C. Malcolm Keating

jainjournal.inJain Journal

11h

There's a new issue of the Jain Journal available online: www.jainjournal.in/website/ It includes two new translations of Jain texts, the Ratnakaraṇḍakaśrāvakācāra (Don Davis) and Dhanapāla’s Eleven-Verse Hymn to Mahāvīra (Andrew Ollett).

12h

I'm curious: Why is revising/rewriting the stage at which a piece of writing becomes "yours"? Why not write the draft and have an LLM "revise" and "rewrite"? Or reconceptualize ownership as being the one guiding the full process through AI (people use LLMs to brainstorm and plan, too)?

Carl T. Bergstrom@carlbergstrom.com

"AI can draft an essay for you, especially if you give it a high quality prompt." Really? This is what MIT thinks high schoolers should learn? MIT's "Day of AI" dayofai.org provides materials for K-12 teachers and claims to have reached over 5,000,000 students to date. 1/2

12h

I guess really, why does the end product of the process need to be the student's ("yours"), and in what sense? That's one pedagogical question to ask. Too, revising something written is a different skill than writing it. Brainstorming and planning are different skills than writing.

@dimitridrekonja.bsky.social

12h

And the definite article in the title slide? Setting aside whether this counts as a writing process, it certainly isn't "the" writing process. I'd also like to see a paper book as the "publish" endpoint. Make some zines or something. Hold it in your hands.

C. Malcolm Keating reposted

Dimitri Drekonja, MD, MS

Well the first person to describe measles was Abu Bakr al-Razi, and he knew more about the disease than RFK Jr despite living >1000 years ago 🤷🏻‍♂️ en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Bak...

en.wikipedia.orgAbu Bakr al-Razi - Wikipedia

The Bulwark@thebulwark.com

RFK: "There's five hundred million Arabs in the world. And yet they don't produce science. They don't win the Nobel Prize. They don't win the Fields Prize. They don't win the Wolf Prize. They don't produce literature."

C. Malcolm Keating reposted

A reminder that David Liggins will present 'The Richness and Strangeness of Higher-Order Metaphysics' tomorrow evening at Senate House. Attendance is free and membership is not required. #philsky

Aristotelian Society@aristotsoc.bsky.social

Join us next week for a talk delivered by Manchester's David Liggins, titled 'The Richness and Strangeness of Higher-Order Metaphysics'. ⏰ 18:15–19:45, Monday 26th October 📍 Woburn Suite, Senate House 🔗 Draft paper: www.aristoteliansociety.org.uk/the-proceedi... Free and open to all. #philsky

@thisismyglasgow.bsky.social

Since moving to London, our cats now routinely enjoy double-cat lap time. Stella, the white-faced one, was previously not even a lap cat. I am not sure whether this is a sign they love us more or are terrified in their new home and need safety. I will take it, either way.

C. Malcolm Keating reposted

This Is My Glasgow

A deserted Kelvin Way in the West End of Glasgow turned golden by autumn leaves stripped from the surrounding trees by Storm Boelo as it passes across the city this afternoon. #glasgow #kelvinway #stormboelo #autumnleaves #glasgowtoday

theaicronicle.comPope Leo Uses Tolkien to Critique AI Tech GiantsPope Leo uses Tolkien's Lord of the Rings to critique Silicon Valley's AI hubris. Read how theology meets tech ethics in this new encyclical.

Okay, so the pope has, among others when I Googled (as I have been living under a rock for a while apparently!). theaicronicle.com/en/news/futu...

C. Malcolm Keating@cmalcolmkeating.bsky.social

Surely someone has written a think-piece on the (mis)appropriation of Tolkien’s Quenya names and technology/weapons companies. Andúril, Palantinir, and so on.

Also, it’s Palantir, I know. I am just too annoyed with phone typing to repost this.

Surely someone has written a think-piece on the (mis)appropriation of Tolkien’s Quenya names and technology/weapons companies. Andúril, Palantinir, and so on.

Today, Word decided that my having changed global language settings requires creating a new "normal" template. However, where the old one has been moved (with all my editing macros) is a mystery. Thankfully, I keep them backed up.

Word constantly claims that it's being "improved" and won't I please restart to see the awesome new changes in the middle of my writing/editing projects. No. No, I would not like to see the changes, and I dread every refresh for how it may break my workflow.

I've been in the UK for over three months now. I'm still getting used to a lot of things; one of the most pleasant is the fact that I'm not leaving my spouse to go work in another state or country for nine months. After a decade of that pattern, I expect this'll take time to feel normal.

C. Malcolm Keating reposted

theguardian.comNHS England policy for trans people could have ‘a number of adverse impacts’, report findsExclusive: rules on same-sex wards could lead to delays in care, discrimination and animosity between groups, finds internal assessment

An NHS report “said the policy’s focus on “privacy, dignity and safety for men and women” would have a positive impact.” I am sorry, but are trans men and women not men or women?? www.theguardian.com/society/2026...

@shannonvallor.bsky.social

Or are they saying that they are focusing on privacy, dignity, and safety by housing trans people with the wrong gender? The report itself also admits this policy could forcibly disclose people’s trans statuses and subject them to worse care. Doesn’t seem to square with privacy, dignity, or safety.

C. Malcolm Keating reposted

Shannon Vallor

This isn’t just malpractice, it’s malevolence

Ethel Weapon@lousadzak.bsky.social

This will kill people

bbc.co.ukTrans people should use hospital spaces according to biological sex, NHS England saysNew guidance says trans patients should be cared for on single-sex hospital wards or bays that align with their biological sex.

C. Malcolm Keating reposted

Jordan

@jordanpfot.bsky.social

Replying to @jordanpfot.bsky.social

Would you as a rule exclude, say, Muslims from hospital wards because they might make elderly patients uncomfortable? Of course not. Discomfort cannot on its own inform policy, for the simple and obvious reason that discomfort is often entirely misplaced!

silentroom.mediaAI Has Finally Learned to Write Perfectly. That's the Worst Thing That Could Have Happened."Slop" went into Merriam-Webster in under two years; "spam" took fifteen. A history of the word, the ten tells that give machine prose away, and why the detector is always chasing a moving target.

"An experienced editor opens his first AI-generated text and doesn't find what he usually does. There aren’t any grammatical errors, so the entire first tier of his work has simply vanished....After that, fury builds in waves...."

Dorian Lynskey@dorianlynskey.bsky.social

Superb analysis of AI prose: how it works and how it feels silentroom.media/the-craft/br...

C. Malcolm Keating reposted

Stuart Presnell

@logopetria.bsky.social

"Can AI suffer?" Guess we'll find out when it gets downloaded into my TV's firmware and has to join me down a 5 hour YouTube rabbit-hole about the history of London bus ticket typography

Rachel Coldicutt@rachelcoldicutt.bsky.social

I am such an old-fashioned stick in the mud because perhaps the answer is not to (a) integrate these models into every frickin' thing and (b) stop turning the people who make them into unstoppable gods www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

theguardian.comAI in your oven? Anthropic warns models ‘months away’ from self-replication on smart devicesResearchers say ‘AI worms’ could soon infiltrate internet-connected devices amid calls for increased guardrails

slate.comGandhi Never Said “Be the Change.” Its Actual Origin Story Is Astounding.The unexpected beginnings of one of the world’s most quoted aphorisms, as told by its true creator.

I love stories about the origins of misattributed quotes. (And I am always on the lookout for misattributions while #editing.) Here’s a good podcast episode about how Gandhi did NOT say, “Be the change you want to see happen.” slate.com/podcasts/dec...

It baffles me that in this, the year of our Lord 2026, people are still going "tappy-tappy-tappy" to format documents with a series of spaces rather than using rulers or the little "bullet-point list" button. Please, please, use the tools in the word processor!

@philosophyblogs.zirk.us.ap.brid.gy

Also, showing "non-printing characters" is your best friend when formatting documents. The non-printing characters show up in a blue color (a residual from when one would make marks with a colored pencil whose blue didn't photocopy). And you can see where extra spaces and lines are inserted.

C. Malcolm Keating reposted

philosophyblogs

Daily Nous || PIKSI’s in Peril but You Can Help (guest post) https://dailynous.com/2026/10/14/piksis-in-peril-but-you-can-help-guest-post/

dailynous.comPIKSI's in Peril but You Can Help (guest post) - Daily NousThe Philosophy in an Inclusive Key Summer Institutes (PIKSI) in Boston aim to “broaden inclusion within professional philosophy.” In part because such efforts are currently […]

C. Malcolm Keating reposted

Alison Fisk

@alisonfisk.bsky.social

Wow, the world’s oldest shipwreck found off coast of Turkey! “A time capsule at the bottom of the sea” 🌊 A trade ship heading for Troy or Minoan Crete sank with a cargo of storage jars. Residue tests will show what they contained c. 4,700 years ago! #Archaeology www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

bbc.co.ukWorld's oldest shipwreck found off Kekova Island in TurkeyArchaeologists say the wreck is up to 4,700 years old, dating to the Early Bronze Age.

I miss this view. I was so lucky to have it daily on my commute for a whole semester.

This Is My Glasgow@thisismyglasgow.bsky.social

Autumn on the River Kelvin in the West End of Glasgow. #glasgow #riverkelvin #autumn #autumnphotography #autumntrees

C. Malcolm Keating reposted

aristoteliansociety.org.ukProceedings: Fatema Amijee – The Aristotelian Society

A reminder that Fatema Amijee will be speaking at the Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society tonight. As always, attendance is free, membership is not required, and there will be light refreshments. Further details are below. #philsky

Aristotelian Society@aristotsoc.bsky.social

Next week at the Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society Fatema Amijee will ask, and attempt to answer, 'When Can Inquiry Come to an End?' ⏰ 18:15–19:45, Monday 12th October 📍 Woburn Suite, Senate House 🔗 www.aristoteliansociety.org.uk/the-proceedi... All welcome, no booking required. #philsky

I wonder: Do LLMs “misunderstand” the way humans do? If I want my work to be read by other people, it’s valuable when someone sharp who is a careful (but maybe a bit busy or sometimes distracted) reader misunderstands what I am saying. It means I might want to rewrite. Can LLM editing do this?

This weekend’s achievements include putting a coat hook into my wall (plasterboard on concrete is a new challenge for me!) and creating a project management Gantt chart in Excel. (There are better ways, but they involve subscriptions. Plus I enjoy a good nested series of IF statements and VLOOKUPs.)

Increasingly, I have no words to express how I feel about what’s happening to my country of origin. It’s possible to recognise that much of what is happening now is not new or is a continuation of previous policies and unresolved issues. But there is also a real, new darkness.

This post is unavailable.

sciencefriday.com'The History of Concrete' with John WilsonJohn Wilson’s latest feature film, “The History of Concrete” is an idiosyncratic journey about more than just concrete

Apparently concrete is having a moment—a documentary on the subject just came out that also emphasised the importance of its reuse and recycling, given scarcity and environmental concerns. Science Friday podcast interview here: www.sciencefriday.com/segments/the...

Bloomsbury Academic@bloomsburyacademic.bsky.social

Why does concrete matter more than we think? In Concrete, Stephen Parnell explores the hidden environmental cost of this everyday material and considers how reusing, replacing and revaluing it could help reduce its carbon footprint. https://bit.ly/4rUy0PX

bloomsbury.comCan we build a more sustainable world with concrete? | Stephen Parnell on ConcreteLeading architectural historian Stephen Parnell looks at how we can reuse, replace and value concrete, creating a more sustainable world before it’s too late.

It's past time for my editing services website to have a statement about AI. The main thing: I will not work* on AI-generated text. I appreciate that non-native* speakers of English are in a tough spot, but I'd 1000% times rather find an author's voice in ungrammatical human text than edit ChatGPT.

@philosophyblogs.zirk.us.ap.brid.gy

*1 - I will not knowingly work on it. It's possible I could and not know, though I think this is still unlikely. *2 - I also don't like "native" and "non-native" framing of linguistic competence in English, but that's a bigger issue, and it's language many people use for themselves.

C. Malcolm Keating reposted

philosophyblogs

History of Philosophy without any gaps || 500e. Daniel Watson on Medieval Irish Philosophy https://historyofphilosophy.net/podcast/medieval/early-medieval/500-watson-medieval-irish-philosophy

historyofphilosophy.net500e. Daniel Watson on Medieval Irish Philosophy | History of Philosophy without any gaps

C. Malcolm Keating reposted

Butlerian Jihadist of House Dornick

@shimminykricket.blacksky.app

Harvard just dropped a study AI productivity in software engineering and it found the average increase in productivity from using Claude code is.....zero and for exactly the reasons you'd think fion.ac/jellyfish.pdf

Full quote from The Human Condition (prologue). Arendt reflects on the escapist desires of some satellite-designers, points out how we need to take sci-fi seriously as a cultural force, and goes on to reflect on the relationship between language, thought, and politics. And the “end” of labor.

Simon Gray@protexblue.bsky.social

“If it should turn out to be true that knowledge and thought have parted company, then we [will have] indeed become … thoughtless creatures at the mercy of every gadget which is technically possible, no matter how murderous it is.” Hannah Arendt, predicting the future in 1958

The context for her worry about machines is that scientific truths have become inexpressible in ordinary speech and so meaningless. She does not suggest the solution is a “gym for our brains.” Because our thinking should not be divided from our knowing and doing.

Her vision, if analogized to the “AI apocalypse” worries, is not that “the AI” will make us slaves in some Terminator kind of singularity or even that we willingly submit to the tech, but that we become enslaved to ourselves in a way, to our “know-how.” We can do something, so why not do it?

buff.lyAt Sea About OurselvesPhilosopher Tim Crane on reading, formation, and why we can't say what AI is until we can say what a human is

"Is a computer a candidate for thinking? ... you first need to ask, what is it that thinks? We start with the idea that a thinker has a point of view on the world, a sense of the world outside it, a persistent existence, an individuality." And if there is no persisting thinker in the human case?

Knowledge in Crisis@knowledgecrisis.bsky.social

🌊 'At Sea About Ourselves' Tim Crane spoke to The Heart of the Public about formation, reading and AI. 'Education is in crisis. And it’s not just because students aren’t writing anymore. (...)they’re not reading(...)They’re not reading anything.' Read it here: buff.ly/vcLmLbZ #AI #philsky

I haven't yet seen philosophers working on Buddhist metaphysics and mind tackling this question, but I would be curious. Tim Crane is explicitly writing from a broadly Christian, specifically Roman Catholic, metaphysical perspective.

@histphilosophy.bsky.social

That famously modern invention, the gymnasium.

Matt Binder@mattbinder.bsky.social

the tech industry is about to invent books

C. Malcolm Keating reposted

Peter Adamson

Hey #HoPWaG fans, don't forget to check out our new spinoff podcast on cross-cultural philology! It launched a few days ago with three initial episodes, on philology and science; the Cain and Abel story; and the ancient language Aramaic! pagesofhistorypodcast.net #podcast #philology

science.orgHow did Rosalind Franklin miss the helix in her iconic DNA image? She didn’tNew analysis refutes James Watson’s claim he was first to recognize significance of famed photograph 51

Can't quote-quote post the original Science article, but it's well worth reading: www.science.org/content/arti...

Elizabeth Anne, PhD@lacksauthority.bsky.social

never the wrong time for this classic

aristoteliansociety.org.ukProceedings: Fatema Amijee – The Aristotelian Society

Here's hoping that inquiry doesn't come to an end until after the Q&A!

Aristotelian Society@aristotsoc.bsky.social

C. Malcolm Keating reposted

aristoteliansociety.org.ukProceedings: Fatema Amijee – The Aristotelian Society

I keep my clients' identities confidential, so I can't say more about this project, which is a shame, because I'm learning a lot! I can say that I enjoy how the text, which engages with Chinese literature, also engages with Chinese philosophy. It makes me wish I had more lifetimes for reading.

C. Malcolm Keating@cmalcolmkeating.bsky.social

Today's editing project, as it involves commemorative Chinese poetry about lost hairpins, has made me wonder whether anyone has written about echoes of this genre and anxieties over lost objects in modern visual media? (The transformation of commemorative poetry into silly songs?)