Great to see mention of ARPS/professional services staff in the news brief; a lot of hard work done by our committee and officials to ensure we aren’t always a footnote, or worse - forgotten, in talks about the higher education sector. #loveOurARPS #UCU

One more signature for the petition to save Humanities at Hertfordshire to hit 2,500! Please take a minute to sign and share. #UCU www.change.org/p/save-the-h...

UCU ARPS members: register for our next ARPS staff drop-in, tomorrow at noon. Space for chat, raising issues, and solidarity. A lovely bunch of humans! #UCU us02web.zoom.us/meeting/regi...

I feel the same way after Wax Heads as I did after Gone Home, and the riot grrl mixtapes featured there. Fictional bands ily

I finished @waxheadsgame.bsky.social tonight, and it was just amazing. After completing the game, I feel like I know these bands, I know this store, I know these people. The art, the original music, and the gameplay mechanics come together to create something really special.

I’ve just finished playing this. 8.5h of pure joy; loved every minute; I got tearful at the end. The soundtrack is incredible. I want all these bands to be real so I can be Girl Junk / Becoming Violet / Sister / Mimi / Bad Toes super fan goddammit. A game for music lovers for sure 🖤🎮💿

Hey, for anybody who didn't back Bombs Bursting in Air for Mothership Month via @spacepenguinink.bsky.social , the soundtrack I composed for it is now available on Bandcamp! Mainly inspired by Ben Frost, 90s anime OVA soundtracks and Gridlock, with artwork courtesy of @atypicalbreakfast.bsky.social

BBC News saying Reform have "come out of nowhere". No, they haven't. First they were UKIP, and then they were The Brexit Party, and with every incarnation, they've been amplified and boosted by the BBC, with Farage given record appearances on Question Time and other panel shows. #Reform #BBCqt

All I want to be doing rn is playing Tropico 5. Unfortunately I have to work 😭

#PIP Have your say: PIP review launches engagement programme for disabled people to get involved www.gov.uk/government/n...

Wait again. It’s NOT out? But how does it have reviews on goodreads? (Which I don’t use btw but comes up in searches for the book)

WAIT it’s out already and I haven’t known and have been angsting for like forever unnecessarily? GAHHHH

When do we get Alecto the ninth? :(

Public services are collapsing. Tax-paying businesses that could be funding those services are being left to crash and burn, because our leaders are too scared to hurt the delicate feelings of @BritishBulldog756857 on Twitter. It's ridiculous, horrifying and infuriating in equal measure. 13/18

This is why my profile pic is now unbranded. It’s felt uncomfortable for a while. I still stand wholeheartedly against the sentiment #CatsAgainstCasualisation which was the only thing keeping it there!

“if people are reluctant to speak openly because of a difficult workplace culture, the resulting evidential weakness is not proof that the concern was invented. It may be one of the consequences of the very problem under scrutiny.” vickyblakeucu.uk/2026/03/31/t...

Post a non-religious picture you think of as holy

Excellent, clear and engaging talk on reasonable adjustments for neurodiversity from Chris Beaumont of @thebraincharity.bsky.social at the @liverpooluni.bsky.social Neurodiversity Symposium today

Absolute classic of late stage capitalist civilisation that the true shift to renewable energy wont come from not wanting to make the planet inhabitable but because fascists bombing for kicks and zealotry blocked up the supply chain

39 Sudanese Chevening Scholarship finalists ejected this week from consideration for the scheme, for being Sudanese.

As Programme Director I met with underperforming students to get to bottom of their disengagement. Usually money or health reasons, needing more adjustments than a nudge. Helping disengaged students requires enormous resourcing (especially time), a resource overstretched colleagues do not have.

Pokémon Pokopia is out and here I am only just getting to the v1.6 update of Stardew Valley..

Super article from an old friend and colleague, and others: Inclusive Neurodiverse Campuses: A Participatory Approach to Understanding Neurodivergent Belonging in Higher Education, Hamilton, L. G., Williams, J., Neilson, D., & Petty, S. (2026) journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

‘AI’ is not a source. It’s a literature review. Always check the sources.

Great news!! Cos this is a wonderful #microbes colouring book that we love! How is it nearly 10y old??

The boycott of OpenAI(ChatGPT) has now surpassed 4 million. We’re also seeing many small businesses (and even some mid-sized companies) cancel their subscriptions. One of the most amazing things over the past year has been watching consumers remind big corporations just how much power they have.

What happens when a women’s health business is labelled “adult content”? 🚫 Bank accounts blocked ⚠️ Payments flagged 📉 High risk tags New research from CensHERship and The Case For Her shows how outdated systems misclassify FemTech. Read more: www.censhership.co.uk/research

I'm hearing more and more stories like this one in The Big Issue - it really does seem like Access to Work is being cut by stealth @bigissue.com

I don’t know how to use chatgpt etc but I imagine it’s going to a website and typing “oh no what groceries do I buy please tell me false god for I am so weak I cannot go on” as your brain atrophies and leaks out of your ears from disuse and the machine is like “buy eggs milk bread and a horse”

Has anyone played A Game About Digging a Hole? And the subsequent prequel ebook, A Tale About Digging a Hole? I read the book first and it really made the game more emotive. I build a really good first hole with ledges for descending and all sorts. Now I’m building (digging) a massive full-yard hole

just fucking do SOMETHING and don’t let the constant stream of atrocities keep you frozen in inaction. yeah, pay attention to the news, but make sure you know when/how to look away at least long enough to take care of those around you & do what you can to support work that needs doing. thanks 9/9.

develop an ethic of radical care for others. part of any successful movement means making sure everyone is fed + housed & that the children aren’t sitting in their own filth. change the diaper. buy diapers for someone in need. set up a community diaper drive for vulnerable families. 8/9

Weird Pride is a practice of becoming. A feral devotion to staying alive as ourselves in a world that keeps trying to make us something else autisticrealms.com/weird-pride-... Free Tickets to @ndhumanities.bsky.social More Than Neurodiversity Event Wed 4th March www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/neurodiver...

not to be all gay and emo but Spiritfarer is still one of the best gaming experiences I’ve ever had in my life and I played it like five years ago

I wrote this song on Saturday, recorded it yesterday and released it to you today in response to the state terror being visited on the city of Minneapolis. It’s dedicated to the people of Minneapolis, our innocent immigrant neighbors and in memory of Alex Pretti and Renee Good. Stay free

(More on Build the Union and associated resources here: www.ucu.org.uk/btu)

Hearing about the building to win project, identifying concepts behind engagement and then discussing that into concrete ideas was a really valuable part of today’s #UCU #ARPS AGM

Theme of discussion in this section could perhaps be summed up as "we are worth more than being treated as replaceable cogs" when ARPS staff hold a diverse range of roles vital to the academic teams / academic "mission" (by extension civic responsibilities) of our institutions...

#UCU annual meeting for Academic Related & Professional Services (ARPS) staff today. We began with heartfelt thanks to our former committee secretary Jenny + introductory speech from current president Maria @chondrogianni.bsky.social recognising the breadth of work ARPS members undertake across HE.

I just took action with @theactionnetwork.bsky.social: Together Alliance: Become a Co-Signatory. Take action here: actionnetwork.org/forms/togeth...

London I am in you! For the next 20h. 10 of which will hopefully be sleeping and then 6 chairing the UCU ARPS annual general meeting before getting a train home 😆. Looking forward to it!

Not including hidden redundancies (eg. fixed term contracts not renewed), which is likely to double this reported figure.

Call for survey participants - Current & past part-time PhD students - AND their supervisors. Looking at experiences of PT PGRs. Run by U of Salford. If your institution gets >30 responses, you get a findings report specific to your institution. app.onlinesurveys.jisc.ac.uk/s/salford/st...

This is a thread about UCU & what it has become over the last few years. But the first thing I want to say is I didn’t join a union to stay silent or turn my back on a single parent of three facing dismissal on the basis of their trade union activities. Marie Monaghan is the Unite UCU 1/12

A good read for UCU and HEI

Of all the things to rage about at the moment, this is high on my list. Not just because it's such a clear sign of how quickly we're managing to hurtle backwards, but also because this is where the 'avoid the MMR jab, autism is worse than debilitating illness or death' narrative has taken us

Say “NO” to Victimisation in @ucu.org.uk 🚨 Strike rally ⏰ Thurs 12 Feb @ noon 📍 UCU HQ, Carlow Street, London Including guest speaker for the Workplace Day of Action for Palestine 🇵🇸 Everyone welcome! Bring your branch banner & your solidarity to say #HandsOffMarie

I urge you to fill in this consultation if you can - with this very helpful support from Amnesty International - although AND because ! it is heart-breaking that this country has sunk so low that Amnesty suggest in a number of cases to provide no answer as the terms of the question are so evil

The really depressing thing about AI is the normalisation of important reports being released by government officials followed by apologies that chat GPT made half the citations up and wrote a chapter 7 that explicitly calls for a nationwide puppy drowning campaign. And noone loses their job.