In fairness to the Times Higher Education, at no point in my PhD career, any time during my TA training, or subsequent practice as an occasional lecturer did I ever recieve any training on how to entirely fix the UK economic system and labour market. So maybe it is all our fault...

An interesting thread. I'd say, personally, the whole thing has been at least neutral and at most a time sink. Maybe I found a few podcasts, books, and movies as a result, but probably not worth it. It continues to be baffling to me that people find partners through these sites...

The thing about all AI ads is they're either so vague that it is entirely unclear what they actually offer, like the HP "Everyone is so busy" ad, or they provide progressive cover for art theft, Adobe's "I'm using AI to focus on Ghanian farmers who make my product" while stealing art...

I genuinely believe that if you cannot play a word from a song on the radio and that word is a fundamental part of the song, you should just not play the song. As a related point, "wet" beign censored but "tears run down my thighs" not being censored is a window into the mind of censors.

Ideologues, incompetents, and soft (well... not soft) corruption is almost the totality of Reform's political offerings.

I finished Clare Obscure: Expedition 33, a masterpiece but heartrending, and thought I'll play Stray after because being a cat exploring a robot city has got to be uplifting, right? Nope, equally heartrending by the end. Both exceptional pieces of art, but I think I do need to find something cheery.

The idea that someone can become British but never English is so agonisingly stupid that it makes me fear for the future of the species.

Such an obviously contrived and fake answer to argue that English news is somehow defined by an *American* census question (that doesn't even directly say what he claims) rather than the British one, because of course the British one explicitly contradicts it.

Using the American census - a thing created in a highly racialised society with its own specific constructions of race and ethnicity - to prove a point about a society and culture which is not, in fact, America is a wild thing to do. A social scientist should be aware of a thing called context...

Absolutely fascinating that you can get an entire page in the paper to complain about a celebrity you disagree with and random young women on the street and then call other people entitled. And let's not get into MP Expenses from 2009...

Seems like the whole separation of Church and State thing is going really well in America...

There are a lot of problems within this, but I can honestly say in my 32 very cis years that societal norms and gender identities on mass have never been stable, they're always shifting. Can anyone honestly say 2000s "manliness" is 2020s "manliness"?

Times the Reform platform has been a direct or indirect attempt to violate the Good Friday Agreement...

I know Bob's Burgers isn't like the favourite programme of the right, but I do feel like we're not far from "the left are getting a taste of their own cancel culture because they didn't stand up for Jimmy Pesto when he got fired just for participating in, and being convicted of, insurrection".

Aside from anything else... it was a very particular kind of white people who were mad about the Treaty of Versailles as well...

They don't want civil debate, free exchange of ideas, empathy, or compassion. Anything short of pure idolitry will be treated the same as celebration for the assassination. Meanwhile, "friends" like Trump, Vance, and Alex Jones will use this for political and financial gain.

The problem is that this isn't true. It's what people with money & power & a real lust for antidemocratic censorship want you to believe about a few annoying youngsters and some slightly over-sensitive HR policies. Nobody on the right was ever actually "cancelled" in the way they claim.

Sounds like an awful lot of steps and useless busy work to provide students with inferior feedback and divert university funds to the pockets of private tech ghouls.

Imagine if anyone said an investment of even a tenth of that into healthcare would boost the UK economy in the next few years? You'd have hours of commentary and experts digging into every piece of it, but I private company who's work relies on thefth comes with the begging bowl and not a peep.

This piece highlights, among other things, that commemoration - even in the immediate aftermath of an event - is less about the individual and more about wider political concerns. There's a reason folks like Klein never quote him.

Can you withdraw from something you never met the eligibility criteria for?

I don't think Peter Mandelson is PM's biggest problem. The biggest problem is not standing up to the literal violent racism on our streets, supercharged by the richest man in the world, and threatening the very fabric of our society. If he and so many commentators can't see this, we're truly lost.

There is a deep sickness that rots at the core of British media. The Daily Mail and their ilk are just explicit with it, but these deep transphobia is across the political spectrum and almost completely unquestioned and unchallenged.

Not a single one of the think pieces praising his civility used his actual words to make their argument

Learn everything you need to know about Groypers and Charlie Kirk.

The reporting on Charlie Kirk’s killer in the UK & US highlights again how fundamentally ill equipped mainstream media is to report on political violence in the digital age. They do not know anything about online far right meme culture & it’s starting to do real harm. #r4today

as soon as there's evidence the shooter's identity isn't easy to weaponize things magically become complicated

going from "transgender ideology" to "look at the poor misguided white kid" without even taking a breath, unconscionable

Looking at the change in Republican, and broader right, reactions now that the assassin has been caught and their identity confirmed, I keep thinking about Butler's idea of greivability and who is within a moral circle. "This is every trans person's fault" to "pray for him" is particularly striking.

She thinks this is some serious mirror world shit.

Now that Kirk's killer seems to be caught, maybe the news could spare a moment's attention for the right wing, from the commentariat up to the GOP and president, whose immediate reaction was not mourning, but to seize the opportunity to try to incite violence against groups they hate

I have now deleted Co-Pilot off my laptop three times. I suppose it shouldn't be a surprise AI programmes don't understand consent.

By the time the Sun went to press last night it was clear that the 'trans ammo' line was a lie.

The relentless contempt, disgust, even hate that successive UK governments exhibit for the country's (hitherto) wildly successful HE sector remains one of the most baffling sub-plots of a generally insane age.

Almost two hours since this incredibly incendiary and dangerous claim was posted, and nobody has confirmed it and there's been no evidence posted that supports it. The only other source that supports this is a Twitter post from Steven Crowder.

I see yesterday's Colorado school shooting is not news today.

Absent any evidence, and given how badly the FBI has bungled this so far, it's absurd and incredibly dangerous to just print this at face value. What is "transgender ideology?" Did the bullets have pronouns?

I have two professor colleagues who have faced threats and harassment due to the organization Charlie Kirk built, and they were not alone. We can denounce and loathe political violence without hagiography for its victims. This is dangerous nonsense.

It is quite simply dishonest to describe TPUSA as a “free speech” organization and not even mention the “Professor Watchlist,” as NPR just did. Reporting on a crime does not entail adopting the victim’s views.

We don’t yet know who killed Kirk or why. Not that you’d know it from the endless numbers of accounts on X with huge follower numbers, including British politicians, making as yet unknowable claims about the motivations behind the murder. Exhibit A. Extraordinary stuff.

A woman & two children have died this week in the Channel. Mike Tapp is the worst of us. He has no humanity, in no way reflects this country's decency. We deserve better political choices than the rebranded Tories at Reform, the red Tories at Labour & the broken, well, Tories.

Just heard this interview about Charlie Kirk and it was stunningly ignorant. Just quote after quote glorifying the guy without ANY pushback from the presenters. And then the both-sidesing and just acceptance of the Trumpy claims that leftist are using violent rhetoric. Unreal.

If Barack Obama was the one who was assassinated yesterday, Charlie Kirk's response would have been 'WOMP WOMP'. (Or words to that effect.) Until America addresses this double standard, there will always be Charlie Kirks.

We should not whitewash the political and ideological career of a man because he was assassinated, particularly not to audiences (like most of the British public) who have no context for him. We should also not lose our empathy, just because the man despised empathy.

Don't be surprised if whoever killed Charlie Kirk has no coherent political ideology, didn't do it for any particular reason, and doesn’t fall anywhere neat on the left/right paradigm.

DUP Ministers never seem concerned about groups influencing policy when it's evangelical christians...

The fact people, even afte several attacks on migrants and hotels since last summer, are still holding to the narrative of "it's just social media posts" is astounding. If anything, he's got a larger audience on social media than he'd have in print or on a street corner.

Part of the problem here is the idea that social media is inherently trivial. I think we'd all agree (Owen included?) that publishing propaganda inciting hatred and violence against a minority would be a prosecutable offence. It's no less harmful if you use twitter to do it.

Sometimes you really do have to wonder what is going on in the heads of the public faces of Novara...

So... we'll just remove malicious use of communications technology entirely then? Or no laws against insightment to violence? Or will we just change the laws so the people you don't like aren't protected?