What is to be done? VCs splurged on campus buildings. Student income now services property debt not teaching costs. So 14,000 staff must be cut. What kind of education will students get 🤷‍♀️ Will government resolve this privatization disaster? Or watch managers empty universities of knowledge?

This is meant as a joke, but is accidentally true. If you know about poltergeists (or have lived with them as I have) you'll know that they are not scary, but they are a massive pain in the hoop. Crashing and banging, hiding your things, randomly breaking stuff, switching stuff on and off...

I have just seen an ad for a kids ASMR video toy set. Utterly terrifying. 2025 absolutely blows!

Cathedral comes from the Latin word cathedra which means cathedral

If you want to support autistic people, stop waiting for us to be “calm” before you care. We don’t owe you composure to deserve dignity.

I am so sick of Cardiff. It used to be a lovely little city full of friendly people and interesting little places and shops. Now it is a traffic nightmare full of selfish assholes and shitty chains. I'm trapped in a city I now hate with no job prospects. I gotta get out of here.

Jay Chester, 40, can’t believe it’s been so long since you last met up and genuinely intends to remedy the issue – and will spend the next decade genuinely intending to remedy the issue.

Please note not AI. Never AI. Just as NFT means No Fucking Thanks, AI means Arseholes Involved.

And this is why Zack Polanski is doing so well. Politics and our country would benefit immensely from vaguely human politicians who have ideas, discuss them and believe in them. Be the change you want to see...

@profanity.accountant how much do I swear?

Does it strike anyone as weird that we have a ratings board that counts the number of times a movie says fuck or shows a boob and decides who is allowed to see it, and yet GenAI was dropped on the entire with no restrictions, no age verification, no checks, no regulation whatsoever?

A British Jesus is like your regular filthy Middle East lefty bastard Jesus, but more interested in bombing brown people, keeping the poor sick and the sick poor. Waving the Union Jack and absolutely no walking on the English Channel.

I am impressed that Your Party have somehow managed to communicate via national mainstream media the feeling of being in an interminably feuding local political organizers WhatsApp with so many daily notifications that it's impossible to keep track of the feuds

If you think a seventh prime minister in ten years will magically solve the structural problems, deep malaise and febrile atmosphere caused by austerity, Brexit and social media, you're a fundamentally unserious person.

The Overton Window explained.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: understanding the Epstein list will require some levels of nuance; statistically not all 1,571 names will be perverts. Some of them are bound to be the plumber, the odd innocent who thought the island was just a nice place for a weekend away, failed marks

This absolutely should be cringe... I was fully ready to be embarrassed. Then I remembered the 'failed theatre kid' attacks on Zack, and he wasn't cringe and realised its a bit of a master stroke.

I managed to fall through the gaps and so while I hadn't been in care, I didn't have a relationship with my parents when I started uni and boy was it hard! No one to drop you off, no one to take your laundry home to, nowhere to go during the holidays. After my first year I went to live in a halfway

Privatisation will only ever work with high levels of regulation and regulatory bodies with enough power to keep companies in line. That's why privatisation in the UK has been such a fucking disaster. Predictably, we've half arsed the job.

An ox-head Iron Age bowl handle from Llantrisant Fawr in Wales. Some 2000 years old and gloriously ’Celtic’ with incised tongue. Known (I believe) as ‘bovril’ the vessel was worked on by @archaedelle.bsky.social . Having seen it this week I thought it perfect for #findsfriday #archaeology #celts

sorta coming around to the view that the social danger of genAI images is less that they'll make people believe fabricated things are real and more that they'll make people believe real things are fabricated

If I was prime minister I'd hike up alcohol duty in shops and massively lower it in pubs. Seems like a win-win for society.

It's fucking ridiculous that it's cheaper to get a plane from London to Glasgow than a train.

Introduce yourself with 5 concerts you've seen: 1. Gogol Bordello 2. Hayseed Dixie 3. Lou Reed 4. Snapped Ankles 5. War of the Worlds

Came to Oxford on a 'fact finding mission'. Grounded research to avoid confirmation bias is surprisingly difficult in 2025. It's impossible to just talk to people and get a feel for what it is going on. Everything is behind email or webpages with the info they think I want, not what I've asked!

The only vaguely concrete finding so far is: no one at Brasenose knew what I was talking about when I asked about the inscription above 'the stairs'. A porter and I had a good poke about, confused a few passing members of staff, but no dice. As the inscription mention Lincoln, and Lincoln college

My other finding is that there is no 'Oxford University'. Each college is its own discrete administrative unit with its own records. I'm struggling to see how an alum who completed an undergraduate* degree in the 1950s would have such easy access to Tudor MSS, particularly from colleges not their

When you see this, post an image from your gallery to describe your mental health

Tried listening to some podcasts in the car. Fantastic content but the sound quality was so poor it was impossible to listen. I know podcasts are cheap and accessible, but you still need a sound engineer. Or at least speak at the same volume as one another and if sharing a mic in the field, put

Woke up this morning and David had snuggled up to me in bed like Finbar does. I'm home now and immediately felt guilty when I saw Finbar... did I cheat on my cat? I feel like a cheat!

Smithsonian Folklife just released an oral history interviewing guide for people who want to interview family members, neighbours, and friends about the history, culture, and tradition they bear. Here's hoping this sort of conversation finds its way around your Thanksgiving table. #folklore

Trying to wake a cat without waking anyone else. Urgently whispering 'David' at a cat seems so odd...

In Oxford for a pretend research trip. Gonna do some Dodleston poking while trying not to explain why I'm poking because it is objectively mad!

I want to be buried at sea. Not when I die, just whenever. Surprise me

What fascinating is that we're happy to leave Twitter users be, yet they're desperate to hang out with us. Like kids clamouring to be allowed at the adult's table for dinner only to realise that adults just talk about mortgages and work!

Twitter accounts are based in Russia. BlueSky accounts are based in homes with, frankly, too many books, plants, obsolete cables, and pieces of rustic pottery, that could do with a bit of a tidying up, to be honest.

And did absolutely nothing to stop them.

Sarah's writing is amazing. 🤩

Cat sitting with my pal and this is Dave! His purr sounds like and old diesel engine and he is incredibly friendly!

By accepting the pardon those turkeys are admitting to culpability

I really wish we'd stop calling them climate "skeptics" or "vaccine skeptics", if you jump off a cliff we don't call you a "gravity skeptic"

A round of applause for the French is in order! 👏👏👏

You're told it'll sabotage your career if you're a vocally politically opinionated, queer, woman. But things sabotaging my career are systemic xenophobia, sexism, and horrible job market. Which are a direct consequences of people not being vocally opinionated in the first place.

A cultural piece from me for a change. I went to the "immersive light show" at Edinburgh Castle. It was tacky and offensive. Why are we perverting our historic sites for the consumption of (mostly) American tourists? www.thenational.scot/news/2564683...

Academic Bluesky, I need some help. I need to turn my PhD thesis into a book. It is agreed that it needs publishing and this should be a simple task. My autistic ass does not understand this instruction. I wrote it as a book. I wrote it how I write. I cannot think of a better way of structuring it

Rachel Reeves ‘tax international student fees’ might make a little sense if at the same time the government were incentivising international students to come here, and encouraging universities to increase the number of international students they recruit.

As someone single with no real family and living away from long standing friends, oh how I long for someone, anyone, to know me well enough to understand me as a person. I am painfully logical, but you have to know the parameters to see it!

Hot take Re immigration: maybe there are too many people in the UK now. Maybe with a landscape and population as diverse as the uk, trying to manage 69M people from Westminster is not doable. Maybe life was better when the Govt only had to manage a population of 56M (1975). 1/5