I've spotted a huge decline over the last two years. What's upsetting is how so many of our current third years have declined since their first year. I did a seminar with them the other day, on the topic of the environmental impacts of different diets. One guy told me confidently that there would be no additional agricultural lands if we all went vegetarian.

"Cool," I said. "What's your source for that?"

"I'm sure I read it," he said.

"Fair," said I, "go and look it up. Find an academic source, let's assess it to see if it's robust."

The first thing he did was go to Google, and then read the AI summary.

"That's not a source," I said. "Find me a source."

Five minutes later, he happily tells me that a Guardian article says so, and mentions the World Economic Forum.

"Okay," I said. "Neither of those are academic sources, and the WEF is secondary anyway. Go to Google Scholar, and find a journal article."

Ten minutes later, he tells me he can only find articles that say it's a very complex issue in spite of pop cultural received wisdom, and we don't actually know.

A THIRD YEAR. This man has a dissertation due in THREE MONTHS. This is a skill we taught him in first year, and it's all dribbled out of his ears in the quest for easy summaries from an autocomplete algorithm. And I dearly wish I could say he's an exception, but Jesus Christ, that would be a lie.

I'm currently writing a lecture for the second years for their research methods module, and I normally wouldn't need to do this. But I'm having to re-introduce them to the basic concepts of how to actually analyse findings rather than lazily take whatever they seem to say at face value. I'm trying to find a good paper that had Surprising findings, because I want to show them a research question and a set of results and then get them to speculate and research on why they found something so different, but that's a difficult thing to search for.

*not actually

"I'm in the way," "I can't fit," and "I can't go there," is becoming "there's not enough space," "the walkway is too narrow," and "that place isn't accessible."

You can’t disconnect sex toys from disability and disability history. If you use any body-safe silicone today, sex toy or not, you have Duncan to thank.

More on Duncan here:

You start a game of Little Guy by saying, "I'm gonna hand you a little guy." The little guy is some kind of baby animal you are imagining. "Oh," she might say in response, "Okay," and hold out her hands for it. I will then mime handing her the animal. This provides some clues as to the little guy's size, weight, and general ungainliness.

She then gets to ask questions about what kind of little guy this is, BUT NO QUESTIONS ABOUT HIS ACTUAL APPEARANCE OR SPECIES ARE ALLOWED. Qualitative questions, or questions about his behavior, are the only ones permitted. She can ask "Is he soft?" or "Does he seem nervous about being held?" or "If I put him in the bathtub, does he seem okay with that?" or "Would he like a lil grape?" or "Is he the sort of little fellow who would wear a vest in a children's book?" but not "Does he have fur," "Is he a reptile," "Is he from Asia," etc. Some questions are in a grey area so you have to follow your heart, but the point is not to identify the animal as fast as possible: the point is to guess the animal purely based on vibes + how he would act if he were in your living room right now.

And I'm not limited to yes or no answers! If she asks, "Would it feel appropriate to see this little guy in a propeller hat?" I can reply, "Oh no, he has a gravity to him. A bowler hat would be a more appropriate hat." Or if she asks, "Does this little guy have protagonist energy?" I can say something like, "he probably wouldn't be the main character in a children's cartoon. He'd probably be the main character's ditzy best friend who's always eating sandwiches, or something."