I mean ‘repugnant’ is right there.

UK University leadership constantly strives to turn middle class left leaning liberals like me into full-blown revolutionary Marxists. I‘m starting to wonder if they‘re secretly Trotskyite accelerationists.

Could politicians please stop calling Reform’s Plans For Fascism™ ‘Unworkable’? ‘Unworkable’ has an air of ‘oh if only but sadly the forces of reality do not permit’. Cut it the fuck out.

‘The abyss screams back’ is 100% my September vibe 🐠😂

Oh ffs. No, I do not want to "Chat with the PDF" of this interesting looking academic journal article I just came across. I would like to read it. With my own eyeballs. And think about it. You know, with that grey matter sitting between my ears. Just make it stop. #AcademicChatter

So many of the half-baked AI implementations are happening in professional arenas that have been hollowed out by extraction and divestment. No journalist needs a writing aid unless they’re being paid too little to write too much, no teacher needs a commenting tool unless they’re overextended.

A little Monday afternoon treat 🎉

6) overall this sounds like a dog whistle to those who despise Humanities. Much research in the Humanities is not funded beyond what comes through REF. And frankly, it does not require much funding - just time and access to good library resources (vel sim)

Problematic (to put it kindly) on so many levels. 1) there isn't really 'unfunded' research. The REF is there to allocate resources so that research is possible without a grant.

Here’s the page you need if you want to join the class action: www.anthropiccopyrightsettlement.com And the Authors Guild statement on who may be eligible for a part of the settlement: authorsguild.org/news/what-au...

Life with cats: 5 days off her food. Trip to the vet on day 2 turned up nothing. Hunger strike continued. I began to worry she was dying. Yesterday she coughed up the biggest hairball of her life, wolfed down 2 breakfasts, and proceeded to act like nothing happened. I am both relieved and outraged.

One of my lecturers once produced a giant radish and slapped it on the lectern mid-sentence.* His ancient history supervisions were every bit as brilliant as this anecdote would suggest. Even in a faculty which far surpassed the 15% threshold, the radish was a standout.

Concerned that we are losing the necessary ratio. 15% of teachers/faculty should be irretrievably strange eccentrics. Every learning experience should have some element where in later life you can reflect with former classmates about how bizarre at least one (1) class per year was.

My job now is to go school to school, university to university trying to help them sort through the challenge of teaching in a world with AI and the first thing I recommend to improve the teaching of writing is cut the number of students per instructor in half. No one is going to do that, though.

This is your regular reminder that Ancient Greek has not one but TWO words for ‘goat-stink’. It is weird how often this comes up in my research but honestly it never ceases to be delightful.

Desk-cell in Senate House. Blue skies beyond. 12th draft of a grant application. There are probably worse ways to spend the dog days of summer. Probably.

There will be many casualties from UChicago ending ('pausing') PhD admissions in Humantities, but one which I am keenly aware of: this is close to a death sentence for teaching cuneiform in the United States (esp. Sumerian, Hittite, Elamite, Eblaite, Luwian) and it will affect the whole world.

Grayson Perry at the Wallace Collection. Excellent way to spend a bank holiday morning.

Listened to this on a long drive today (“urgh, mummy, they are STILL talking about tomatoes”) and really thoroughly recommend this whole series. It’s great at showing how colonialism, science, and commerce all come together to shape the history of food. pca.st/episode/188e...

Hot off the press and fully open access. If you’ve ever wondered what that weird textile term in Sappho fr. 100 might mean (and honestly who hasn’t? 🤔) boy do I have exciting news for you. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

centuries of fairy tales & folklore about not trusting glittering, deceptive entities that flatter our vanity and look at us. eating the fae food, mesmerized by the mirror, etc. clown behavior.

Once again, the prestigious universities have pillaged the market, to their own destruction as a brand and the detriment to the students they are recruiting but can't teach properly. All the while laying financial waste to the post-1992s that can. When is government going to step in and fix this?

My mother: you know, that daughter of yours will do literally anything for a sticker. Me: hmmm excessively motivated by signifiers of achievement even though they have nothing even approaching monetary value? I obviously have no idea where she gets it from as the child of two academics 😬

This was exactly my mum’s reason for turning out. She feels powerless. As an Israeli citizen living abroad, she can’t even vote there. But the sheer stupidity of the Home Office on this just pissed her off so much, and she can at least make them look (even more) stupid.

I’m sure there will be press releases from the Met today claiming they got everyone. The didn’t, because they simply couldn’t. My mum made it home, and reports plenty of arrests but also plenty of people who weren’t taken in. The turnout was huge. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/a...

Glorious gift from a friend’s garden. It’s a tromboncino and I mean just look how silly it looks isn’t it fabulous?

More dicking about with everybody's time and energy from UKHE's champion dickers-about with other people's time and energy. At this stage they might as well just ask every university what its favourite colour is, and hurl anyone who answers wrongly into an abyss.

Urgh weekend conferences should not be a thing,* a thread. *exceptions apply.

Because it just wouldn’t be a holiday without dragging our bored children round a castle.

If anyone wants to indulge in some nostalgia for their own/their children’s childhood, I’m looking for recommendations for first chapter books which won’t make me despair at t the lazy garbage being peddled at children just because if you put a unicorn/fairy on the front someone will buy it.

So, just to reiterate: PLEASE REGULATE THE USE OF EXTERNAL CONSULTANCIES, Government. We all had a good laugh today, but it wasn't worth the millions this will have cost in tuition fee money going to some consultancy that is about to do exactly the same two towns over.

Me and @apistone.bsky.social, back at it again! This year, we're designing the kind of workshop we've desperately wanted to attend over the past few months, but haven't found: an AI workshop for people who hate AI. Come chat with us about the plagiarism machine!

"Thinkers who are empowered to reject norms" but not those of the neoliberal entrepreneurial university. Even @bantshireuni.bsky.social hasn't come up with something so bonkers

Poetrye ys the technologye of hope

Me and my book project

Stobaeus giving us the good stuff.

Very excited to report that the mysterious door in the Senate House basement that looks intriguingly like a safe was finally open today

I don't UCU post much now but I'll do one about pay for a sec, as IMV we're headed towards a predictable fail state unless people get realistic, and quick. 1. the UCEA pay offer is comically bad 2. Going out in fall on "pay" is a terrible idea 3. Go out on saving jobs and saving the sector instead

IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT there is a new series of I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue and it is everything you need in these times.

"More than £18 million had been spent on consultancy" 😵‍💫 hey! Government! Regulate the use of consultancies! Sure, some *very specific* tasks cannot be done in-house and require external advice. But these consultants are taking over the basic running of universities. #UKHE

Arguably, one of the biggest problems the country faces is the collapse of its higher education sector at a time when we desperately need more, not less, 'science'. Making HE a 6th government mission would afford UK universities' 'best minds' a chance to pose/answer some ace R&D questions. 3/3

My cartoon for this week's @newscientist.com

Latin word of the day: mergo, mergere, mersi, mersus - sink in, hide #LatinWordOfTheDay

They’re all wrong it’s Anna Karenina

No no go away CATS DON’T EAT ICE CREAM

'A document inviting organisations to bid for a new contract to recruit and train high-flyers specifies that the work must be delivered by a “supplier neutral brand”.' Education, education, education? 1/2

Hey you know where trains teachers? UNIVERSITIES! But hey let’s watch the sector crumble and axe jobs while outsourcing this to Serco, sounds great.

If you're as concerned as me about the pace and scale of proposed staff cuts and department closures at UK universities, this piece arguing for a new regulatory framework is worth a read 👇 isrf.org/blog/a-new-r...