@generalising@mastodon.flooey.org
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generalising

@generalising@mastodon.flooey.org

Librarian and occasional researcher. Opinions of course my own. Scholarly communications, historic MPs, Wikipedia, inter alia other things. Misplaced Scot.

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generalising, to random
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Just to clarify for the people overseas: these strange and confusing news stories from the UK are not, in fact, marketing an overdone new satire show.

Yes, the PM got drenched on live TV when calling an election. Yes, he forgot to warn his party it was coming. Yes, he wants to reintroduce conscription. Yes, this is only day four.

We're as baffled as you all are tbh.

generalising,
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@Faintdreams ...I had no recollection of that at all, wtf

generalising, to random
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An election on 4 July means:

  • voter registration deadline 18 June
  • postal vote registration 19 June
  • proxy vote registration 26 June

https://election-timetable.democracyclub.org.uk/?election_date=2024-07-04

generalising, to random
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The things you learn: photographic identification cards existed as early as 1861 in some form

generalising,
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The perils of fast fashion, c. 1969 (these are both from the same work, a 1960s photographic handbook)

generalising, to random
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Alec Douglas-Home, accidental discoverer of Nixon's great secret. It's never the ones you expect.

(Francis Wheen, 'Strange Days Indeed')

at the CIA. This was the first they had heard of it, but after checking (presumably with the Secret Service) they confirmed the story and kept demanding how on earth MI6 had found out. Thus it was that the supposedly omniscient Central Intelligence Agency learned of Nixon's best-kept secret through a thirteenth Earl whose duties as one of Heath's ministers had to be fitted in between assignments on Scottish grouse moors.

generalising, to random
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I knew that before 1914, motoring was pretty rare. but I hadn't quite thought through the implication that it was perfectly possible as a result to just ... publish a book with all the cars in it. here: all of Ireland. https://www.lennonwylie.co.uk/IrishMotorDirectory1914.htm

(my grandfather's town - a perfectly respectable and prosperous coastal resort - had two thousand people, twelve cars and three motorbikes.)

generalising, to random
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I have to hand it to OSM: this is a whole kind of vandalism we never dreamed of on Wikipedia, and I thought we'd seen everything https://www.404media.co/pokemon-go-players-invent-fake-beaches-on-real-maps-to-catch-rare-wigletts/

generalising, to random
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This evening's film: Desk Set (1957), a late Hepburn/Tracy comedy set against the looming spectre of computers coming & taking our jobs.

(Taking her job, anyway. He is the computer guy. You can guess how it goes.)

Short video clip of a man and a woman talking, sat at a table on a cold rooftop

generalising, to ChatGPT
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I have a preprint out estimating how many scholarly papers are written using chatGPT etc? I estimate upwards of 60k articles (>1% of global output) published in 2023. https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.16887

How can we identify this? Simple: there are certain words that LLMs love, and they suddenly start showing up a lot last year. Twice as many papers call something "intricate", big rises for "commendable" and "meticulous".

#bibliometrics #scholcomm #chatgpt

generalising,
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@Wikisteff Credit where it's due - I took the sample list from an earlier study! https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.07183 (p 15, 16) I think this is a bit of an idiosyncratic list due to the peer-review context (hence it's all adjectives/adverbs, almost all positive) and there will definitely be other distinctive terms, some unpredictable - it would be quite interesting to do some larger analysis to try and find them.

generalising,
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@franco_vazza there's always a baseline of usage, but that pair together has suddenly become a lot more common.

I don't think this approach is great for detecting LLM involvement in any individual paper (there are much more sophisticated tools for that) but it works OK for estimation at a much broader scale.

generalising, to random
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Have to admit I find it kind of bleakly amusing that someone who moved to Edinburgh in 2017 is alarmed by the growth in tourism, and thinks it's because of the films. https://www.businessinsider.com/living-in-scottish-city-from-avengers-action-movies-edinburgh-2024-2

generalising, to random
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updates from the cutting edge of VAT law https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/jan/19/walkers-mini-poppadoms-are-crisps-in-all-but-name-judges-rule

generalising, to random
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A small #wikidataMPs update: I think I have stumbled across the secret second family of a minor MP.

He died 110 years ago. I may be slightly too late to sell this one to the papers.

generalising, to Wikipedia
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feeling a bit cranky this evening so diverted it into productivity, and we now have two new #Wikipedia MP articles - Nicholas Lynch ("a wealthy man, who, on the hustings or in the House of Commons, was unable to open his mouth") and Pickering Phipps (a Conservative who surprisingly got elected in a very Liberal town). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Lynch_(politician) & https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pickering_Phipps_(MP)

generalising,
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It's a good thing we don't have any more of this kind of government two centuries on, tho.

https://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1820-1832/member/calley-thomas-1780-1836

generalising,
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Number seven: Swynfen Jervis, a radical who had a habit of getting in fights with the whips and then sending the letters to the papers (which enlivened things no end). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swynfen_Jervis

The @VictorianCommons blog on him is worth a look https://victoriancommons.wordpress.com/2017/03/13/defying-the-whip-rebel-mp-of-the-month-swynfen-jervis-1798-1867/

generalising,
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Number eight: Horace St Paul, a Northumberland landowner who was also a Count of the Austrian Empire for slightly murky reasons involving his grandfather. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Horace_St_Paul,_2nd_Baronet

generalising,
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Number nine: Owen Jones Ellis Nanney, who was elected after an election petition ... and then lost his seat on a counter petition. Total career in Parliament, two and a half months. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owen_Jones_Ellis_Nanney

generalising,
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Number ten: Joseph Feilden, who contested an election in 1868 against his cousin, had the result voided on petition, and then his son won the resulting by-election. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Feilden_(died_1870)

generalising,
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Number eleven: William Henry Ord, who became a Lord of the Treasury in his third year in Parliament, then worked himself into exhaustion trying to rationalise newspaper stamp duties, left, and died aged 35. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Henry_Ord_(1803%E2%80%931838)

Interesting to see a Treasury Lord actually at work on Treasury policies - presumably this was before it become purely a post for whips.

generalising,
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Serendipitously turned this up while trying to confirm his death-date - weird to see a reference to contemporary events that you recognise 185 years later.

generalising,
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And here's number twelve: David Guardi Ker, Athlone 1820–26 and Downpatrick 1835–41. Brother-in-law of Castlereagh, but also (perhaps) the son of a Venetian opera singer, and (even more perhaps) the grandson of a prominent Venetian painter. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Guardi_Ker

generalising,
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I was very doubtful about that detail, but it seems a recent biography may have substantiated it a bit? I will have to track it down. Certainly an academic at UCD seems to treat it as convincing - https://ucdarthistoryma.wordpress.com/2016/11/11/paintings-by-francesco-guardi-and-other-old-masters-from-the-beit-collection/

generalising,
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Anyway: that's us done. Every UK MP since the 1832 general election now has a #Wikipedia article. Many of them are admittedly tiny stubs, but hey, there's always more to work on!

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