Delighted that Mamdani has won and moreover opened his victory speech by quoting Eugene Debs. aeon.co/essays/for-s...

If someone tries to make me wear a lanyard, I am always at risk of going full freeman-on-the-land.

The biggest clue for students using AI isn’t words like "delve" but variants on the phrase “not only X but also Y”. Marking those essays is not only infuriating but also exhausting.

One of the reasons I find the tone of ChatGPT so repellent is that it combines sycophancy with absolute confidence in the face of error — which is a mixture that will be familiar to anyone who has taught in a self-consciously ‘elite’ university.

No person with the name of a food should be more famous than that food.

I’ve been marking essays today, and in unrelated news will be launching a Butlerian jihad to wipe thinking machines from every corner of the galaxy.

New cat names just dropped: Perkin Warbeck; Milky Toner; Tacolobo.

Not sure I would have gone with this particular name in the current climate...

PhD scholarship in Moral Philosophy at Edinburgh registryservices.ed.ac.uk/scholarships...

Whenever I speak to someone about Moishe Postone, there always comes a point where we have to admit that we often have absolutely no idea what he is talking about.

On the train to Manchester to give a talk about structural domination in the economy. I'll be recompensed in curry afterwards.

We're going to have a big beautiful dark age, perhaps darker than ever before. And I think you'll be very happy

me: ugh god you know how you make plans for friday night but then friday night gets there and you don't want to do it and it feels sooooooo good to cancel? my liege lord Daimyō Nobunaga (unsheathing katana): even a dog understands loyalty. She whose word is not bond does not deserve to live

After slicing a Quorn picnic egg in half to feed to a toddler, I have discovered this is the superior dining experience.

Couldn't have gone to a worthier winner.

Going for the world record today for the number of failed attempts to spell ‘Montesquieu’.

Are there any messages anyone needs passed on to The eternal worm before I go to sleep?

Avoiding gendering our baby by referring to them as "comrade".

Personally, I don’t think those with the broadest shoulders should pay the most tax. That ought to be the wealthy.

Somewhat taken by Mark Goldie’s claim that Hobbes is “the Clapham Junction of the history of political thought”.

The university: We care about the quality, not the quantity, of your publications Also the university: Whether you lose your job depends on how much you published

Humanist scholar François Hotman was not a beneficiary of nominative determinism.

Microsoft Word not recognising ‘outwith’ is going to turn me into a full-blown Scottish nationalist.

“start your free trial now” what if i told u i am already experiencing trials.

An email full of foreboding: “An editor has created an account for you on the journal's content management system.”

Next joint reading group from @critiquecentre.bsky.social and @eehnetwork.bsky.social is on Richard Healey and Angie Pepper's article 'Pets, Power and Legitimacy', Thurs 20th November critique.sps.ed.ac.uk/pets-power-a...

I had occasion to read some of Roger Scruton’s England: An Elegy this afternoon. www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWkT...

From: Fair, then Partly Piggy (1988), dir. Toshio Hirata, Oh! Production

Think I’d have made a good member of the Addled Parliament of 1614.

Rich people prefer to talk about income rather than wealth. But the true masters are those who complain about their bank balances being empty after having splurged all their cash on the extravagances to which they have become accustomed.

the Hippocratic Oaf

"Using Marx’s theory of commodity fetishism, it thus contends that care ethics risks treating care as a fetish, obscuring the systemic inequalities and inherent contradictions embedded in caregiving." doi.org/10.1177/1464...

And we're live! tktp.as/EBRUTN

Lots of politically significant events must have taken place in the eighteenth century, but I feel they are none of my business.

The chaos around the launch of Your Party can't be allowed to derail the whole project. If anything, it shows the urgency of establishing democratic structures that hand control to the hundreds of thousands of potential members rather than feuding bigwigs.

A typically thought-provoking and sweeping survey by Anton Jäger in @mihjournal.bsky.social of Skinner's and my's recent books on republicanism

Got my article on the politics of desire in the history of feminist thought accepted at Hypatia. 🎉

In this world, nothing can be said to be certain, except death and the Time Allocation Survey.

Good news everyone! My long overdue second book - The Revenge of Reason - is currently at the printer and is now available for pre-order on the Urbanomic website (estimated to be sent out mid-October). Link here: www.urbanomic.com/book/the-rev...

One must imagine Sisyphus pushing a big rock up a hill

Saw some commentary today saying Yvette Cooper was moved from the Home Office as her instincts were too liberal. Insight into the galaxy brain of Morgan McSweeney there.

@ucuedinburgh.bsky.social FIRST DAY OF WELCOME WEEK STRIKE ACTION ‼️#StopTheCuts

The most important song is Hole's Violet, and that is final.

How it is

telling my cat i am going to bake him into a loaf of bread in my customer service voice

I have taken a vow of silence. In unrelated news, I also happen to have acute laryngitis.

Yesterday, I uttered the fatal words: I can't remember the last time I caught a cold. Nemesis has been swift.

A senior manager once came to talk to my department about some useless self-aggrandising project — but we were only allowed to ask him questions from a pre-prepared list.

Assembling the troops.