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January 2025

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Bought myself a present to cheer up and recover from hospital. New Payfone EP! Love these guys. New material even more stripped back low slung electro funk.

The cover to Payfone's Wild Butterfly EP. It features the text Wild Butterfly, Paradise, Confession of a Queen, Wasted on You. And the phone number 07985352882. The cover features an elegant young black woman with large earrings. A record playing
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I'm also always massively ambitious about when I can get back to work after these hospitalisations. I thought I'd try tomorrow. My wife says I have to do Monday at the earliest. After my hip op, I had a call booked the day after I got home. That didn't happen!

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I feel like I say this too often, but it's something I really would like all my friends to know. It was the rheumatoid arthritis attacking the bowel that hospitalised me. People think it's just about the joints because of "arthritis". But it's notorious for attacking internal organs.

It's an autoimmune disease that attacks organs systemically. Joints are just the most prominent expression, usually in milder cases. That said, I can also barely use my hands here. My joints are disabled, my bowel is paralysed, my kidneys are destroyed. Rheumatoid "arthritis".

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Also scary: if you don't eat for 4 days, you are completely diminished. Weak. Almost unable to walk. It's remarkably quick.

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If you want an idea of how our underfunded healthcare has become - I was taken to hospital by emergency ambulance. But local hospital has no dialysis capacity. So my potassium goes high and I'm at imminent heart attack risk. But the hospital that can dialyse can't take me in this state. Bonkers.

It's grim. Hospitals are not safe places for patients with multiple complex life-threatening conditions

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Watching rubbish TV to recover from hospital and the basic moral I'm getting from The Traitors is: nobody is any good at reading anybody else's lies.

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No space outside the hospital. Parking warden just gave us a ticket for stopping for 30 seconds outside while I got out of a wheelchair and into the car. I could hardly be angrier.

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I am, finally, on dialysis having had emergency insulin for the potassium. Think I'm out of the heart attack zone.

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I am now in a worrying - life threatening - situation with potassium levels at 6.6 (critically high). Hospital trying to reduce this urgently so that I can dialyse.

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Afraid I have been hospitalised once more with another rheumatoid arthritis consequence. My bowel has gone into acute paralysis. Unbelievable pain. I'll be in here for 2-3 days until the bowel restarts. They're going to put a horrid tube up my nose to drain the bowel and stop me feeling sick.

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Just tried to get up and it didn't go well. Pain remains intense and immense. Looks like it's going to be try again, fail again, fail better, tomorrow.

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Lolz

"Strangely, ChatGPT seemed to be so impressed by them that it scored virtually all as 4* when complete text was entered!"

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One of the problems with having an autoimmune condition that can cause absolutely agonising pain is that I have become completely tolerant of many opioid painkillers. This means that if I can't handle the pain at any point, they give me ketamine... Which you are only allowed in hospital.

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Having a truly awful day. Last night, my bowel went into severe dysmotility/paralysis mode - something it hasn't done for over half a decade - and the pain is so, so bad. More than I can bear. Hoping I can avoid hospital, but unsure. Ended up admitted last time.

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Living kidney donation is one of the most selfless things you can do. These kidneys tend to fair better than those from dead donors. If I'm ever eligible for transplant, I'd be relying on others to donate.

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I also love the recurrence of the word "okapi" in this text. One of only two words (the other being "Omani") used in crosswords for o_a_i.

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I finished _The Poisonwood Bible_ - Kingsolver is an amazing writer. Planning to read _Flight Behavior_ next.

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Graham is such a great guy. I remember, well over a decade ago now, when I was a PhD student, giving my first big talk at UKSG. Graham buttonholed me afterwards along with others at Jisc and roped me into OAPEN-UK.

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“I have told officials at the highest level of the University that they only have two options: fire me, or let the HSRP do this work properly,” Cellini wrote in a September statement to The Crimson.

On Thursday, Cellini wrote in a text message: “Today Harvard fired me. So now we know.”

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Mrs Eve has baked us some delicious egg muffins with vegetables and smoked salmon as a healthy treat. Mmm.

A baking tray full of egg muffins
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Wow. Radical idea. We could even make it compulsory and tiered according to income, administrated by the government.

A sign that says "what if public infrastructure was funded by the crowd?"
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With comment from me.

He added that unless publishers recognise the current financial picture of the sector in their pricing, “they will see cancellations, because universities just can’t afford to keep their costs at the same levels as they are and [as] they have been for many years”.

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QR is precisely for this kind of work. NOT just some arbitrary funding that universities can use to plug the tuition fee gap.

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Heard from Reddit that the price of methotrexate in the US now has no price cap. Awful for people suffering from rheumatoid arthritis, for which this is a frontline treatment.

Mind you, methotrexate is a godawful drug. Made me feel constantly rotten, being sick, headache, brain fog, fatigue.

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I can't tell you how great this feels. It's taken me much longer than hoped, but I have the Knowledge (Humanities) Commons site up and running locally.

A screenshot of the Humanities Commons homepage
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My talk in New Delhi at the end of the month currently has over 1,100 people registered. Do please feel free to join us!

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Well, I finished this. The #1 problem with it is structural. It doesn't define what's a "meaningful life" until the last chapter. Frustrating.

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This book is basically:

Author: I've got an idea for a book about existential phenomenonology

Publisher: OK. But can you make it about dogs?

Author: say no more...

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Next up is something more lighthearted. The Happiness of Dogs.

Mrs Eve declared that the dog-philosophy ratio was too heavily weighted in the latter direction, but we'll see.

The front cover of Mark Rowlands's The Happiness of Dogs: Why the Unexamined Life is Most Worth Living. Cover is orange with a white dog eating the corner of the cover.
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So I finished Chiang's second story collection. Really fantastic, again. The title story is perhaps the best, with its launch into a totally surrealistic environment based on an Philip K Dick tale, but I also really liked "What's Expected of Us" with its free will humour.

The front cover of Ted Chiang's Exhalation, showing a sparse constellation of stars.
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So my haemodialysis machine reaches end of life next year and I'm really hoping that my unit will go for the Physidia portable machines for home patients. Would transform things with the ability to travel.

An image of a portable dialysis machine with a detachable screen
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Drat. Dialysis machine gave me a critical error last night, just before I was about to connect up. Sensor air detector error. Disconnect patient. Call technician. This is a serious error with safety implications.

Great. Anyway, skipped last night and phoning techs now.

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Call from the hospital today. They've spent the last year doing a full genetic sequence on me to see if there's a genetic reason for my autoimmune problems. I have a genetic abnormality pertaining to mitochondrial disorders. I am being referred to the National Neurology Hospital to investigate.

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Of course, we did genuinely used to have guinea pigs. I am pleased to report that I never trained them. Or lost them.

Me, a white mid-30s man with glasses and short brown hair holding Jane the guinea pig, a dear little grey piggy.
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Hilariously, in the middle of the night I sat bolt upright and demanded of my wife: "have you seen the guinea pig I was training? It's not here."

When she told me to go back to sleep, I replied: "you're not taking me seriously!"

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Mulling what next to write about. I'd quite like to write a book about Ted Chiang's science fiction.

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It remains disgusting that the @royalsociety.org would continue to rather honour Musk than a truly accomplished scientist, @deevybee.bsky.social. Makes a mockery of the fellowship tbh.

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In personal admin today, I must attempt to book a remote dialysis centre in July. This is the real difficulty with travelling anywhere in my life. Longer than a day away? Gotta persuade a remote dialysis centre to take you. Or you die.

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I find that books of short stories require a much higher reading activation energy than novels, because every story brings with it a new context and stylistic framework to which you must adjust. Obviously, novels can work like this, but I find I get the rhythm of the prose once and pretty quickly.

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Money to help sick and disabled people. Oh no.

Money for universities. Uh uh.

Money for supercomputers. YES!

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Laughing at Elsevier employees emailing me asking about a journal's publication status and marking it as "urgent".

This is not "urgent". My grant deadline is today is "urgent". Student grades are expected today is "urgent". This is not.

What a joke.

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"This includes anonymised NHS data".

Hugely worrying. AI will very likely see straight through the anonymisation because it can cross-reference with other datasets.

I talk very openly about my disability and health. It helps others. That doesn't mean I want to share my full health records.

"Find people in England with BK virus nephpropathy, rheumatoid arthritis, and who have had a stroke. Get me their place of employment."

One match found. Social media indicates this person works at...

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The "Labour" Party has no plan for what it will do if such technologies cause huge problems for actual labourers. Let's put it this way: I doubt it's going to be a joyous "post-work" utopia.

And that's beside the fact that the tech isn't (yet?) good enough

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The more I think about this, the stupider this response is. First, obviously, 4/5 did not abandon democracy.

But to be in the group that did, you have to imagine that the leader is one you approve of and that you are happy to have no way to make them leave. It requires a huge imaginative leap.

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Discussing how bad Jonathan Franzen's writing can be with a friend. Example: two chefs "talked about flavor the way Marxists talked about revolution".

What? They talk about flavor as an inevitable outcome of historical circumstances under late capital?

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I enjoyed Stories of Your Life and Others so much that I'm moving straight to Chiang's other collection: Exhalation.

The cover of Ted Chiang's Exhalation. It shows a pair of lungs made up by plants and gears/cogs.
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OK. I'm now tired. But the book manuscript is submitted! Hopefully feedback will be helpful and shepherd it through to its final state.

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Phew. I'm really getting there with the Voyager book now, which is provisionally titled "Lost in the Delta Quadrant: Power, Politics, and 1990s American Ideology in Star Trek: Voyager"

The projected table of contents for the mentioned book: Dedication 3 Acknowledgments 4 Typographical Note 5 Introduction: Why Voyager? Why a Journey? 6 Star Trek, Difference, and Repetition 14 Structure 28 Chapter Two: Gender and Sexuality 40 It’s my way, or the Janeway… 43 Carnivalesque Transgender Ideologies in Voyager 53 Keeping it in the Family 61 Chapter Three: Diplomacy, Race, and Species 66 Trek and Race 66 Fair Haven 74 “We Are Not Immigrants!” 79 Negative Externalities and Racial Behaviors 83 Chapter Four: Crime and the Death Penalty 91 “Emanations”, “Death Wish”, and (In)Voluntary Euthanasia 95 “Tuvix” and Anti-Realistic Ethics 105 Back to the Real World: “Repentance” 109 Chapter Five: Medical Ethics and Holographic Hurts 116 Universal Healthcare and “Critical Care” 121 “Author, Author”, AI, and 24th-Century Copyright 127 Idealism and Forms of Medical Ethics 136 The Doctor as Metatext for Voyager’s Televisual Nature 143 Chapter Six: Time Travel and Metahistory 146 Who Controls the Past Controls the Future. Who Controls the Present Controls the Past 147 The “Year of Hell” 157 “Future’s End” and the Computer Revolution 166 Rewriting History: “Endgame” 175 Conclusion and Coda: The Novels, Star Trek: Picard, and Star Trek: Prodigy 178 Appendix A: Bibliography of Voyager Expanded Universe 184 Comic Books 184 Novels 184 Video Games 186 Bibliography 187
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Still laughing at one of my wife's students who wrote of the "so-called Battle of Hastings". 😀

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Not at MLA because dialysis stops me travelling (urgh) but chuffed that @kfitz.info sent me this picture from the event :)

A copy of my book, Eve, Martin Paul, The Digital Humanities and Literary Studies (Oxford University Press, 2022). It has a pink circle on the front with the cover text in it.
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Before I started my Knowledge Commons work for the day, I was reviewing copyedits for @melissaterras.bsky.social and @semames.bsky.social. It is astonishing how much chocolate this requires you to eat.

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Spent the morning in Python environment dependency hell but have only one last aspect to resolve... I hope. Please.

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Drat. Dialysis failure overnight. Trans-membrane pressure alarm went off, indicating too high a pressure in the dialyser. Hopefully the techs will come out today.

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Right. New year is over. Time to finish the book on Star Trek: Voyager and start the new work at Knowledge Commons/MSU. "Go Spartans!" (am I doing this right?)

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Tomorrow begins my work on the Knowledge Commons project. Can't wait to meet the rest of the team and to get my head around the architecture.

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Now on to some SF. Ted Chiang, Stories of Your Life and Others. I've seen Arrival but never read the original.

The cover of Ted Chiang's Story of Your Life and Others.
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It's a shame that AFAICS there are no exemptions for those with disabilities that mean they must use a car to travel.

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It sounds as though the actual AI use was for reformatting to JATS XML and/or some InDesign flow, rather than "rewriting", and the system lost the important intricacies of the original.

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Read David McKitterick's Old Books, New Technologies: The Representation, Conservation and Transformation of Books since 1700. I'd read the introduction before so it was good to revisit and properly read the whole thing. A robust historicisation of where the computer screen fits in book history.

The cover to David McKitterick's Old Books, New Technologies, which shows, in grayscale, a group of people dressed in antiquated garb gathered around a printed artifact with some qualities we would recognise as bookish.
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I heard from a former school governor that the systems of "phonics" taught to children discourages parents from reading anything except the prescribed texts. Is this true? If so, what room is there for pleasure and exploration in children's reading? It sounds awful. It's our education system.

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The Zotero mobile beta is cool, but I really, really want it to be able to export a citation of an item, for social media use. The only real use it has at the moment is reading the attached files on the device.

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Today I read Jonathan Coe's metafictional detective novel, The Proof of My Innocence. Lots of fun wordplay and pastiche (eg Lawrence sequence). I also enjoyed what I assumed was an oblique reference to JH Prynne.

The cover of The Proof of My Innocence by Jonathan Coe. It depicts a man in a suit with a flame where his head should be.
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"The tech mogul - and close confidant of US President-Elect Donald Trump - offered no immediate explanation for the name or his new profile image"

Oh my word! The mystery! The intrigue! What could this man adopting loads of far-right symbols mean?!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy53vz1qpx1o

This man could change his profile picture to a swastika and the BBC would say "it is unclear whether he is referring to the nazi regime or the ancient Hindu use of the symbol".