🎈Book launch! The Penguin Book of Existentialist Philosophy edited by Jonathan Webber Wednesday 12 November 2025 : 18:00 - 19:30 Oat & Bean, 26 Park Place, Cardiff CF10 3BA Everyone is welcome! No need to register. Just turn up!

24 October 1945: Sartre gives a lecture on existentialism in Brussels and one Iris Murdoch is in the audience. From her notes, this was clearly a version of the now rather famous lecture he was to give in Paris five days later.

Books. No cookie preferences. No cookies. No GDPR. No pop ups. No bots. No floating videos. No AI. No ads. No trackers. No misinformation. No fascist techbros. No distracting animations. No paywalls. No influencers. How good are these things? Books are frickin awesome

Police officer, running up to me: "Stop, what's that brown liquid you're pouring into the drain?" Me: "It's 1,000 gallons of untreated sewage" PO: "Phew, I thought for a minute it was a few dregs of coffee"

Post 16 White Paper is out at last www.gov.uk/government/p...

I think it's excessive to remove all his titles. He should have just been downgraded to The Marquis Of Granby, or maybe The Slug And Lettuce.

“the accumulated knowledge of generations … is stored in universities as it is stored nowhere else, and it continues to be produced there, patiently and as far as the wide world goes almost anonymously, by generations of scholars in communion with each-other”

Calling English a 'rip-off degree' is one of the most blatant exhibitions of personal barbarism I've ever seen. You've demonstrated nothing but the poverty of your own mind.

British monarchy encloses 150 acres of public land for their private use.

UPenn professors have responded forcefully to the Trump administration's that colleges sign a "compact" in order to secure funding: "When an invitation is accompanied by consequences for not accepting it, it is in fact a threat, not an invitation." aaup-penn.org/statement-by...

“AI has turbocharged the spread of bullshit and falsehoods. It is not able to produce actual, qualitative academic work, despite the claims of some in the AI industry. As researchers, as universities, we should be clearer about pushing back against these false claims by the AI industry.”

Anyway, you do have to wonder what this means for "growth": yesterday's ID proposals are *designed* to make access to work more difficult for people on low incomes, and they come with the side effect of potentially squashing a growing domestic technology sector.

“After nearly a decade of mutilating the country to address the ‘legitimate concerns’ about immigration, we’re still being told the precise same nonsense we were told in 2016, or in 2005.” — @iandunt.bsky.social

“Either we have copyright law or we don’t. Either plagiarism and the theft of intellectual property are anathema to higher education or they aren’t. We’re either modeling academic honesty and integrity to our students or we aren’t.”

“AI has turbocharged the spread of bullshit and falsehoods. It is not able to produce actual, qualitative academic work, despite the claims of some in the AI industry. As researchers, as universities, we should be clearer about pushing back against these false claims by the AI industry.”

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

“Assuming scrubbing-brush man wasn’t Banksy himself, though, he inadvertently produced a new work of protest art. The silhouette of the image has seeped into the stone of the court buildings and is at least as powerful as the original image. This could well have been Banksy’s intention”

"Uh, I think it's the wifi..."

I'm sorry, worldwide, irrevocable, non-exclusive, transferable permission to my voice and likeness? For what now? In any manner for any purpose??? This is in academia/.edu's new ToS, which you're prompted to agree to on login. Anyway I'll be jumping ship. You can find my stuff at hcommons.org.

#philsky A Sad Philosophy Workshop GRIEF, HEARTBREAK, & HALLUCINATIONS Pilar Lopez-Cantero (Antwerp) Becky Millar (Cardiff) Lucy Osler (Exeter) 13:30-17:30, Friday 26 September 1.57 John Percival Building Cardiff University Free! All welcome! Register here: bit.ly/CdfGHH#philsky

In Vienna for the Railway Aesthetics conference, which takes place in and around trains, including several night-trains on the trajectory Vienna – Bucharest – Istanbul. Program includes a panel at the Royal Salon in Bucharest & visit to the Energy Museum in Istanbul lievenameel.hypotheses.org/2605

Coming soon –– The Penguin Book of Existentialist Philosophy edited by me :: available now to pre-order from all good bookshops (and that bad one) :: –– contents pages are in the thread below. #philsky

“It is important to get this right,” said Vallance. “We must not get bound down on measuring things that we cannot.” www.timeshighereducation.com/news/patrick...

Public First has found higher education is in the top 3 for exports in 102 constituencies demonstrating the essential role universities & international students play. Public First has also found that international students raise living standards in every UK constituency.

I see Simon Jenkins has written his universities article again.

“A legitimate PhD-level expert in anything,” they said. “Show me a diagram of the US presidents since FDR, with their names and years in office under their photos,” I said.

Some photos of former participants in these cultural colloquia: a very young (pre-Beauvoir) Jean-Paul Sartre, Martin Buber, Martin Heidegger, Paul Ricœur, and Gabriel Marcel

. . Happy *100th* birthday, Frantz Fanon! . . To celebrate, here is Rethinking Existentialism Chapter 8 –– Black Skin, White Masks –– free to download for one week only :: bit.ly/RethExistFan... . . #philsky

To celebrate the 100th anniversary of Frantz Fanon’s birth, we’re sharing this archive Essay on the existentialist philosophies of Fanon and Simone de Beauvoir, which offer important insights into the nature of prejudice #FrantzFanon @jonathanwebber.bsky.social buff.ly/HhoUcNp

"People must see themselves as the authors of their own emancipation." Excellent new open-access article on the dangers of externally induced regime change with particular reference to Iran –– –– coauthored by Cardiff philosopher Patrick Hassan.

Superb keynote lecture from Betty Cannon to round off #UKSS2025

Superb keynote lecture from :: Kate Kirkpatrick :: @philosofemme.bsky.social on the influences of various readings of Hegelianism and responses to it in Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex. #ukss2025

Kierkegaard on why you need to actually do the work rather than, say, have an AI write your essay for you —

My take on the toppling of the Colston statue, published five years ago today at @thequietus.com

I’m very honored that this happened. For me of course, but also because in this time of constant threat against academia and especially against academic philosophy, it’s a little hope that some people see the importance of what we collectively do.

Excited to announce our CfP for this international conference co-organised with colleagues from the Uo Ioannina, Uo Athens, Ionian U, Aristotle U, and FORTH-Hellas. It's on the ethical, legal, and political challenges posed by BCIs, Neurotech, and AI: politech.philosophy.uoi.gr/conference-2...

When a book falls open at the right page. From Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching.

Here is over there. #bristol

“The powerful do not need free speech protections. They can do what they damn well like. It is the powerless who require them.” — excellent article from @iandunt.bsky.social ::

Sleep matters! Highly flammable! Toxic to fish!

In case it’s helpful …

Book launch! Meaning: A Very Short Introduction by Emma Borg and Sarah Fisher Wednesday, 26 February 2025 18:00-19:00 Cathays, Cardiff Full details ––

Anyone aged 18 and older in Leicester, Leicestershire, or Rutland can sign up to the libraries for free and borrow up to 10 books at a time. liberalengland.blogspot.com/2025/02/all-...

— The Woman Destroyed — :: Exhibition of Hélène de Beauvoir’s paintings opens in London this Friday. :: Runs until 2nd March.

Excellent discussion of my paper at the philosophy of education group at Birmingham — thank you! — hope I wasn’t too distracted by the spectacular views from the seminar room window.