Would a ban on Christmas advertisements, promotions, municipal decorations etc before the first day Advent be woke or fascist? Whichever. Sign me up.

Remember when we thought Wikipedia was the big problem for academia? Wikipedia. The problem. Those were fun innocent times eh.

What the hell is a speech act, though? I mean, really, what?

CWA Gold Dagger winner #33: Michael Dibdin, “Ratking” (1988). I have nothing much to say about this and probably ought to have turned that fact into a pun on the name of the detective. But I didn't. www.nickwiltsher.com/cwa-reviews/2025/11/18/michael-dibdin-ratking-1988 💙📚

Keep getting emails from an unrecognised address asking me to click a link as part of the university's cyber-security training programme. Of course we all know you shouldn't click links in such emails, so I just delete the emails.

Wasn't the primary motivation for moving to Scotland, but this damp climate is doing wonders for my hair.

I hoyed some coins in the pot to help make this book happen. Maybe you'd like to do the same? After all, supporting actual artists and writers making actual art is a good thing. www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/we-eat-the...

CWA Gold Dagger winner CWA Gold Dagger winner #32: Barbara Vine, “A Fatal Inversion” (1987). No idea what's up with that title. Otherwise quite good. www.nickwiltsher.com/cwa-reviews/2025/10/21/barbara-vine-a-fatal-inversion-1987 💙📚

Oh and ALSO I'm offering a short story critique of up to 5k to help Apex reach their goal! Not only that, but I'll give you advice on where to send it once you're done (and answer your industry questions along the way)! Spread the word!

"Is it a long way to the golf course?" "Well, it depends on what you mean by a long way." THAT'S WHAT YOU GET FOR ASKING DIRECTIONS OUTSIDE THE PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT PAL.

CWA Gold Dagger winner #31: Ruth Rendell, “Live Flesh” (1986). All the hallmarks of good Rendell, but too much psychological "explanation", and thus bad Rendell. www.nickwiltsher.com/cwa-reviews/2025/9/30/ruth-rendell-live-flesh-1986 💙📚

If you've sent email to my Uppsala address in the last couple of months, I won't have got it and you should resend it to my St Andrews one if you want a reply. The auto-response from Uppsala unhelpfully says "out of office" where it should say "this address doesn't work any more" or something.

Moving office: a time to contemplate your books, thin a few out, rationalise and downsize. Or just hoy them all in boxes and make your future self deal with it. Man my past self was a knob.

First day in new job. How do you make a cup of tea around here?

Dispatch does good, thoughtful journalism—actual stories written by actual people going to actual places. Couple of articles a week by email. They're offering a 57% discount on a subscription via the links in this article. That's about £3.20 a month. Worth it. dispatch-media.com/margaux-blan...

CWA Gold Dagger winner #30: Paula Gosling, “Monkey Puzzle” (1985). Dense academic business, enjoyable provided you can overlook the homophobia. www.nickwiltsher.com/cwa-reviews/2025/8/26/paula-gosling-monkey-puzzle-1985 💙📚

Let's be generous, here, and assume that by the solar system Altman wants to put the sphere outside the orbit of Neptune, and we'll just exclude the kuiper belt entirely. That would be a sphere with a diameter of 6 billion miles. Let's assume that it has the thickness of an eggshell: .3mm thick.

"What's this philosophy thing about then?", the removal man casually asks during a break from carrying boxes of books. He ends up leaving with a copy of the Nicomachean Ethics to read on his way home. Corrupting the youth and the middle-aged alike.

407364-colorful-autumn-leaves.

CWA Gold Dagger winner #30: B.M. Gill, “The Twelfth Juror” (1984). More of a plod than it ought to be. www.nickwiltsher.com/cwa-reviews/2025/8/11/bm-gill-the-twelfth-juror-1984 💙📚

I have a pristine copy of issue 24 of @thefence.bsky.social to give away (I bought a copy, and then took out a subscription, and now I have two, so there we go). Would prefer to just hand it over to someone in/near either Durham or Dundee, but can post if needs be. Who wants it? Someone should.

Friend is after work accessible to non-academics on the notion of a "real man", as in "a real man does[n't] ..." (and not as in social ontology). What've we got, folks? #philsky

It's the year 2097. Humans have averted climate catastrophe, achieved world peace, and eliminated poverty. However they have still not yet worked out a standardised configuration of the on/off hot/cold controls on hotel showers. Or how to stop the bastard things rinsing the whole bathroom.

CWA Gold Dagger winner #29: John Hutton, “Accidental Crimes” (1983). A portrait of an entirely contemptible... colleague? www.nickwiltsher.com/cwa-reviews/2025/7/26/john-hutton-accidental-crimes-1983 💙📚

CWA Gold Dagger winner #28: Peter Lovesey, “The False Inspector Dew” (1982). Farcical, in the good way. www.nickwiltsher.com/cwa-reviews/... 💙📚

Turns out the process of finding a place to rent in the UK has been thoroughly enshittified since I last tried to do it, ummm, 13 years ago.

CWA Gold Dagger winner #27: Martin Cruz Smith, “Gorky Park” (1981). Good but too much, like a massive helping of rich food. www.nickwiltsher.com/cwa-reviews/2025/6/29/martin-cruz-smith-gorky-park-1981 💙📚

CWA Gold Dagger winner #26: H. R. F. Keating, “The Murder of the Maharaja” (1980). Eh, fine, I guess. www.nickwiltsher.com/cwa-reviews/... 💙📚

Fancy moving to Sweden? Why not apply for this job in Umeå? philjobs.org/job/show/29186 #philsky

From the headline down, a sheer delight. www.ft.com/content/3a64...

CWA Gold Dagger winner #25: Dick Francis, “Whip Hand” (1979). Enjoyed it tremendously; whether for good reasons, hard to say. www.nickwiltsher.com/cwa-reviews/... 💙📚

New newsletter, new playlists, what I did in Stroud, sign up for free, it's all good.

This is the first of two adverts for postdocs on a project I'm involved in with Laura Gow and Thomas Raleigh. This one will be based in Luxembourg; the other will be based in Liverpool and will be advertised soon. Please share with anyone who might be interested. recruitment.uni.lu/en/details.h...

CWA Gold Dagger winner #24: Lionel Davidson, “The Chelsea Murders” (1978). Better than the last two Davidsons, but still not great. www.nickwiltsher.com/cwa-reviews/2025/5/8/lionel-davidson-the-chelsea-murders-1978 💙📚

CWA Gold Dagger winner #23: John Le Carré, “The Honourable Schoolboy” (1977). Good enough but too much of it. www.nickwiltsher.com/cwa-reviews/2025/5/3/john-le-carr-the-honourable-schoolboy-1977 ‪ 💙📚

I wrote another blog thing on imagination for The Junkyard. I figure if I write enough of these things I'll end up writing a book by accident and accumulation. junkyardofthemind.com/blog/2025/4/... #philsky

I wrote a 1000-word version of my paper on the aesthetic constitution of gender kinds for the Ergo blog. Now I'm wondering whether the original paper really had to be 10 times longer than this version. ergoblog.org/nicholas-wil...

Call for extended abstracts: Aesthetics and Ethics Research Group conference Uppsala Universitet, Sweden 26–27 May, 2025 Theme: all topics at the intersection of aesthetics and practical philosophy. Submissions via forms.gle/C5C37XPXntVs... Deadline 28 April. #philsky

I have attained a higher plane of ... something.

What's the scam with all the left-leaning pseudo-accounts, then? Gather a huge amount of followers and then switch to pumping out crypto-content or conspiracy slop or whatever?

Today UK authors are protesting against Meta for stealing our work to train their AI model. Authors earn an average of £7000 per year, we are not rich, and yet a trillion dollar company decided it didn’t want to license our work fairly as it was “too expensive” Theft is not a valid alternative.

I'm leaving Uppsala at the end of the academic year to take up a position at St Andrews. Difficult decision, will be sad to leave in many ways, but excited about the Scottish prospects. PS anyone want to buy an apartment in Uppsala?

PhD position in Gothenburg, epistemology or philosophy of science. I keep telling you all that PhD students in Sweden get a sweet deal. Encourage good MA students to apply! web103.reachmee.com/ext/I005/103... #philsky

CWA Gold Dagger winner #22: Ruth Rendell, “A Demon in My View” (1976). Precision nastiness. www.nickwiltsher.com/cwa-reviews/2025/3/26/ruth-rendell-a-demon-in-my-view-1976 💙📚

substack.com/@northseapoe... I wrote about a little brush with generative AI. NorthSeaPoets Substack.

The philosophy seminar, 1295.

Is there such a thing as late style in philosophy? (assuming there is such a thing as late style at all) #philsky

I submitted a paper to the Journal of Universal Rejection about 10 years ago (I think) and it's still not been rejected. Should I contact the editors? www.universalrejection.org

3 year post in Philosophy at Sheffield! www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DMH928/l... (post with added # for greater visibility...) #academicsky #philsky

Columbia Journalism Review tested eight generative AI search tools and found their answers were wrong 60% of the time, and the paid ones actually fared worse than the free ones. Meanwhile, millions of people trust the way they present total bullshit with confident language.