Very sad to hear of Chris’s death. RIP.

Our Vice-Chancellor used to repeat the aphorism "if you think education is expensive, you must consider the cost of ignorance"

This would be grim stuff from a politician. From the Vice-Chancellor of a university, it’s unforgivable.

NEW BOOK: my first children's book is out this week. It's an encyclopedia of Europe for 8-12s.

The book has apparently been pulled now. Though there are plenty of others by the same ‘author’ left.

Wonder if he pulled it down or the site did…

Oh, no, that’s not me! I’ll have to go back to wondering why it says mine is posted but doesn’t actually appear on the book page.

I think that’s mine! But how the hell it got on the French site, I’ve no idea…

I don’t know. Someone else has apparently clicked to say it was helpful so it must be visible somewhere!

That would be good! My review is 'live' but doesn't seem to appear on the book's page for some reason...

Bombarding them with customer complaints as well as negative reviews might at least get them to bury it with the algorithm

Good plan.

Did they say why not? (I’ve written one, but it hasn’t appeared yet.)

No, it isn’t. But my experience with reporting an illegal copy of The Wager to EBay suggests it’s hard to do anything about. And that one was straight copyright theft.

Most welcome! AI bastards.

Friends, please do go and write reviews of this on Amazon pointing out that it's AI plagiarised shite. Many thanks.

Very much enjoying the story of AI bros going to religious leaders and asking them to say that machines have souls, only to be told: a) no they obviously don’t and b) if they did then what the AI guys are doing is literally slavery and that would be BAD.

Should you read this if you need a laugh this morning? Absolutely yes. Will I now be buying M&S tits? Absolutely not.