Thinking with machines: Some reflections on LLMs in academia

As somebody who studied computer science in the early 2000s, I find large language models (LLMs) like GPT and Claude an extraordinary, science-fiction-like technology. While sharing many concerns with sceptics like Gary Marcus, I believe LLMs are so disruptive because they truly are amazingly good at understanding natural language and performing countless tasks that used … Continue reading Thinking with machines: Some reflections on LLMs in academia →

Movies from foreign lands: Computing the geographies of cinema

The article discusses President Trump's proposed tariffs on foreign film productions, aiming to boost domestic cinema and challenge "woke" Hollywood. With a decline in traditional cinema attendance and a shift towards globalized filmmaking, the authors highlight the complexities of film geography and the industry's reliance on international markets amid rising nationalism and protectionist tendencies.

I’ve made some maps using AI

During the Christmas break, I indulged in some aimless dialogue with Dall E 2 and Midjourney, two of the most popular and impressive deep-learning generators of images based on text prompt. Demos of both systems are freely accessible. The prompts I used are mostly about cartography and maps, but also entirely random and silly stuff … Continue reading I’ve made some maps using AI →

Windows and its discontents

I generally try not to write about things I dislike, but this time I will make an exception. This post acts as an outlet to vent my immense frustration with the infamous Microsoft OS on a less transient medium than Twitter. Important qualifications to my rant: No operating system is perfect. Mac, Linux, iOS, and … Continue reading Windows and its discontents →

Web scraping is legal (for UK researchers)

TL;DR: In the UK, it is mostly legal to scrape data for non-commercial research. Great for doing research from home. Much research data nowadays is sourced directly from the Web, either from traditional websites or from social media platforms. Economists, sociologists, and geographers often rely on web scraping to collect large datasets about the behaviour … Continue reading Web scraping is legal (for UK researchers) →

10 tips for interdisciplinary research careers

Interdisciplinarity has been a hot topic in academia for several decades and is probably here to stay. Having done interdisciplinary research for almost 10 years in the UK/US academia, I feel I am in a position to offer my advice regarding the challenges and rewards of crossing the treacherous boundaries of disciplines (and departments). For a … Continue reading 10 tips for interdisciplinary research careers →

Moving to open access in GIScience

See also my list of open access resources for GIScience. Open access is coming. The radical European Plan S is just the latest of major pushes to reform the current expensive and irrational model. Since the second half of the 20th century, academic authors have usually published without fees, while a handful of private publishers reap handsome … Continue reading Moving to open access in GIScience →

GIS is bigger than Big Data: The battle of the buzzwords

Have you heard of hyperlocal, cloud computing, and the gig economy? Arguably, these are buzzwords used to describe things that have existed for a long time in a new, exciting way (e.g. services aimed at local markets, outsourcing computational tasks to data centres, and poorly paid, insecure jobs). Wikipedia has a nice, up-to-date list of … Continue reading GIS is bigger than Big Data: The battle of the buzzwords →

Bullshit (academic) jobs

Some good quotes from Bullshit Jobs: A Theory (David Graeber, 2018): Most universities in the United Kingdom now have public relations offices with staffs several times larger than would be typical for, say, a bank or an auto manufacturer of roughly the same size. Does Oxford really need to employ a dozen-plus PR specialists to … Continue reading Bullshit (academic) jobs →