Aston University + gerbil merch thread

[GrimbutGerbil]

By request. The shop is here

https://grimut-gerbils.teemill.com/

It also makes the gerbils very happy if you say hello and share your merchandise on TwitX.

https://twitter.com/Grimutgerbils

Yaaaaaaay!

Runs around like a headless gerbil.

Now I've awoken from my Sunday snoozing I shall get on with deciding exactly which items will be coming to live with me next!

I have no idea what this is about!

Is there another thread that will make everything clear?

Are you acknowledging Barry Wall?

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5060410-thread-2-a-corpus-assisted-discourse-analysis-of-linguistic-transphobia-on-mumsnet?page=21

I think this is the correct page.

It's also worth reading the following thread.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/site_stuff/5057903-mumsnet-corpus

So, on one of the threads about the Aston University Data scraping, it all got a bit out of hand. Someone referred to various of the university protagonists (one of whom was writing a PhD about 'transphobia on Mumsnet'*) as Foucault addled grievance gerbils.

Then I said, "And tonight on the John Peel Show, a full session from the Foucault Addled Grievance Gerbils".

And it was Friday, and I was pissed off with work (still am) so set some gerbil friends to work and by the end of the day we had t-shirts. And now we have mugs and bags.

And yes, I think the origin of the second half of the phrase was originally Barry Wall. But it has come a long way since then.

*I don't think that's the subject of her PhD any longer...

Thanks for the updates.

Then I said, "And tonight on the John Peel Show, a full session from the Foucault Addled Grievance Gerbils".

And here is the two versions of the song that AI wrote the other week about the Gerbils (and Barry Wall has heard both) for the session above!

https://suno.com/song/f84561d1-01ba-46c2-aab8-aaef669653be

https://suno.com/song/f84561d1-01ba-46c2-aab8-aaef669653be

@Boiledbeetle I’m a lurker but had to come to the surface to say that your song is pure class. Fantastic.

It's the deep and meaningful lyrics that did it isn't it!! 😁

I've bought another mug! And another bag! And some T shirts!

I shall remind myself of this fact when I'm eating beans all week!

Gerbils!

😍

I still don't really understand why gerbils but I'm seeing suffragette colours and I'm seeing rodents and i'm liking it a lot
(.......my bank balance is not.......)

There's also a steampunk cat!
https://grimut-gerbils.teemill.com/product/steampunk-cat-short-sleeve/

the cat looks like AI though, and AI hurts artists :(

The cat is most definitely AI, however it did come from our fevered brains of wanting firstly a t shirt for the GC lab rat who was worried that the T shirts wouldn't be in rat size followed by someone requesting a t-shirt being worn by a cat!

@GrimbutGerbil is not doing this for profit. The small amount of profit that she does get (and I think it's pennies rather than pounds) will be donated to a good cause (I've still got my fingers crossed for Sex Matters). It's just us messing around.

Without us mumsnetters there would be no gerbils or gerbil shop so technically no human artists have been harmed, as I doubt anyone would have been prepared to spend the many hours required drawing a Steampunk cat for zero pay!

The Aston University t shirt has made me laugh very much 🤣

Yes, he was.

It was weirdly his birthday the day it all kicked off and he has been alerted to the songs, although not sure if he knows or cares about the full story what with everything else going on.

one of whom was writing a PhD about 'transphobia on Mumsnet'

Correction, supposed “transphobic hate crime” on Mumsnet. I’m still eager to learn what crime is supposed to have been committed, let alone how it was motivated by hate🤨.

My long-sleeved t-shirt arrived on Saturday. Just be warned that it's more sweatshirt weight if you're ordering one - a bargain for £20 though.

I waved the whole 'Foutcuttil Fourcault Addled griigematt gerbils' text under DH's nose. Poor chap is baffled.

I completely agree with this, but as @Boiledbeetle says, no one is making any money out of it. And a real designer has been employed to do all the text setting and - barring the steampunk one - to turn bonkers AI ideas into reality. The garbled text setting was quite hard for a human to do, but despite this, he's not getting paid either.

In addition - and I am about to be pretentious here at a level way beyond what any t-shirt justifies - there is a level at which this is also a project which itself resonates with AI. While there are a whole heap of issues around what Aston have done (waves again to Eden Palmer), two of the biggies are data privacy (harvesting our speech for profit) and the potential for using this to identify individual people. In short, quite like AI. And people on the other threads have been garbling their speech to mess with the algorithms, just as the algorithm messed with the text we gave it. And so, in short, please can I have a good mark for my first year Art College project on AI and free speech?

To be entirely accurate here (just in case anyone is reading), the talk that originally alerted people to Eden's work, and the description still on her supervisor's Aston web page (screenshot below) refer to linguistic transphobia. Her LinkedIn page, which someone did get a grab of before it evaporated, referred to researching transphobic hate crime...

The whole concept/situation/shit show is a bit 'Meta'.

If they'd got back to MNHQ with an apology, a range of deletions and a promise of an enquiry, it would have all blown over in a day.

I have a t-shirt that is almost as wide as my side of the sofa!

Going to go and do some gardening in it now.

I shall touch grass in my grievance gerbil t-shirt.

I might even get a photo for the next time a F.A.G.G. tells me to touch grass on Twix.

Thank you AI generated nonsense merchants. And the grimbut gerbil. And all who sailed in her.