Leytonstone, London, 14th September 2025

Continued:

The cross cultural conversations happening on RedNote are something to see. For example:

"I used GenAI to research this topic" The research:

I can only conclude that this will wash an infinite amount of dishes

“We can tell whether we are happy by the sound of the wind. It warns the unhappy man of the fragility of his house, hounding him from shallow sleep and violent dreams. To the happy man it is the song of his protectedness: its furious howling concedes that it has power over him no longer.” Adorno

“The difference between men and women is like that between animals and plants.” — Hegel, who for some reason I am still reading

Today I get to teach one of my favourite philosophical arguments: G.A. Cohen on ‘freedom tickets’

To be clear: this isn’t a side-effect of current government policy, but one of its central aims.

Educators are rightly worried about AI threatening student writing. But there’s also dangers to reading with a new generation of AI summary tools, with students relying on abridgements rather than working through the details of difficult texts.

Family ticket booked for Moana 2 tonight and I can report that the excitement levels here are extremely high. My kids also seem to be looking forward to it.

This is important. It's no big deal to me that Bluesky totally ripped off everything Twitter is because that place now sucks so bad. But we don't need a new word for a micro-post of a nature we all understand to be a thing. Like podcast started from iPod, tweet is now just a generic. This is a tweet

Rousseau by a mile.

my two cents on the echo chamber discourse (with a very outdated title) 1) echo chambers are only a risk for dominant groups, when they don't hear marginalised voices 2) most people instead need *epistemic respite*: space away from alternative viewpoints to build communities

Counterpoint: seeing fascist memes from people called things like @cuckfuhrer18 is, in fact, unlikely to deepen my understanding of politics and society

Every day I curse the series of life choices that led to my sometimes having to teach people about Hegel

Every time I see this ad on fb my first thought is “omg they put a Death Star in Moana 2”

This is the longest autumn I’ve ever experienced.

Guys I'm not calling them skeets. Get fucked 😂 if Twitter has given up on the word tweet then it's ours now

if i've learned one thing from doing union stuff while also doing other forms of organizing, it's that you're better off with people you disagree with who are nevertheless trying to do the same thing as you than with people you agree with who aren't trying to do anything

I think that at this point “tweet”, “retweet”, etc. should be considered as generalised terms (like hoover, wellington or sellotape) and not as platform-specific

This.

When I last visited X, several weeks ago or longer, it had the feel of an abandoned shopping mall in a dystopian B movie.

i refuse to use the terms “skeet”, “reskeet”, “repost”, “quoteskeet” or any such woke nonsense. nothing less than the full afc wimbledon treatment is demanded here. everyone knows it’s a tweet. stop lying to yourselves. musk has relocated the IP to milton keynes. I’m taking his 1988 fa cup

These are symptoms of past covid infection www.theguardian.com/society/2024...

Advance notice of this decision was, I suspect, the real reason Braverman was sacked. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023...

I went there for a ponytail extension because my hair needed a synthetic posterior

Rather sadly - my first post on here is to let anyone who will listen know that English/Creative Writing at Oxford Brookes is facing massive redundancies - 40% of staff to be culled by January including my own role. Please share and support, we are trying to save our livelihoods #SaveBrookesEnglish

How your email finds me.

Gonna tell my grandkids this was Kant, according to Nietzsche.

JOB at KCL — Early Modern / Modern Philosophy. Permanent position, Lecturer or Senior Lecturer. Closes 8th Jan. Please help spread the word! www.kcl.ac.uk/jobs/078085-...

Cabin crew: Is there a Dr on board? Me: I am a Dr Cabin crew: Thank God. We have a question about the 18th century textile trade in Northern Africa Me: Ah. I'm afraid my PhD is in the ceramics of Northern Europe, 1672 - 1701

Temptation update: currently trying to resist calling the thing ‘Bad Idea, Right?’

Today I’m working on temptation. Hoping to avoid having to do any fieldwork.

Forget ‘analytic’ vs ‘continental’. There are basically two types of philosophers: those who illustrate their points with concrete examples, and those who don’t.

(building a straw man) oh this guy is gonna be such a fucking piece of shit

Not good enough. I demand an apology from Billy Corgan himself.

Pastry time

1/ New paper! “Gender and retention patterns among U.S. faculty” w/ N Laberge KH Wapman @samzhang AC Morgan M Galesic BK Fosdick @danlarremore @aaronclauset: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... A systematic study of gendered rates & reasons for faculty attrition in US academia 🧵

Tanjung Pinang, Indonesia 18/10/23 Riot police in the Riau Islands province practise for clashes with protesters Photo: Yuli Seperi www.theguardian.com/news/gallery...

“Subsidized clout farmer” is now my term for the absolute worst academic personality type.

Ethics publishing a paper on collective bargaining and unions. Albeit in 1932, co-authored by Dewey. Wonder if there’s been one on the topic since?

Düzce, Turkey 17/10/23 Orphaned baby squirrels are held by an official from the Düzce department of nature conservation and national parks after their mother was found dead Photo: Anadolu Agency www.theguardian.com/news/gallery...

Milan, Italy Last Generation activists block traffic Photo: Stefano Porta www.theguardian.com/news/gallery...

See you there!

“Search it up” is an incorrect locution

New Jersey, US People wearing witch costumes line up on stand-up paddleboards to take part in a Halloween flotilla in Spring Lake Photo: Lokman Vural Elibol www.theguardian.com/news/gallery...

There is no plan. Nobody is in charge. They fully expect to enrich themselves and build walls around their families and to just react to crises with ever-more hysterical calls to total, brutalizing violence as the seas rise higher and the flames grow taller.

A depiction of me writing a philosophical paper