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June 2020

Looks like IT Services have got it handled, lads

text reads (in a screenshot of an email subject line): "Subject: Important: Anti-virus updates"

Waking up every day as an immunodeficient person with current government COVID policy and UK population-wide social distancing violation is like

Today is a sort of mid-year's resolutions day for me. I'm cutting back on chocolate as I'm eating epic amounts of it, going to have a few fewer whiskys, and getting back on the exercise bike, which has just been displaced by too much work this last fortnight.

Good riddance to OfS regulator Michael Barber. The OfS remains terrible, pitting students against universities in an adversarial market relationship that is wholly inappropriate.

"No 10 refuses to accept call from medical leaders for review of UK readiness for Covid-19 second wave"

That must mean that we're ready, right? Right?

Looking forward to teaching on our MA with @the_blochian tomorrow -- a tag-team duo that I haven't done for quite some time and that is long overdue.

BBC: "Coronavirus: How does the Covid-19 alert level system work?"

Me: is it "the government just makes stuff up according to an arbitrary timeline?"

It's the second evening of our Ph.D. Work In Progress conference at @BirkbeckUoL @birkbeck_arts. I am enjoying hearing about students' projects after a long day of admin.

Trying to field a tricky question to which I do not know the answer. If publishing sensitive material re. petrochemicals/nuclear industry, pretty clear that international export restrictions prohibit sale of this to certain countries. But what about OA material?

@petersuber any ideas?

The actual question then is: is it prohibited to put such material on the open web because someone from a country under sanctions might access it?

Some nice news for terrible times. @openlibhums has been shortlisted for two AOP Digital Publishing Awards: Best Digital Publishing Innovation and Small Digital Publisher of the Year!

Toby decided, this AM, that he didn't want to go for a walk, so he slipped his lead. I went to grab him and fell flat on my back on the pavement with a painful bump. He, meanwhile, sprinted back home and was found sitting on the doorstep looking very pleased with himself. Homph.

Today was going pretty well until about 5.30pm. Now autoimmune conditions have gone berserk and need to retreat to the morphine, which is going to be challenging for tomorrow's 9am meetings. See you on the other side.

thanks for the kind wishes, all. I feel much better this AM. Euphoric, in fact! 😂

An exciting four-hour @COPIMproject Zoom workshop today on the challenges and opportunities for libraries with OA monographs. Need a cup of tea at this point!

@COPIMproject

Exciting news in my inbox from @brettbobley: NEH Announces Fellowships Open Book Awards https://www.neh.gov/news/neh-announces-fellowships-open-book-awards

From Duke UP:

Max M. Ward, Thought Crime: Ideology and State Power in Interwar Japan, 2019.

David F. Garcia, Listening for Africa: Freedom, Modernity, and the Logic of Black Music’s African Origins, 2017.

From Indiana University Press:

Martin L. Johnson, Main Street Movies: The History of Local Film in the United States, 2018.

From Johns Hopkins University Press:

Richard C. Sha, Imagination and Science in Romanticism, 2018.

Jason R. Rudy, Imagined Homeland: British Poetry in the Colonies, 2017.

From the University of Chicago Press:

Julia L. Mickenberg, American Girls in Red Russia: Chasing the Soviet Dream, 2017

Kenda Mutongi, Matatu: A History of Popular Transportation in Nairobi, 2017

and

Kristine C. Harper, Make It Rain: State Control of the Atmosphere in Twentieth-Century America, 2017

From the University of Illinois Press:

Jewel A. Smith, Transforming Women’s Education: Liberal Arts and Music in Female Seminaries, 2019

From the University of Michigan Press:

Jonathan W. Stone, Listening to the Lomax Archive: The Sonic Rhetorics of Folksong in the 1930s, forthcoming

From the University of Minnesota Press:

Whitney Trettien (@whitneytrettien), Cut/Copy/Paste: Echoes of Little Gidding, forthcoming.

From Vanderbilt University Press:

Luis Martin-Estudillo, The Rise of Euroskepticism: Europe & Its Critics in Spanish Culture, 2018

Looking at Uni of Nottingham's plans to reopen in person in September with some scepticism.

"To minimise impact on the local community, we ask that you stagger arrival times with your housemates, so that only one of you is moving in at once."

"Social distancing measures will be in place across our indoor and outdoor spaces including dedicated entrances and exits, one-way and queuing systems, and distance markers"

"Our buildings will be cleaned & disinfected regularly and additional handwashing and sanitising facilities will be provided. Personal protective equipment (PPE) will be provided where it is required in specific circumstances, for example clinical teaching & research facilities"

No mention of vulnerable/shielding groups https://u.nottingham.ac.uk/t/5IL5-1LQZ-1D7LQF3B/cr.aspx

The Lancet's pre-publication anonymous peer review is going to get us all killed.

The problem of bad review exists everywhere. The problem with high-prestige venues like The Lancet is that its status confers trust and then policy decisions are made on the basis of the work "having been published in The Lancet".

Work is, quite frankly, extremely demanding at the moment - and a real ramp up on COPIM this week for me, as well as for our digital teaching preparation programme - but I persist. Then there's Toby to keep control of... (not actually possible)

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 TAKE BACK CONTROL FROM *CHECKS NOTES* SCIENTISTS 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿

We're in a lot of trouble.

The PM bravely decides that we've had enough of protecting the weak! Hurrah!

Today I am rereading the Wordsworth to which I turned recently. Thinking through The Prelude's metatextual references to internal/external representation with respect to London and diverse multitudes.

A positive element in an otherwise exhausting day was that I had a final acceptance on a submitted book manuscript.

As though the email situation wasn't bad enough as it stands, Bandcamp goes and does a zero-fees artist day meaning I get spammed off the planet with interesting music. Oh well!