Dummy board, woman with mirror, British ca. 1640 Dummy boards were placed in corners and on stairways to surprise visitors, or in front of empty fireplaces in the summer. (V&A Museum, London)

My thoughts on GPT-5. I think it shows that the development of #LLMs has plateaued and that means that we finally have time to be thoughtful and critical about what decisions to make about its use in our lives and workspaces, particularly in #HigherEducation and #Academia #philosophy #AIChatbot #ai

https://matthewbarnard.phd/posts/2025-08-11-llms-have-plateaued/

De KB en Wikipedia zijn voor veel mensen nuttige informatiebronnen. Onderlinge samenwerking zorgt ervoor dat die bronnen zo breed mogelijk ingezet kunnen worden. 🤝

Wikimedia-coördinator Olaf Janssen en Wikidata-specialist Sandra Fauconnier vertellen in een KB-College op 3 oktober hoe topstukken van de KB én andere erfgoedinstellingen opgenomen kunnen worden op Wikipedia zodat de hele wereld ze kan inzien. 🌍 Zien we jou dan ook?

💻: https://www.kb.nl/agenda/kb-college-samenwerking-tussen-erfgoed-en-wikipedia-hoe-zit-dat

#nationalebibliotheek #kbcolleges

I don't think AI can do your job (but I *do* think an AI salesman can convince your boss to fire you and replace you with an AI that *can't* do your job). However, there is a class of workers whose jobs can be performed *perfectly* by AI: workers with bullshit jobs:

https://memex.craphound.com/2018/06/20/david-graebers-bullshit-jobs-why-does-the-economy-sustain-jobs-that-no-one-values/

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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/08/06/unmerchantable-substitute-goods/#customer-disservice

1/

With the launch of Ghost 6.0, every publication that runs on Ghost becomes part of the #fediverse. You can follow and comment on Platformer or 404 Media articles without leaving your Mastodon feed. This is the future of social media.

Congratulations to @johnonolan and all the team at Ghost!

https://ghost.org/changelog/6/

"The people who find AI fun or useful or surprising are centaurs. They're making automation choices based on their own assessment of their needs and the AIs' capabilities.

They are not the customers for AI. AI exists to replace workers, not empower them. Even if AI can make you more productive, there is no business model in increasing your pay and decreasing your hours."

https://pluralistic.net/2025/08/04/bad-vibe-coding/#maximally-codelike-bugs

citation: @pluralistic

💡 Institutional repositories are an increasingly crucial part of the contemporary digital intellectual environment.💡

Knowledge Commons is a nonprofit, member-governed organization, and institutions that adopt KCWorks as their institutional repository will benefit both from non-extractive pricing and from having a voice in the future development of the platform. Learn more: https://join.hcommons.org/

Hulk Hogan Was a Very Bad Man https://jacobin.com/2025/07/hulk-hogan-wrestling-trump-mcmahon/

Edinburgh University had ‘outsized’ role in creating racist scientific theories, inquiry finds, The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2025/jul/27/edinburgh-university-outsized-role-creating-racist-scientific-theories-inquiry?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Morrison's Job Ready Graduates scheme continues to damage the humanities in Australia, but Albo does nothing. Sign/share this petition from the Australian Historical Association to repeal JRG now! https://www.openpetition.org/au/petition/online/repeal-job-ready-graduates-policy-now-restoring-equity-in-higher-education #histodons

For 30 years I've been experimenting with ways to see & use the online collections of libraries, archives & museums. I've made useful things, playful things, & weird things. Here's a big list of them for you to explore! https://wraggelabs.com #GLAM #histodons #digitalHumanities

So wonderful to see punctum books 📚 going from strength to strength!

A living testament (among many others active in the @copim and @RadicalOA communities and beyond) that sparkly #DiamondOA for #OAbooks can actually work! 😍

> For the first time in our fourteen-year history, we have reached a threshold of financial stability whereby we have the salaried staff we need to do the work we want to do at a pace that is liveable, everyone is being compensated above academic publishing industry standards, and economic sustainability is no longer something we hope for: it is a reality, especially thanks to the libraries who have decided that investing in community-led Diamond OA book publishing is a vital and valuable wedge against the wholesale commercial privatization (theft) of publicly funded knowledge production and exchange.

https://punctumbooks.pubpub.org/pub/punctum-books-activity-and-financial-report-2024/release/1

We are excited to present Copim Compass, a comprehensive tool suite developed by Copim's Open Book Futures project 🚀

As the name suggests, Copim Compass points you in the right direction and we hope it will steer you through the choppy waters of #OA book resources!

We make no excuse for the nautical puns ⚓

Read the full post 🔗 https://buff.ly/tL1JgHG

I'm digging around in old projects and (re)discovered a whole series of tiles I created from 10 x 10 pixel thumbnails of all the images in the National Museum of Australia collection.

⏰ The European Accessibility Act comes into force tomorrow (28 June)

Revisit the recent blogposts from our #Accessibility team

Global Accessibility Barriers 👉 https://buff.ly/khVDXLG

Accessibility Tools and Resources 👉 https://buff.ly/GS8k519

Librarians and Open Accessibility 👉 https://buff.ly/FsKZ4JV

#EAA

Maybe some good news with respect to infrastructure systems and modes of ownership?

Annual Reviews takes over Knowledge Unlatched from Wiley

https://www.annualreviews.org/pb-assets/assets/documents/press-release/ar_knowledge_unlatched_6_26_25.pdf

The third story in the series of 'Wanderings in Wales' is now up on my website. Frankly, 'The Spectre of Pont Vathu' is my personal favourite from the whole set. It's a thoroughly creepy story that knows exactly when and where to stop.

https://bydbach.hcommons.org/the-spectre-of-pont-vathu-2/

#Wales #Literature #RomanticFiction #Gothic #Ghosts #WelshWritingInEnglish #ShortStory

#jobAlert! Postdoctoral Research Associate in Pacific History (full-time, 3 years fixed term) at University of Sydney: https://usyd.wd105.myworkdayjobs.com/en-GB/USYD_EXTERNAL_CAREER_SITE/job/Camperdown-Campus/Postdoctoral-Research-Associate-in-Pacific-History_0134567-2 #histodons

@wragge A jeremiad?