guilty verdict.
November 25, 2025 at 7:12 PM
Juries are not perfect.
Many of the worst miscarriages of justice have followed jury trials.
But the merit of juries is not so much the power they have, but the power they prevent others from having.
They mean a judge cannot just nod-along with prosecution evidence and give a guilty verdict.
Many of the worst miscarriages of justice have followed jury trials.
But the merit of juries is not so much the power they have, but the power they prevent others from having.
They mean a judge cannot just nod-along with prosecution evidence and give a guilty verdict.
After teaching it was Print Club. I have the acetates for the yellow and magenta layers of the CYMK process and learned to align and print them. Fiddly and fascinating. Here’s the silk screen, the yellow stage and one with yellow and magenta layers completed.
November 25, 2025 at 10:16 PM
After teaching it was Print Club. I have the acetates for the yellow and magenta layers of the CYMK process and learned to align and print them. Fiddly and fascinating. Here’s the silk screen, the yellow stage and one with yellow and magenta layers completed.
I wish I could go to this. Lynette Roberts is a wonderful and underrated poet.
On Wednesday 26 November, join us at 6.30pm at Manchester Poetry Library, where @francescabrooks.bsky.social and Martin Kratz will be introducing the life and work of Lynette Roberts, after Carcanet's recent publication of her Collected Poems.
Find out more:
www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/poets-who-...
Find out more:
www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/poets-who-...
Poets Who Stopped: Lynnette Roberts
Join us as we explore the life and work of poet Lynnette Roberts, delving into why she stopped writing and the impact of her legacy.
www.eventbrite.co.uk
November 25, 2025 at 9:42 AM
I wish I could go to this. Lynette Roberts is a wonderful and underrated poet.
100% this.
"It’s ludicrous that aviation doesn’t pay fuel tax, especially now that Rachel Reeves is making noises about a tax on electric vehicles. If we’re looking for easy wins for revenue, just look to the skies."
~ Flight Free UK Director Anna Hughes in the Guardian today 👇
~ Flight Free UK Director Anna Hughes in the Guardian today 👇
End the tax break that makes flying cheaper than trains | Letters
Letters: Airlines benefit from a tax system that helps them keep fares low, writes Anna Hughes
www.theguardian.com
November 25, 2025 at 8:24 AM
100% this.
Good god. It’s like a summary of the last finance committee meeting I went to, except that Jones here thinks it’s a bad thing.
November 24, 2025 at 9:18 PM
Good god. It’s like a summary of the last finance committee meeting I went to, except that Jones here thinks it’s a bad thing.
The writing is really on the wall for humanities here (apparently supporting such courses causes overwork and sickness in the understaffed Business school and it’s definitely a zero-sum game) but at least O got to express my views on the ‘hero’ course discourse. Are the rest of us ‘villains’?
November 24, 2025 at 7:29 PM
The writing is really on the wall for humanities here (apparently supporting such courses causes overwork and sickness in the understaffed Business school and it’s definitely a zero-sum game) but at least O got to express my views on the ‘hero’ course discourse. Are the rest of us ‘villains’?
Someone give him a calculator to spell 80085 with and let the rest of us get on with our lives unmolested.
Everything about this might be the saddest thing I’ve ever seen
November 24, 2025 at 2:25 PM
Someone give him a calculator to spell 80085 with and let the rest of us get on with our lives unmolested.
Today’s Round the Wrekin class covered the British-Asian and Caribbean 90s. Soundtrack was Credit to the Nation, Apache Indian, Panjabi MC and Cornershop; primary text was Meera Syal’s Anita and Me and various Goodness Gracious Me sketches. They seems to enjoy it.
November 24, 2025 at 2:22 PM
Today’s Round the Wrekin class covered the British-Asian and Caribbean 90s. Soundtrack was Credit to the Nation, Apache Indian, Panjabi MC and Cornershop; primary text was Meera Syal’s Anita and Me and various Goodness Gracious Me sketches. They seems to enjoy it.
Reposted by Plashing Vole
Feels like a good time to remind people: pensions are deferred wages. Moving someone forcibly to a worse pension is wage theft. Always unjustifiable, but particularly appalling in the context of years and years of real-terms pay cuts. Why do they NEVER have any solution other than paying us less?
Please sign and share: www.megaphone.org.uk/petitions/no...
November 24, 2025 at 10:02 AM
Feels like a good time to remind people: pensions are deferred wages. Moving someone forcibly to a worse pension is wage theft. Always unjustifiable, but particularly appalling in the context of years and years of real-terms pay cuts. Why do they NEVER have any solution other than paying us less?
Very reminiscent of Cher’s argument in Clueless that there’s no point banning violence in entertainment while there’s so much of it in the news.
November 24, 2025 at 9:38 AM
Very reminiscent of Cher’s argument in Clueless that there’s no point banning violence in entertainment while there’s so much of it in the news.
Very much looking forward to this week’s Board of Governors meeting, at which the VC and his cronies will, as usual, blame others while maintaining that we’re about to hit a gold mine although sadly a lot of colleagues won’t be here to share the loot.
'Despite these concerns, little positive news is expected for universities in the upcoming budget....the focus will...be on the proposed international student levy, which would result in universities being taxed on their income from overseas students.' 2/3
Universities receiving £6.4bn a year less for teaching students compared to a decade ago
New analysis from Universities UK (UUK) shows the scale of underfunding English universities face in teaching today’s home students, compared to ten years ago.
www.universitiesuk.ac.uk
November 24, 2025 at 7:47 AM
Very much looking forward to this week’s Board of Governors meeting, at which the VC and his cronies will, as usual, blame others while maintaining that we’re about to hit a gold mine although sadly a lot of colleagues won’t be here to share the loot.
Shocking, but not surprising.
Oh FFS, Today Christmas guest editors, tax dodger James Dyson an ex Tory PM and head of AI from Microsoft…. Why not get some genuinely interesting people? Someone who volunteers in a food bank, a doctor who works in a&e, a Welsh hill farmer…. BBC has completely lost its way.
November 24, 2025 at 7:36 AM
Shocking, but not surprising.
What a prescient cartoon from JF Horrabin - newspaper strip cartoonist, British Communist Party founder and Labour MP for Peterborough 1929-31. This is from the Noahs and Japhet strip, 1920-52. Not sure what date this one is.
November 23, 2025 at 10:39 PM
What a prescient cartoon from JF Horrabin - newspaper strip cartoonist, British Communist Party founder and Labour MP for Peterborough 1929-31. This is from the Noahs and Japhet strip, 1920-52. Not sure what date this one is.
Another night at the Bonecutters’ lodge.
We have arrived at the inferno.
The MBS banquet was such a depraved and decadent ritual that it wouldn't have been surprising if the Fortune 500 executives had broken out in Satanic chants as if they were characters in a wretched Dan Brown sequel to The Da Vinci Code.
The MBS banquet was such a depraved and decadent ritual that it wouldn't have been surprising if the Fortune 500 executives had broken out in Satanic chants as if they were characters in a wretched Dan Brown sequel to The Da Vinci Code.
The night America’s doomed ruling class gorged on lamb, blood, and oil
For America’s deeply corrupt billionaires, time heals all wounds — even from a murderous Saudi prince’s bone saw.
share.inquirer.com
November 23, 2025 at 6:50 PM
Another night at the Bonecutters’ lodge.
800 years of holding on to chunks of Ireland and Dan Gallan of @theobserveruk.bsky.social still thinks Munster is a county, and one close to Dublin.
Dublin.observer
November 23, 2025 at 6:17 PM
800 years of holding on to chunks of Ireland and Dan Gallan of @theobserveruk.bsky.social still thinks Munster is a county, and one close to Dublin.
It’s a prátaíction racket.
I think if I worked in a production company and was allowed to commission a movie with a €70m budget was based on one tweet, it would be this one.
November 23, 2025 at 5:16 PM
It’s a prátaíction racket.
Me as your Bsky therapist:
November 22, 2025 at 8:00 PM
Me as your Bsky therapist:
Reposted by Plashing Vole
[mutters] Paul Kingsnorth with hundreds of thousands of views on YouTube going on like a prophet I clearly missed a trick writing a book *about how problematic prophecy is* should have just put on my sackcloth gown buy my book instead.
November 22, 2025 at 8:55 AM
[mutters] Paul Kingsnorth with hundreds of thousands of views on YouTube going on like a prophet I clearly missed a trick writing a book *about how problematic prophecy is* should have just put on my sackcloth gown buy my book instead.
Reposted by Plashing Vole
will admit i don't fully understand this but POETRY OUTFOXES AI is the best case for preserving English degrees i have ever heard. 'all the teenage girls who were really into Sylvia Plath at one point vs tech bros' is the battle for civilisation we deserve
Looks like LLMs are *very* vulnerable to attack via poetic allusion: "curated poetic prompts yielded high attack-success rates (ASR), with some providers exceeding 90% ..."
https://arxiv.org/html/2511.15304v1
https://arxiv.org/html/2511.15304v1
November 21, 2025 at 1:05 PM
will admit i don't fully understand this but POETRY OUTFOXES AI is the best case for preserving English degrees i have ever heard. 'all the teenage girls who were really into Sylvia Plath at one point vs tech bros' is the battle for civilisation we deserve