Looks like I’m a historian. Senior Lecturer at UWestminster: wrote a book about the memory of colonialism in Britain and France, and another one about the pitfalls of memory politics in post-WWII Europe. Dogs are better.
I think this is the saddest point about the whole debate around UK higher ed right now, when we forget expanding universities was a choice about public good, not employability metrics.
Glen O'HaraBetween the 1970s and 1990s the UK state made a strategic bet to expand Higher Ed. They poured in untold billions of your money. Now it's been handed over to private creditors to burn in a furnace. Then they just laugh at you: at all the taxes you've ever paid or will ever pay. True story. (2/2)
It really is odd (as in personally dispiriting) to see how much of the European and especially US left has embraced the silliest type of nationalism in so many cases, completely forgetting there should be at least some anti-nationalist strain in the very DNA of the left?
Alexander ClarksonIt is rather bizarre to see so many on the European and American Left embrace myths of Iran's supposed 2500 year continuity as a state that have their origins in Pahlavi-era nationalist identity narratives
Are we still a serious country? Discuss.
Jessica ElgotIncredible amount of Binface truthers on the other place
Cranks splitting the pro-Binface vote.
Sam FreedmanPiers Corbyn is also standing in Clacton. Lucky lucky Clacton.
Over the last few days I’ve become obsessed with all the “no petrol” videos from Russia. Here’s a good thread about what it all means.
Cédric Mas#Russie 05/07 (1) Nouveau fil sur ce qui émerge du pays ces 2 derniers jours. Un pays connecté et industrialisé qui plonge dans le chaos et le collective. Rappel : ce clip UKR sur la question qui émerge « Qu’est-ce qui se passe ? »
The narcissism of small scale. This is us.
Marie Le Contethese debates about what the north is, where it starts, etc etc, always remind me of how geographically dinky England is, if you tried to argue with a French person about whether some north/south line is here or 40 miles down they'd look at you like you were an alien I think
This (and the whole of BlueSky) is the best ever example of Poe’s Law (no, not Murphy’s, but the one that says one should never try to make jokes on the Internet)
Ben AnsellOK, I’m calling it. Burnham to win next election with 550 MPs.
Having spent the last few weeks in the purgatory of organising AI vivas for over a half of my first year students, the thing that struck me most was colleagues’ unhelpful understanding of AI as an individual moral failing (and hence: the students they liked could never, but the bad students would).
Jeff SharletIn winter, I spoke at a faculty event about AI. I was alarmed by the range of faculty awareness. Some believe our students are so "good" they'd never cheat. Yes, cheating's wrong. But systems that explicitly or implicitly incentivize cheating--AI does both--will produce cheating. 11/
This is a very reasonable kind of attitude which I will adhere to.
Dave KarpfYet another newsletter just arrived in my inbox that was clearly written with (by) AI. Look, I'm not being unreasonable here: I am not going to bother to read your newsletter if you aren't bothering to write your newsletter. Have some fucking self-respect, people.