Rescheduling classes means the original labour wasn't withdrawn and employers would have no right to dock original pay. Hope @ucu legal can get onto this. https://x.com/python33r/status/968978456871612416

"If you like rambling verbiage that not only obstructs but obliterates the point, you'll love this author"

The 50 best one-star Amazon reviews of Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow https://lithub.com/the-50-best-one-star-amazon-reviews-of-thomas-pynchons-gravitys-rainbow/

Whatever Happened to the Polytechnics Part 2
https://andrewmcgettigan.org/2018/02/28/whatever-happened-to-the-polytechnics-part-2/

Ouch. The just-released @officestudents Regulatory Framework has a typo on the contents page: "The Office for Student’s". A problem of literacy or because they only represent the one politically safe student elected to the board? #ofslaunchconf https://www.officeforstudents.org.uk/media/1022/ofs2018_01.pdf

Whatever Happened to the Polytechnics? Part 1
https://andrewmcgettigan.org/2018/02/27/whatever-happened-to-the-polytechnics-part-1/

University staff pension dispute moves to Acas https://www.theguardian.com/education/2018/feb/27/university-staff-pension-dispute-moves-to-acas?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Fenix

UUK and UCU to meet for further talks with a mediator/arbitrator. This is good news! https://www.ucu.org.uk/article/9364/Further-talks-agreed-in-universities-pensions-dispute?list=1676

Ministers meddled in Toby Young getting OfS role, report finds. What a surprise. https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/feb/26/no-10-advisers-meddled-in-toby-young-getting-ofs-role-finds-report

Higher Education Matters: A Personal Reflection, by @ernestopriego https://epriego.blog/2018/02/27/higher-education-matters-a-personal-reflection/

Large protest outside UUK today. #USSstrike

What they said in 2011. https://x.com/MartinNHW/status/968075281754918913

Heading off to the freezing picket.

The Commuting Universities Blues- the solution is song…
https://moremeansbetter.wordpress.com/2018/02/25/the-commuting-universities-blues-the-solution-is-song/

Lecturer B in Early Medieval Literature and Culture at Birkbeck, University of London
http://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/BHX875/lecturer-b-in-early-medieval-literature-and-culture/

Brains for remain: the 1,400 academics who signed up
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/brains-for-remain-full-letter-bp8z30t5d

Open access monographs in the REF
http://blog.hefce.ac.uk/2018/02/23/open-access-monographs-ref-2027/

Except that talks on Tuesday exclude discussion of the reason we're on strike... https://x.com/timeshighered/status/967473160084914176

Ben Bradley apologises unreservedly for Corbyn spy claims https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/feb/24/ben-bradley-apologises-unreservedly-for-corbyn-spy-claims?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Fenix

Facing Fanon: Examining Neocolonial Aspects in Grand Theft Auto V through the Prism of the Machinima Film Finding Fanon II http://doi.org/10.16995/olh.177

The City & The City coming to TV in 2018 https://www.panmacmillan.com/blogs/picador/the-city-the-city-coming-to-tv-in-2018

Advantage of strike days include being able to snag Chemical Brothers tickets for October at the moment of release

One of the most hilarious things about Elsevier's SCOPUS is that once they've decided to index a journal, they write to the publisher asking for a free subscription so they can mine it. Not even kidding.

Brief Talk at Video Game Preservation Workshop
http://blog.dshr.org/2018/02/brief-talk-at-video-game-preservation.html

The Guardian view on the lecturers’ strike. "The public see excessive vice-chancellors’ pay while lecturers face low-paid casualisedemployment."
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/feb/22/the-guardian-view-on-the-lecturers-strike-a-deficit-in-thinking?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Fenix

Suspect someone else already made that Picard joke :P

Jean-Luc Placard https://x.com/DrJulioDecker/status/966764171521118208

Give a fair hearing to people without speech https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/feb/22/give-a-fair-hearing-to-people-without-speech?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Fenix

Sophie Scholl
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophie_Scholl

22nd February 1943 – Beheading of the White Rose group
http://www.onthisdeity.com/22nd-february-1943-%E2%80%93-the-beheading-of-the-white-rose/

UUK offices occupied by students supportive of our strike over unreasonable pension changes!

It's almost as though they have an incentive not to transition to OA... https://x.com/c_riesen/status/966670595176960001

What tact. https://x.com/HEontap/status/966566990944047104

Sigh. I don't want to strike. I love my job & the work I get to do. Our management at Birkbeck (who are really great) have publicly called for a return to meaningful talks. But the pension downgrading is untenable & it is a national action. #solidarity #ucustrike

Blimey. 8 posts last year and now three more. https://x.com/StuartEDunn/status/966002047299608579

Meet the pirate queen making academic papers free online
https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/8/16985666/alexandra-elbakyan-sci-hub-open-access-science-papers-lawsuit

The Plashing Vole: Strike for a Kingdom
http://plashingvole.blogspot.com/2018/02/strike-for-kingdom.html

Shock https://x.com/RLUK_David/status/965899053191061505

Yes, but the funds aren't necessarily in the right place. I disagree with her that, therefore, it's "simple". #whefevents https://x.com/RLUK_David/status/965893740811431937

Good citation of @lawsonstu's work on open access offsetting agreements here at #whefevents

Cambridge Colleges coordinated a rejection of USS’s proposed level of risk
https://medium.com/@mikeotsuka/cambridge-colleges-coordinated-a-rejection-of-usss-proposed-level-of-risk-bfced9866c0e

Taylor and Francis claiming that they've worked hard to make their processes more frictionless for OA. Alongside, I presume, their recent suggestion of paywalling older material and excluding it from library subscriptions? #frictionless #whefevents

PS did you know that HEFCE has an open-access mandate proposed for the REF after next (mid 2020s) for monographs? #whefevents

This morning I will be speaking on OA monographs at an expensive closed event. Wouldn't normally do this, but it's a good way to reach university management and policymakers, who will almost certainly be in attendance.

The major review of post-18 education
http://wonkhe.com/blogs/the-major-review-of-post-18-education/

"Who Made Your Phone? Compassion and the Voice of the Oppressed in Phone Story and Burn the Boards", new at @openlibhums! http://doi.org/10.16995/olh.209 Part of the "Postcolonial Perspectives in Game Studies" collection.

Prime Minister launches major review of post-18 education - includes info on panel and chair https://www.gov.uk/government/news/prime-minister-launches-major-review-of-post-18-education

Has anyone modelled what English student loan debt does to credit scores for different levels of earnings?

Eight category mistakes in the debate around the funding review
http://wonkhe.com/blogs/eight-category-mistakes-in-the-debate-around-the-funding-review/

Stop the decline in part-time undergraduate study
http://wonkhe.com/blogs/stop-the-decline-in-part-time-undergraduate-study/

Major reviews of English higher education through history
http://wonkhe.com/blogs/major-reviews-in-history/

Spent the afternoon rigging up the music side of my office. Still hunting for a fair few cables...

Southern Rail Timetable wins Man Booker Prize for fiction
https://rochdaleherald.co.uk/2018/02/17/southern-rail-timetable-wins-man-booker-prize-fiction/

Ace new mix from Javier Busto at Logical Records opening with a remix of one of my forthcoming tracks https://soundcloud.com/javier_busto/black-shadow-vol-5-javier-busto @ernestopriego @qui_oui @jon_fugler @CarinaWestling

An amusing experience buying a television today.

Man in the shop: what TV do you have at the moment?
Me: we don't have a TV.
Him, speaking slowly: do you have "the Internet"?

Fresh in @openlibhums as part of @DrMagennis's #Agreement20 collection: Towards a ‘Journalism of Opposition’: BBC Northern Ireland, Hearts and Minds and the Good Friday Agreement https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.249

Politics as Usual? Theatre, the Northern Irish Assembly, and the Romanticization of Normality
https://olh.openlibhums.org/articles/10.16995/olh.253/

My latest article has just been published. Hurrah! "Reading Very Well for Our Age: Hyperobject Metadata and Global Warming in Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven"
https://olh.openlibhums.org/articles/10.16995/olh.155/

"The concept of actors acting in accordance with their essential nature is not at all creative; it is banal" http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-43056814

The incoherence of UUK’s attitude towards risk
https://medium.com/@mikeotsuka/the-incoherence-of-uuks-attitude-towards-risk-f377f514fb85

Yes and good, but who voted for the Spanish armada option?! https://x.com/NHSMillion/status/963485613835071488

Millions remember the martyrdom of Saint Pancake
http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/society/millions-remember-the-martyrdom-of-saint-pancake-201202214919

"The White House has requested that Congress appropriate approximately $42 million to the National Endowment for the Humanities for the orderly closure of the agency."
https://www.neh.gov/news/press-release/2018-02-12-0

Spam emails: "I'm just checking that you got my message". Me: yep. I'm ignoring it.

And we're very pleased to have you! https://x.com/ScrivenerSmith/status/962972381781413888

C21 Literature: journal of 21st-century writings today launches its issue on literature of the anthropocene
https://c21.openlibhums.org/

The most important aspect of the house move is complete. The guinea pigs are in.

Grad Tax vs Loans: the national accounting differences
https://andrewmcgettigan.org/2018/02/10/grad-tax-vs-loans-the-national-accounting-differences/

Deep learning's advances are the product of pattern recognition. But almost all the interesting problems in cognition aren't classification problems at all. http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/NOQch_duPFA/modern-ai-is-good-at-a-few-things-but-bad-at-everything-else

This is illegal and should be reported to the union. https://x.com/timeshighered/status/961611863967625216

Almost as good as the Heffalump effect. https://x.com/InterestingLit/status/961600534707916803

Fourth volume of Michel Foucault’s History of Sexuality published, posthumously - expert comment from Prof Stuart Elden
https://warwick.ac.uk/newsandevents/expertcomment/fourth_volume_of/

"Here's how to improve next time. Only don't improve too much or the computational surveillance will be suspicious." https://x.com/lizmorrish/status/961565120626176001

I *think* the removal guys are paying me a compliment... "You have a lot of books".

That is a shame but not unexpected https://x.com/lizmorrish/status/961547134117072897

Master of Birkbeck, University of London: "I am now stating publicly that both sides should return to the negotiating table and conduct meaningful negotiations with the preferred outcome being the retention of defined benefit scheme in an affordable form." @ucu @UniversitiesUK

Students demand compensation from universities over lecturer strikes
https://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/2018/feb/07/students-demand-compensation-from-universities-over-lecturer-strikes?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Fenix

"Humans Not Invited" Is a CAPTCHA Test That Welcomes Bots, Filters Out Humans
http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/qvWnXqsyYLY/humans-not-invited-is-a-captcha-test-that-welcomes-bots-filters-out-humans

Foucault’s Les Aveux de la chair – published tomorrow
https://progressivegeographies.com/2018/02/07/foucaults-les-aveux-de-la-chair-just-picked-up-a-copy/

Looks as though @ajrbyers has got the prototype flexi-flow workflow modification working in Janeway. Allows customisable workflows. Exciting!

Fair Use for Videographic Criticism https://justtv.wordpress.com/2016/01/08/fair-use-for-videographic-criticism/

The other day I was told that a department had decided as a policy not to draw on university funds for gold OA because they objected to propping up the scholarly publishing industry. They didn't seem that keen on my suggestion of cancelling all their subscriptions though.

Note that deductions at 1/260 have been ruled illegal by the Supreme Court https://www.supremecourt.uk/cases/uksc-2015-0142.html - previous deductions at the higher rate were also illegal. https://x.com/UCL_UCU/status/960975998480207872

Who was actually responsible for assessing Toby Young for the OfS board and by what criteria? The Department for Education tells me: Michael Barber, Gordon McKenzie of GuildHE, and Stephen Jones. https://www.martineve.com/2018/02/06/who-was-responsible-for-the-toby-jones-ofs-debacle/

Cloudflare Terminates Service to Sci-Hub Domain Names
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/lpr86eRdddg/

21 SLOWCASE // El Fulminador https://soundcloud.com/wabsabii/21slowcase mmm @ernestopriego @CarinaWestling @qui_oui @jon_fugler

Pleased to say that @jwyg and I have a contract for our open-access edited book with the MIT Press: Old Traditions and New Technologies: The Pasts, Presents, and Futures of Open Scholarly Communication

Nonsense. People are marching because politicians of your political persuasion are trying to de-fund our brilliant healthcare system. https://x.com/realDonaldTrump/status/960486144818450432

This week: OA working group, lots of OLH admin, some PhD supervisions, book discussions with @jwyg, the @CHASE_DTP Brief Encounters journal issue launch. Then: move house!

DPD courier who was fined for day off to see doctor dies from diabetes https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/feb/05/courier-who-was-fined-for-day-off-to-see-doctor-dies-from-diabetes

Understanding the last UCAS cycle in depth
http://wonkhe.com/blogs/understanding-the-last-ucas-cycle-in-depth/

What Really Happened with Vista: An Insider’s Retrospective
https://blog.usejournal.com/what-really-happened-with-vista-an-insiders-retrospective-f713ee77c239

What we know about the 2018 student recruitment cycle so far
http://wonkhe.com/blogs/what-we-know-about-the-2018-recruitment-cycle-so-far/

Malware Exploiting Spectre, Meltdown CPU Flaws Emerges
http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/dqbEUFWMuA4/malware-exploiting-spectre-meltdown-cpu-flaws-emerges

While preparing for a house move we found our Some Poasyum programme from many years back now, on what would have been @russellhobanorg's 93rd birthday. #SA4QE @sa4qe

Kate Macdonald on the Virginia Woolf industry... https://katemacdonald.net/2018/02/04/the-virginia-woolf-industry-is-a-problem/

Had my site moved by @ReclaimHosting to a new box last night. Was dreading this, but... everything still works!

In unusual move, judge grants CrossFit’s request to unmask anonymous peer reviewers
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/01/unusual-move-judge-grants-crossfits-request-unmask-anonymous-peer-reviewers?utm_campaign=news_daily_2018-01-31&et_rid=187547023&et_cid=1823192

"Average age of first stroke in England falls, figures show" http://www.bbc.com/news/health-42871861 (pleased to have been able to contribute)