since chatgpt has coached another young person in a mental health crisis to their death, I am yet again tapping the sign

Dear GOD if you want to save money in the asylum system 1. LET ASYLUM SEEKERS WORK 2. FAST TRACK STATUS FOR EVERYONE FROM CLEARLY UNDAFE COUNTRIES like Sudan, Syria, etc 3. Run an asylum accommodation system that is NOT FOR PROFIT #r4today

Next Thursday (13 November) the ECtHR will hand down AR v Poland, concerning the Convention compliance of Poland’s restrictive post-2020 abortion law. One to watch.

'Music and modern foreign languages degrees are among courses being suspended at the University of Nottingham, with the institution saying it “cannot rely on additional income” from the coming tuition fee rises.' 1/3

This is the interesting and important bit, if you don't want to click on the BBC link. It won't be a surprise to anybody who enjoys paying attention to the motivations behind horrible actions.

‘He voted for Reform knowing they planned to cut “waste”.’ 🤦🏻‍♀️ THERE IS NOTHING LEFT TO CUT

The way all of these people convinced themselves that Mamdani is antisemitic is a subject far more worthy of media examination than any of the ‘groupthink on campuses!’ thinkpieces we’ve been subjected to

Absolutely insane. Labour would have purged and smeared someone like Zohran Mamdani. Wes Streeting's politics align far more closely with Andrew Cuomo. The lessons from Mamdani are about how to defeat both the right - and the bankrupt "centre".

The "why do you care so much about the NY mayoral election" takes strike me as pretty obtuse. The world's sole superpower is being taken over by fascists, and this was part of the struggle to define what the opposition to that will look like. That obviously has major implications for all of us?

While it is significant that New York can elect a Mayor who is & so identifies as an immigrant leader, the tendency to conflate Zohran Mamdani & Sadiq Khan as Mayors who are Muslim in high profile national/global cities (by opponents but also fans + media) overlooks significant contrasts

"As the title of the book suggests, Clanchy attempts to challenge her own prejudices through interactions with her pupils, but this is troubling in itself: children, particularly ethnic minority ones and refugees, are not a vehicle through which to explore personal bigotries." This is a subtweet.

University of Birmingham is offering fully- and partially-funded scholarships for Arts & Humanities doctoral research students. Details in the link. I am very interested to hear from prospective research students wishing to work in the fields of: www.birmingham.ac.uk/study/schola...

Normal People Don’t Want This Shit is running away with the vote tonight

Uh-oh… (Academic job ad.)

Ofwat letting England water firms charge twice to tackle sewage, court to hear Companies billed people for sewage disposal, used cash to pay dividends and exec bonuses, dumped sewage in rivers. Now charging again to fund promised investment, not raising capital from shareholders. Customers fleeced

Junior Research Fellowships 2026/27 (Arts, Humanities, Social Sciences) University of Oxford - Christ Church www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DPG873/j... #skystorians 🗃️

“This is an extremely serious and troubling case that raises wider concerns about the academic freedom of staff and students at universities across the UK.” www.theguardian.com/education/20...

Probably should stop being shocked by @ucu.org.uk's rhetoric by now. And yet. And yet... That language of 'responsible manner' is copy-pasted directly from our senior managers' playbook to delegitimise legitimate action, and @ucu.org.uk called our boss the 'most vindictive' in the #UKHE sector.

Over 3 million life-years lost in Gaza www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

Top Halloween tip that I learned in the US last year: make the hole in the bottom rather than the top of the pumpkin.

NEW from me: Political hostility, high visa fees and (in the case of the UK) stagnant incomes are making the UK and US less attractive destinations for top international talent. That steep decline in the appeal of moving to the US after 2016 is 👀

Really detailed and thorough reporting but dismayed by the “bothsideism” about the flags. *Very few* people - even people without criminal records or neo-Nazi affiliations - who put up flags this summer did so innocently regardless of their stated motivations.

University of Edinburgh cutting its Institute for Academic Development which offers crucuial training and support for students, lecturers and researchers. I woked at the UNSW learning centre and know what a huge difference these services make. #AcademicSky thetab.com/2025/10/31/e...

Being disabled shouldn’t mean you’re on a lower wage, or that you’re afraid to ask for support at work because it could hit you financially. Having a reasonable adjustment should never lead to a pay cut. But this is what’s happening to some UCU staff right now. Short 🧵

#2 Proposition (1962) Make a salad. Premiered October 21st, 1962 at Institute for Contemporary Arts in London. ❤️ RIP Alison Knowles. Will make a salad tomorrow.

the university keeps advertising Enterprise Fellowships - where you apply your scholarship in a commercial/entrepreneurial context - & all I can imagine is sitting in a boardroom with some men and saying tenderly to them 'all my research indicates that your business should cease to exist asap'

Genuinely delighted to download a PhD thesis from a university repository where the author has neglected to remove the words "BITCH THIS IS YOUR THESIS" from the filename.

Keir Starmer's failure to stand up to this man is a cowardly and suicidal calamity

ARCHIVAL FUNDING: Ann Ball Bodley Visiting Fellowship in Women’s History, to use Bodleian Libraries collections to advance scholarship in women’s history, of any geographical area and historical period. Deadline 28th Nov. www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/csb/fellowsh...

New Interview: www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a...

I'm grateful to The Guardian for publishing my short response: www.theguardian.com/world/2025/o...

Something for all the Donald Tusk fans in the West, who adore him simply because he's not Law and Justice. This is what he actually thinks. www.thetimes.com/world/europe...

More from the scene

We are delighted to announce that Kader Attia will deliver this year’s Nikos Stangos Lecture, titled “The Body/Gaze: A Territory to Be Reappropriated.” 🗓️ 20 November 2025, 18:15–20:30 📍 B40, Darwin Lecture Theatre (Reception to follow) 👉 Book your free place: shorturl.at/0Rhh1

Settler terror devastates West Bank olive harvest Israeli military restrictions and over 150 settler attacks in the past two weeks have prevented many Palestinians from harvesting this year’s crop. www.972mag.com/olive-harves... @mekomit.bsky.social

(1/X) Check out a typical Harper's letter signatory's Twitter feed and you'll mostly *still* find 80% complaints about the "woke left", even in the midst of the greatest government crack-down on free speech in at least 60 tears. Why? Because the "free speech" movement is donor/patron-driven.

how it feels explaining early 2000s hipster history to young people

70 per cent of our outpatient visits in southern #Gaza are for diseases linked to poor living conditions, as over a million people are still crammed onto a tiny patch of land. Without urgent improvements, more people will die from preventable causes. www.doctorswithoutborders.ca/palestine-di...

This is a Borges short story in the making

Isn’t it depressing, though, that apparently the role of a political party is not to stand for specific beliefs but to bend to whatever they imagine the majority of voters want. Politics is done the wrong way around because people want to be in power more than they want to represent a worldview.

I did not realise that the former president of Columbia who invited the NYPD to pacify protesting students and left her role following a vote of no confidence from faculty is now the UK prime minister’s chief economic adviser.

All arts and humanities approaches welcome! - 'Dispersal of Manuscripts From the Cotton Library' - 'Libraries, Literacy, and Learning in Leeds' - 'New Sources & Perspectives on Sarah Sophia Banks' - 'Cold-War Socialism, Non-Alignment & Anti-Colonialism in Yugoslav Press, 1961-1979'

Water bills in England rose by an average of 26% this year. More rewards for failure for the privatised water industry. Bring water into public ownership @weownit.org.uk www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

I’m ASTONISHED that this article does not mention Poland’s horrific abortion laws as a MAJOR factor. Yesterday(!) was the 5th anniversary of the Constitutional Tribunal, staffed by Law & Justice judges, tightening abortion laws. And the current government has made close to zero progress on this.

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I’m ASTONISHED that this article does not mention Poland’s horrific abortion laws as a MAJOR factor. Yesterday(!) was the 5th anniversary of the Constitutional Tribunal, staffed by Law & Justice judges, tightening abortion laws. And the current government has made close to zero progress on this.

Isolation, suspension, exclusion - I find these aspects of British schools shocking and impossible to understand (not to mention counterproductive). What educational model is being followed here? You can’t isolate a child out of whatever problem they’re experiencing.

On a train to Oxford listening to someone describe the annual leave situation in the US (i.e. no legal entitlement) as really bad and restricting people’s freedom, and the conclusion they’ve reached is that it’s therefore akin to communism.

Adam Szymczyk has been appointed director of the Swiss Architecture Museum Basel artreview.com/adam-szymczy...

imagine your partner of 55 years saying he can't tell the difference between you and your clanker imposter