FaceTiming your friends from the gym is weird, please stop

You're going to hear a lot of people saying "well, why can't universities hire US citizens? Isn't there an oversupply of PhDs?" And there is, but you have to understand that neoliberal universities are always, always, always looking for an excuse to fire faculty members.

"Do your own research" is such a ridiculous notion if you know anything at all about actual research

If you use AI to summarize a research article for you, that is a tacit admission that 1) you do not understand what that article argues; 2) you do not know what evidence is presented to support that argument; and 3) you do not have enough information to evaluate either the argument or evidence.

usually I think the BBC coverage of US politics is decent but I've just heard one of the Americast presenters say, without irony, that US-UK relations are now "normalised" (?) and that Starmer's staff must be relieved (??) not to have to worry about Trump anymore (???????????)

We already have summaries of research articles. They are called abstracts. I have written many of them. In fact, I am in the middle of revising one right now.

has anyone considered that both sides of the discourse might be wrong

Finally! 🤩 Our position piece: Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia: doi.org/10.5281/zeno... We unpick the tech industry’s marketing, hype, & harm; and we argue for safeguarding higher education, critical thinking, expertise, academic freedom, & scientific integrity. 1/n

some of you really need your license to critical theory revoked

The way some extremely online people insist that heated disagreement is equivalent to abuse is ridiculous. People criticizing your lukewarm take is not marginalization. Stop minimizing actual abuse and go outside.

been staring at this paragraph in @umich.edu ‘s AI guidance on and off. you have an ethical obligation to feed Sam Altman.

Together with his friend and colleague Hadrian, Theodore of Tarsus is credited by the venerable Bede with bringing song to early Medieval English churches in the late 7th century. Both men were immigrants, Tarsus being located in present day Turkey, and Hadrian originating, per Bede, in Africa.

A college English class where they’re told to use AI to complete assignments. Why bother teaching at all? Especially the languages/literature. I’m sorry but I will judge any professor who does this, especially in fields like English and history

Might fuck off back to the UK and do another degree just to spite the Labour government

The difficulty with knowledge in the university is that you never know which knowledge you are going to need. If the only knowledge that has value is that which is immediately monetizable, what happens when you suddenly need knowledge on Ukrainian Studies? Or how contain a virus?

I can guarantee this man has never met a single American university student

Trumpism combines a promise of blamelessness to its adherents with an obsessive paranoia about contagion and contamination. Nothing is your fault, you are surrounded by agents of infection. Trans people become the ideal scapegoat in this scenario, a perfectly diabolic alien other.

This is an important point. Setting yourself up on a dais under a banner that says "Prove me wrong" is the schoolyard bully's idea of debate. If you take the time to actually watch clips of Kirk "debating" you will instantly see that what is actually sophomoric point-scoring, not genuine debate.

A man just told me I’m not being hysterical *enough*. Nature really is healing.

Side parts are good. Getting your news exclusively from social media is bad.

If you’re on academia dot edu, let me suggest that you strongly consider deleting your account.

Tip for anyone trying to delete their academia account

kirk, shapiro, weiss, milo, etc. all got funded as follows: a rich non-profit backed by billionaires formed student groups on campuses, the student groups invited speakers (paid for by the non profits), then campus rules about speakers mandated those talks go ahead.

Democrats have been doing events in red states and districts for MONTHS. Bernie Sanders' tour has been in West Virginia, Louisiana and Montana. Khanna, Casar, Booker, Murphy, etc. held town halls in districts with GOP representatives. But those don't count because they weren't in the right building?

IT'S OFFICIAL: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York State, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and New York City have formed the Northeast Public Health Collaborative. The collaborative will issue their own vaccine recommendations and coordinate public health efforts.

Why isn’t Ezra Klein concerned that evangelical colleges won’t hire gay professors or bring left-wing speakers to campus? Where is the concern when Fox has a Democrat on air but the host won’t allow them to actually finish a sentence? Is that not also hiding in ideological bunker?

It takes both real effort and enormous bad faith to turn the openness of universities to a wide range of perspectives into evidence that progressives have a bunker mentality but these two lifelong pundits have found a way to do it

The Third Reich didn't last 1,000 years. Pinochet was ousted with a referendum. And the US isn't exactly dealing with the smartest, most competent fascists. Those of you insisting that 2025 is forever need to read a book, touch grass, go to therapy, anything other than trying to make others quit.

Panicking is actually not the best or only thing you can do right now. You don’t need to listen to influencers who are intentionally causing you anxiety. Having a lot of followers on this platform does not give them the right to control your emotions or actions.

they don't have the capacity to compel obedience by the process of law. they don't have the capacity to compel obedience by violence. the only lever by which they can obtain obedience is fear. do not offer it to them.

This is almost as embarrassing as wearing royal purple to meet real royalty.

One of the main issues here is that the speech of mostly marginalized private individuals like students and minorities has been transmogrified into the violation of free speech rights. "Maybe we shouldn't invite this person to speak" is not a violation of free speech. It is speech...

same

I know everything is terrible but consider this: it’s raining in Los Angeles

Bob Dylan. Well known advocate of political censorship.

Beyond cancelling Kimmel's show are about 200 writers and crew members in LA who just lost their full time gig.

The union representing the musicians from Jimmy Kimmel’s band releases a statement calling the FCC’s pressure on Disney “state censorship.”

Life hack: The fastest way to clear off your desk is to move it so you can clean behind it, watch one leg fall off in apparent slow motion, shout for help, and hastily remove everything on top while your partner heroically holds what remains of your workspace roughly parallel to the floor.

Margaret fucking Thatcher had a better stance on firearms regulations than any member of the Republican Party.

Gun control now.

"school shooting industry"

more than a decade of public scholarship has taught me that the moments when it's most tempting to react strongly and quickly are the ones when it's most useful to step back, seek context, and force yourself to think slowly. i don't always follow it, but those are my guidelines for myself.

Perceptions of the popularity of anything Trump does are extremely warped among the chattering classes. A lot of people seem to have convinced themselves that deploying troops to American cities is hugely popular. It has like 58% disapproval!

I don't want to bookmark any BlueSky posts. I prefer my shitposts to drift aimlessly until they are simply forgotten

Dan Quayle couldn’t spell “potato”!

Two kinds of people don’t get why we study religion: people who think religion is bad and not studying it will make it go away and people who think religion is good—but just their own—so keep your critical hands off it. Both are wrong about what religious studies is. (See first comments on op.)

My only problem with this incredible content is that it’s set to a concerto by Antonio Vivaldi, a composer who died in 1741, approximately 130 years before the Gilded Age began.

I’m so sorry for all the times I was this person at the faculty meeting

you are not going to get it all done in one day and that’s not a moral failing, it’s the nature of the construct of time