The financial marketplace of ideas

All that supremacist stuff about autistics being inherently more honest than everyone else etc. was always going to end here.

Two observations:

(1) A part of UK academics' generous salaries is redistributed from some of the world's poorest people, often via unsustainable debt.

(2) This cannot continue. This industry will obviously not halt, but surely it will be more regulated. What then for UK HE and its finances?

‘I see it as trafficking’: the brutal reality of life as a foreign student in the UK The long read: Universities in Britain rely on overseas applicants paying full fees, which has given rise to some unscrupulous recruiters and left many hopefuls and their families deep in debt

There is finally some excellent reporting on the role of agents in recruiting overseas students to Higher Education. As anyone who works in HE will already know, it is a relentlessly grim situation, but the detail and stories is still shocking to read.

www.theguardian.com/education/ng...

Have written about the politics of how we see the Grenfell Tower fire - including seeing the fire as a “tragedy” - and the flawed role the Inquiry played in producing an authoritative account.

doi.org/10.1111/jols...

The original flat white drinking soy boy allegations?

Screenshot of title and abstract to an academic article "The codpiece with a charm: coffee and sexual anxiety in 1670s England" by Amelia Rosch

Today's rabbit hole

Updated my plots for the evolution of the CO2-intensity of GDP for OECD plus other large economies and emitters.

Since 1990, CO2-intensity has declined in most major economies (points below the 45° line). Exceptions here are Saudi & Indonesia. Scroll down for the big ones, India and China.

crazy to me that no one at youtube or google is ever even, like, asked about this stuff anymore, let alone pushed to take responsibility. regardless of whether a PRMC/moral majority-type campaign would be a good idea, is the respectable center really so anemic/captured that it won't even try?

Fun & Games: Call for Papers for a special issue of New Formations Fun and Games  Call for papers for a special issue of New Formation: a Journal of Culture / Theory / Politics ( New Formations is a peer-reviewed scholarly journal that has been publ…

Fun and Games - call for papers for a special issue of @newformations.bsky.social on games, gamification, game culture etc: jeremygilbertwriting.wordpress.com/2026/02/17/f...

The Berkeley School: Critical Theory, Political Economy, and the Future of Intellectual History by Jonathon Catlin This essay is part of a JHI Blog forum: “The Return of Political Economy in Intellectual History.”

This is a very illuminating essay on the intellectual genesis of Samuel Moyn's particular liberal anti-liberalism

www.jhiblog.org/2026/02/16/t...

The wonderful @maltelaub.bsky.social and I are hosting a workshop on the theme of Austerity Militarism at EWIS 2026 in Izmir! If you are working on these themes then please consider submitting an abstract! We'd love to see you there.

The link to submit is here: eisa-net.org/ewis-2026/ab...

The UK student loan system — and its danger for Labour Growing anger among millions of graduates who face decades of debt is causing unease in Westminster

“I graduated with £42,000 of debt and even though I’m paying it off, it’s now £72,000.”

It's truly an abomination: On a normal job you keep paying forever. 40 years!

“Why would I trust a government that mis-sold me a loan when I was a child?” is a very good question.
www.ft.com/content/7bf5...

I've written an essay on the politics of neurodiversity, drawing on the vital books by @drrobertchapman.bsky.social and @dr-nicky.bsky.social. I hope it will serve as a primer for anyone new to the topic (and maybe prompt questions for those who know it well)

journals.lwbooks.co.uk/newformation...

Super interesting reading, drawing on the work of @drrobertchapman.bsky.social and @dr-nicky.bsky.social

Neurodiversity Politics
By Liam Stanley
liamstanley.blog/2026/02/04/n...

Good essay by @liamstanley.bsky.social, exploring the evolution & political aspects of #neurodiversity theory through an analysis of my work & the work of @drrobertchapman.bsky.social.

Unpaywalled version available here:
liamstanley.blog/2026/02/04/n...

#neurodivergence #neuroqueer #consciousness

A wonderful review essay by @liamstanley.bsky.social that we recently published in @newformations.bsky.social

This is really good, I'm equally worried about the pushback and stigmatising of anti disability sentiments coming out daily in news. ⬇️

An ungated version of the essay is available here: liamstanley.blog/2026/02/04/n...

I've written an essay on the politics of neurodiversity, drawing on the vital books by @drrobertchapman.bsky.social and @dr-nicky.bsky.social. I hope it will serve as a primer for anyone new to the topic (and maybe prompt questions for those who know it well)

journals.lwbooks.co.uk/newformation...

‘If I think about what this means, I want to cry’: what happens when a city loses its university? When Essex University’s Southend campus opened, it was a message of hope for a ‘left behind’ UK seaside town. Its closure will be felt far beyond its 800 students, some of whom will not get their degr...

A sad story that is unfortunately likely to recur, possibly many times, in the year ahead

www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Chartbook 432 "Writing column. Talking w peril" - polycrisis or stroke? Why do people, more specifically, rich, famous and powerful men, do the things they do?

Tooze's latest Chartbook on Epstein, Summers, the crisis of liberalism is extraordinary. Don't miss it. adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-...

Who leaked this Number 10 discussion to Jeffrey Epstein? And are there consequences for the leaker?

It’s an internal discussion re. getting markets moving in the aftermath of the financial crisis. No doubt of great interest to Epstein and his financial market clients.

Now available for pre-order and we're open for book talks to students, workshops and conferences, organisations etc.
press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...

The dilemma a place like UCL faces is that it can open a new MA and the following year it will have 50 students, mostly paying ~£20k a year. There is no incentive not to do it, and the ‘student experience’ in many cases is appalling.

In discussions of "weaponised interdependence", higher education obviously isn't the biggest issue. Yet through a potential exit power, China basically has the capacity to cause a serious crisis (or worse) in UK HE.

Matt Goodwin? The columnist for the magazine available only in departure lounges for private jets?

This is a really useful article for anyone researching British capitalism, especially on the intellectual currents and political contexts of Starmer's political economy.

Agentic AI and Social Science Research Practice Generative AI that follows rules to produce executable statistical code will change social science research practice, for the better and for the worse.

Reading quant social scientists on Claude Code is fascinating. It seems like a crisis is coming to that world, whether that's a crisis of overproduction (of potentially comic proportions) or a crisis of skills devaluation. Or both.

tompepinsky.substack.com/p/agentic-ai...

The Chinese restaurants surrounding our most sensitive military bases The Daily Mail can reveal a bizarre anomaly in the distribution of Chinese restaurants across the country.

how advanced is your nation's sinophobia? very? extremely? you are like baby, we are inventing sinophobia the likes of which cannot be dreamt of

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article...