Just the TILs →

October 2026

It looks like I have the early stages of another infection. This always manifests in a similar way: extreme morning pain in my neck, my shoulders, my hands, my knees, my ankles, and my feet. Hard even to move until my pain relief has kicked in. Agony. Burning.

Also quite distressed to learn, through my own attempts, that Kagi is not great at historic searches. It could not turn up historic articles on a subject and was dominated by this year's results. Yes, I tried the time dropdown!

Our tabloids are so vile. I believe The Sun wrote, before, that "Meghan should reunite with estranged father Thomas Markle as it felt like she 'cut him off quickly'". I only vaguely followed this frenzy, but the U-turn is so predictable. As though they'd never said all they said.

News from home is that our dog Luka has been extremely scared by the storm. In panic, he raced to the forbidden upstairs and insisted on sleeping by Mrs Eve's side on the floor. This morning, he joined her for tea. I am being supplanted by my dogs!

More seriously, we always let Luka come up when there is something like a storm or fireworks that frightens him. But, usually, he goes in the other room with Mrs Eve. He is not allowed in the bedroom constantly because of the dialysis machine.

I have been assured that my place is reserved when I come back. Luka has not been on the bed and he has not been anywhere near the dialysis machine. But it is kind of sweet how much he clings to Helen and loves her and finds safety in her.

Maybe 75% of my PhD supervision requests are clearly AI. Maybe ~75% of the remaining batch are then overseas candidates who cannot study without funding, which will be a depressing long shot. I always reply to these to discuss. The remainder cheer me up, though.

Yesterday was strange. I woke shivering with a temperature. Then I slept all day. But I do not mean 'I went to sleep'. It was like an irresistible force compelled me. I missed all meals. I did not realise I had gone to dialysis and back.

I have never known anything like this. It was extraordinary. I would fall asleep midway through speaking to someone if they had woken me up briefly.

I said to my wife on a call at 9:30pm, 'Yes, I'm just going to take my drugs, then go to bed.' I ended the call, and next thing I knew it was 11:30pm; I had fallen asleep sitting up and not done either of those things properly.

Everyone says, 'Oh, your body needs sleep. It's good for you. It's probably a good thing.' But seriously, this was something really wrong.

I have yet to find a way to convey the wrongness of this sleep from which you awake no less fatigued and which you cannot resist.

Amusing that the ward I am on, the Intestinal Rehabilitation Unit, used to be called the Intestinal Failure Unit. Good motivational renaming there.

Also, "I FU" 😬

Let's say you're in hospital - in immense pain - and prescribed a strong morphine-related painkiller. The doctors have said that you can ask for this whenever you need it. How long do you think it is reasonable to wait, in this pain, after you have asked the nurses for it?

Quite frankly, today was terrible, work-wise. I spent 3hrs this AM with ongoing security remediation work (bad enough)... then the worst cybersecurity flaw in a long time was announced, with mere hours notice and attacks in the wild. Rest of the day: a total write off fixing this.

The entire technical maintenance environment has changed, now. Vulnerabilities can no longer be patched "in a couple of days". They have to be done immediately because kids with AI agents will get hold of these known weaknesses and use them immediately. It is exhausting and stops the work we want to do.

The first Open Access Week in a decade and a half, I believe, where my health/being in hospital has prevented me from speaking entirely. Was due to speak at Indiana University today 😞

So proud of what my colleague and friend, Prof Caroline Edwards, is doing. She is building the diamond OA funding structure, at scale, of which we dreamed when we established OLH: OJC. https://www.openaccessweek.org/theme-profiles/open-journals-collective

Just to note, of course, that OLH owed debts to many institutions, collectives, organisations, and individuals that went before. But the thing I remember at the time was that people kept asking us: won't YOU grow to be a new monopoly with this model? Hilarious!, we thought.

Mighty oaks from acorns grow? It is truly amazing to see Caroline's energy realising this OJC mighty-oak vision for not-for-profit, high-quality, OA publishing, with neither author nor reader charges. These things don't exist unless people with a vision build them.

Waiting for this painkiller is not a trivial encumbrance. It is my entire function. I can't use my hands, every twist and turn I make, every sit-up to reach something, every attempt to do anything is agony w/out it. It's what the "severe" in "severe rheumatoid arthritis" means.

But they made me wait 1hr 25mins to get it. I was crying in pain. I tried to do my other meds but my hands were shaking and extremely painful to use. I'm sure they were busy with other patients, but this is the ONE THING that I need on time. I don't pester for anything else. It's 3 tablets.

At home, I have strong opioid painkillers, controlled drugs, that I can take first thing. In hospital, they take these away from you and make you wait for a nurse to dispense them. I am in absolute agony and asked for them 50 minutes ago.

I do actually love Sundays, with the quiet, non-dialysis afternoon. I get but two of these per week, on Wednesday and Sunday. A friend will visit later, but for now I am writing.

A picture of me, Martin Paul Eve, writing at a computer, in a hospital, with a hospital wrist band and an Apple Mac computer running a Linux virtual machine. I am a white man, here with germinative beard and longer hair than usual by a long way (but still fairly short). I am wearing a Janeway t-shirt.

"QS had expressed concern that Romi would get an unfair advantage over other candidates"

SHE HAS TO WRITE BY BLINKING. WHAT ADVANTAGE? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c6zxj8grer7ro

This is a very typical response to disability accommodations. They are seen as giving the disabled person an advantage, when really they're just trying to make it possible. It is a confusion between equality and equity.

Personally, I think this examination board should offer all students the opportunity to conduct their examinations solely by blinking out the spelling of letters and see how many people really wish to take up this option, with its many advantages over other candidates.

Today I will start a physiotherapy programme to try to prepare myself for getting home. That's still a way off, but I cannot walk more than 5m by myself at the moment. Hospital deconditioning is extreme.

This is a total piss take. I mean, which other industry's product is regulated based on the ultra-low bar of not killing 50 people? Oh wait, I forgot. The US has guns.
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/10/16/anthropic-ai-safety-01124654

I guess the problem is they are just not willing to enforce laws against corporations. OpenAI should be held liable criminally, if it kills someone.* Somebody tangibly human in the corporation should be the subject of that liability.

* it should be taken as read that people who have killed themselves on the provocation of chatbots already count. As well as elementary schools targeted for bombing

My mother-in-law has cats. Lots of cats. And she lives in deepest Somerset. Her beloved cat, Bertie, has been missing for weeks, but he's just showed up... in Cardiff!

What did this cat do? Catch the train? Has he been on a holiday somewhere in the meantime? Extraordinary distance to have roamed.

A new annoying trend: self-published authors writing to me asking whether I will act as their agent or review their book. OK, not terrible. But they resend if I haven't replied in 2 days!

Perhaps the most frustrating of my malnutrition symptoms is my shaking. I go to use my phone, for instance, and I inevitably double-tap with a twitch when I only wanted to single-press on an item. It makes many digital devices quite difficult to use.

Well, this morning I passed my competency training in disconnection from IV feeding. I now know safely how to disconnect and am authorised to do it myself tomorrow morning. Exciting!

Janeway is pleased to announce a new collaboration with PLOS to develop and extend the Janeway codebase for use in parts of PLOS’s article submission process https://www.openlibhums.org/news/1025/

We've gone from Andy and me coding Janeway by hand, in those pre-AI days, over a weekend or so, to Janeway, a solid structure for OA journal publication workflows. Now being used and developed by a major scientific publisher.

I never had aspirations for it like this. I just wanted it to do what we needed it to do. If there is a cool way for other organisations to make it do what they need, too, so long as it does not violate our ethical principles, then that is fantastic.

Okay, I would be most grateful for your thoughts and input: for my Star Trek:Voyager book/monograph, should there be an index?

There's an open online copy, so you can search, but thematic connections can be drawn much better in an index.

I receive several PhD applications per week on some intersection of literature with AI. It often looks as though the paragraph about my work has itself been AI generated. Dispiriting.

I'm sure this is right. I went to my GP 6x before I was believed. Finally, a female GP referred me to hospital immediately and reprimanded her male colleague. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2026/oct/13/women-autoimmune-conditions-psychological-misdiagnosis-cambridge-study

This study shows that, if this was my experience, it is much worse for women. I think I had it bad because I was outside the core demographic for RA. But medics need to listen.

There are so many horror stories of RA patients, who are predominantly female, reporting terrible diagnostic pathways, taking years on end for them to be listened to, understood, and treated, for a harrowing disease.

kfitz - In the Wake https://kfitz.info/in-the-wake/

Adapted: In the early hours of October 2, ET, we discovered clear evidence that we were experiencing a malicious intrusion. I initiated an immediate shutdown of the platform, a rotation of all of our access keys, and a revocation of our CILogon authorization keys.

I'll believe it when I see it, but I spoke with a very nice man at Motability yesterday, who promised that they would not take away my wheelchair. Apparently, the dealership should not have just, in the first instance, immediately called me to tell me my contract was terminated.

I can safely report that this is a deeply tedious document. It includes the instruction "do not watch pornography during the nurse's visit". It horrifies me that this has happened and they must prevent it again. 🤢

The front page of the Home Parenteral Support Services in England Patients Charter (Version 3)

Yesterday, I met the home parenteral support nurse. She will train me to administer IV feeding to myself, w/ support from my wife, at home. We begin training proper today! Meanwhile, medics continue to try to bring my weight up w/ feed.

I've really had enough now. I just got a phone call to say that they are trying to take away my electric wheelchair because I've been in hospital for more than 28 days. So when I get out, by Nov, I will have no way of going anywhere. If I have to go through the process for a new one again, it takes months.

TIL: No matter how good at computers you think you are, or how much hubris you have about your Linux expertise, sometimes you do still need just to turn it off and on again to fix that ridiculous problem.

Hospital frustrations continue, but I am still alive and kicking. I reached the limit for being off my rheumatoid arthritis drugs. I cannot describe to you the unendurable misery. I had to restart them.

Another factor that was not considered. Visiting hours on my ward are 1pm to 8pm. But 5x per week I am taken to dialysis at 1pm and I am returned ~7pm. This means I only have two days per week when I can have visitors.

I have obtained a special exemption for my wife so that she can come earlier, but this is still quite isolating when it's a two-month stay!

I also remain troubled by my muscle spasms and tremors. Honestly, they are strong enough that I accidentally throw my book or phone.

Hospital transfers. Totally Kafkaesque. There's no commode on the dialysis ward, but there's one in my side room. I need it. But, 'obviously', says a nurse, without a hint of irony, 'we can't take that one because it's the ward's'.

I am screaming inside. Why is that obvious? Just wheel it upstairs, then wheel it downstairs afterwards. That is 'obvious'. Instead, they suggest that I 'take some extra pads'. Basically, that I soil myself, norovirus-style, in an open ward.