The P in PhD doesn't stand for 'prompt'

We’re back! Sort of. Monthly-ish. Regular-ish. With a puppy.

In this episode of On the Reg, Inger introduces Latte Sipping Socialist, her new desk dog and emerging productivity expert. Meanwhile Jason has actually been working and explains how ClickUp has become his work gravity well.

Then we open the mailbag to discuss:

• building a note-taking system when ADHD and object permanence are working against you
• combining bullet journals with Zotero, Obsidian and NotebookLM
• managing complex or collaborative research projects
• Bullet Journal nerdery 
• Typst as a possible plain-text academic writing tool
• cheaper ways to record and edit video
• why Monday is obviously the first day of the week

Our major work problem is the vexed issue of AI in doctoral education.

Should universities restrict generative AI so students still learn the foundational practices of thinking and writing? Or do bans simply drive AI use underground, without guidance or education?

We discuss AI dependency, inconsistent policies, writing as thinking, assessment reform, oral examinations, the future of the dissertation and whether academic writing may become the intellectual equivalent of artisanal stonemasonry.

There are no easy answers. There is, however, a small brown-and-white dog who looks suspiciously AI-generated...

Things we mention:

• Visit Tiny Latte on Instagram @coton_lattemewburn
• Download Jason's notes on Claude integration in Clickup
• Curtis McHale’s website
• Typist website
• OBS: Alternative to Riverside: https://obsproject.com
• Davinci resolve studio 
• Rectangle Window management (for mac and windows): https://rectangleapp.com/
• A system for writing by Dotto
• Rooster TV show on HBO
• The P In PhD doesn't stand for Prompt
• BuJo sticker shop 

Got thoughts and feel pinions? Want to ask a question? You can email us on <pod@ontheregteam.com>

-  Leave us a message on www.speakpipe.com/thesiswhisperer.

-  See our workshop catalogue on www.ontheregteam.com. You can book us via emailing Jason at enquiries@ontheregteam.com

-  Subscribe to the free, monthly Two Minute Tips newsletter here (scroll down to enter your email address)

- We're on BlueSky as @drjd and @thesiswhisperer (but don't expect to hear back from Jason, he's still mostly on a Socials break).

- Read Inger's stuff on www.thesiswhisperer.com. 

- If you want to support our work, you can sign up to be a 'Riding the Bus' member for just $2 a month, via our On The Reg Ko-Fi site

Transcript

Hey, come, come, come. Come, come, come. Oh, come on Ri- riveting television Come, come, come. It's not safe right now. Come, come, come ... podlis- podcasters at home, Inga's trying to encourage her baby- Yes ... puppy to come for treats She's a prodigy. And, ooh Second attempt. Who's that? Who's that on the screen? Who's that?

Can you say hello? Who's that? It's Uncle Jason, isn't it? It's Uncle Jason. I'm gonna be the naughty puppy uncle. Just say her name. Say her name. Latte. Hello, Latte. Look here. Oi. She's actually looking at the right spot. The, the speaker's over there. Oh, okay . That's correct. Hello, Latte. Hello. Even if the actual

She's correct. Okay. All right, cool. This is good. I won't hear you say my dog is not correct. No, no, no. I, I trust that, that the dog is correct All right. Where am I putting her? Go to sleep now, [00:01:00] dog. ... Favorite human is actually Brendan, who's home at the moment. So she- I'm not surprised he's the- Get out of my office and go and see him I'm not surprised.

He's a dog whisperer. He really is. He taught her drop today. Uh, are we doing brand endorsements? Do, uh... Have you got a particular favorite dog treat brand or something? Well, see, I don't think- Is that what we're doing?

it's me who has the favorite, Jason. It's a certain- Ah ... young lady has a favorite. Oh, okay. And freeze-dried chicken or bust. Though she doesn't mind a bit of cheese. Okay. All right. Um, let me, let me find the show notes. Where are we? Who's driving the car? Maybe we- Me. Oh, you are? Hmm. Okay. Um, maybe what we should do is we should reach out to the fine folk at Dog Treats Inc.

and, uh, get some sort of sponsorship deal going. I like this idea. She's gone to sleep. Oh, look at that. That's well-trained. I know, right? This is her primary job in life - Right ... [00:02:00] is to lie under my desk while I do things on the computer. Yeah. Um, and she seems to be taking to it. She's going like, "This is great. I've lucked out here." She really has lucked out, I tell you what. She's a very boozy dog. I know, right? She could've- Very boozy ... could have been born in a different place at a different time and had far, much more work to do.

I know she did something good in a previous life, Jason, is all I'm saying. All she does is lie around, get fed freeze-dried chicken. It's all good. Did, didn't you say that that was their job previously? Like, that's their purpose, they were bred for this kind of work? Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. All right. I'm driving the bus. Correct. Uh, welcome to On The Rig. We're so out of practice. I'm Professor Inger Mewburn from the Australian National University, but I'm better known as Thesis Whisperer on the internet.

We're going now, Jason. The train has left the station. I'm here with my good friend, Dr. Jason Downes from On The Rig [00:03:00] Team, for another episode of On The Rig. That's a lot of On The Rigs. Uh, where we talk about work. We talk about work, um, but you know, not in a boring way. Practical, implementable productivity hacks to help you live a more balanced life.

Jason, how you been? Inger. All right, as a matter of fact. Um, it just feels, this feels like it's been for bloody ever since we've recorded a podcast. Yeah. And, um, listeners may not be aware, but we've actually recorded two, three? Yeah. Three others. One, we recorded like a, four-hour epic, and then we recorded another- Yeah

40 minute, and then the battery ran out, and we're just... I don't know. Yeah. I'm the weak link in this situation, though. 'Cause every time I get those- So-

Yeah. Anyway, you explain what's been happening, Jason. Look, we're, we're back. The last one that people would've seen or listened to would've been the one where you said, "There's a lot going on.". Um, so this kind of re- represents a bit of a return to form for us, [00:04:00] where after a bit of a period, uh, where a lot has been going on, uh, I think we're back. I think we're back. Are we back? No, we are back, and I'm gonna, I'm, you know- Good

me, de facto in charge of the production schedule, as I have been for the last, what, seven years, eight years? Uh, yes. Not de facto in charge, actually in charge. Like, I handed- Yeah ... I, I handed that off to you a long time ago, going- Yeah ... "That looks hard." Yeah. Actually, I think I, I think it really happened at the beginning of your last work troubles, which is years ago now, 'cause you don't have any now 'cause you work for...

On the right team. You work for us, but, um- Well- But, yeah, and- ... I'm work, close to work ... and I've been the weak link in just so many ways, Jason, at work. Have you? And... Yes. I mean, I know we're meant to be talking about you, but we are in an, in the apology side of the pod. I'm just making production decisions, 'cause it seems like this follows on more naturally rather than return to it. Yes. Is to say there was a lot going on, family health crisis, deep, prolonged health crisis- Oh, yeah ... m- involving more than one person, and [00:05:00] sadly, during that health crisis, though not at the end of the crisis, my dad died.

Mm. Poor old fella, Roger Mm. Uh, he died in May. And so- Yeah ... the health crisis started in December. His health crisis was ongoing, so it started- Mm ... before that, and then we had another one. There were overlapping health crises. I took three months off work. And, uh, and then Dad died, and that was sad. Mm. Um, he's 80...

He was 86, and- Mm ... he was sick for the last year. So he had a, he had a pretty good trot. He wasn't sick for very long, actually, in the whole- Mm ... scheme of things, in a life. But yeah, it kind of, it was a slow burn, Jason, 'cause- Mm ... kind of knocked me about a bit. Um, and, uh, given the other health crisis, of which I won't go into, but that one was far more dramatic, I, uh, I've just, uh...

Yeah. I realized that I had something, [00:06:00] I think, akin to work burnout I was saying this to you the other day, that I feel like, um, it had the features of the burnout because the emotional intensity of it and the prolongedness of it and the stress of it, um, is similar to the kind of work burnout you get, but it's different, um Yeah, it's just different.

It's not... Yeah, it's different. But it, cognitively, I think it does something similar to you, where you're just very hard to get back to your normal daily activities, very hard to sort of retain information and do anything with it, and you just kind of get into this reactive space where you just, you do what you have to do, but forward planning seems really hard.

Um, remembering things is really hard, and it just takes a while. And every week I say, "Oh, I feel like I'm back to normal." And then the next week I'm like, "Now I'm really back to normal." And then the next week I'm like, "Wow, I wasn't back to normal at all those previous two weeks- Mm ... but now I'm back to normal."

And I feel like that every [00:07:00] week. Mm. So I've just been burning down my long service leave, working part-time. And, um, and if I keep that front piece in, which I will cut it in, we've got a delightful new family member who arrived, who's deeply asleep underneath my desk. She'll wake up soon- ... and start biting my feet.

Um, Latte, our, our Coton de Tulear pup, which everyone who's listened has known I've had on my list for two years, and was put off... It was meant to come last November, but I'm glad we waited because, um, because, uh, Latte is an interesting character. Um, what's Latte's, uh, long name? The actual- Uh, Latte's, Latte Sipping Socialist is her show name, Jason.

Yes. Uh, um, she's a brown and white girl. She's very curious and lively, and she poos everywhere and wees everywhere. My house smells like poo and wee. Uh- ... she's chewed up all my socks. Um, [00:08:00] yeah, what can I say? She's a puppy. The, um- Which is cute. She's adorable ... l- listeners, before we got online, uh, t- for the podcast, uh, Inga had the Riverside open and playing in the background, and I could hear a conversation that was going on in another part of the house where Inga and Brendan were very excited about the fact that the, that, uh, Latte had taken herself out for a poo and had pooed in-

exactly the right spot. There was just short of cheers like in the background. It was the funniest conver- Not only that, she'd been, she'd been locked in my office, like wandering around in preparation for the pod, and she barked at me once like, "I wanna go to..." And I'm beginning to understand her barks. I'm like, "That sounds like a toilet bark."

And so, and it, you know, so there was a whole communication change. I'm just saying. Mm. Like, look, training, house training's a process, Jason. And, uh, Brendan, my son Brendan, who, uh, longtime listeners will know, has been training puppies for several years now and works at [00:09:00] Pet Stock

um, so he, uh, yes, he told me the other day that I ha- I had unhelpful toilet training energy, Jason. Apparently I hang around the potty place a little bit too expectantly- And I suspect I did the same thing with him back in the day. And he's kind of like, "Just back off. I'll show you how this is done." And so he's just been training me basically.

He's been training me to train her. But she can do sit and drop Yeah, and come. Yeah. So, you know, she's a prodigy. She's so cute. People look at her and they go, "That dog looks like AI." So she's got... Of her many nicknames around the house, one of her nicknames is now Fluffy G. Right. Just like Chubby G, but Fluffy G, 'cause too cute- Okay

to be real. But also sleeping, so she can carry on. How about you? I've done my apologies to her now. What's been happening in your side of the fence? Uh, just [00:10:00] a, just a ton of work, which has been, like, great. You know, when people say, "I've got a ton of work on," and they usually mean it in the like, "Oh my God, I'm exhausted," kind of way.

Yeah. Like, I'm continually... I am con- I continue to be excited by the work that we do. A huge proportion of the amount of work that we've been doing more recently has been around harnessing AI. And you know, kind of watching that whole debate turn up and, like, it's really starting to gather speed now in the spaces that we operate in.

Uh- Yes, it is ... and then kind of, kind of having to, you know, that pin myself down on what my position actually is around some of that stuff has been, has been really interesting. And I- Yeah, we need to talk about that later, 'cause I, I really think- Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's been interesting, me being inside the tent, so you know- Yeah, yeah

working still at ANU, and you being kind of semi-inside the tent or visiting the tent. Yeah. It's very different vibes, yeah. Yeah. Mm. Uh, and I... You know, we've got different [00:11:00] views on this- Mm ... now, where over the last couple of years our views have been pretty much lined up. So that's, that's kind of really interesting as well, right?

Like it's... I'm enjoying that conversation as we go on. \ I'm excited to kind of preannounce. I don't know if you can do this, like, but Inga, we've got a new product called- Oh ... Harnessing, uh, Harnessing AI for Law Academics. Really? What we're doing- Do we? Yes, we do. This is news to me. It is news to me.

There was a little... There was a text message that was like, "Do you reckon?" I'm like, "Sure." And then- Yeah, yeah ... this is, this is the whole thing we're doing now. Yeah, yeah. Like I... We have built, you and I, have built a Harnessing AI for Law Academics workshop that is on point. It's really good. Of all of them, it's probably the most, uh, exciting version of our Harnessing AI that I've got.

Man, do we go deep. Do we go deep with, uh- And I think we need to, we need to thank some [00:12:00] people, because with the help of- Yeah ... Mel, Mel Caston, big shout-out. Mel Caston. Yeah, yeah. Mm. We've done, done a lot of work with, uh, Monash Law Faculty over the last 12 months or so. I think six engagements, maybe more.

Maybe eight engagements- Mm. Mm ... with the law faculty there. Um- Uh, so yeah, we-- there's, there's a lot of work that as we built stuff to work with them, a lot of that-- a lot of what we built there kinda... And, and we, we didn't test it with them. Like we knew it worked, but every time we ran a different version of that I-- we upgraded our examples.

The models got more powerful as well, um- Yeah. Yeah ... at the same time. Yeah. And so the, the last one that w- I did with them when I rebuilt the, the workshop, you know, things had changed and I was using Fable to really build some of the content and some of the activities. Anthropic's Claude's Fable, for those people who- [00:13:00] Yeah

been living under a rock and haven't heard about Fable yet. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It's, it's been a while since I've had, uh, an experience where I kind of push back from the desk and go, "Whoa," right? Yeah. But, but just using Fable to build that stuff was... That was next level for me. And I'm not even doing anything fancy like the coding people must.

They like- Yeah ... I don't even understand that side of it, right? Yeah. How people code, vibe code, blah, blah, blah, whatever. , But that must be, must be just extraordinary working with it in that capacity, uh, for what it should be able to do. I was reading, , today in one of the papers, can't remember which one.

, OpenAI said that a model or a few models of-- a model or a few models escaped their security sandboxing, and went and hacked into Hugging Face. Uh, as-- Yeah, so they were, they were testing their upcoming new even [00:14:00] more capable model, , inside the security space and it, and it, it, it escaped and it found its way to Hugging- Hugging Face?

Hugging Face. , And attacked Hugging Face. And Hugging Face have come out and said, "Yes, this is true. This is what happened." Um, and they've explained what happened from their end. And one of the things that they said in the article that I was reading was, uh, the problem is that the new models have context Um, but the defenses, like, so in terms of an, an attack, they've got context that they can work with, , and they can autonomously make decisions about how they're going to attack a particular system.

But in the defense side of it, they can't, you know, they've, they've got boundaries and that sort of stuff with their AIs internally to stop that on the way back. So- Every day I feel like we're a step closer to living in not the best William Gibson novel. Right. Right. So- They're all a bit dystopian really, aren't they?

Like- Yeah. The, the CEO [00:15:00] of Hugging- Is it, I just... Doesn't sound like a good idea. No. I mean, as a newly, as a newly minted dog owner, can I just say, sounds like some puppy proofing needs to happen. Yeah. And, uh, puppy, puppy proofing takes work. Do the work- Yeah ... AI, OpenAI. Don't fuck around. Well, the, the- I don't like it.

I don't like it ... the interesting thing was the, , uh, the CEO of Hugging Face came out and said, because of the way in which the AIs have boundaries set around them, they had to disable whichever model AI they were using, , and install a Chinese open weight, , large language model that didn't have all of those boundaries baked in so that they could effectively defend against this, uh, this attack.

Yeah. Right? So, so what you've got is you've got autonomously you've got one set of models attacking a thing. The thing can't respond 'cause it lacks context. So what they do is they download another thing, the defenders download another thing that [00:16:00] doesn't have any boundaries to fight back, right? That's like, that's, mm- I've seen the opening scene 'cause it's like Termi- Terminator movies

YouTube, YouTube watchers will see my face. Yeah, I mean, I've s- seen The Terminator. Yeah. I don't- It's like, mm. I don't like it. Again, I don't like it. I don't like it. I'm not comfortable. And the th- the thing that got me was, , re- being reported to the public in the newspapers. So you can just imagine, right, like how bad it actually is, 'cause you wouldn't just tell the public- No, but it also, I also think some of this stuff is good PR, right?

Oh, yeah. Like, look how scary are our models. Look how scary they are. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's like- And our next model's even more powerful than the last model ... scarier. So please keep giving us money- Yeah ... at a biblical rate so that we can keep burning it- Yeah ... throwing it in the big money furnace. I don't know.

I don't know. No. , So this harnessing AI for ac- for law- Law academics ... academic. Uh, is this gonna be an online course, Jason? No, no. [00:17:00] I'm happy to, I'm happy to fly to law faculties all around Australia. Fly to wherever. Okay. And all- Yeah ... all around the world to, to, to deliver this one. It's a full-day, - Oh, okay.

Yep ... workshop. Hand- Yep ... hands-on. Um, like doing stuff. Uh, it's tuned for, uh, Australian market at the moment, but there's no reason why I, we couldn't retune it for other markets if there are, if there's interest I'm happy to, happy to fly to New Zealand or, , anywhere really, um, and work with- Have we even caught people up?

I can't remember where we're at in our podding cycle, but we did catch people up with you being in the UK. We did do that. That was the last pod, right? So- Yeah, but we- You've- No, that was the one- You flying around the world ... no, that was the one that we abandoned 'cause we had battery issues. Anyway, you went to the UK, you had a great time.

I went to the UK, I had a great time. , Met a whole bunch of people while I was over there. , Uh, I- rather than l- read off the names, , I will forget someone I'm sure while I was there, [00:18:00] but, , visited towns like York, Cambridge, Oxford, Bristol, Brighton, , various universities across those, you know, University of Cambridge, University of Sussex, uh, like York.

It was like, it was, it was wonderful to go and spend that time. Uh, met up with a whole bunch of people in, uh, some pod listeners. Uh, the stories were quite funny because they would say, "Oh, I can't come into work today this morning because I'm meeting this guy from Australia who I only know via a podcast."

And then various versions of that were, , one was, uh, , "Be careful that he's not an ax-wielding murderer." Another one was, "This is how, , human trafficking occurs." You know, like I was like, "It's fine. It's fine. Everybody, everybody, I didn't, I didn't A, kill anyone or human traffic anyone," uh, as- And you, and you exit, you exited via [00:19:00] Paris and had yourself a croissant.

I came out via- Went to the Eiffel Tower ... like amazing. You had a great time. Paris was- I loved it ... I, I really enjoyed Pa- Paris. Uh, I was only there for not very long, s- like 72 hours or something less than. 24 hours, yeah. Something like that. Like it was really, really short. I got in late in the evening- Uh, had two days and then was out in the evening, , on the way home.

Uh, but got to walk around all around Paris, uh, got to see some... It w- and I walked everywhere, it was amazing. , Climbed the Eiffel Tower, did all that sort of stuff, which was- Did you actually climb it or did you take the lift? Did you use the stairs? Took the lift. Oh, my God. I was gonna say climb. Climb.

It's like, it's pretty high. I- Nah ... I got to the first- The lift ... I got to the first, you know, flat bit- Yeah ... and I actually had a bit of a flip out and went, "I don't wanna go any higher than that, thank you." I'm happy enough to never... to go my whole life without going to the top of the Eiffel Tower. So Luke and Brendan went all the way to the top.

They said it was great. I was like, [00:20:00] "Good for you." Yeah. That's too high for me. No. I'm not a fan. I'm, I'm scared, I'm, I'm scared of heights. , And- Yeah ... it was- So like- Yeah, it was, it was a long way up. So, uh, um- So did you go to the top? Yeah. You did it. I did. Yeah. Feel the fear and do it anyway. Pretty much. Uh, I'm going to, in the interest of letting sleeping dogs lie, and knowing- Mm

that we're always on the clock- Mm ... , i'm gonna move us on. Yeah. But we've both been good. We're back. We're gonna have- We're back ... back to our monthly schedule-ish- Ish ... because we're always monthly-ish. Yeah? Yeah. Yes. That's because we're on the regular, right? Yeah. 'Cause... That's right. Yeah. It's, it's a joke.

Okay. Uh, good, good news. Hopefully next time- Yes ... we record I'll have fiber to the premises. That would be really nice. And like we're... Right? We won't have laggy, laggy. Anyway. Yeah, that would be very nice. Uh, this is the mail bag, and the mail bag, I, like... Basically, the mail bag is so bulging that- Mm ... my suggestion to you, Jason, was to take some portions of it and make it the [00:21:00] main segment.

Are we doing that? Is that what's happening- No ... in this? No. No, we're just- Okay ... we're just gonna, we're gonna burn through them all because- Okay ... at, at that point we're up to date. Yeah. Um, and we need, we need more. There's a lot in here. Yeah. Uh, but I think if we leave it any longer, things are gonna drop off.

The, the context window will collapse, Inga, and we- Right, okay. Context will collapse ... we'll lose a few. L- l- let's go for it. All right, let's go for it. So we love hearing from you all. Please, after this episode, continue sending us because we've got a bulging mail bag, but it will be empty. Um, it's- ... our chance to, for you to share the interesting things with us.

Uh, you can write to us at pog- pod@ontheragteam, all one word, .com. Uh, we'll make sure your email makes it to the next episode, even if that episode is three months delayed. Are we three? We've been three months off the air, which is pretty bad, actually. But, um- One go ... there you go. One. The... Really? Oof. Mm-hmm. Um, anyway, we're back.

We're back. Um, the first one comes from Kathleen, and it's in black, so it's my read. Um, thanks, [00:22:00] Kathleen, for writing to us. "Hi, my name is Kathleen. I'm a new PhD candidate." Welcome, Kathleen, to the world- ... of PhD candidature. Kathleen continues, "I'm in my mid-50s, autistic and ADHD, and making the leap from corporate life to teaching and then into academia."

Sounds like my trajectory. Um, uh, "Full disclosure," says Kathleen, "I'm a PC user." It's all right. We don't judge. We accept all types. Ooh, I'm- Yeah, yeah ... a little bit. J- you do a little bit? I do judge. I don't, I don't. I live with two PC users, so I don't. Uh, Kathleen goes on, "I'm also a printer of journals, notes in the margins, highlighted texts with asterisks everywhere, Post-It Notes, journals clipped together with bulldog clips based on connected ideas.

I was listening to the podcast about Jason burning his master's thesis." Mm. Yeah, that's a thing he did. "Uh, which led to printing journals, and I would love to hear your thoughts on how to capture those margin notes and connections between papers digitally if I stop printing. I use Zotero, but I struggle [00:23:00] with object permanence thanks to ADHD.

I generally worry all my ideas will just vanish into the ether. If I'm truly going paperless, I wanted to, I want to do it before I go in too deep. Thanks for your help. Bye." Wow, okay. Mm. Good call. Like paper or paperless, good call. Um, object permanence, do you know about that, Jason? Do I need to do teaching on it?

You need to help me. Yeah. You do. You need to teach me. Right. So you might remember you've raised a child. Who's now very tall. Um, and there comes a time before six months when something's out of sight, it doesn't exist, and then when it comes back into sight, it exists all of a sudden, and you can play peekaboo.

Oh, okay. And they get really excited because it's interesting to them, because for all they know, the thing that they can't see is gone from the world completely Right? So that's called, at about six months, I believe, don't quote me on this, they develop what's called object permanence. That means you can remember things that aren't physically located with you, right?

So because of the way that ADHD works in the brain, dopamine, [00:24:00] yada, yada, yada, uh, sometimes memory, like s- it's like your brain has got gears that kind of slip. Yeah. And so, um, what we do when we're using object permanence is we're using memory parts of the brain as part of our executive function, and something in ADHD makes that a little glitchy, right?

So that means that it's very, very easy for people with ADHD to forget things. Mm-hmm. Which is why the bullet journal is genius because- Mm-hmm ... it was designed by an ADHD person, and that, that, um, the bullet journal migration is designed to be a way to preserve object permanence, right? So either things are crossed off or they're not crossed off.

If they're not crossed off, they need to be moved and written again, right? Mm-hmm. So that's why BuJo's really good for people with ADHD. If you don't know what I'm talking about, you need to go and find a bullet journal. Just type bullet journal into Google. You'll learn so many things. So I think the bullet journal is your friend.

I would not [00:25:00] let go of a paper system with ADHD, quite honestly. I really wouldn't. Right. Um, if it's that bad that you already sort of feel like you're struggling and you're not gonna cope, I would say probably written notes. Um, printing out and written notes. And I would just give you one piece of advice, Kathleen.

Collect notes, don't collect articles. Yeah. So the articles are irrelevant, right? That piece of paper you printed on, what you wrote on the sides, that can all be chucked. And what actually is the juice is what you squeeze out of them and you put in your bullet journal. And I would say that that's probably gonna do more for you.

The indexing's gonna be important, the threading's gonna be important, um, and the keeping things in Zotero is important. But what's really, really, really important is that DOI number, right? Yeah. So you've got to copy that DOI number with your notes. You can always find the article again, um, if you do [00:26:00] that.

So I would, I would be very cautious about going to an all electronic system if object permanence is really that much of a problem for you. For those of you who are slightly less so, I think the search function in Obsidian and getting your notes from Zotero into Obsidian and working that pathway might be helpful.

So you could explore that, but as you quite rightly say, you don't wanna get in too deep and switch systems. Mm. Like, you wanna play around a bit. I, I say to people at the start of their PhD, play around with things for six months or so- But after that, your migration of your information is just gonna be a nightmare.

It's hard. So, yeah. So I would just concentrate on understanding that it's a DOI number and keeping the... And writing your notes in full sentences, right? So you know how full on I am about verbs, you know? Mm-hmm. Newburn argues that writing notes- Mm ... is important. A note should be a full sentence with a verb.

If you don't- Mm ... do that, your notes don't really have [00:27:00] much transferability. I would say the book that you need right now, Kathleen, is that A System for Writing by Dotto That's all I've got to say, Jason. Oh. Do you have anything to add? I'm gonna write down- I-

to say I'm gonna put it in the show notes, and then I always forget. So I'm writing a little show notes list in my bullet journal, you know, which I haven't p- picked up for a couple of weeks because I've been on leave. But it's a very- What's the name of- ... flexible system ... what's, what's the name of the book?

A System for Writing by Dotto. You are putting it in our show notes so that when I go back, I can just extract it. It's- Yeah ... it's straight in the show notes for the Live and Learn. D-O-T-T-O. Um- Yep, number six. I would, I would go deep on that book first- ... and see, see if you can set something up. Also, don't forget you can take photographs of your notes.

Um, and any good AI system will give you a perfect transcription of it. That's what you're saying. You would do that in what? [00:28:00] Google LM, would you? Would you take- No ... photographs of all your notes? I, I, I've been... I do it mostly in Claude. Um, take photos- Okay ... of my handwritten notes, and Claude's great at this.

Yeah. Um, I un- understand, I defer to you, Inga, as our chief- Mm ... ChattyG user in- Mm ... on the reg. Um, I'm- Chatty does a great job too. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, brilliant. Um, uh, Kathleen, I don't know whether this advice will work for you, but like Inga says, just have a bit of a play. , The last step of that chain for me is taking your digital notes from Obsidian and putting them into Google NotebookLM.

Um- Yeah. So if you're typing them- Because- ... in Obsidian, you take them into... But if you're just writing in the bullet journal, just take a photo- Yep ... and put it straight in is what you're saying. Attach it to an Obsidian note. Yeah. Attach that image- Yeah ... to your Obsidian note, so that- Oh, yeah ... it's all in the one, it's all in the one spot.

Yeah. Uh, and then extract- Yeah, that's a good idea. Yeah ... ex- extract it all to, uh, NotebookLM. Um- Right ... mainly because [00:29:00] of the way in which NotebookLM is structured, uh, when it makes a claim of some kind, you know, summarizes your notes or whatever- Mm ... uh, it'll often point to the exact source where it's drawing its information to be able to make that claim.

And in Google NotebookLM, you can roll over the little... They, they show up as little gray circles with a number inside them. You can roll your mouse over that little gray circle with a number inside it, and it'll pull up an extract of the exact source that it's drawing from. So- Yeah ... um, that, that reduces...

It means that you can verify the claims that the, that the AI is making. Um- Yeah ... remembering that it's predictive math, right? Like they can, it can make things wrong. Yeah. And just the other day, in fact, I was doing that. Uh, I was demonstrating it to someone. I found a sentence. I rolled over the thing just to kind of show them, and the- [00:30:00] Uh, the AI had missed some nuance.

Uh, and it, it said a thing, but actually the source note didn't actually say that thing. , And of course I knew that because I wrote the source note. , But yeah. But that last- Yeah ... that last step, it- Yeah ... as long as you remember that there's, there's always risk involved with it. Like, you might misremember things, so- Yeah, yeah

like let's not get too carried away and think that w- as humans we're perfect around this stuff. But that last step of moving it to Google NotebookLM, I think is useful. Yeah. So actually my latest blog post, so if you go to the Thesis Whisperer blog, uh- Have you published anything? I haven't published since then.

No, I did, but I published about Google em dashes and I ranted about the em dash. Did you read that one? The last, last one I saw was, uh, y- you got ChatGPT to write the whole thing. It was about- Oh ... whether or not, uh, uh, LMs should be I know that was a little... That was, uh, actually someone else wrote that.

That was, , something [00:31:00] that ChatGPT just came up with that I put on LinkedIn like wild. Oh, is that where I saw that? Yeah, I just put it on LinkedIn. No, o- on Thesis Whisperer I've got one about em dashes and self-policing- Ah ... in, you know, and then, um, and then I talk about NotebookLM. And so I've got the whole process there.

So what we're saying is- Yeah ... stick with the Bujo, stick with the writing. Remember DOI is more important. Take notes, not articles. Take photos. Jason's suggesting put it in Obsidian, so you have got it located, and then, um, transfer your Obsidian markdown notes into, , Google LM for the connected goodness of it all.

And I think that's a good system for anyone actually, , if you're interested in a hybrid system. We are not gonna get through these if we can't move on. Um, in, um, uh, we, we talk- Just saying ... about this in a, in our workshop, um, note-taking workshop. Yes. Which hardly anyone ever asks us to come and do, which really hurts my soul because it's my favorite and- It's a good one

I don't know what to tell [00:32:00] you, but people aren't interested in- I- ... writing good notes. I don't know. In, in the actual really, like the- I know ... as, you know- It's so good though, Jason. It's so good. And it's, it's where the leverage is, right? I know. Actually, I think we need to need to re-craft and re-like, re-market it because it's really about writing.

Yeah. It's really about the first stage of writing and how to get from an idea and get it into text. So- Yeah ... I think it's really about that. Um, right. I've put, I've put your, I've put your link to your latest one. The P does not stand... In PhD, the P does not stand for prompt- Yes ... is the title of the- Yes ... um, and I've put that link in the show notes.

So people will be able to just click on that and read that whole process. Yes. Yes. Excellent. Next one you, is in pink for you. It's from Karen, and she ha- It's quite a long one, and she has a- Mm ... Bujo question for us. Uh, so, and I love this one. It, it really made me stop and think for a bit. So I've been cogitating on this one.

Mm. Mm. "Hello Inga and Jason. I [00:33:00] appreciate your enthusiastic discussions on bullet journal- bullet journaling in On The Reg, and the way you cover both research and institutional responsibilities. Do you have advice on using Bujo for action research or other engaged projects that are more dynamic and generate their own unpredictable tasks?"

Side quests A side quest, yes. "I've successfully run these projects over the years, and now I'm trying to include these tasks in the BuJo. I work on multiple team projects and have other work responsibilities, and I've tried to include my project tasks in the BuJo using collections." Yeah. Which was my first thought too, right?

Yeah, me too. Yeah. "Cu- currently it's making a mess of my daily logs as I list new tasks and try to flag which are unexpected tasks along with the project, and my colleagues', uh, collections pages are messy. Uh, neat plans with random tasks added as plans change. If you know of any BuJo approaches for dynamic projects, perhaps you could give examples in a future podcast."

Here's an example of the type of engaged research I'm talking about. A community-based research project with 40 [00:34:00] commu- 40, four zero, community organizations submitting information about their work each month for two years, plus a team of researchers doing field work with these organizations, all of which has to be organized.

Hmm. Uh, and when interesting happens in, interesting things happen in those communities, it triggers a change to our research plan to focus on that new issue. As I say in my new book, Research projects, they evolve as they unfold. That's it. Yeah. This is a great example of that, right? Yeah. Um, most of the BuJo advice on project management is for top-down projects with clear activities and tasks that can be scheduled and tracked, but that's only about 50% of the work on these engaged research projects, and it's the other unpredictable 50% that I'm struggling with in my BuJo.

The BuJo items are a mix of One, bundles of two-minute tasks often acquired during a meeting, maybe 20 to 30% of the BuJo items from a project. EG, Jim at the Corio office has left and Mary is the new [00:35:00] contact. Update our records, tell the team, give her access to the project database, and explain to her what data we need.

Um, two, tracking actions of others where I then need to do the next steps, and keeping track of which steps are stalled because the trigger event has not happened. And that's maybe 20 to 30% of- Mm ... the BuJo items for a project. Mm. So, EG, when Mary sends me the Corio data, hopefully by the end of April, analyze it, compare with previous months, then book a meeting with Mary to discuss the implications.

Mm. Uh, three, a new information and ideas and/or problems to solve where decisions have to be made before I can plan out the tasks. Around 20% of the BuJo items from the project. EG, Rockhampton flood creates lots of new challenges for that office. Research team to discuss what other data we can collect and how to see how local office responds to the community's needs during the flood, while also maintaining their usual services, then plan this out with Wendy.

Um, four, the rest are in the middle. Larger than two-minute tasks, but not as large as a full can of worms, which I love. [00:36:00] That was a great sentence. I l- I read that one and laughed. Um, perhaps you know of ways to track this kind of project with a BuJo. Uh, also, if you like fun stickers for your BuJo, you might like a particular, um, website, made590, 590.com.au, a shop in Maroochydore in Sydney.

Thanks, Karen. Um, couple things. While I'm talking about this- Mm ... Inge, you might take that website address and- I am ... pop it in the bottom of the- I'm doing it, doing it right now. Yeah ... show notes. Yeah. Mm. Um, Karen, I don't think you have a BuJo problem. Yeah, I was about to say that. Go on. I think you have a task management software, project management software problem.

Yeah. What you're describing here is way too big for a BuJo. Like, you're talking 40 ... What was it? 40 sites, two years' data every month, every, like ... And then meetings upon meetings. Like- [00:37:00] Bless you. And no disrespect, but no one can keep that level of crap organized in, uh, like a simple paper-based system without going full Zettelkasten and big drawers and like a dedicated person who- Or multiple different colored bluejos for different projects- Yeah

and then, you know- Yeah ... I'm not sure that helps either. Yeah. Yeah. So what I'm gonna su- Things to lose ... what I'm gonna suggest, uh, this is not a paid endorsement, although I will in full transparency say we use this software to run our business. Um, our business is remarkably task-based. You might not th- you might not know that, um, but it's in, it, it's very much a series of tasks.

A- any- anything that we do. I've broken things all the way down to make sure that tasks don't slip. Um, we use a system called ClickUp, um, clickup.com. It's online, cloud-based, uh, and you can build pretty much anything inside it. [00:38:00] And over the last little while, I've been really going to town on building our particular version of ClickUp out.

Um, and so lots of automation Lots of, uh, lots of ways of being able to keep track of things. It can show you dashboards, it can show you when things are slipping, it can show you when things are missed due dates. Uh, you can email tasks to particular parts of ClickUp. So let's say you've got a, a project, we'll call it site one for, you know, make it easy.

Uh, that's got its own kind of... That's its own project. That has a unique- site one has a unique email address. So if you're taking notes, you can-- or you get an email or something, you can just forward it to that particular unique email address, and it'll go straight to that project within your ClickUp thing.

So- Mm ... you've got individual email addresses just get allocated, um, to site one, site two, site three, site four. They're system generated. You don't have to build them. Like, you just have to [00:39:00] know where they are. Um, and then you can collect it all in one spot. The power of this is, uh, that both Inga and I are seeing at our end, but it really makes it easy to see how this would work for you and your teams of researchers, is that you can see everything.

And it, like... So Inga and I are both owners, if you like, of, of the ClickUp space, so we can-- we've got complete view over everything that's happening inside it. But if we were to bring other people into our business, um, we could give them restricted views to just parts of the ClickUp that we want them to see.

Um- Mm ... we don't have to give them unfettered access to everything. And so what that means is that you could a- start allocating permissions to people depending on their role, um, and then everybody has a very clear view of what the work is. Um, and then [00:40:00] you-- everybody knows what they have to do. You can allocate people to tasks.

So for example Um, when Inge has to run a workshop on, on our behalf, um, there's a whole series of steps that we go through when we engage a client. I typically do the front end of that, which is kind of setting up all of the client, like the file structure in, uh, in our office and all that sort of stuff.

I set all that up. Um, the middle bit is the design and delivery bit, and if Inge's doing the, the workshop, she's got one coming up, in fact, with RMIT in the end of September, middle, middle, end of September. Uh, Inge will do-- There's a whole series of tasks there that Inge needs to follow to do the design and put it, put all the artifacts in the right place and have it ready for delivery on the day.

Um, and then when Inge does that, as she does that, she ticks... I allocate those tasks to her as part of the structure. Mm. She goes through and she ticks them off. I [00:41:00] can see that those tasks have been done, so I'm sleeping well at night because I know that Inge's doing what she's supposed to be doing. And then after the delivery a-and kind of there's a little bit of work that needs to go after the delivery that Inge will have to do.

The, the remaining pieces of that, which is the closeout phase of that, of that particular job, I pick up again. And so at any one point, we can see where we are. We can see what's slipping. So, you know, if, if Inge's a day behind on building her presentation materials, I'm not particularly worried about that because I know she's a professional and she'll deliver on the day.

Uh, so I'm not worried about that. But if I'm a month behind on sending the invoice, I mean, that's- Yeah ... something that Inge needs, needs to know about. And by having it really transparent like that, Inge, she's never done this, um, 'cause I'm usually not late but, um, she could theoretically say, "Hey, Jas," like, kind of, "What's going on here?"

Yeah. [00:42:00] Um, the last thing I'm gonna say about this is, and I know this gets off the topic of Bujos a little bit, but, um, that over the last three weeks, I have been deep in Claude and Fable, and I've been automating our ClickUp space. So now e-every week an automation goes out. It looks at all of the tasks inside our ClickUp space, um, figures out which ones have been completed, whether they're on time, whether they're late, blah, blah, blah.

Paints a complete picture of the week, um, and then automatically generates a management report, which I then email to Inge so she can see all the things that have happened in the previous week that are kind of usually invisible, but behind the scenes. Where in the past, Inge's just kind of trusted that it's getting done, which is, which is great, and she still does, but I mean, it's...

There's this now this level of reporting across it that makes it just super easy. Um, th- and the [00:43:00] thing that I like about that is that it puts pressure on me to deliver as well. So i- I know that that report runs on a Friday, and if I haven't done the things in the week that I need to do by that Friday, that a report's gonna get written.

It's gonna go to Inge, and it's gonna... and Claude's gonna say, "Hey, Inge, maybe you should have a look at this. This is drifting from green to amber or from amber to red," or something like that. Yeah. And I don't want that. I mean, I'm like, Claude- Like, I don't want that. I'm glad that works for you, colleague.

Like, Claude's not the boss of me though, so I'd like... You could tell me that, I probably wouldn't listen. But the point is sometimes to just external accountability, and that's probably... I can see just in the nature of some of these tasks exactly what you're saying. A system like you're describing would be awesome.

One caveat, two caveats Um, when you're working with research data, you often have to keep it inside even- Yeah ... yeah. So- Yeah ... you could build a similar system. It will no- be nowhere near as good, but you will be able to build it in, [00:44:00] uh, in Teams Microsoft Planner. I'm sure there's something for Google that'll be similar.

I've used Basecamp. I've used a bunch of them. ClickUp's the best, I would say that. Y- and what Jason's... The way that Jason's got it is, like, mm, that, i- it's a thing of beauty is all I will say. It's like the inside of Jason's brain, and it's tidy yet flexible. So, like, I'm very impressed with ClickUp. Um, so that, one thing is just, you know, you might not be able to use it 'cause of your environment, but also other researchers, Jason.

So it depends on how much power you have to say how things have to be done. Because I'm happily, like my dog, happy to roll over and have my belly scratched in terms of being told tasks with things. I'm happy to be told. I'm happy for Jason to put things in the system. I monitor it as best I can. I'm compliant.

I've had less success with doing that with other academics, [00:45:00] little to no success- Mm ... in most projects I've worked on because I'm not the boss. I can do it with my team. Um- Mm ... at times they've resented it, dragged their feet. Um, not my current team, but previous team members. Just- Mm ... um, strategic incompetence.

Um- Mm. Uh, you know, I don't like it. I'm just gonna do kind of slave behavior, right? Like, which is, I'll look like I'm doing it, but I'm not really doing it because I hate you. Yeah. So, so that whole piece, like you can have the best system in the world, but if you're trying to manage a bunch of academics, I mean, good luck with that.

They don't play well with others generally. Mm. Yeah, yeah. Good call. Um, so it's a persuasion piece to get people on board and to get people to see the value. 'Cause like I thought, and I'm just gonna hand on my heart say this, watching how much time you were spending in ClickUp, I'm like, "Is this a diversion project?"

You know. Um, but I trusted that you had the vision, right? And you [00:46:00] tried a few other things, and I saw you trying to get your head around it. And also, I'd run my own business before that, a much smaller scale. So I understood the annoyances of the number of tasks. Like, how many steps are there in a whole client engagement?

Like 50-something I think it's- Like- ... uh, like if you, if you count the checklist items on the back- Yeah ... of those things, are they? Yeah. It's in the s- it's in the 70s. Yeah. So there, and that's, that's just a lot of small moving parts, and a, the, a lot of the tasks you've got here could have come out of our ClickUp, right?

Like, you know, did you talk to so and so? What did they- Yeah ... tell you last? Where is it up to? Um, so you definitely BuJo, you're just outside the bounds of it. The only thing that would- Yeah ... make it possibly work is to have different colored BuJos or use highlighters, and good luck to you. I just don't think it's possible.

And then you've still got the which bits of it you manage with a BuJo. You manage yourself probably. Yeah. You manage yourself in relation to the systems you're working with, which gets us back to a whole bigger issue, which we talked about a little [00:47:00] bit, which was like we're both in a process of maybe letting go of OmniFocus.

Mm. We're both in the process of that, which is hard for us because it's, it held us for so long in our work. But the thing with OmniFocus, it doesn't, you can't connect to another person, and our work involves, uh, and my work at ANU, every, all my work pretty much involves connecting with someone else. So this is the problem you've got.

Again, a BuJo is a self-contained universe like OmniFocus is. And I think that's the fundamental problem here, is you're always gonna be the clearing house for everything and tasking other people. And so they're cognitively outsourcing to you, whereas with something like ClickUp, Jason can kind of throw the ball to me.

Mm. And I'm a bit like Latte. I run after it, I don't necessarily bring it back. But in this case, he doesn't have to have me bring it back. He can trust that I've got the ball for a while, and then- Yeah ... then it comes back to him. So yeah, I mean, yeah, wish we had a better answer for you, but it was a long answer and a good one.

We're at 47 minutes, so I'm gonna read the next letter. [00:48:00] So thank you for that. Great letter, Karen. I'm gonna check out those stickers, so thank you- Okay ... for the sticker connect. This one's from Stephanie Zims. Hi, Stephanie. It's been ages since I saw you. Um, so we're playing a lot of catch-up here. Um, Stephanie says, "Hi, Jason and Inga.

I've been paddling along between toddler mom life..." Very cute baby, by the way. Not a baby anymore. Walking baby And the UK higher education bin fires. I'm assuming the bin fires are similar to the bin fires we've been having, so sympathies My, m- my read, like I was ... I've, I, I've talked to you about this. Uh, my- Yeah

I understood higher ed in the UK to be under pressure. Mm. It wasn't until I was on the ground and talking to people and kinda seeing the whites of their eyes that I under- Yeah ... that I started to get a sense of how bad it really is there My heart goes out to you. Like I- Yeah, yeah ... anyone I've had contact with, it's just so demoral-

I just, it's just fucked. The case- Yeah ... really fucked. I'm sorry it's happening. Um, you've got a new prime minister. I don't know if that's gonna help [00:49:00] anything. There's Count Binface running against Nigel Farage. That's what- Mm ... I call him, Nigel Farage. Mm. So like, you know, maybe you get some change. I don't know.

Anyway, back to you, Stephanie. "So I haven't caught up with the pod." That's all right 'cause there's no pod to catch up with. "But I'm listening to the March episode," which was probably the last one, "while I tidy the house and get some order before the weekend. First up, I hope you're okay, Inga. I am now, thank you, Stephanie, and hopefully we'll get to hang out at future Shut Up and Write symposium.

I've pitched GCU as host for 2027." Um, I don't wanna get ahead of news, but I did get asked to go to Cambridge for the next Shut Up and Write symposium that is trying to be organized, and I'm hoping to be there in December, um, dog permitting and various other health matters permitting. So maybe I'll see you there, Stephanie.

"Second, Jason's UK trip. Are you coming to Scotland?" Too late. He could've. Um, maybe Glasgow. Glasgow's amazing. "You should come and visit GCU." Yes, you should. Yes. "I would be happy to show you Glasgow and happily provide some recommendations for Glasgow and other-" Yeah ... [00:50:00] "Scottish areas. Not sure your timings, but my Gen AI for Researchers series," which he's doing, starts on 21st of May.

Should AI Do This? A good title. Stephanie's great with titles, by the way. Really great title, Stephanie. I'm gonna like write to you and ask you if I can steal it for my internal AMU things. Um, "I do-" "... realize I'm late to party, so maybe you have a spot left. Um, talking about AI, you might enjoy my friend's slow AI Substack, Prof Sam Illingworth, um, theslowai.substack.com.

Big hugs from Glasgow." Did you have a look at that Substack, Jason? No, I didn't. I- No. I loved the title though- I- ... Slow AI, I'm into it Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Like slow food, slow dogs- Yeah ... sleeping dogs. It's, um, it's been, it's been interesting. I won't, I won't out the authors, uh, on the podcast here, but- Mm ... um, I was asked to read a chapter of an upcoming book, um, that talks about, uh, research, use of research, uh, use of AI in research.

Um, [00:51:00] it's fascinating. Like it's a really, really interesting, um, really interesting space at the moment. You know, lots of, lots of different takes on whether or not, and how, um, AI can be used in this sort of space. I'm loving the richness of this, uh, d- this debate at the moment. It's great. Uh, richness is one way to say it.

Burning bin fire might be another way to say it. Um, but we'll get there. I'll, uh, since, uh, since you thoroughly missed the opportunity to meet up with the delightful Stephanie, and I'll tell you, Glasgow's amazing and well worth it- Oh ... for next time. Next time, I'll try and get her in December. Eight... Well, was it something like eight cities in 17 days I did- I know

while I was there? It was just- Like, you were just full, full, full. Yeah. And had a great time. Was out of control. All right, the next one Curtis McHale, author of The Analog Productivity. Remember you talking about this- Wrote to us ... uh, wrote to us. I didn't, I didn't realize this. This must have happened during my, my travels.

Um- Yeah ... wow. Hi, Curtis. So, uh, you, we mentioned, um, Analog [00:52:00] Productivity, uh- Yeah, I loved it. Yeah ... on a previous podcast- Yeah ... a while ago. Um, and so he, th- someone heard it on the podcast, reached out to him. He then listened to the, the episode- Oh, bless ... uh, and then wrote to us. Uh, and he says, um, "A listener bought the book and then reached out telling me where they'd heard about it.

I listened to the podcast this morning, and thanks for the pleasant review." Oh, glorious. "I'd agree that once you know some of the stuff, you don't need to read about it again. So many productivity books are filled with fluff, so I did try and give you some ideas about systems and show you what I use without all the marketing fluff that many people toss in to pad out their books.

Have an excellent day." Um- Oh ... as a, as a sidenote... Thank you, Curtis. As a sidenote- Yeah ... I went to his website. Yeah. It is delightful. Yeah. It is like one of... It is a really... I rec- I won't... No spoiler alerts about- Okay ... why I found it- Yeah ... delightful, but, uh, the link is in the show notes already. Uh, have a look.

Uh,[00:53:00] 

I, like, uh, uh, when it opened up, I, I went, "What?" And then I went, "Oh, I love this." So, yeah, it's a, it's a great website. It's really, really cool. So thank you. He didn't say whether he was writing another book or working on anything else? No, that's, that's all I got. Although now I feel as though- Oh, so I'd love, I love his take on s- like, I'd love a new version of it or something.

I, I feel like the gate's open now. I feel as though that we know each other, because we've emailed each other, or he's emailed us once. Like, that's enough- Right ... as far as I'm concerned. Right. We're like, "Curtis-" Oh, parasocial now. Yeah. It's like- ... "Good to hear from you." "By the way," "we talked about you again."

Anything you write, Curtis, send it to us. We're always happy to review. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I hope I didn't come across as dismissive. I, I think my point was that reading it again was just reminding me, "Oh, this is where I heard of all these good ideas," often in the first place. Pretty sure that's what I said.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, at the time. So yeah. Thanks, Curtis. Uh, [00:54:00] this one- Uh- ... uh, this, it was a while ago he, he wrote to us, so the episode's- Yeah ... probably nearly 12 months old now. He's probably not even listening to us anymore. Okay, the next one is from Krista, who weighs in on our debate about whether the week starts on a Sunday or a Monday I love that we get, I love that we get mails like this.

Right? Thanks for writing to us. This is why I think we do the whole all... Like, that's why I wanted to do all of them because every one- I know. I c- I can see why ... of these emails, uh, is just great. All right. "Dear Ian, Gar and Jason, I'm just now listening to your latest podcast, Planning for 2026 Fashion Influencer Style, and I can't help myself.

I had to weigh in on the question about whether the week starts on Sunday or Monday. I think you are looking at this conundrum from the wrong end. The question is not when the week starts, but when it ends. If I remember my catechism," and you're more churchy than me, how do you say that? Catechism.

Catechism. Catechism. I always think that's cat- Anyway, that always sounds like catastrophe or something. It just lights up the wrong neural networks in my brain. Catechism. So ac- actually, so that's how [00:55:00] I've always said it, and now you've just introduced doubt. Now you're wondering. Yeah, I know. Right. Have I had catechism?

It's not a word. Have I been saying it wrong my whole life? This might be the first time I've ever said it out loud. I've read it, like, a thousand times. Anyway. God, God created the world in just seven days, and... On seven. I'll get it wrong already. Ah, Krista continues- She- "God created the world" ... God will be up- up- upset with you if you do that, right?

Okay. Don't look at God- Sorry ... okay? I promise. Sorry. Um, "God created the world in six days and on the seventh she, he rested." God is non-binary, people. Read your Bible. Um, "By that logic, Sunday is a day of rest, worship, and contemplation, is the culmination of the week, not its beginning. Love the podcast." So that means that Monday is in fact the first day of the week, is what I'm taking from that, uh, that- Yes

question there, Krista. Thank you, Krista. Yes. She says, "We love the podcast. Already looking forward to the next one. With regards, Krista." Thank you for clearing up, and I'm, I'm [00:56:00] buying what you're putting down. That's all I'm saying. And in fact, I, uh, you know, I agree. Monday is the beginning or the end of the end of the week, if we can say it that way.

Look, I don't know, like, is that a double negative? I'm not sure. Uh- We're gonna get down a rabbit hole. I'm gonna read the next one. I'm gonna read the next one. All right. All right. Okay, the next one is from, from Caitlin, wondering if we've been publishing, dot, dot, dot. "Hi, Jason," brackets, "hi, Inga. I was rather taken with your thinking partner verifi- verifier information processor framework for AI you see presented in ep- Episode 81.

If AI is the hammer, do we have the right nails? And I'm wondering if you've published this anywhere yet. I'm preparing a conference presentation that the thinking partner and verifier components are very relevant to, so I'd like to be able to reference the most complete and up-to-date version of your work on this.

Love the pod so much. You two kept me sane through the interminable nearly two years from my initial submission to my sign-off of my PhD. As an actual doctor about six weeks now." Congratulations, Caitlin. Congratulations. Um, "It is always a great joy to find a new episode. Thanks for all [00:57:00] you do." A n- new episode.

Did I say episode? Episode. "Thanks for all you do." Thank you, Caitlin. Thanks for writing to us. No, we haven't published it, because we don't get around to things like that. But you're more than welcome to cite the pod, like- Right ... research, non-traditional research output, right?

I, I thought about this after I read this- Yes ... um, a long time ago. Yes. And I wonder whether or not, uh, what would be the process for us to ascribe DOI numbers to every episode that we publish, so that people could- There'd be a process- ... if they wanted to ... for that, I'm sure. Uh, there would be a process. Do, do you happen to know what it might look like?

No. And is it easy? Do I need to look it- do I need to add that to my bullet journal? Well, um, some- one of us maybe probably should look at it. You know, probably, like, it would increase my research output, like, a thousandfold. Not that I care. Well, is, is that- I don't care about research output. I know I should, I just don't [00:58:00] I just don't- Well, I don't know.

I just like maybe... I, we could go with a really good- But DOI numbers are useful. DOI numbers w- we're fans, as has been already established in this podcast. We're fans. DOI numbers- If anyone, if anyone knows, our librarian- Librarians, write to us. We love you. Thank you. Bye ... librarian, please. How hard would that be?

And- Yeah ... the, the immediate follow-up question to this, of course, is how do I automate that? Like, 'cause I don't wanna do it the hard way. Okay. Right? Like- Yeah. I mean, there must be ... do, is it TextExpander? What, like how, how does it work? Yeah, yeah. Um, you want- you've got the next one, go friend. But now we're all out of sync, we're all out of sync because now I'm black text and you're pink text, and that just doesn't feel right.

But okay. Hang on. Did I read the wrong one? Yeah. You read all the pink. Oh, did I? So now I'm like, I don't know what to do. Go for Jason. Go for Jason. Go, go for Jason. The next one is from Louise, who's, uh, some BuJo questions. More BuJo questions. Okay. More BuJo. Love it. Bring it. "Hello Inger and Jason. Hope you are both [00:59:00] well.

Greetings from Ireland." Hello. I love that we get to all parts of the world. Ireland, beautiful place. Yeah. Mm. Uh, "I've been a dedicated listener to the pod since the early days and have followed so many of your tips and suggestions for productivity." Thank you. "They have not always worked for me." "But I think that it-" They don't always work for us either.

Yeah. They don't always. Um, "But I think that's the nature of life, and we need to experiment and tweak to find systems that will work for us as individuals. And have-" Hear, hear ... and more have worked than not." Great. "Plus, your lovely Aussie accents and friendly banter are a joy to listen in on, like sitting next to the cool kids at my favorite coffee shop listening to their chats, but not in a creepy way."

Uh, "You definitely helped me through my PhD, and now I'm one year post-graduation working as a lecturer." Congratulations. That's awesome. Congratulations. Welcome to the salt mines. I- or the academy, or are they the, the same? Yes. Mm. Okay. Okay. Mm. Welcome. Welcome. Uh, "One thing that I have stuck with, largely because the system is so flexible that I can adapt- Mm

and change it as needed, [01:00:00] is bullet journals. In the pod dropped in January, planning your year, fashion influencer style..." So this is the same one that Kieran, um- was talking about, I think the same episode Yes, 'cause there's been, like, two episodes this year. It's July. It's nearly the end of July. Okay, go on.

I was intrigued by how many spreads Jason had prepared in advance, and I have many questions. Mm. I know you've covered how Bujo's work on the pod before, but I was hoping that you could touch on this in the mailbag time some, uh, next time or something. Mm. Jason, do you have just one physical Bujo notebook in a calendar year or...

So quick answer, yes. Mm-hmm. Uh, unless I fill it, and then I have another one. I have two. Yeah. I've never exceeded two. Um, but I now buy the, um, I now buy the bigger, thicker, uh, I use Molsk- Moleskines. Mm. Um, they're 400 pages, um- Mm. Are they? ... rather than, uh, [01:01:00] I think like- I'm trying to look at what mine is. The Leuchtturm.

I think they're- 248 pages. Yeah. I think they are, they're, the normal, um, Moleskines are about 250 pages or something like that, so yeah. Mm. Um, so that kind of keeps them to just one bullet journal, uh, a year. Uh, and if I don't finish it, like, I just, I close the door and I, I've got the next two years' worth is just sitting up there un- unopened yet ready to go.

Yeah, okay. Yeah. Sure. So yeah. Um, do you redo the spreads at the start of each new notebook? Yes, I do. Um, do you have a master notebook to rule all the other notes in the year? No, I do not. Uh, I'm split- I do. Mm. Yeah. I've got an index of indexes. I've shown you this, haven't I? Uh, yeah. Yeah. Um- No ... I've got a...

Oh, oh, oh. Thanks to Anuja Cabral. Ah, we love her. Our friend Anuja, who once sent me a lovely care package of a very big Bujo. She's awesome. She's awesome. Thanks, Anuja. If you're [01:02:00] listening, we love you. Um, and this has got indexes of all my indexes. Like every page is an index and all my bujos are numbered

So I thought maybe Bhutto I- I've got a master index, if you like. So that, that helps you- Yeah, so- ... go back to any other bujo. So on one page it'll be 2024 index, and it's just a direct copy of all- Yeah ... of the actual index in your 2024 bujo. Yeah. Yeah, I do it by hand. Cool. It's very mindful. Yeah, yeah. Every time I finish a bujo, part of my closing ritual is to record it.

Index. Yeah. I would be doing that- Saved my ass a couple of times, actually ... yeah, I bet. Yeah. Um- Yeah ... I've just, look, my brain has just gone, "Huh, I wonder if you thread indexes, like master indexes." Oh. Right Okay, stop, stop, stop. So there's- Your brain just exploded. Popcorn. Cheese flavored- ... which is my favorite.[01:03:00] 

So if you had, if you had, uh, something in your 2001- Mm ... bujo- Mm ... and then you live your life for a few years, and then you- Mm ... come back to that thing in 2005- Mm. Mm-hmm ... whether or not- Mm-hmm. I could ... even worth just having, having a look and just seeing whether or not there's some connection. Oh, there's plenty of crossovers.

Like, things carry on. Like- Yeah ... I could do that. I could thread my... Wow. Wow. See also- Mm ... bujo number, blah. And then I could go- Yeah ... back to here and find- Yeah ... amazing. Okay. We went on a side quest totally, so- Hope- That might have h- Hope- ... might actually have, have helped though, right, like, weirdly. From the- Yeah

like, Louise is, like, going, "Ooh, I hadn't thought of that." Yeah. Yeah. Beautiful. So the answer is Inga does have one master index of indexes, yes. Uh, Louise- Come on. Where, where were we? Louise Carrison. Louise is saying. She says she's split between her home office- Yeah ... my campus office, uh, when not [01:04:00] teaching, research sites.

Mm. So I try to keep it into one notebook on the go at any one time, and I write a fair bit in my bujo, so usually fill three to four 206-page noo- no- notebooks in a year. Wow. I find it tedious to redo too many spreads at the start of each notebook, but equally have been known to do, to have the wrong notebook with me if I have more than one.

Yeah. Yet- Yeah ... if I'm only working in such short fram- sh- such short timeframes, it is harder to see those crunch points before they're on top of me. Much like Inga suggested, it's harder to see in digital formats. Yeah. Okay. So tips on balancing this would be great. Mm. The system I currently have involves using my bujo for future planning, monthly and weekly spreads, daily plans, et cetera, as well as collections on any project currently working on, from module delivery to articles I'm writing, to field notes and random thoughts.

And then I use Todoist as a project manager- Mm ... for recurring tasks and/or tasks that have a particular workflow that needs to be repeated, as well as random lists like books I want to read and so on. That's a really [01:05:00] long sentence. Yeah. I had to take multiple... Like, it's a good one. Breaths. Yeah. Like, I, I got...

You know when you read a sentence like that- It still made sense ... you're like, "Oh my God." Like, it's impressive. A, it made sense. Yeah. It's a long sentence, but in its design of being long, it brings a level of exhaustion with it that I can actually feel what she's trying to tell us in that. Yeah. Like, it's very evocative, that sentence.

Yes. Anyway, sorry. Yes. Sorry, Louise. Dunsford's- It's like- ... bible of no more than 50 words, though, so, you know. Yeah, but I, like, at the end of it, you're like- But it's an email ... "Yeah, man." It's fine. Yeah. You, you, it, like, man- It, it felt- ... there's a lot going on ... what it meant. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I love it. Um, I've tried to use Obsidian as well, and while I do like it and see its potential, it has never fully worked for me, and is now mostly where I keep my waiting for list and similar- Mm

lists that are visited regularly, but not on a daily basis. Mm. I don't use- Finally- ... Obsidian as a note, a to-do kind of... It's really a drafting place for me, so I can understand. Some people I know really use it for to-doing, but I've never really, I've never really liked it for that. Yeah. [01:06:00] There's community plugins that make that a whole lot easier- Mm

and stuff. Um- Mm ... but I, I tried to run it for a little while there in, when I was at La Trobe as a to-do thing- Mm ... because I was in Obsidian- Mm ... a lot. Uh- Mm ... but it never stuck. I went back to- No ... uh, I went back to OmniFocus. Mm. Finally, I know that your workshops are tailored to the different institutions you work with, but if you ever decided to do online workshops that people could sign up to independently, which are a little bit less tailored, I don't think I'd be the only one who'd be clamoring to sign up, especially if manageable time zone-wise for Western Europe.

Please do consider it. This turned into a longer email than intended. Thank you for the pod. Please keep up the great work, and I'm off to listen to the latest episode. All the best, Louise. Thanks, Louise. Um, we... Are we teasing anything? We're working on it, the online course. We're working on, we're working on the online stuff.

We're definitely working on it. In fact, you're- It's- ... really working on it right now. Yeah. Yeah. Um, it's- It's- ... it's in the, it's in the, it's in the pipe. Uh, it's, it's got its own section in [01:07:00] ClickUp with tasks and stuff. Uh, so you know, under, under active development at the moment. More, I'll let you know. We'll let everyone know more once we've got something that we can show people.

Yeah. We're excited about it, though. Yeah. Like early stages. Yeah. Early, early, but- Yeah ... but looking good. Um, so yes. We, we would like to do that, and we would like to- Yeah ... have access for people who don't have to go through their institution and have some research money that they want, professional development money they wanna spend on themselves, and give them really good value for money.

'Cause I don't know about you, but I don't think I've ever met an online course that I like. No. Except possibly, um, McSparky's Field Guides I found useful. Oh, yeah. They're great. So, yeah. Yeah. So we're taking inspiration from that, um- Yeah ... and also from YouTube and TikTok, because I'll watch heaps of in- informative content there, but give me a fucking LinkedIn, fucking online professional development course-

I'll just stab my eyes out with a pen. So- ... [01:08:00] we are working on it, but we're not gonna do shit ones, and that's why it's- No ... taking a while. Yeah, we don't want- Yeah, yeah ... to do shit ones. Yeah. It's gotta be, it's gotta be cookbook. It's gotta be good. Um- Yeah ... my use of the Bujo, it was central for a, an extraordinarily long period of my life.

Mm. Um, that plus OmniFocus worked really well. Mm. Mm. Um, now that I'm spending- easily four hours a day inside ClickUp. Easily. Yep. Yeah. Um, just kind of managing everything. ClickUp has become- Yeah, you're the air traffic controller, really. Yeah, yeah. ClickUp has become my, um, Sorry, I just keep checking- A bu-

to see if Latte... And all she's doing is moving around and then stretching her little- Oh ... paws above her. And she's got little toe beans, and they're so cute. Sorry. Oh. I'm very distracted by the cuteness that's down here. She's ad- she's adapting well, so well to being a desk dog. I'm so proud of [01:09:00] you. You're cute.

She's just looking at me now like, "I'm tired, lady. Can you shut up?" Yeah. Okay, go on. I might, I might use the W word just to kind of like, you know- Do not. No, she doesn't know it yet, so you can use it. Oh, doesn't she? Yeah. Oh, okay. No, no, no. Um, yes. Or she- Sorry. Yes ... probably doesn't, probably doesn't have a, a understanding of the word beach yet either, or park yet, but- No.

No ... but when, when it comes- That has not been installed. Software has not been installed. I've- You're coming to visit me. You're coming to visit me, so you'll learn what words she does know. Okay. She knows, uh, she knows wee-wees. Huh? You're gonna go do wee-wees. Okay. And that mother is strangely obsessed with it, and she knows ni-nies.

Time to go ni-ni. Park. Good. She goes in her crate, and she goes ni-nies. Um- That's good. Um- Uh, sorry, I was so distracted ... ClickUp is- Yes? ClickUp is my gravity well now, uh, for all of my activity. Mm. So where I'm finding value in my bujo is in the [01:10:00] monthly weekly spreads. Um, and so what's actually happening there is, uh, I am, I'm still...

I might not actually write anything in my bujo for a whole month or a whole week now. Mm-hmm, mm. But I still do the weekly spreads and the monthly spreads to give me that overview of what my life looks like. Mm. So for example, I can look at the, I can look at the August one, and I know it's just, it's on fire.

Um- Mm ... that's fine. It's just lots of moving pieces. Mm. Um, and I, uh, so then when it comes to actually planning out my week and, and thinking about, you know, what do I need to have washed by when so that I can do various activities at different times and places. Mm. Um, that's, the bujo really helps me with that kind of- Time and space planning, if you know what I mean.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's- Rather, rather than the actual, rather than the actual detail of the tasks and, and that sort of stuff. Mm. Because I legitimately now have outsourced all of that to- [01:11:00] Mm ... ClickUp. Um, uh, and I have my... I've, I've just started, like, a personal list inside ClickUp, where I'm starting to migrate my stuff from OmniFocus.

Wow. Um, because Om- Again, again, we tease with the OmniFocus. It just- Yeah, so... Yeah. You just, it just can't be a solo trader anymore. Like, we really... Yeah. No. Omni- OmniFocus still holds a lot of really important data like, um, dates for when insurance, various insurances fall due. Yeah, same. For, for review. And paperwork, yeah.

Tax. Um- It's good for managing your personal tax, I think. Yeah, yeah. Like forwarding it receipts that you get in email and stuff. But on the other hand, there is other ways, lighter ways to do that. Like reminders- Mm ... are actually pretty... Apple Notes is actually amazing. Like, I've said this again and again, like I- Apple Notes, um, and we use 1Password for our team- Mm

documents, and you can keep a lot of documents in 1Password. So yeah, I [01:12:00] think, um- Mm. Yeah, Omni really- I- You know, mm. Look, the Omni- It's gonna be hard to let go. Yeah. But I, I think when we... Like, with ClickUp So I'm, I'm saying a lot of positive things about this, uh, and but I, I wanna be really, really clear about it.

We needed a backbone, like a task management system that both of us could see into. Yeah. Um, and O- OmniFocus didn't deliver that. No. What ClickUp, uh, as well as that, we, uh, the, it's a subscription-based model, and our data is not our own. So I mean, there are ways to get the data out, but in reality, you're paying it, we're paying every month, and our business pays for that because it's so central to what it is that we're doing.

Yeah. As an individual, mm, would you find the same value? Yeah. I'm not quite so sure. Yeah. No. Um- I don't think you would ... so I, if we didn't have to run our business on it, if we, and we didn't have to see [01:13:00] each other's tasks and, uh, be able to allocate each other tasks and, and- Mm ... all that sort of stuff- Mm

uh, I'd still be BuJo plus OmniFocus, but- Yeah ... but that's- I don't know. I just- ... that's kind of where I'm at ... like, I've got work as well, and I, I, I would get a lot of value out of Teams just for keeping track of stuff. Anyway, we could go on. Yeah. This whole episode, um, I'm just conscious of how much dog time I've got here before I get- Sure

get someone biting my feet again. Um, next one is from Elizabeth who... Thank you, Louise, by the way, and thank you for writing to us all the way from Ireland, and thank you for enjoying our Australian accents as we enjoy the Irish accents. We do. I think it's a mutual admiration society. Uh, the next one's from Elizabeth, who has some gear recommendations for us.

Bring in Elizabeth. Awesome. Good one. "Hey, Jason and Inga. Almost fell off my chair when you said how much you're paying for Riverside. If you can put aside a day or two to learn new software, I highly recommend looking to OBS Studio fee free. The gaming streamers love it. [01:14:00] OBS Project, and the paid version of DaVinci, DaVinci Resolve Studio, about 470 AUD.

There's a free version, one-off payment, includes sexier tools like editing from transcript." Nice. Actually, Riverside has included that now. So like I used to do Riverside then Descript, and now- Mm ... I do everything in Riverside, so you know, it's got better value than it had. Mm. But, but- Mm ... good call on the cost.

It's very expensive. "You can capture your Teams or whatever convo, snippety doo-dah, export the whole v- video, audio files where they need to go. It's a time investment but may help cut costs in the longer term." Uh, this may be well of relevant to the wider audience. Academics may want to record presentations, et cetera, for wider viewing than just conferences.

I wish they would. Mm. I'm a fan of the video format and the audio format. Thanks for keeping me company for hours and years while I get shit done, Elizabeth. Thank you, Elizabeth. I'll look into that. I'm, I'm open- Mm ... I'm open to new formats. Yeah. I- Can I give you a [01:15:00] production note right now, though, Jason?

You've gotta stop leaning on the desk 'cause you're making your camera wobble, and that's gonna be annoying on, um... Yeah. And you can also hear it. You can hear it- Yeah ... and it's annoying. It's annoying the audio nerd inside me. Editing- I'll sit back now ... English is gonna be like, "Why didn't I say this earlier?

I didn't even notice it till then." Right. And then I was like, "Now it's all I can see." Yeah. All right. Hands off the desk. You need a dog to pet. Just saying I have made, um I have made Jason, I have made Jason's wife enjoy my dog too much. Sorry, not sorry. Okay. Here's the final one. I, I, I like, I like, I like the volume of, uh, Latte photos that, that are coming my way at the moment.

And then I was sitting, I was sitting next to Cath the other night, and she was like, "Have you seen the photos of Latte?" And then she

shows me your chat, right? Yeah. And it's like photo after photo after photo after photo. I'm like, I suddenly realized that I'm only getting, like, 1% of the total number of photos you're going out to these days. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Your Latte content, [01:16:00] I am, I am, I'm h- I'm damping it down. Damping it down. I'm, I'm like light milk latte, aren't I, really?

Like versus full fat latte. Thank you, Elizabeth. And, um, yes, also for including, um, maybe some audio visual for including Latte should she ever wake up. Yeah. Someone said, someone said on Threads, and my sister sent this to me, said that, "Owning a beautiful dog is like being a personal assistant to a celebrity.

You're always-" Yeah "... going down the street and saying, 'Yes, Bongo loves her fans. We have a next appointment to get to, Bongo.'" And it's a little bit like that. Latte loves her fans. Everyone makes such a fuss. It's amazing. Like, she is so... She's AI dog. You'll see her in a moment when she wakes up and no doubt- Yeah

and starts biting my feet. Okay, we're at the last one. This one's from Marin, who has a question- Yeah ... about teaching no... Was that no- No ... neuro, non-neurotypical? No. I mistyped. Non-neurotypical. So neurodivergent students. It also- Mm ... points us in the direction of [01:17:00] Typus, some software for people who have to write technical documents.

Interesting. "Hi, Ingrid and Jason. First of all, thank you for the hours and hours of entertainment. Long email incoming, sorry." That's fine. We love our long emails. Mm. "Firstly, as a neurotypical teacher who often has non-neurotypical students, I wanted to ask you for tips on how to approach teaching for, for non-neurotypical students.

For instance, I noticed some of my students have trouble following announcements or understanding written assignments. I was wondering if you had any advice on how to write assignments, instructions, class assignments, et cetera, for students who might have trouble following them. Secondly, I wanted to call your attention to a very useful scientific tool for scientific writing.

I'm sure you've heard of LaTeX," yes, I have, um, "which can be described as HTML for writing. Well, now there's a new tool called Typus, which is essentially marked down for scientific writing. You write in plain text and annotate citations such as @Bergson2002 claims that, and it will later get rendered as square brackets one claims that, with square brackets one being referenced to Bergson [01:18:00] paper.

In your Zotero exported bibliography file, it automatically page sets formats and numbers images-" Order citations. I'm getting a hot flush. Writes the references section and so much more. This is all I want in my life. Okay. Oh my God, that sounds amazing. Yeah. Since it's plain text, you write it once, then you apply journal style file to switch journals in seconds.

Oh my God. Or apply blog style and turn your... I didn't read this one before we went to, to print, so. Or apply blog style, turn your paper into blog post, et cetera. I'm sure no one would even write Typst... I'm sure no one... I'm sure one could even write Typst in Obsidian. To get a better understanding, check out the tutorial.

We'll include the link. I think this could be useful for many of your listeners who might not be in the math engineering circles, and thus have never used LaTeX or heard of Typst. Best from Maren. Amazing. Right. So I went and had a look. For those, if you know, you know. Yeah. Yeah. If you know, you know. [01:19:00] Yeah.

You went and had a look. What did you think? I went, I went and had a look. Um, it looks super powerful and, uh, it does amazing stuff. So particularly around formatting, like, kind of like LaTeX work, formatting those fancy math equation things and- Yes ... all of that sort of stuff. Yes. Does a really, really good job of that.

I- Yeah ... my initial thought of it when I looked at it was- But to be fair, I've never learned LaTeX either, so I don't know what the learning curve is there. Um, but my initial thought was I would ha- it's ki- it is kind of Markdown, but it's, it's just enough removed from Markdown that there's, like, you'd have to invest.

I personally wouldn't find use for it in our business, but as an academic, I think that it looked awesome, and I would probably go, "Ugh, okay, I need to learn a thing." But once I'd learnt that thing, I would be so happy as Yeah ... after. So- [01:20:00] Exactly. I think the same. Like, I, I don't- Yeah ... I write in Overleaf sometimes when I write papers with my, um, computer science colleagues, when I write- Oh

my machine learning papers. Good. And I, I really like it. It's a bit of a head, get your head in the game where what you're writing is not what you see. Yeah. So it looks like a right old mess, like the back of the knitting, and then you see- Mm ... the, what it renders a beautiful document. So- Yeah ... and it just handles that complexity that otherwise you're manually handling in Word, so it's worth it.

But like I say, I only do it with my computer science colleagues 'cause exactly what you're saying, there's just enough of a learning curve that I can't- Yeah ... convince the other people I write with. They're just like, "Ugh." Yeah. Like, they can't even go to Scrivener. Like, they can't even- Yeah ... go there with me.

Again, Scrivener- Yeah ... you can't share either, which is a- Yeah ... big limitation. Scrivener and Omni do feel like they're stuck in last decade- Mm ... in that respect, you know? Which is unfortunate. Um, I had a, I had a look at that tutorial. Um, Marin is underselling it here, I [01:21:00] think, in, uh, in their description. Uh- Mm

the, it does image handling, like, so image sizing, placing, all of that sort of stuff, uh, handle, seems to handle it really, really well. Mm. Rendering, all that sort of stuff. Looks really good. Mm. Mm. Um, I re- I recommend it. Excellent. Thank you to- Um- ... everyone who wrote to us. Thank you for the longest mailbag session ever.

We're at one hour 20. Um- I, I think- Thoughts? Yeah. Mm. So I think do you, have you got any SpeakPipe? No No. Okay. That made that very, very quick. Um, the work problem I was going to talk about, uh- We kind of talked about it ... we kind of t- we, we kind of touched on it. Yeah We kind of touched on it with the ClickUp discussion, uh, discussion.

Yeah I was gonna talk about how I'm using this Plus Claude in order to be able to produce our kind of weekly, uh, management report for you, and I was gonna go into a [01:22:00] little bit of detail about how to do that and what some of the thinking was, and how you can use AI to support that thinking. Uh, that may not- May I make a suggestion?

Yes. 'Cause these notes are go- they're gold. They're really good. Yes. I think we should just make the notes available as a on-reg downloadable. Mm-hmm. And we should talk though, right? We should talk about this bigger discourse of AI that we hinted at in the introduction. Mm. Um, and, and how our thinkings and the tensions in our thinking and how it's bringing into our teaching, 'cause I think this is a very, very live issue for academics at the moment in the academic world.

Sure. Sure. Do you- Happy Yes. Just let me, just let me sharpen my knives. That's all I'm saying. Okay.

Um, do you wanna start? I feel, I feel as though I'm bringing a knife to a, like a gunfight though a little bit, but no- No, no. I mean, it's, it's, it's been very interesting to me [01:23:00] because I work with you. Like, you know, I've got a day job- Yeah, yeah ... but I take a lot of time off, like time off my job. Like, I don't get paid many days in the year now because I work On The Reg, and you know, ANU have been really good and really flexible around that.

Plus also, I've just got a monster amount of leave, and they're happy for me to burn it. Yeah. And I'm just burning it doing On The Reg work at the moment. Um, but I like... So I've got a foot in both camps and, um, and you also have a foot in both camps, as we mentioned at the start. Maybe you wanna talk to us, I think we've touched on that one time that you, you were in the room full of haters.

Remember that? Yeah, yeah. So- And you rang me afterwards. You needed to be debriefed from that- Yes, I did ... experience. So- It's- Yeah. Shall we start there- I'll go- ... maybe? Yeah, yeah. I'll, I'll g- Yeah ... like, it's, it's interesting, right? So, um- This is our work problem segment. It's a problem we had to- It's about AI

solve since last we spoke. In this part of the show, we focus on one aspect of work, and what we nerd out about it. Sometimes we tackle problems we've had at work and suggest a thing. [01:24:00] Actually, can I start? Because it is a problem I've had at work. Sure. Go. Okay. Here, here's my problem at work. I do inductions for new PhD students.

Mm-hmm. All right? So we get them in a room, we feed them, we get them to meet each other, we have fun, and at the same time I talk about things like work health and safety and research integrity. And I have this, these presentations, one of which is called Five Tragic Research Mistakes, another of which is called You, Me, and Chatty G, where- Mm

I just talk about, you know, research integrity in the context of everyday work. And my talk about AI has become, over time, uh, more scary because it's really come to my attention that people are not really writing their PhD anymore. Mm. And, uh, so I happened to go to a writing retreat one weekend. I happened to sit next to a lovely student who I won't name, um, who didn't know who I was, bless her heart.

She'd missed induction, okay? So she hadn't got my talk. And, uh, we were talking about something else and I said, [01:25:00] "Oh yeah, um, it's great. Happy to help you with that other thing but, uh, really you booked to see me about writing. This is why I'm here at this writing retreat on the weekend," which I don't do a lot of but occasionally I'll drop into things like this.

And she said to me, "Oh no, I don't need help with my writing," and she flicked and showed me what she was doing, and she was writing her PhD with DeepSeek. And it was basically her typing in one window her thoughts and DeepSeek running, running it, right? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And producing a thesis on the other side.

Mm. Like side-by-side windows. Mm. And I was like, "You can't do that." And she said, "Yeah, I can." I said- "You can't though." And she said, "Oh, my supervisor's doing it." I'm like, "Well, they may be able to do it, but, like, you're a PhD student, and our policy says that if you're gonna use PhD in the writing process, you can only do it the way that an editor, a human editor would work.

And here's the Australian guidelines to editing standards." Mm. "And here's the things an editor can do, and what they can't do is write your thesis from dot points, okay?" Mm. Like, it's just something they [01:26:00] can't do for you. And she looked me straight in the eye, Jason, and she said to me, and I quote, "But I don't have time during my PhD to learn how to write properly."

And I just blinked. I slow blinked, and I said, "What do you think we all did before 2022?" Yeah, yeah. Right. Like, we learned to write properly during our PhD. Yeah. It is a struggle. I get it. I don't like it either. I don't like reading it. I don't like writing it, but it's ... Here we are. This is, this is the language of your workplace.

You need to learn it and not outsource it to a machine. Yeah. What if you don't have access to a machine? What if, you know, what if you're breaking the rules not only here, but you're breaking the rules for a journal? What if ... And I said, this made her stop and think. What if you become a teacher of other PhD students?

How are you going to teach them to write? Mm. So she stared at me in kind of blank confusion. I said, "Go tell your friends." Like- Yeah ... then I told her who, then I told her who I was, bless her, 'cause my title's scary. Yeah. Director of Research and Development. Yeah. She's kinda like, "I'm gonna get [01:27:00] kicked out of my PhD."

Yeah. I'm like, "No. We've had a pedagogical conversation, okay? And which I've afforded you." Prof- Professor. Professor. Yeah. Like, she had no idea who she was talking to. And then I said, "Go tell your friends." Yeah. So I was sitting outside a, like, a glassed-in classroom, and the people ... I saw her go inside, talk to her friends, and then one by one they came out to talk to me, 'cause of course she was like- Ah, right

and they were like, "I'm doing this. Am I allowed to?" I'm like, "No, you can't do that either. No, you can't do that. No. Oh, you can kinda do that. Slippery slope. Here's the line where I would stop doing that," all those kind of things, right? So I had a series- Mm ... of clarifying conversations, at the same time profoundly depressing, okay?

Mm. So the next time I'm in induction, um, my, I tell my team this, and they're like, "You need to be, you know, scarier, Inga." And I'm not, I'm not a very scary person, like, by nature. So I got up and I was like, "Listen, if we find out you're doing this and this and this and this, we'll take your PhD off you." Yeah

after, after that presentation, so in the room I could [01:28:00] see everyone looking at me at the start of my presentation like, "Yeah, yeah, I've got this," and then by the end, slowly it's dawning on them that what they've done all the way through their undergraduate career- You got it ... is no longer an option. Yeah.

And they're going, "Fuck." Yeah. Now look, I know you can learn to write during a PhD, because I started my PhD not really being able to write, and that I taught myself, and there's books- Mm ... and you can do it. Like, there's no doubt you can do it, but you need to invest the time and effort. And I asked myself, quite honestly, I wouldn't have invested the time and effort if I'd had these tools.

No way, man. Mm. I would've been all over it, and I would've been hiding it- Mm ... and I... So I'm profoundly sympathetic. So I'm, I wrote a paper for my committee that I report to, and I'm like, "Dudes, pulling the stop cord on the tram. Everyone needs to stop because we've got people coming through who can no longer have the foundations of writing.

We really need to address this. You gotta teach these people. You can't expect them to just have spent nothing in their [01:29:00] undergraduate career really developing these skills, and then all of a sudden they're meant to be on top of their game. No, we're gonna really have to rethink what we do here to support- Mm

people properly. But also, ban it. Mm. Ban it. Ban it. Mm. Mm. And I don't see any other way through... Talk me down off the ledge because- ... also, some of, some of the s- the more, you know, the kinda managerial type of people are telling me that people, like, not only at ANU but other places, that people are getting to confirmation, first milestone- Mm

they're not able to do it. Mm. Because they've prompted their way to that point- Mm ... and prompting's fallen down, which is a relief, I suppose, that... You know, but for the people that are further along and have got through that milestone, that are still in the system- What are we doing here, people? Like, what are we actually teaching?

What's the point of all this? Mm. How... You go, I've ranted. Mm. That's where I'm at. [01:30:00] Yeah. Yeah, so I, mm, I disagree with the whole banner slot. I've just gotta pat my dog 'cause she's, she's looking at me- ... like, "Why are you yelling?" Yes, go on. Um, yeah, I, I think that we're largely aligned in some of our thinking around this, but, um, I think that banning, uh, AI at the PhD level is a fool's errand- Yeah, totally

Inga. You've been- Yeah. Sorry. I know. I know. Professor Director Inga Meuwissen. Um, I know . I, so I sent you yesterday... I'm just gonna pull it up here. I, I sent you a message, uh, on- Mm ... like, just phones because, like- Old school, 'cause we're boomers, yeah ... old, old, old people send you, send you a message without warning you that I'm sending you a message.

Yeah. Um- Exactly ... and, um, I'm going to, I'm going to... I'm not gonna reveal who, which institution. Mm. But this was really, really driven home to me [01:31:00] when I was doing some work to spin up a harnessing AI for HDR students- Mm ... um, session. Because we often get asked to come in, uh, and to just talk to graduate students about, um, the use of AI, what they can, what they can't do, what the risks are, that sort of stuff.

Um, it used to be really easy because there was no policies across the university sector, and it was like, just roll in. "Here's priming and prompting," you know, kinda, "Knock yourself out. These are the things- Yeah ... you need to worry about," blah, blah, blah. Yeah. But now each institution has its own policy, and so what that means is the development time of these workshops is going up.

Yeah. I've noted this- Uh, Inga, um, I'm spending more time developing workshops individually for institutions, but I haven't increased our prices Yeah, we may need to think about that. So I'm just sort of saying- Yeah ... mm, might have to think about that now. Yeah. But this particular institution, and I wrote to you, I said, "This is where I think [01:32:00] banning gen AI at the PhD level, PhD level is a fool's errand.

Despite," insert university's name- Yeah ... "HDR guidance saying that you can't use gen A for-- gen AI for complex ideas, this guidance on how to use their internal AI," so it's a university that has their own- Yes ... um, a- and at undergraduate level, so this is publicly facing. I found it- Mm. Mm ... just by googling it.

Mm. Um, and it's a nicely branded, formatted, two-page, uh- Mm ... A4, this is what you can do with our AI, this is what, you know, blah, blah, blah, um, specifically allows that kind of use. Um, and then I sh- I shared the document with you. Um, and then I said, "If I've been using AI this way throughout my undergrad master's experience, and then you tried to take it away from me at the PhD level, I'd be like a child who had his lollipop taken away Because on one hand, you can't be giving me lollipops all the time every day and saying, "Good boy."

And then when I get to a particular point [01:33:00] of my development, you suddenly take the lollipop away and say, "Oh, no, that's bad- Yeah ... you can't do that anymore." Yeah. Like, like just, you can imagine if you tried to do that with a human child, what kind of behavioral- Or a dog ... or a dog, what kind of behavioral problems that you would have as a result of that.

Yeah. Like, it would be insane, right? Yeah. So even at the PhD level, I would... I'd be like, "What the fuck?" Like, you have ab- if you had started your undergraduate at a university, had been told... And in fact, I didn't show you another one. Mm. There's another document that I found that talks to you about how you can actually use their internal AI system to build specific agents to help you to do some of this, and the examples that they use, very complex researchy type kind of things.

And it, like, it, it uses this exa- And I'm like, "You're actually saying here what you're banning over there in policy." [01:34:00] And I don't, I think, I think that that's a false error. And what I think that needs to happen, and I'm gonna get some heat for this. Yeah. Sorry. Go on. Sorry, not sorry. Go on. What I think that needs to happen is that supervisors need to have less PhD students.

Yeah. Like, not eight or 10. Yeah. Like, a, a few. Yeah. But to fucking teach them properly. Yeah. Well, I've got- Right? ... three, and that's enough- Right ... if you wanna do your job properly. Right. So- Mm ... and that's where I think the system needs to change. Mm. That, like, you need to have supervisors who are across this technology- Mm

in such a way that they understand what it is. Mm. They still have the discipline knowledge, which is what's actually really important here. Mm. But what it, what it comes down to is going, okay, what you need to do now is that you need to understand that this particular tool has this particular set of affordances, that the way in which you [01:35:00] use the tool is as critical to the outcome as the actual outcome itself.

And you need to be able to explain to a committee what the, what you did and why, and what the outcome was, and why that outcome matters in a particular way. So you still have to have both AI Capability, you need to be able- Mm ... to use that AI tool. But you need to be across your discipline in such a, such a way that you can explain what you did, where it worked, what your human researcher decision-making was when you chose to either accept that, um, output from the AI or you decided to reject it for something else, um, and what that thinking looked like.

And okay, that means that you have to keep a lot more notes, and you have to, like, you have to be way more clear about what you did and how. Mm. Um, but then, but that's what you need to do. And, uh, additionally, your PhD probably needs a whole chapter or [01:36:00] appendix on the use of AI in the PhD. Yes. Yeah, you have to- What you did, how you did it.

I think the very least we have to do that. Like, y- Yeah ... it's an appendix. It's not a declaration at the start. That's kind of some kind of bullshit. No. It needs to be- Yeah ... more like what my publishers demanded of Writing Trouble. Yeah. The upcoming second edition of Writing Trouble, which includes AI in it, and so therefore I did use AI for parts of it.

In fact, I've- Yeah ... calculated how many words in there are from AI, and it's 842 out of a- Oh ... 40, 50,000-word book. I had to give them the exact number of words, which was hard, 'cause I hadn't kept the records because they hadn't asked for that at the start of the publishing process. But by the end, that's what they wanted because they- Yeah

are more in tune with what the legal necessities of it are. But here's a more radical thought, Jason. Huh. Sure. Ban, ban it, ban it all the way through. All the way. Every single... Get... It's, I'm with Cory Doctorow on this. I like, I think it's asbestos in the [01:37:00] walls. I think we'll be- Mm ... digging it out for decades.

Mm. I think that we're... I think that here's the thing, that's, that piece that you read in LinkedIn, which we'll, we'll link, um, was completely- Mm ... one prompt from ChatGPT wrote that. And I- Mm ... I had no notes. It was, like, perfect- Mm ... encapsulation of my argument. Which was that- Mm ... you know, we just, we're getting dependent on these big technological corporations.

We're under-developing people. And, um, we're, we've got people who don't know how to fly the plane properly. And when the instrument- Mm ... fails, they don't know what to do. Mm. And I think we need to go back to our roots, and by that I mean our monastery roots We were monasteries. Yay. We were monasteries.

Monasteries. We produced writing. We, we saved writing. We saved Latin. We did all that, and we did that by going back to doing things by hand and keeping... Being the archivist of the human race, right? [01:38:00] Like- Mm, mm. And so you should enter a university, that's it, no AI for you. Mm. Because this, this whole AI literacy thing is bullshit.

Mm. Don't say AI literacy to me. It's not a literacy. There's nothing easier than using AI, and I know we go around and teach it, and we've talked a lot about how difficult it is- Mm ... for people to get their heads around. But it's not so difficult you can't do it in a three or six-hour workshop. You can do it, right?

Mm. Like, we've taught it all the time. Mm, mm. So it should be taught by people like us after you finish your degree. Yeah. The various ways that you can use it to speed up your cooking. But you should know how to chop the fucking onions in the first place- ... before you use a food processor, or else you never know how to chop onions properly, and you always need- Yeah

a food processor. And so here's the other thought. This is what these broligarchs and these technological corporations and, I don't wanna say that fucking guy's name on the [01:39:00] podcast, but you know the one that starts with T. That's what they all want. They want us- Rent boys. Yeah. They want us to be paying rent for the rest of our lives.

They want us to pay not only rent for our houses, for our software, uh, you know. They, they also want us to pay intellectual rent for the rest of our lives. And that- Mm ... I just think we should just, there's no... Like, you decide, you decide you don't have to come to uni. You don't have to. But if you come to uni, you're just doing it the hard way 'cause we're monks now.

This is what we do. And, and that means a lot of other things. I've put this in my paper up to the committee to say, if we take this position, which I am advocating for, and it has a lot of force coming from p- me, a well-known enthusiast, and I am an enthusiast. I fucking love it. I use it all the time. Yeah, yeah.

But I can still land the plane in the dark without instruments, Jason. Yeah. Yeah. So I think, um, I still [01:40:00] myself have to go through the how much do I do just to keep my hand in, to make sure I can still do it. I make sure I still write my blog. I make sure... Like, I'm practicing all the time because I understand it's like playing the piano, that if I don't use it or lose it, I'm gonna be in trouble myself.

But I will strategically use it, and one of the things I use it for, you know, it's to write papers for committees, though I wrote this one by hand 'cause I felt like it was important. But then my boss said, "If you're gonna write this, you need to benchmark all the policies for the whole sector." That would've taken me weeks.

Yeah. Did I get ChatGPT to do that? Yes, I did. Did I get Claude to check Chatty's work? Yes, I did. And then I wrote, "Generated by ChatGPT and Claude." I'm aware of the irony, okay? But you asked me for a benchmarking thing. I don't have time for that. Here it is. Yeah. If you really wanna go, here's all the links.

You can go and do the benchmarking, what other universities are doing. But I'm advocating that we have the strictest policy in the country, and we show leadership on this, and we just say no. Mm. We just say no. Mm. Like, [01:41:00] my, one of my nieces, Artie, shout out to Artie, did really well last semester, struggled and used no AI.

Got a HD. Yeah. Really felt like she fucking earned that HD, okay? Like- Yeah ... and she was really angry, uh, at classes where she was told that she could use AI because she's like, "I don't wanna use it 'cause I wanna do this myself. I've listened to my aunt and my mother rant about it," like probably, I don't know.

Wherever she formed this opinion, okay? She wants to do it herself, and she said, "Now I'm gonna be compared with all the people who don't." Take my stance. Mm-hmm. So now I'm gonna have to accept that my grades are not gonna be as good as the people who- Mm-hmm ... and same with our PhDs. If we are saying no, then we're gonna have to accept the standard of our PhD won't be as good as it would be if they used it.

I believe that. Like, it will raise the standards of your work. Especially when it's in the hands of an expert, it raises your- Mm ... your expert level to stratospheric. But [01:42:00] it raises average to just kind of okay, and is that what we're here for? No. Mm. Anyway, that's just how I feel about it at the moment. Mm.

Like, it was just, it was just being looked in the eye and being told I don't have time to learn how to write during my PhD, and I didn't have a, I didn't have a get off my lawn response, okay? I didn't have, like, the old days you... I had, like, a moment of fear and anxiety for this young person- Yeah ... who was going out in the world b- being dependent on machines for the rest of her career.

Yeah. 'Cause she will be. Yeah. Yeah. And one day she won't have access. Uh, another example, my son went for a few job interviews, got pretty far in the process- Mm. Mm ... and they were offline, not able to use any AI. Mm. You know? And he was like, "Shit, I'm glad I did my undergraduate before this became, like, the way everyone does things."

Yeah. 'Cause there's no way I could have written that. Yeah. You know? So we're just doing people a disservice. So that's- Yeah ... [01:43:00] I don't know. And I, I mean, and I, and I think you should, the day after you graduate your PhD, fucking knock yourself out. Go hog wild. Use it as much as you want, and come to our workshops and we'll teach you how to use it in a day.

It's a day. Literacy takes years, decades. Yeah. Think about what it took for you to become literally literate, to be able to read and write. It took decades. Mm. Mm. It doesn't take a morning or an afternoon with... I mean, we're good. I'm not, you know... Like, we're great at teaching people. Very good at that . But, you know, but even someone who's in- Last, last one I got 9.5 out of 10.

Like- I know. People, people love it. So, like, save it for, like, come to one of our things, empower yourself in a day, and then y- you're just, like, amazing. So anyway, it's my plea to you if you're listening and you're doing your PhD. I, I just think we need to have this conversation about standards and about, like...[01:44:00] 

We- remember a PhD is a pass or fail, and remember that most people marking your PhD at the moment did it the old fashioned way. Their expectations aren't AI powered. Mm. Okay? So just don't, just don't, just don't do it. Mm. I feel like I'm just begging people- Mm ... not to take drugs, and there's no point. Mm. Mm.

I've gotta cuddle my dog. Okay. Are you away? Uh, as you know- This is where I cuddle my dog. Yeah. Right. Okay. Yeah. It's very hard to have a conversation with you when you disappear.

Oh, look. Little Floofster Little Floofy Little floofy dog. Hey For people who are listening, not watching, uh, on the YouTubes, uh, there's a little floofy dog, Floof She's sleeping on me now Kind of brown and white latte, tea color Yeah. Can I just turn around so you can see her toe beans? Sure I think we've finished our rant.

We- this ends the rant sta- stage of the [01:45:00] Hate List for today No, no, no, no. It, it ends your rant stage. I, like I've still got things to say Okay, you can have a rant. Look at her toe beans. Look at the little toe beans. Yeah, darling, I'll put you down. Okay, thank you for- Thank you for bringing me joy. Thank you, darling.

Where's your piggy? Should we get your piggy?

Oh, my God. Killed, yes. Sick 'em Rex. Go on, you go with your rant. Um, right. So, uh, in a previous lifetime, for my sins, I- Mm ... was deputy director of quality and standards at La Trobe University. Yes, somewhere- Um- ... my memo would've landed on your desk at some point, right? Maybe? Probably, yeah. Yeah. Like, like it would- something would've come across my desk about what you were saying.

Like- Mm ... it would've, it would've hit my radar. Mm. Um, the thing about La Trobe at the time was that, uh, before AI was a thing, so [01:46:00] this is starting to date me now a little bit- Mm ... but, um, ghostwriting was a big problem, right? So students outsourcing their assignments to professional services, professional services to write their assignments on their behalf.

Mm. Um, and so they would go to a website, and they would pay the monies, and student- and these websites would turn around an assignment in, depending on how big the assignment was and how urgent it was, and how much you decided to pay, sometimes as short as 24 hours, um, quite large assignments. Yeah. Wow, really?

They had, they had professional assignment take- assignment writers really, um, that would just kind of turn- All those people have lost their job, haven't they? Well, that's right. They did, right? Because as soon as AI came along- Mm ... all of a sudden that whole market collapsed. Mm. But the response that, um, La Trobe had, and many others, like not just La Trobe, but many other institutions as well, was that they [01:47:00] would blacklist, um, these sites.

So when you were on the La Trobe network, you couldn't get to these sites. So if they knew that they were a particular essay mill or, um, that there was a particular website, they would black banner it at the gate. And so any student or w- would not be able to get access to these things. What we had to do as an academic integrity team was actually get... We had to apply- to the IT people to allow just us on specific machines to be able to have access to these sites so that we could continue to monitor them, um, and see what they were doing and, and all that sort of stuff.

Um, but the, the, the thing that always kind of baked my cookie was, uh, as soon as you disconnected from the La Trobe network and connected- Mm ... to your home network or- Mm ... just your mobile phone and just hotspot it to your mobile phone- Mm ... um, that gate disappeared, right? Mm. And you could [01:48:00] just get straight access to these services and, um- Mm

you could get your assignments ghostwritten, and people were. They, um- Yeah ... we had cases where we were able to, um, establish that it was true that a student- Mm ... had outsourced their work somewhere. Um, we also at the time, uh, had some, uh, students who found themselves, like, kind of got caught up in all of that, uh, found themselves in a little bit of trouble as well.

So- Yeah ... don't deal with shady characters is the takeaway partly- Yeah ... from that little story. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But the other one- Well, the black- the blackmailing was real, right? Like, that's- Yeah ... the real purpose of that kind of operation. It's not to sell it to you once- But- ... but to hold it over you. Right, for the rest of your life.

Mm. Yeah. By the way. Um- Yeah ... but the fact is that just as you were saying, you were telling people not to take drugs, um, the people, some people were, were doing that even though they knew that they shouldn't be doing it Um, they [01:49:00] were heading home and they were doing it anyway. So my argument here is that, um, should you ban it and therefore not have any oversight over it whatsoever, or should you engage with the technology, recognize its harms, and then specifically work with people so that they understand it?

And that, you know, we are in a period of transition here, I think- Mm ... still. I think the unis, uh, and their, uh, the academics that work within them are in a really, really tricky spot because if you think about a- any, um, major transit-- major technological transition that's ever occurred, there's this messy spot, right?

Like we go from- Yeah. Yeah ... horse- we go from horse and cart to, to cars. Yeah. Um, but-- and the bit in the middle means that we also have to build roads and, and petrol stations, and it's not just horse and cart to [01:50:00] cars. It, like, it doesn't just happen like that. There's all of this really messy kinda work that has to go in the middle, and that's, in the literature, it's known as a transition strategy.

Um, you know you're in the middle of it. You have to deal with all the messy stuff to eventually get to the point where you know that you're gonna get to. Uh, if you don't recognize that you're in that transition s- phase, you're, you're often in trouble, right? Because it's so messy, you have to be able to be flexible enough to be able to deal with things that come out of nowhere.

Like, there's a lot of uncertainty, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Mm. Um, that's where we're at at the moment. What the academics are trying to do is that they're trying to actually apply their brain to this particular transition strategy problem, and that's why we're seeing such a diversity of views here, uh, lots of finger-pointing and "yes, but," which is exactly, by the way, what we-- you and I are doing here, uh, like today.

Mm-hmm. "Yes, but what about...?" And, "Yes, but what about...?" And, like- You know, we, neither of us have brought it up, but the one that we commonly get, the objections that we commonly [01:51:00] get are on ethical and environmental grounds, right? Like about- Yeah ... this, this kind of technological, you know, people are being exploited to, to be able to produce this stuff.

Yeah, I always- Capitalism, blah, blah, blah, blah ... I'm, I'm very impatient with that stuff because fast fashion- Me, me too, right? Like, because- You know, do you drive a petrol car? Do you take overseas trips? Shut up. You don't care about it any other time. Suddenly you care about it now. Right. Hmm. Yeah. But, but like I- I'm much more dialed into this, like, skills capability.

Like, that's the only- Yeah ... kind of one that I, I've ever thought was a compelling argument not to. But I, I- Yeah ... don't think that... I think the, let's return to the monastic approach, the banning of AI at the gate at undergraduate level, all the way through to, okay, you're now no longer our responsibility in terms of education.

Go fuck wild. Yeah. Like, you're on, you're on your own now, bro, right? Like, that is, I, I think it's unrealistic, I think it's unsustainable, and I think it misses the fact that this [01:52:00] technology, um, is shifting the way in which we produce and consume knowledge, words- ... at the moment. Yeah. And that it's a much more reasonable position to go, "I don't like it.

I'm unhappy about it. I think that there's a lot of problems with that." Yeah. "But this is the solution, or this is a way that we tackle this," knowing that, you know, that we're in this transition thing, and that there is really, there is no going back. I mean, the only going back bit that you will see around this sort of stuff for- you know, advanced economies, uh, for want of a better term, um, is, uh, like artists, artisanal stone mason kind of like people who keep those kinds of skills alive, um, because they're useful in particular parts of the economy.

Like, so I was in York, um, when I, when I went to the UK, [01:53:00] uh, and we walked past, uh, the big cathedral that was there. Yeah, beautiful. And it, it's beautiful, right? Like absolutely beautiful. It's astonishing, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Undergoing renovations at the moment, and you can see like they've fenced off some areas, but you can look through the fence and you can see where the stone masons are actually carving out the stone to replace the various different bits of this, this cathedral that's crumbling down.

Like that skill has largely disappeared, right? There's a probably a vanishingly small number of people who can actually do that anymore. Yeah. Um, but you know, we still value that work, but in that very, very little minor space. And so when it comes time- Yeah ... when it comes time for the cathedral to be rebuilt, w- um, and we, and we require stone masons to do that, we pay them a shit ton of money because they're the only people who've got those skills.

But that is a strategic decision that you make, uh, when you enter stone masonry, is that you go clear-eyed into the future. Calls for my services here are probably not gonna be very big [01:54:00] Right? But I'm gonna do it because I believe in stone masonry. I think that it's a skill. There is enough going on in the economy where there are enough old buildings that require my abilities to keep me alive and to feed my family and to, and to do all that sort of stuff.

And by the way, I f- I fucking love ch- chiseling rocks, right? Like, what- whatever it is that, that floats your boat. But let's not- I don't know. I don't know, though, writing and- I don't know ... writing is sort of linked with thinking, and maybe- Yeah ... it's only linked with thinking because that's the way that we've learned how to do this kind of thinking, and maybe we find...

I'm sure, like I, I back humans. We'll find other ways to do that kind of thinking. That, it's not... That's not even so much my concern. My concern is who owns it, who controls it, what kind of access- Yeah ... do you have to it, can you do it without it? These are, these are my concerns. And, like, and if I never have to read another academic and paper in my life, I'm not sad about [01:55:00] it.

Mm-hmm. Like, maybe one, one thing we have to consider is the kind of level of writing. We've taken writing as a proxy, writing a particular style, a particular fashion- Mm ... we've taken it as a proxy for smart. Mm. Because it does require incredible skill set, incredible dedication to be able to- Yeah ... and to time on task to be able to do that.

It is the stone masonry of the highest order, right? Mm. So what you've done with this technology is you've taken away all that time. Like, you keep telling me, like, the thing about AI is speed and scale. Speed and scale. So this is where speed and scale are affecting, right? So no longer does it take a really long time to make that artifact.

So how are we judging you on your thinking abilities? I think we need to shift that disc- and that is happening to some extent with oral exams, and I'm actually pleased to see that, you know- Mm ... really take traction, and that more oral examinations throughout the PhD where experts are testing [01:56:00] experts, I think is, is a way through there.

Um- Mm ... and that we should... I've always been, I've always, as you know, been we should get rid of the dissertation. The assessment alignment is all wrong. Yeah. Right? 'Cause what are you really testing- Yeah ... through the- Yeah. Yeah. So, so maybe this just hastens the demise of the dissertation, which in theory I'm in favor of, okay?

And, like, I'm not saying- Yeah ... all this because I make- a large portion of my living teaching writing, 'cause I don't really. Like, I can do it, sure, and I'm good at it- Mm ... and I write books about it- Mm ... and stuff. But, like, if you said to me tomorrow, "You don't teach writing," there's many other things I teach.

Like, I've- Yeah ... always kept many tools in my sack. Mm. And I don't love teaching writing, so I wouldn't miss it. I just, I'm just thinking, well, so maybe what needs to change is what academic writing is, like whether we keep doing it that way or whether we teach other ways. And now, now that maybe it's made not only words more [01:57:00] accessible but image-making more accessible, that- Yeah

more time is spent doing diagrams and, um, you know, some more visual representations, which are really effective ways to capture knowledge about chemistry- Mm ... about physics. You know, they're big drawers. Yeah. Yeah. Um, you know, m- what happens if you start to bring that more into the humanities and into these writing spaces?

Like, this is a potential to rethink, and I'm sure you're right, like we're in a transition period, and we'll get there. And I can't help reflecting on my own education as an architect back in the day. I started my architecture degree in '89. We were still drawing and using dial line machines, and I learned all the pen weights and all the ways you cross your corners.

I learned how to do lettering. And by the time I finished my degree, no one was doing that anymore. It wasn't being taught. And I remember my teachers lamenting. Yeah. You know, "Look, you really have to. If you don't draw it this way, you can't understand how a building goes together." I was like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, old guy, whatever.

Okay, I'll [01:58:00] learn it- Yeah ... if I have to, whatever." And now- Yeah ... they can't draw elevations anymore. Like, I asked a friend of mine, "Can you get me a student to draw me an elevation for my house? I can't be bothered. I could do it myself. It takes me too long. I don't have the right software anymore." And he goes, "No one knows how to do that anymore, Inga.

They'd have to do the, build the whole house in 3D and then take an elevation snapshot." I'm like, "You fucking kidding me. What?" Yeah. "They can't just draw an elevation?" He goes, "Those days have been gone for a while. You've been out of- Yeah ... the industry for 20 years." Like, what those people were predicting in '89 has come true, and the world hasn't stopped.

Yeah. Buildings are still being built, right? Yeah. So, like, I'm, one part of my brain is aware of this, and, and, like, I have lots of conflicting feelings. I just, it's, it's the reliance on the technology that I just cannot, I just, I just can't get over that. But we've always- Dependency relationship. Yes ... I got- But it's [01:59:00] dependency rela- I can buy a pen from a store or buy a pen from another store.

It's not the way we Claude Fable. Like, they gave me 48 hours of access to Fable, and I was like, "This is fucking great." Right. Oh my God, it was like driving the fastest... Like getting from my old petrol car into a Tesla for the first time. It was like, blew your hair back. Yeah. This is the future. I'm never going back.

Fucking love Fable. Incredible. Then they took it away- Yeah ... from me. And I was like, "Well, fuck." And I had this moment where I'm like, "Well, now we have to start paying $300 a month for me as well." And then I'm like, "Wait. You're paying the extra for ChatGPT. For our business purposes, it's probably good we've got a foot in either camp.

That you've got the- Yeah ... Claude knowledge and- Yeah ... expertise. I've got the ChatGPT side of things. If one of them goes down, the other one's still there." And then I thought, I even have to start thinking in these terms. Like- Yeah ... I can't, I cannot run... But then, you know, probably I can't run my health without my injections of my GLP, which is some sort of lab all the way.

[02:00:00] You know, like, we live in an advanced society here and, like, I don't know what the answer is. I just, it makes me upset. Yeah. I don't like it. Look, I, I to- I totally get it. But, um, I, mm, uh, I'm not- Yeah ... b-

I'm not boosting AI b- for the sake of boosting AI. Like, I- No, I know you're not. No ... I, I bring, I bring- We don't do that here. We don't do that ... we don't do that. Like, I bring- But we, we love it ... a, a critical- We do enjoy it ... a critical view to- Yeah ... uh, to it as well. Yeah. Uh, it, it's just that if I had to, if I had to bet my money, if I had to bet my house- Yeah

and I'm not. Yeah. Just to be clear, internet- Yeah ... I'm not gonna do that. Yeah. If I had to bet my house on the direction of where this, this technology's gonna go, I know that it's not, it's not gonna go away. Um, you only have to look at the open weight, open source models that are out there now. Like, you talk about dependency, it's a dependency on the [02:01:00] frontier models that have a rent extraction- Yeah, but you can't-

attached to them ... you can't... Even those, even those open weight models, to actually make them run at anything like even a basic ChatGPT, the amount of money you're gonna have to spend in hardware and the amount of expertise you're gonna have to have to make that, to riddle me that. Like if- Yeah ... our business wanted to buy even the most...

But I looked into it, 'cause I thought, I've felt all kind of, you know, what happens if ChatGPT goes away and now you're using Claude in ClickUp? And I've just been thinking about us, Jason, thinking- Hmm ... what do we do? Do we buy ourselves a fucking shit hot server? Do we get Matt or someone to help us do a local install of one of those?

And I'm still interested in doing that. I looked into the pricing of those servers. Hmm. $16,000. Whew. And it would last you two years So it might just be a business expense you have to factor in come time in the pipe. You know, and they're gonna start pricing their subscriptions to match that, you [02:02:00] know. So anyway, and I've been watching a lot of stuff about on...

I've been watching a lot of YouTube, um, uh, about, you know, just the financing situation that OpenAI and Anthropic have got themselves into. Yeah. I don't see a way out for OpenAI, frankly. Just don't see it. Yeah. Yeah. Anthropic might. So I think OpenAI will be eaten by Microsoft, and then everything will be Copilot now.

Anyway- Oh ... I'll just leave you with that. I'll leave you with that thought because we need to move on. All right. Um, we have not time for book, article, website, except I need to say one thing to you. Sure. H- HBO Mm. The streaming channel, HBO. Mm. HBO, Home Box Office. I have. Sure. Right? Yeah. Okay. There's a show on there called- Bougie.

You're bougie ... there's a ... I, I rotate- You, like- ... okay? You're burning tokens in the background, like, streaming- I know, my streaming habits ... streaming Yeah, gone. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Um- How did we do entertainment before TV, before streaming? I know, right? Yeah, that's- Right ... that's what I wanna know. Like, before- The illuminated manuscripts-

[02:03:00] Jason. Okay. There's a show on there that if you have got HBO, I highly recommend. Lots of people told me to watch it at the time, and I just didn't, and I was wrong. Mm. Um, it's called Rooster. It's set in a- Ooh ... small liberal arts college. It's got Steve Carell from The Office, not playing The Office character at all.

It is heartwarming, delicious. It's sort of not realistic at all about academia, and yet deeply and strongly realistic about academia. I loved it. Me and Luke loved it. We mainlined it- Oh ... like crack over two nights, could not stop watching it. Uh, you know, on my side podcast I've done Academics Talk About the Chair on Netflix.

Mm-hmm. Mm. Um, then we did Academics Talk About Severance. I think we might have to do an Academics Talk About Rooster. Um, because- Mm ... anyway, do yourself a favor, Jason. If you've got HBO or you wanna buy HBO, uh, watch it. It's great. Okay. Um, and also- I- ... [02:04:00] I've been reading, and I've been reading the book you gave me.

Team Dog. Team Dog. R- read it to the child- How to Train Your Dog the N- Navy SEAL way. Yeah. And you've seen, she, her stealth sneak attack is cuteness, and I actually- Does it work? ... wanna teach her kill, but it doesn't really. Yeah. She can't fetch either, but- Yeah ... she sits like a champion. She's ... Before you know it, she'll be busting i- busting down doors and, and tearing terrorists apart.

I reckon she'd be the- Dragging them out by their- ... the perfect undercover dog, right? Like, you could, like, put bugs on her collar and- ... she would just ... And everyone would be like, "Oh, look at the puppy." You, you w- you'd want, like, a little helmet with night vision goggles, right? Oh, yes. Like, and so the... And lasers like they have on the guns, so that, like- Yeah

the infrared ones, so that the, only the people with infrared sights can see them, blah, blah, blah. Yes. Like, and, and then send her into a smoke-filled room- ... with dirty terrorists in the corner somewhere like, "Go get 'em, Tiger." Attack her. Attack her. Attack her. You should see her attack her little banana toy.

You'll see it when you come. Watch- Okay ... [02:05:00] she loves that banana toy. She's got, she's got the animal in her. Uh, you've got a two-minute tip and you've outsourced it. I just- Go for it No, I haven't asked it I know which one. Oh, okay. Oh. No, no. Yeah. I ju- I'm, I'm calling out to Ben Crowle, friend of the pod- All right

also. Ben, haven't spoken to you for ages. Hi, Ben. This, this is what happens when Twitter goes away. And like- Yeah, I know. It fucking sucks ... yeah, we're like, we're Twitter friends. Yeah. We used to just always be... Yeah, I know. Right. Mm. We could just text- Um- ... but we don't. Go on. Mm. Friend of the p- could write a letter, you know, old school.

Yeah. Like before technology. Oh, shush. Yes, go on. Friend of the pod, Ben Crowle, once put me onto a little piece of software called Divvy. D-I-V-V- D-I-V-V-V-I-Y. Y. D-I-V-V-Y. Yeah. It was for windows management. So- Yeah ... in the good old, bad old days, Macs, you, if you wanted to move a window from your, like resize a window or move it onto a different screen or whatever, um, you had to do that manually, like a bloody Neanderthal, right?

Like you had to drag it. Living like an [02:06:00] animal. Living like an animal. Anyway- And not like a bougie animal, like this one. Like not like a- No, no, no ... happy bougie animal. Yeah, like a real animal. Yeah. So Divvy came along to solve that problem with keyboard shortcuts. Mm-hmm. Um, you would press a shortcut, and it would move your active window to like a third on the side, or it would move it- Oh

like you could pr- in the middle- Oh ... or you could move it to half the screen. Oh. Like just instantly it would snap into place. it was awesome. Um, but then they, for whatever, like once it was built, it just did its job really, really well. Uh, but then Macs, um, moved over to, uh, Apple silicon off the- Hmm ... Intel silicon, and then it broke, and it stopped working.

Wow. Oh. And I was like, "Ugh," sad. And then Macs released their own internal window management stuff now. Yeah. So you can do this natively on the- Which is okay. Yeah. It's okay. It's not great, right? It's alright. Um, and I was like, "Oh, God damn it. All right, fine." Um, I bloody loved it, and then, but the other day I was like, the [02:07:00] Mac version just, just doesn't do it, so I went looking for an alternative, and I've come across one.

It's open source. This is for our Windows friends as well, even though I- Oh ... I, I computer shame them. You judge. Yeah, you computer shame. I do judge. Which is wrong. Yeah. It's wrong. Yes. Um, I came across an alternative, open source, free, although you can- Oh, wow ... pay, pay for a pro version, but there's no, it's not naggy.

It doesn't make you pay for it. It's just like, if you want, you can buy the pro version for 14 bucks. Um, it's called Rectangle. Hmm. Um, there's a link in the show notes at the bottom. Uh, it's an awesome window manager. Um, and it, uh, super powerful. Uh, it's like you can set key bindings like you used to be able to- Hmm

in Divi. I haven't done that yet. Hmm. Um, I put it in, it lives in my menu bar at the top of my, uh, at the top of my computer thing, and I just like click on that, and then literally it drops down. There's like 30 different ways that I could make windows move a- [02:08:00] around my screens and stuff. Um, you can have like a third, an up, and like a little bit in one corner, and a little bit in that, and like all sorts of crazy shit.

Like it's really, really good. Um, uh, it's enough for what I'm doing. The free version is enough for what I'm doing. The power users might like the pro version, uh- Hmm ... but I don't think you need it. Hmm. Like it's bloody awesome. It's really, really good. And I now snap my calendar, my text message app, um, and like into thirds on this screen over on the left.

Um, and so they just kind of sit there happily doing their thing. Um, and then I work on the kind of the other screens, uh, kind of full size and stuff. Yeah. So it will be important on your, your whole setup, which is very Star Trek Enterprise level- kind of screen architecture that you've going on there. Mm.

So, uh, Whitney- As opposed to mine, which is just pretty basic. But I, I'm a mess with my Windows, so I need to check this out. Y- um, you know [02:09:00] how, uh, you and Luke convinced me to move from a desktop Mac to a MacBook Pro- Yes ... um, as my main machine? Yes. I, like, I cra- I cracked it the other day, and I'm like, "This is shit.

I hate it. I'm gonna go back to my desktop Mac." And do you know what stopped me? Mm. The Claude integrate- Like, I've been using Claude so long on my laptop that it- Yeah ... knows all about me, and it stores all of that stuff in weird places on my laptop, and I don't know where it stores it. And so if I was to suddenly start working off my perfectly good Mac desktop, um, it, I would lose all of that context Again- Yeah

dependency relationships Right. I'm sure there's a way around that, and like I'm- I'm sure there is- People are- ... but you don't want to, and they'll just make it- But people in the- ... just painful enough, right? Pe- people will like, they'll go, "We'll get a flood of stuff to the pod@ontheredteam.com." Yes. Um- Write to us

[02:10:00] we, we- What do you think? We'll get a- Yes ... we'll get a heap of about, "Look, Jason, it's really easy. This is all you have to do to fix that problem." But- Yes ... um, yes, anyway, that's, I, dependency, yes, absolutely. You can also, on the YouTubes, you can put a comment down below, and you should also like- Mm ... and subscribe, which we're at just, um, two hours and nine minutes, so I'm gonna read us out.

Um, I- Because the, also the dog needs dinner. Okay, cool. Who is looking at the comments, like of us on YouTube chat? Oh, I don't go in there very often, but um, it's our old, um, On The Reg Team, so you can log in and have a look. I'll show you how- Mm ... when you come down. Okay. So we- Also my head- headphones are just running out.

I'm down, down to one now. Okay. All right. Okay. We'll talk. Technology. Thanks for listening. We love reviews. There might be a review. I haven't read it, sorry, but if you leave one next time, I promise I will. Just scroll down and get typing. Like and subscribe as they say on the new YouTube land. [02:11:00] Give us a thumbs up.

Ring that bell. And hey, if the hype button's available to you, hit the hype button. Helps other people find us. If you want- I don't even know what that is ... your question featured, you can write to us, pod@onthereedteam.com or Speak Pipe- We've got an empty mail bag now. So it's like- speakpipe.com/thesiswhisperer.

Jason said he's having a break from socials, needs to change his show notes. He's actually there on LinkedIn, where- Mm ... it's 2026, it's a burning bin fire. LinkedIn is what we've got. Friend us. We have no boundaries. Um, and you can message us there, just like old school DMs. Um, we've got an On The Reg Team page that you can find.

Mm. And it's in the show notes. Uh, costs about $1,000 a year, though it might be cheaper if we take up our listeners' invitations to look at the- Well, listen ... listeners', uh, suggestions. Um, so but if you do wanna support our work, $2 a month on our Ko-fi site, link in the show notes. Um, we said we'd enlist people, [02:12:00] which we haven't done either.

Thank you so much, but all of that really helps the wheels of the bus go round. We are a small business. We're doing well, but it's the bones of our arse existence, isn't it? Like we would, we're, we're going as fast as we can, captain, and it's, it's covering your lifestyle, keeping you in shoes. But- Yeah, like we've, we don't have any corporate offices here.

We're literally like We do have to think about spending, and we did have a long, long discussion about a $30 Coles receipt the other day, because that's what we have to have long discussions about in a very small business like we have. Yeah. Yeah. So thank you for supporting the pod. We're back to our normal schedule We are back.

I make that promise to you, J- Jason. When you come down next week, we'll record another version. I'll get this one out as soon as possible. The dog still has gone back to sleep again because she's bored, and she said it's gone on too long. So it's goodbye from Canberra with me and Latte.

It's, uh, signing off from [02:13:00] Melbourne? Signing off from- From Melbourne. And we'll catch you next time ... with no Latte. Um, with no Latte. Although you do have your Ginger. I haven't seen Ginger today, but I'm sure she's around. Yeah, probably. Correct, yeah. Um- She, whatever. All right, and we'll see you next time. Bye.

Bye, Jason. Bye.