Listening, walking, working, growing things. Here since 2016 carrying on about this and that: work, writing, trans rights, #auspol, #compostodon, and health governance. Wollongong.
Images: a green marble, and orange lit clouds over an ocean horizon.
“I want to be on the side of surprise, and against the certainties of pictures and property.” - Barbara Kruger
@ben_hr @bryanalexandee And apparently also no longer needed, so this seems like an unintended consequence meeting an unplanned solution.
What keeps on surprising about all this is the idea that AI should somehow copy what is here now, when it’s more likely that AI will swiftly do away with its own referents, and the familiar apparatus of college will go the way of fax machines and modem sounds.
@bryanalexandee PhD programs are also keys to both prestige and global career mobility and this is how anglophone universities attract both revenue and foreign government sponsored candidates.
What will happen to rankings, do you think?
And how will this affect global equity? Potentially if, say, the University of the South Pacific becomes AI centric on equal technical terms with the AI Ivy League, what happens?
To clarify, both Latham and Bryan mention research as a practice:
“Outside of the classroom Latham imagines AI playing more of a role in scholarship, including accelerating research and improving logistical processes. As part of that grantors will want to see more AI in applications.”
This still leaves us with the predicament of research as academic career training when there are no more academic careers.
@spinopsys This really isn’t the moment to underestimate Green voters who put ALP second.
Every conversation I have with my students is a learning experience for me and every single one is a gift. Just feeling the love a little bit after the nicest chat this afternoon and in a week of many nice chats.
It’s a curious righteousness that celebrates the defeat of Kamala Harris as a triumph of conscience—while quietly enduring the triumph of something far more monstrous.
@bryanalexandee Interesting. This becomes a question of scale. If grad school turns meta in this way, how big will that layer (internationally) need to be? How big will that specialist sector need to be? How sustainable as a life stage can it be and for whom?
This is always also a business question: what’s the revenue stream currently coming from grad tuition and PhD training, especially foreign student revenue?
We need less allies and more accomplices!
Thoughts of a Revolutionary Worker: Accomplices
https://majorrevolutionary.com/thoughts-of-a-revolutionary-worker-accomplices/
@clayote @majorlinux Colonisation is also about land theft which isn’t hard to see in property owning. Migration attracted by the prospect of cheap property drives housing security way beyond local reach—this is historic colonialism on rinse repeat.
@bryanalexandee I’m curious to know where the graduate (and specifically the PhD) layer is in all this.
One function of highered has been to reproduce itself as an employment sector. As this future evaporates, will this be the end of the PhD? Who else really needs one?
Two students from my rural public university tell it like it is:
"New Hampshire should be investing in the university system — not abandoning it" https://newhampshirebulletin.com/2025/05/07/new-hampshire-should-be-investing-in-the-university-system-not-abandoning-it/
I'm not linking to it because ew yuck it's a Murdoch rag, but the Adelaide Advertiser has a headline "Conflict between India and Pakistan rocks cricket world". Yes, that's absolutely the important thing in this situation.
@bright_helpings Don’t leave the layers on the train though!
@wragge I’m appalled at what this has put you through. Wishing you a safe onward path to what’s next.
For the sake of my health, I’ve decided to stop work on Trove, archive all my code repositories related to Trove, and move on. Farewell Trove... https://updates.timsherratt.org/2025/05/07/farewell-trove.html
@NunavutBirder So much this.
This was such a relatable blog post, heck.
There’s something so intimate about a garden. Something quietly revealing. The styles, the care, the preferences, the planning. What’s left wild. What’s clipped back.
I'm doing a wee photo series (just for myself). The glimpses of gardens you see from across the street, in between buldings, at the end of a long path, through fences and hedges.
Here's a few of my recent favourites.
