For the first time in, uh, over four years, I wrote a blog post:
pandoc-lecturenotes and the Quest for More Efficient Professoring
https://dynalabs.de/mxp/blog/2025-12-29
The post presents pandoc-lecturenotes, a set of #Pandoc Lua filters for producing slides and lecture notes from a single #Markdown document.
Can anyone help? I saw a post a while back (maybe 2 months max) about a woman who was being employed to advise organisations and universities how to make the transition to open source tech provision, including social media. It may have been an EU role or national, maybe in Netherlands? I cant remember. Does anyone know what Im talking about?
For the first time in, uh, over four years, I wrote a blog post:
pandoc-lecturenotes and the Quest for More Efficient Professoring
https://dynalabs.de/mxp/blog/2025-12-29
The post presents pandoc-lecturenotes, a set of #Pandoc Lua filters for producing slides and lecture notes from a single #Markdown document.
Welp.
Ran into another ageist thing in academia.
https://www.sbfi.admin.ch/en/swiss-government-excellence-scholarships#Research-scholarships
Welp.
Ran into another ageist thing in academia.
https://www.sbfi.admin.ch/en/swiss-government-excellence-scholarships#Research-scholarships
Is there such a miracle as funding for a "roll your own" PhD in EU, UK, Canada, NZ?
I'm finding that most funded PhDs in plant science are slanted towards computation (either bioinformatics or remote sensing or AI) and that's not my forte nor my interest. I'd really like to be able to construct a research topic of my own given I'm not finding what I'm hoping for in advertised PhDs.
I'll never know if I don't ask, right?
Is there such a miracle as funding for a "roll your own" PhD in EU, UK, Canada, NZ?
I'm finding that most funded PhDs in plant science are slanted towards computation (either bioinformatics or remote sensing or AI) and that's not my forte nor my interest. I'd really like to be able to construct a research topic of my own given I'm not finding what I'm hoping for in advertised PhDs.
I'll never know if I don't ask, right?
My review of @rwg's new book "Move Slowly and Build Bridges" is now published in Convergence
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/13548565251409858
In my draft/notes, I had written "this book slaps and everyone should read it because what is thing I feel... hope? optimism? That's been a long time overdue"
What I actually ended up writing was: "A more just, equitable, and inclusive online world is not only possible, but it is already being created."
My review of @rwg's new book "Move Slowly and Build Bridges" is now published in Convergence
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/13548565251409858
In my draft/notes, I had written "this book slaps and everyone should read it because what is thing I feel... hope? optimism? That's been a long time overdue"
What I actually ended up writing was: "A more just, equitable, and inclusive online world is not only possible, but it is already being created."
I have been seeing posts today that NCAR might be shut down by the US government. This would be a tragic loss for climate science. They develop CESM, probably the most widely used climate model. I used it in the last paper I published! #ClimateChange #AcademicChatter
EDIT: This Nature news piece is based on a study that is only reported in a glossy report by Frontiers that has a clear agenda ("only half of researchers use AI for peer review? Clearly we need to help the rest"). I'm not saying it's wrong, but... I have limited trust. https://www.frontiersin.org/documents/unlocking-ai-potential.pdf
Nature : "More than half of researchers now use AI for peer review"
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-04066-5
"GPT-5 could mimic the structure of a peer-review report and use polished language, but that it failed to produce constructive feedback and made factual errors."
Yep, that matches the recent review I had, on the basis of which my manuscript was rejected. Vague criticisms that sound bad but are not actionable.
Bigger picture: Nobody has time to do peer review, so many reviews are shoddy. Now shoddy reviews can have AI help, but they're still shoddy reviews.
AI's making it worse, but the fundemental issues here are around workloads.
Everything is stuffed with "smart features", AI, automation and streamlining buzz words.
But when it comes to submitting a manuscript for peer-review it remains the same f-ing onerous and archaic platform since I started my PhD almost two decades ago.
Since researcher time is free, it can clearly be wasted with inefficiencies as it doesn't touch publishers bottom lines. Greedy bastards.
SNF (Switzerland) restrictions proposed: only 1 concurrent research grant per PI (plus maybe one coop), only 1 proposal per year.
🔥 Hot take (since I'm not at all operating like this currently): I actually think this might be a good idea? It would curb some of the biggest "research mills", where one PI has a huge pyramid scheme underneath them, and might encourage more careful grant proposals, slower science. And might even put more emphasis back into the basic research funding (instead of the grant lotteries)?
(Maybe naive, I know, and I have no idea how this would be implemented)
#academicChatter #researchGrants
https://www.snf.ch/de/7qymWfJMG1z9XR2S/news/einschraenkungen-in-der-projektfoerderung
SNF (Switzerland) restrictions proposed: only 1 concurrent research grant per PI (plus maybe one coop), only 1 proposal per year.
🔥 Hot take (since I'm not at all operating like this currently): I actually think this might be a good idea? It would curb some of the biggest "research mills", where one PI has a huge pyramid scheme underneath them, and might encourage more careful grant proposals, slower science. And might even put more emphasis back into the basic research funding (instead of the grant lotteries)?
(Maybe naive, I know, and I have no idea how this would be implemented)
#academicChatter #researchGrants
https://www.snf.ch/de/7qymWfJMG1z9XR2S/news/einschraenkungen-in-der-projektfoerderung
