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James Sumner Profile picture
James Sumner
@JamesBSumner
Historian @ManCHSTM (all views mine). Computer users, brewing scientists, Manchester science & technology gubbins. Book: http://t.co/UvoMVKk5Ck
Sep 28, 2020 • 26 tweets • 6 min read
Quick thread about corridors and contagion.

I've been hearing about how things played out in a UoM teaching building – one of the big ones with not-so-big corridors – around the middle of last week. If the report (second-hand, I should say) is right, there was no distancing: students were crowded into the corridors as normal, unable to get out of each other's immediate vicinity for minutes on end. I don't have info on level of masking but this is obviously not good.

My point is that it's unavoidable, if you run mass on-campus activities at all.
Sep 25, 2020 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
I once asked a mystic who dwelt atop a mountain what the secret of a contented life was, and the mystic replied: "Act as though your actions might get written up in the news media if they obviously make for good headlines". I wonder what he meant by that.
thetab.com/uk/leeds/2020/… Image MMU, likewise, more or less writing its own negative press at the moment:
Sep 21, 2020 • 16 tweets • 6 min read
Puddle off, I'm not going to read anything you run if you insist on running it with a stock photo like that. Image Not even 100% sure this man is a real masked hacker, given he fell for the old "Now give us your signature, which we will put on file" ruse. motionarray.com/stock-photos/p… Image
Sep 18, 2020 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Yup (thread up and down). Full transparency is in everyone's interest.

By which I mean: it should go without saying that it's morally the right thing to do, but it's equally the best course from a standpoint of pure greed, assuming the future lasts longer than about two weeks. See also this. I'm just not sure "We got three months' worth of money by endangering and misleading the people we rely on for further money" is going to turn out to have been a strategic masterstroke.
Sep 16, 2020 • 5 tweets • 3 min read
This is in a problematic degree more fun than the actually quite important and necessary emails I should be writing ImageImage Too niche? ImageImage
Sep 15, 2020 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
In sum:
• a meaningful Brexit by definition requires either militarised border in Ireland or NI/GB split
• May's solution: unspecified magic, or, failing that, NI/GB split
• Johnson's solution: promise NI/GB split anyway, then claim that's ridiculous and therefore not binding. With helpful diagrams: flipchartfairytales.wordpress.com/2020/09/14/bri…
Aug 27, 2020 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
"Transcribe in Word": worth knowing about if you teach/study.

Probably fair to say this will be practically useful to many people in the short term. But for goodness' sake don't let anyone shape institutional expectations/requirements around it, because+ krdo.com/money/2020/08/… so far as the nefarious weaponisation of locking users into platforms and use patterns is concerned, Microsoft Corporation cannot exactly be said to be approaching the court with clean hands. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_…
Aug 17, 2020 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Where's this coming from? Because I'm seeing it a *lot*.

(Circs will vary, but typically the shortfall in international students would nowhere near make up the difference. Plus, you never really know how many international students you've got till the very start of teaching.) Image This is from the replies on , which also contain this gem of an exchange. If you are surprised to be told that institutions don't make the same number of offers as they've got places then I cannot begin to imagine how that head of yours works. Image
Aug 6, 2020 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
Same. Now wondering how many of us in @ucu have been emailed the message "in accordance with the preference we have recorded for you, your ballot paper has been sent to your work address" when (a) we asked for it to go to our home addresses and (b) it did. Why does this sort of stuff keep happening? I appreciate it's difficult to get things right when there's a global pandemic, but I'd have more sympathy if they'd made any moves towards fixing problems I've pointed out during the past few years of there not being a global pandemic.
Aug 4, 2020 • 10 tweets • 4 min read
Perhaps unwisely, made my first attempt today to visualise what the small-group-meets-in-large-room teaching environment with physical distancing will... you know... actually look like.

Tell you what it *doesn't* look like. It doesn't look like a discussion seminar: Image A lot of people pointing out I've got more students in here than you'd have in a typical seminar. Yes: it's just a quick doodle to show the likely spacing (working off UoM's seats-to-distanced-capacity ratio) for a tiered theatre where the layout can't be changed...
Jul 31, 2020 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Well, that's somewhat clearer... if unworkable.

Some people are saying "The confusion is 100% deliberate, so they can blame us." IMO it's more a nasty symbiosis of scrotes who really are that devious with others who are genuinely surpassingly clueless.
manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-m… It's the "We Didn't Realise" problem. Standard discourse consists of argy-bargy between (a) they truly Didn't Realise so there's no problem and (b) they Obviously Knew and are lying.

But the correct answer is usually (c), they Didn't Realise and are thus monstrously culpable.
Jul 22, 2020 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
NEW HOW-TO VIDEO: Adding captions (subtitles) to your recordings for teaching etc, including tricks to speed up the editing process. Warning: includes captioned footage of captioned footage of me talking about the fact it is captioned footage of captioned footage.

Making the captions is actually easy; making the how-to video was like flipping Inception. I'm not 100% sure I'm not still inside it. Image
Jul 20, 2020 • 23 tweets • 22 min read
LAST CHANCE TO SEE (for now): talks and events from the @BSHSNews History of Science Festival #HistSciFest are online for the rest of today at bshsfestival.org.uk/index.php/prog….

Here is a slightly random thread of things I attended and enjoyed... ImageImageImageImage (The intention – to be confirmed – is to make all the videos available again long-term on a different platform, if participants agree... but we need to take them off the current system now, as it's costing the Society a lot and mainly designed for live events) #HistSciFest
Jul 7, 2020 • 12 tweets • 7 min read
#HistSciFest Note that ALL of the Crowdcast sessions are recorded and available afterwards at the links on the Festival website!

Mine, for instance: crowdcast.io/e/tour-of-the-… (which I will now have to watch back with teeth clenched through the bits that went wrong) The recording also includes the live chat (keep trying to scrolling back and it'll slowly bring in earlier posts), in which several people have kindly provided links, clarifications, and personal recollections... Image
Jul 6, 2020 • 4 tweets • 3 min read
#HistSciFest Fascinating talk from Sibusiso Biyela @AstroSibs right now (I think you can still join: bshsfestival.org.uk/index.php/prog…)

The question "Why doesn't our language have a word for dinosaur?" felt like it ought to be an article in itself. Turns out it is:
bbc.com/future/article… #HistSciFest Realising he would need to coin his own term for "dinosaur" in isiZulu, Biyela settled on "isilwane sasemandulo", approximately "ancient animal".

Notes that "dinosaur" (= "terrible lizard") is a *very* long way from what current science sees a dinosaur as being...
Jul 3, 2020 • 4 tweets • 3 min read
This is next week, Monday to Friday, events running morning to evening UK time.

It's a serious attempt to do something different: we've got book talks, skills sessions, a performance, lightning talks, general chat sessions, and even a pub quiz. Programme: bshsfestival.org.uk/index.php/prog… Monday's events include two @ManCHSTM contributions. At 18:00 UK time (UTC+1) there's @PratikChakrab's keynote asking whether the concept of a "global history of science" does useful work, or whether making "global" distinct also makes it marginal... bshsfestival.org.uk/index.php/prog…
Jul 2, 2020 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
This "We support free speech but [example of hate speech] is indefensible" language has suddenly become the norm in the UK, which I find very odd.

I'm happy to say I oppose free speech as a principle, because it's incoherent: some people's exercise of freedom limits others'... ...and as far as I can see, the only responsible approach is to ask "What manner of regulation of speech would safeguard the widest freedoms in the most just fashion?"
Jul 1, 2020 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
The "idiot son" yarn, then. Because Twitter, my timeline is fissioning loosely into "it's gospel truth and a searing insight into the Brexiteer mindset" (Centre) vs "none of this happened, the author's not real, and some unspecified species of grift is at work" (Left)... ...whereas to me it looks and feels very much like heightened reality.

There *are* such people. My parents in Spain were surrounded by them. They've brought down a lot of pain and privation upon themselves as well as everybody else.

They never do anything funny, though.
Jun 30, 2020 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
Right.

I have just shovelled another £150 (that is ten levies, levy fans) into the @ucu Fighting Fund.

I cannot say that I will not feel this, exactly, but clearly as permanent staff on an SL's salary I will feel it less than most.

I am *not* happy.
ucu.org.uk/fightingfund When I encouraged precarious colleagues to hold the strike by pointing to the Fighting Fund and local hardship funds as available sources of support, I did so in the clearly utopian faith that there was some minimal level of financial calculus at the back of all this.
Jun 29, 2020 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
I'll tell you who on UCU Twitter I most wish would think twice before uttering:

All the people who persistently chip in with "Yes, and what about [calling an unsustainable strike | shooting down the DemComm proposals]?" whenever ANYTHING GOES WRONG. It is safe to expect that a wide variety of things will go wrong at frequent intervals for the foreseeable, given that important comms and decision-making structures are creaking or broken not only within UCU but throughout the UK and much of the planet we're currently on.
Jun 27, 2020 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Lockdown status: finally achieved my long-held ambition of contriving a way to see the back of my own head, which I put to the obvious use.

Full video of the auto-haircut now carefully archived just in case I ever have to be First Minister of Scotland. The end result neatly illustrates the perils of techno-solutionism. I was so preoccupied faffing about with the camera setup that at one point I mistook the grade 1 for the grade 2 clippers, so it's a bit severe round the back and sides... Image