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March 2022

"Looking to use up funding for outward student mobility?"

Yes, that's precisely it. I've just got back from swimming in my pool of left-over cash in UK HE and can't think how to spend it!

🤦

I've been battling admin and email all week, but I took an hour out today to do some writing and really enjoyed it. Thinking about the ethical standpoint shared by pirate archives and some OA advocates around the moral good of access specifically to medical research.

It involves thinking about how cultures of healthcare rights are enshrined within national jurisdictions and the "criminality" or otherwise of profiteering from the unwellness of others.

I should also add that my book MS hit 100,000 words today!

Something big happening at the journal Orbit on 1st April. In fact, this date is probably going to make people disbelieve it :P

We've been considering the situation in Ukraine and had a query at the Open Library of Humanities about whether we should refuse submissions from Russian authors. A good background context on this is provided by @lisalibrarian and @rschon.

https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2022/03/02/decoupling-from-russia/

A first and important point: if we did this, we would be throwing stones from a glass house. Britain has a history of worldwide imperialism and waging wars that were not sanctioned by the international community.

It also seems important that we maintain lines of communication between those who study culture in different countries, even when governments behave repulsively. Just as many humanities researchers in Britain do not condone our government's actions, the same goes for elsewhere.

If we were talking about OLH sponsorship/membership, that might be a different matter. There could well be significant ethical blocks to accepting money from Russian institutions at this time.

My current thinking, though, is that we should not ban authors on the basis of national identity.

Bad publicity from P&O really has hit rock bottom when similarly named companies are running Youtube adverts to say "we're not that company"

Thank you so much everyone for your well wishes. That was a terrifying call to get from the hospital at 10pm. Glad that it seems to have been an anomaly although I need a follow up on the other odd results.

Thanks also to the staff at my local hospital who, on hearing of my immune condition, immediately isolated me in a side room on arrival for covid safety and dealt with the situation at lightning speed. Long live the NHS.

OK, so there're some very abnormal blood results but the repeat test is not as bad as they feared when they called me in. I'm on a drip at the moment but will be allowed home in the early hours.

I have just had a call from the hospital. Apparently my blood tests show acute renal failure and I must now attend A and E.

Did some music this evening. A bit of a struggle to keep the creative juices flowing at the moment, as life doesn't have much external stimulation (I can't complain but sometimes I do). But quite pleased with where this is going.

Today's clue may be favoured by UCU.

EXECRATION = violent disapproval

EXEC RATION = "amount senior management receive"

I've instigated a new "motivation" system for exercise where I fine myself £5 per day if I don't get on the exercise bike. I'm allowing myself sick days, so if my arthritis won't allow it, I don't push myself too hard, but it seems to be working so far 😂

I mean, my condition is just so variable. Some days it's a struggle to do a short walk. Other days, the exercise bike is fine. Rheumatoid arthritis. Sigh!

I don't know when it was originally published, but cryptic jumbo 46 in the Times Book 18 was the worst I've ever seen. No idea how it got past the editor.

However, it had one great clue: University cuts lead to search for local courses (3, 4)

For those who don't do these, it's PUB GRUB.

(U)niversity "cuts" lead (PB), "to search" = GRUB.

Local courses = PUB GRUB

Looking back at my diary and it's seven years ago today that I spoke at Brown University in the lovely Rhode Island. I also made some great friends for life at URI.

A colleague points out to me the apparent typo in early editions of The Crying of Lot 49: "central paintings [plural] of a triptych". My later (corrupted?) editions do not have this. Perhaps @AlbertRolls1 knows the history...?

I've had several people ask - thank you! - how Toby is getting on. The basic answer is that he's actually a bit better, but has really taken a knock after this latest illness. The walk that he used to do in 15 mins now takes 50. He's slowing down.



Butter wouldn't melt in his mouth.

"I think we should test that theory!"

Toby today is very tired. He was unwell again last night and it seems to really knock him for six.

For all the REF consultations and attempts to avoid "poaching" - not to say lifting the numbers cap to induce institutional size changes - the UK academic job market is stagnant. There's neither mobility nor stability. (And that's not even mentioning lack of ECR-level posts.)

Many universities that are growing don't want to take the risk of hiring permanent staff at mid-senior grades because they can't guarantee year-on-year income stability.

"Do you have permission to re-use this section from your own book? You will need permission from the publisher if not."

Why yes. Yes, I do. Because I kept copyright and the book is also openly licensed.

Thinking about @markjamesmcgurl's "fiction as service" model in the context of "novels by Strictly Come Dancing judges" 😂

We keep buying these as jokes for my mother and I wonder how the sales/service model accounts for ironic purchases.

Appalling. Discriminatory against the vulnerable. Re-enforces libertarian sentiment of protecting others as apparently unjustified restriction. https://x.com/grok_/status/1504106546250330115

I mean, for years I have told students that if they come to my classes while they are sick and infect me, they will likely land me in hospital and jeopardise most of the rest of the course. Masking is now the same.

In conversation with colleagues at Loughborough University, I have, with sadness, resigned my external examiner position as part of the current @ucu @LboroUCU dispute.

An interesting point will be to see whether they pay me pro-rata or try to argue that I will get nothing for resigning mid-way through. If the latter, I won't be serving any notice period.

Today I'm speaking first to the Research Libraries UK conference then have a meeting later that requires me to go full shirt and tie. Rare in these Zoom times...

For those who follow for Toby news, I'm afraid to say that he's still not very well. Back to the vet tomorrow am.

Back to the vet today, although still feeling very sorry for himself. Poor chap. Trying to make him as comfortable as possible.

Poor Toby. He clearly feels very sick and is in pain. Emergency vet says he has to wait it out and come back tomorrow if not improved, although obviously we can take him in tonight if it's too awful. 😔

The hands-free Nike Go Flyease trainers arrived today! Although I'm relatively able in lots of ways, bending down to put on shoes and tie shoelaces is the one thing I really struggle with with my arthritis. This is a great fix!

Busy week of talks at Oxford's OxFOS, OpenAthens's Access Lab 2022, and Research Libraries UK's annual conference. Travel arrangements, of course, continue to be "walking down to the hall to my desk"🤦

Today I managed to order some Nike Go Flyease trainers and I hope that, when these arrive, I will be able to put my shoes on without help for the first time in several years. Pretty excited. They're amazing disability tech.

This morning's excitement* is that I've started the batch of immunoglobulin injections that were produced during the pandemic! This may mean that they have Covid antibodies!

* not that exciting

This is one of the most remarkable drugs I am given. Except for the pandemic -- when it suddenly couldn't protect me -- I went from getting constant pneumonia and hospitalisation to zero infections. Thanks, Subgam!

Horrific costochondritis today. A side effect of my rheumatoid arthritis where the tissue that joins the rib cage to the breastbone becomes inflamed. Feels like a heart attack quite frankly. Walking is extremely painful.

Honestly, it feels like I've broken 3 ribs.

There's a weird anti-correlation in grant writing between "amount of money you are pitching for" and "effort you put in to the proposal".

When asking for absurdly transformative amounts the detail becomes less relevant. It's the start of dialogue rather than a full plan.

Of course, you have to put enough that you don't look like an idiot. But I can't spend months on building an ask if everyone will say "no" b/c it's too ambitious. So I go for the high-level pitch and then hope foundations who are interested will guide me.

This evening is the NGLP community forum, where I'll be speaking a bit about @janeway_systems and our work on this project.

HERE WE GO

Discussing @openlibhums policies on post-publication author name changes. Interesting to see how COPE guidance has changed on this. We'll have a statement about this soon but basically will allow it. Our technical ability to change this though (say in PDFs) is a different matter.

The good news: I've been nominated for a @BirkbeckUoL "Birkbeck Effects" story, not just for OLH but for disability advocacy and visibility!

The bad news: they're going to create a 1m high printed board picture of me to scare everybody who comes into the main building.

Petition for a 1m-high Toby board

Toby update: he's still struggling to eat and clearly in pain when he does. He's got steroids now and we're trying to make him as comfortable as possible. He's back on the sofa, mind.

Getting excited writing a grant proposal and thinking of the amazing work we can do.

Then feeling exhausted just thinking of the work involved in doing the funded project.

😂

A note on how messed up the world situation is. Visiting Russia in 2002 was a hugely stimulating experience for me. A student, at the time, of Russian history, I was mesmerised. Two years later I'd fall in love with a graduate in Russian linguistics who'd teach me "я тебя люблю".

But it didn't feel safe, even then. We were not well regarded as Western tourists. The entire space felt so alien that I never got to grips with it. But I also had assumed the Cold War was past, gone, passed. I don't think I dreamed that 20 years later we'd be back here.

Shocking, distressing, and just what we need after two years of global pandemic. WW3 on our doorsteps again and untold suffering in Ukraine. There's little point me publicly ranting - my words mean little here - but it's all so deeply wrong.

Cultural exchange, mutual understanding of history, dialogue. These are the things that make the world work as a planet of interconnected people. Not war, abuse, suffering, aggression.

Poor Toby is still quite unwell. He's now on steroids and we're doing all we can to make him comfortable. Poor chap just isn't himself though and won't eat anything except his favourite foods.

"[YYY] does not follow a standard reference style, which makes compliance with house style a little more time consuming for authors".

Urgh. This is really a waste of everyone's time.

There are a lot of bad things about the USS pension modeller - like the appalling cuts to pensions that it models - but I'm pretty sure that the image they've chosen for "retirement" is hardly great for re-enforcing disability stereotypes.

I went for an isolated walk to commemorate two years of isolation. Privileged to be safe but also mourning a life I used to have of popping into pubs and shops - and undertaking international travel - without feeling my life was in danger.

Mental health can be a difficult terrain to navigate, but my past two years has been a constant state of background existential threat coupled with extreme isolation. It has not been easy. And so it goes... On.

But I am still relatively safe. And thankful.

I'm not sure fully able people really understand how bad it is to know that there's an omnipresent virus that will kill you, quite horribly, if you catch it. And fearing how to navigate employment, projects, and the world when the danger is so much greater to you than to others.

Reading @DrMagennis's book today with its chapter on Milkman and wondering what I lost or gained from/in the audiobook version to which I turned. I also still haven't bought that book stand that I wanted.

Just seen an Editor's contract (with a major for-profit publisher) prohibiting them from editing any existing or new journal that "competes" for *two years* after the contract's termination. A serious curtailment of academic freedom for commercial purposes.

And, of course, it makes it far harder for us to establish new (diamond) OA titles in a field, when editorial expertise has been monopolised in this way. I really think should be an unacceptable clause.

While phlogiston theory is used by many major science historians as an example of revolution/scientific method and revising the past, most of the books on this are _really_ poor at the basic history of the theory. They just assume that everyone knows it (Becher etc.).

You have to go to something like Daintith, John, ed., A Dictionary of Chemistry, 6th edn (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008) to get something solid.

Two years ago, today, the UK confirmed its first Covid death. On the advice of immunology, I cancelled all events and we started shielding. Since then we've met only people who have isolated. It has not been a brilliant two years.

There's now some hope on the horizon. Vaccines were good. I have mounted some response after 4 doses. My immunoglobulins will soon have some antibodies. The new antivirals are excellent.

But we're not there yet and the government is removing all that make it possible for me to take calculated risks. Winding down the testing programme. Removing mask mandates, even in hospitals! No self isolation requirements. Just as things look up, they kick us back down.

So who knows what the next six months will look like. It's the hope that does for you. But not sure how hopeful I feel. I'm going a bit spare after two years of house arrest but remain grateful that I can stay safe.

"Western sanctions on Russia akin to declaration of war, says Putin"

It's a good job this is coming from someone with a clean record who hasn't made any recent declarations of war.

Facts are not copyrightable. However, scientific facts must be refutable and subject to revision, by definition. Does this mean that when a previous 'fact' is refuted as an untruth, it becomes copyrightable?

Not a huge cricket fan (to put it mildly), but I met the late Shane Warne in Nairobi and he was so recognisable and famous that everyone I was with had a sense of excitement.

Today I've done some reading, some writing, some programming, some meetings, some practical projects, some theory, and a cycle on the exercise bike. (Some emails.) Really the ideal day of variety.

Today is Toby's two-year gotcha day and his official seventeenth birthday! He's not feeling great and is still unwell, but we're doing our best to make it a nice day for him.

Today at the burial was lovely in the end. We wept a little but laughed. We marvelled at a century-long life. It was also fitting for World Book Day that Nan's overriding last regret was not being able to finish her current novel.

I read - and got through it OK!

Today is a beautiful, sunny day and we're off to my grandmother's funeral. Well, not really a funeral as she didn't want one and hated events where someone unconnected with the family spoke. So, instead, she'll have me trying to get through a reading!

Wordle was apt today

I'll probably be shot down, but my favourite Richard Thompson album is the later Sweet Warrior. The tour was the best thing I've ever seen, in terms of live music, too.

Oh dear. Poor Toby is feeling very unwell today with no energy and off his food. Crossing our fingers he pulls through.

Toby seems to be feeling a bit better! He's had a little walk and some food/drink.