The candles on the alpaca cake were still warm when the advice started. 🦙🎂 My daughter is ten. We must now perform "distance." My ND brain hears a suggestion and translates it at 100mph into an IMMEDIATE MANDATE to rewire our entire life. 🧠💨 I am the wrapped mother.

'In 2023, UK universities spent a total of £500m on education agents – but there is very little oversight of how these agents operate.' 'Once students got their offers, they were passed on to the visa team, and finally delivered to universities as a fully wrapped, fee-paying package.'

Human judgment tells me this is a v v v v v bad idea.

Anni Albers is the best visual artist in the world (says me)

'Sexism in football - a problem that isn't going away', covered by BBC Sport including an interview with @staceypope.bsky.social as a leading expert on female football fans and gender inequality in sport. Take a look at the full BBC Sport piece: www.bbc.co.uk/sport/footba...

The read of all PullRequest reads, compliance and incompetence.

"He read the laws, decided compliance was the correct response, and went to work." www.sambent.com/the-engineer...

Our spin-out company Nevrargenics has won the @bionow.bsky.social Project of the Year Award for its pioneering work on a potential new treatment for neurodegenerative disease. Learn more: www.durham.ac.uk/news-events/...

We are running on neuro-burnout and fumes while the modern Higher Ed machine demands perfectly sterilised engagement metrics. They don't give a flying f*** if students actually learn, just so long as the spreadsheets are green and the consumer surveys hold steady.

Read about how British companies profited from slavery in Brazil longer after abolition, from our @durhamhistory.bsky.social Honorary Fellow Joe Mulhern, in @theguardian.com. @anthempress.bsky.social @tiagorogero.com

The modern "diversity" hustle is just a bureaucracy of dissent - designed to pacify anger, not redistribute power. I wrote about the relentless EDI tax, the physical toll of being a disabled woman in academia, and why my new default boundary is the hardboiled, uncompromising "no."

The algorithm demands we be searchable, but some truths are too visceral for the feed. 🌊 My new post is a meditation on "The Metadata of Silence." Moving from Viola’s disguise in Twelfth Night to Prospero’s release in The Tempest, I’m exploring why we exist in the Uncategorised folder.

Article on equitable health AI for #LGBTQIA+ people and communities. open.substack.com/pub/cervixsa...

I legitimately think Sam Altman should be tried for crimes against humanity

Honestly never could have predicted that My Temu Therapist™️would figure prominently in AI adoption

Even if this system had been trained by real therapists, I would be very concerned about it not having any kind of supervision.

Did you know that @durhamphysics.bsky.social researchers are involved in the search for life on distant planets? They're investigating how a UK-led team could design and build a core instrument for the new NASA Habitable Worlds mission due to launch in the 2040s 👉 tinyurl.com/3fmwfyur

Oh we must read and appreciate the composition of sudden find-outness. ‘Andrew’s aghast eyes echo The Scream’: is the arrest photo the ultimate royal portrait? www.theguardian.com/artanddesign...

My view on the Time Allocation Survey that UK university staff must complete to log how they have spent their time: It is tiresome, burdensome, technologically clunky, bureaucratic, financialising, and generally symptomatic of contemporary university management. I have always hated it.

We’ve been told our #neurodiversity is a "#superpower" only when it produces a Return on Divergence. I’m done with that script. open.substack.com/pub/thatprof...

Willow’s Valentine 🏹🐾 Cupid napped; Willow swiped his spark to fire her Caturday spa day. This grooming bath is a sovereign cure for the soul! I hied a distempered guest, only to find my heart’s heat where Cupid first found his: in those calico eyes. #caturday

🖥️Who holds power in a digital world?📱 💡 @thatprofmaz.substack.com from our Business School researches how AI, digital culture & accessibility intersect to influence modern life. Her work pushes for tech that supports everyone, not just those it already empowers 👉 bit.ly/4tsBR7j

To watch someone through a digital ledger is to pay for stale data in the currency of your own time. On the Patricia Highsmith Paradox, the physics of the emotional "Pang," and the mathematical certainty of becoming unreachable. The signal is now encrypted by the simple act of being truly gone. ⬛

In the flickering light of the Yorkiwara, one must possess eyes that see both the light and the dark. My face is split like the dawn and the dusk-a mask worn for the sake of justice. 🏮 To catch a thief, one must move like the mist and strike like the mountain wind. #Caturday

The SaaSpocalypse is a Case of Identity. 🕵️‍♂️ I woke up a Professor. By 10:39 AM, the air had turned thin, and I was a fugitive. While we play with "prompts," $830B has been spirited away into the Highland mist. The boat is leaving. The land is yours.

I’ve spent 20 years acting as an unpaid PR agent for the Information Age. Every year, I sold my students the “glossy brochure” of digital labour. The beach. The coconuts. The "Digital Nomad." This year, I couldn’t get the words out.

We are often taught that love is "grabby" - that it’s about status or possession. But inspired by the novel The Ministry of Time, I’m arguing for a different definition:

Amazon is the ultimate Margarine. 🧈 It mimics the "yellow flood" of care, but it contains no nutrients. It is a simulation of sustenance served to us in a cage we are too tired to leave. My forensic audit on why we hug the Jailer, feat. Foucault, Parmy Olson, and Asako Yuzuki. #HigherEd #Butter

We don't buy productivity books because we want freedom. We buy them because freedom is exhausting. We are drowning in choice. We don't want a guru; we want an Administrator to absolve us of the burden of our own potential. Why do my students prefer the Cage to the Open Field?

I don’t know if there will ever be structural or legal accountability for the people in epsteins world … but you, yes you, can shame anyone who tries to normalize them. No speeches. No gigs. No public events. Boo them in restaurants. They come to your professional meeting, put up banners.

Am I still his daughter? Or was 'Daughter' just the first architectural extension I built to please a landlord?" I’m exploring the archaeology of the 'I' after the collapse of the 'We.' This is about moving from a temporary camp to a permanent foundation. Warning: Contains ghosts.

The Dark Portal: How to Teach the "Zeroed-Out" Generation open.substack.com/pub/thatprof...

To teach the "COVID Generation," I’ve had to go back to the sewers of Deptford. 🐭 My latest essay uses Robin Jarvis’s The Deptford Mice to explain why students are "zeroing out" in seminars. #EduSky #RobinJarvis #AcademicChatter

“Do not speak to me of kibble. My soul belongs to the crags." She tolerates the living room with the weary fortitude of a Brontë heroine trapped in a parlor. A Wuthering Heights in miniature, judging the Lego chaos with silent, brooding disdain. Happy #Caturday from Heathcliff. 🥀🐈‍⬛

City dwellers urged to take photos of the stars. 🧪 🔭 #astrophotography www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

This is the final week to apply to our Medical Humanities in Practice Research Fellowship Scheme! ⏳ Applications close 30 January 2026, 12:00 PM (noon) Find out more and apply 👇 medhumsplatform.org/practice-res...

The #BartonFile is a forensic study in Digital Integrity. From a £516k "Hate Tax" to an 18-month suspended sentence, we’re seeing the structural collapse of a digital bully. @thejeremyvine.bsky.social - The High Court just gave us the blueprint for containment. open.substack.com/pub/thatprof...

The $48B "Shame-Free" industry is trying to delete our core hardware. I argue for a Shame-Aware society instead. Your Drop into silence isn't a stain; it’s Biological Sovereignty. Refuse to be a JPEG. Refuse the predatory narrative. Stay human. Stay uncomputable. open.substack.com/pub/thatprof...

Shame isn’t a glitch; it’s a Firewall. If it were a defect, why has evolution - the most rigorous debugger in history - kept it in our code for millennia? In my latest for Permanent Thoughts, I explore why our "Emergency Brake" is actually a form of Protective Intelligence. 🛡️

The 147:1 Ratio is the new baseline. From Sun Tzu’s survival fallacies to the "Digital Drawer" of failure, here is why 6,700 subscribers might just be a stadium full of ghosts. It’s time for a Success Audit. open.substack.com/pub/thatprof...

Willow (the cat) doesn't post daily to the kitchen counter; she waits for the high-quality signal. 🐈⬛ Most growth hacks are just "Short Win" sprints that lead to physiological depletion and machine-made ghosts. Redefining success in a 147:1 landscape.

Over 26,000 have emailed their local trust to keep Palantir out of the NHS. Will you join them? https://notopalantir.goodlawproject.org/email-to-target/stop-palantir-in-the-nhs/?utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=PalantirNHS&utm_medium=social_media

While I spend my week at Durham deconstructing the ethics of machine-first worlds, Willow is busy monitoring the kitchen counter—which, in her mind, is a tactical launchpad for deep-space surveillance. #Caturday

Algorithms are shameless. Your PhD shouldn't be. @leverhulmecal.bsky.social @leverhulme.ac.uk is recruiting Funded PhDs. We don't want "Zero-Shot" thinkers. We want the human capacity to pause & use the brake pedal. If you’re a tank, keep driving. Humans, apply here

Things that are cool, that I did not know.

We’ve spent a century calling Tess of the d'Urbervilles "passive." She wasn't passive; she was biological. Her silence was an emergency brake. My latest on why we need the shame-response to survive the algorithmic life-worlds we’re building. www.mariannhardey.com/technologica...

The mark: a silver sedan. The witness: a tortoiseshell with ice in her veins. She’s been on the sill since the kibble hit the bowl, eyes locked on the asphalt. To you, it’s a nap. To her, it’s a stakeout. In this city, the only thing sharper than her claws is her intuition. #Caturday #Noir

Please help spread the word on this, especially to those who may be feeling cold winds towards their research. We’ve opened the call for our International Fellowships, enabling early career researchers to work for two years at a UK research institution www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/funding/sche...

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Business books are autopsies, not recipes. They dissect a success that has already died. My latest on the $48bn "Stealth Help" economy, the rise of "Quiet Ambition," and why I’m teaching my students to be meteorologists in a world of broken maps. www.mariannhardey.com/technologica...