A lot of institutional gas lighting is about the expectation that you will fix problems that shouldn't even exist (and not acknowledging that they shouldn't). For example, how to teach "university level" ideas to students who can barely construct sentences you can parse when asking for help.

#abm Edmonds, B. Carpentras, D. and Chattoe-Brown, E. (2025) 'Strongly Empirical Modelling' in Czupryna et al. (eds.) Advances in Social Simulation (Springer), pp. 99–111. doi.org/10.1007/978-...

Contentious view: As long as students collectively can't be a**ed to make use of feedback opportunities that generate sensible response rates, we should follow the science and simply teach as our expert judgement suggests.

I am interested in the way in which people talk. For example, unless they are discussing films or books in a "criticism" sort of way, how interested does Alter think Ego should find Alter's rationale for say, not having sugar in his/her tea?

Straw poll: Do people keep a pen/pencil with them at all times?

“… the perfect demographic Democrat – a poor, young, unionized, Roman Catholic, second-generation, unskilled laborer named Grabowski with an eighth-grade education and a lumpy bed in Buffalo – and find that he votes the straight Republican ticket ..." (part 1)

Peer review article "Correction": We originally put this article up with lots of mistakes. On the second attempt we did the thing that academic journals make all that money for supposedly doing.

So what is A. I. claiming here about the identity of one or more Tony Wilsons? CAUTION CAUTION CAUTION.

What is the point of component A being recyclable if it is vigorously attached to component B which isn't?

What if organisations sacked employees in strict remuneration package size order? Doubtless CEOs would claim that this would lead to organisational collapse but then _they_ would. #abmutopias Would such open structure thought experiments also robustness check existing #abm of organisations?

These days it is hard to decide if you are dealing with a not very good A. I. or a not very focused English speaker. "We have taken note of your request to send the bill to ..." So will you? Or are you still making up your mind? Can I help at all?

It may sound indulgent but I wish academics had more time to discuss research over coffee. Even articulating a problem in progress outside your head sometimes suggests the bones of a solution.

According to student essays there was this awful thing called COVID and lots of people couldn't work (except medics who had to work a lot) and we all had to meet on Teams. Why wasn't I told about this before?

I don't mind if my online shopping platform has to make itself more secure. But I kind of _do_ mind if I am told this is a great new feature of their reimagined web site. Are people so daft that they don't notice something is extra fiddle and effort if you say something like this?

Eat your heart out philosophers of language. I have just been told by a utility company that I will receive a bill in a "default name". Is this what they mean by a Dear John (Doe?) letter?

It is quite a pleasing form of creativity to write, for example, a deliberately bad research proposal for students to assess. The trick is not to make it "externally" bad (so they need domain knowledge) but to spread the badness across the proposal so it "trips itself up" with inconsistency.

It is interesting to watch students start with arguments and try to patch in data rather than starting with data and trying to build arguments. So showing that rural broadband has poorer average speeds does not show that rural workers had worse consequential employment outcomes (like sacking).

Has anybody tried systematically to "scale" intellectual content (not sentence difficulty) so we could check, for example, if Panopto teaching resources really are "equivalent" to the pages of a book it would take an equal length of time to read?

1) You see written evidence that a Cabinet Minister would sell a convicted sex trafficker the right to amend legislation. 2) As a proud Briton you say things like "Thank God I don't live in a banana republic where politicians are bought and sold." 3) Reflect on 1 and 2 very carefully for 2 minutes.

You would get the impression, from many student assignments and quite a few academic articles, that qualitative research is mainly about building rapport and giving a voice to the oppressed. The idea that it may be a reliable kind of data of a distinctive kind limps home second if it places at all.

I fear reckoning for HE. I just watched, jaw fallen, as a stream of about 25 students swiped in attendance for teaching and then piled straight out of another door like a Benny Hill sketch before the lecturer arrived. Unless the result is mass failure or consequential punishment, we will rue this.

"Now an overseer must be blameless and beyond reproach ..." (1 Timothy 3:2). If you are going to pontificate against students on A. I. better make darned sure you _never_ get caught out with hallucinated references because you were rushed on your teaching preparation. Just saying.

Don't let AI write your text. (Or maybe proof read what you write):

Platform solipsism: If you are lucky, online banking with one provider gives you just about enough time to do what you need to do before logging you off involuntarily. But it has clearly never occurred to any of the parent companies that you might need to do things across multiple providers.

Doh. A lecture on the presentation of data where the graphs showing skewness and kurtosis do not match the text and can't be distinguished from the normal distribution shown: "I are a good comunicator".

Imagine if the weather had been as some of the more sensationalist media said it would be. Too many snowflakes alert?

How can anyone not find the social world absolutely fascinating? pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...

Student: Is this building X? Busy staff member: No. This is building Y. You can see building X there." [Thinks: "Building X is the one that has "Building X" written by the door in large letters. As does Building Y by the door you just entered ..." Good luck employers ...]

Suddenly topical again: www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwdy...

A useful example of learning through laughter IMO: cvgenius.com/blog/cv-help...

It would be hard to research but has social media eroded notions of good authority? Students seems baffled by the idea that there may be people who both know what they are talking about and are prepared to give advice for their good and not just to sell stuff or exert political influence.

The lowering of standards is subtle. All it takes is going from requiring students to ask questions in seminars to creating technical fixes (like Menti) so they don't have to. Without even acknowledging it you can quietly "delete" their employability skill of being able to speak up in mixed groups.

How much muddle is caused in academia by the fact that academics (with their administrative hats on at least) routinely don't do version control and "document owner" procedures? I see so many anonymous documents which could be contemporary or five years old.

Happy 2026 BTW.

If it hasn't been done already I always thought that institutional pantomimes might make a nice PGT research project. There certainly used to be instances at Nuffield College and The Church Commissioners:

Annual social media Cringle detox starts here. Bless you one and all says Tiny Tim (and see you in 2026).

“Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak, and that it is doing God’s service when it is violating all His laws." (John Quincy Adams).

Another for #abm? “Research driven by a technique seems to be a poor bet, since almost invariably the technician’s skill is a solution looking for a problem." (Donald W. Braben, Nature, 316, 1985, p. 402).

Another for #abm? “Unless we foster that type of intellectual activity which – rather than expanding science in the usual sense of research – simplifies it, formulates concentrated syntheses, maintaining its substantial and qualitative essence, the future of science looks bleak."

“The demand for certainty is one which is natural to man, but is nevertheless an intellectual vice. To endure uncertainty is difficult, but so are most of the other virtues." (Bertrand Russell).

“There is something fascinating about science. One gets such a wholesale return of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact." (Mark Twain.) He should have said social theory probably.

Just when I thought I couldn't admire the man more... 🎯 🎯 🎯 💯 💯 💯 👍 👍 👍

“What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our mode of questioning." (Werner Heisenberg)

If you say things are getting worse you are always told "But people have been saying that since Roman times." That is not, in fact, an effective counter-argument without additional reasoning.

HE teaching is becoming increasingly odd. Instead of finessing a student's understanding of a subject by questioning and dialogue, you have to design systems to protect them against the consequences of bad choices that you previously warned them against.

One for #abm early doors: "If I can make a mechanical model I can understand it. As long as I cannot make a mechanical model all the way through I cannot understand it." (Lord Kelvin, quoted in: K. Walker, Meaning and purpose 1950).

“Every real thought on every subject knocks the wind out of somebody or other. As soon as his breath comes back, he very probably begins to expend it in hard words. These are the best evidence a man can have that he has said something it was time to say"

The exact opposite of contemporary HE? “The only help that can be given to a researcher is to defray his needful scientific expenses, and then to ensure that no one filches his leisure." (Rene Descartes, Discours de la me/thode, 1637)

Without anyone saying it, I think research methods are quietly dying out. It is noticeable how many jobs with "research methods" in their text aren't really. Once a field stops knowing how to produce new knowledge (or even being sure what knowledge is), it is doomed. Not immediately, but inevitably.

A motto for the internet? “We should leave our minds open but not so open that our brains fall out." Alan Ross Anderson, New England J Med, 308 (1983) p. 962.