More on the state of British academia.
Such cruelty and brutalisation effected through these processes that are dismantling disciplines and universities in the face of governmental indifference
Gil Duran tweet: TLDR: Fascism in response to Palantir's long fascists screed on X.
"Your Account is Suspended" Message on X
The CEO of Palantir posted a fascist manifesto on X.
I pointed out that it was fascist—which resulted in a permanent suspension from X (my second time!).
So, when you hear the tweeters complaining that BlueSky is intolerant, remember why many of us came here in the first place.
15 minutes; no questions; government got the blame; my department to have 60% of us sacked. Apparently sacking us will lead to a ‘new, improved’ curriculum. No voluntary scheme, straight to selection and legal minimum redundancy payment.
Bishop Barron clarifies that the Church has no right to condemn specific wars and has to defer to Trump, he's just fully sold out
New, from me: Take the Palantir manifesto seriously, if not literally.
It reveals that our tech philosopher kings want public money, but without public accountability. This creates a dilemma for governments unaligned with its techno-fascist vision. 🧵
donmoynihan.substack.com/p/palantir-w...
At Long Last, InfoWars Is Ours By Bryce P. Tetraeder, CEO, Global Tetrahedron
We have a deal. theonion.com/at-long-last...
Rare sighting of a column chart taking a dip at Hove Beach.
#dataviz
Tech news is basically ruined these days. You never know if something is really cool or something being trumpeted out of context to manipulate VC investment. I suspect this one is… kinda both???
The oldest known image of Keith Richards, published around 1140 AD ...
fRED wHERE iS tHE lINK aGAIN
Imagining Marx and Engels' track changes on their google docs
I feel like a book about how power corrupts has been unfaithfully interpreted by a lot of rich people.
torn between "we need to soften IP law to stop the calcification of the culture" and "we need to give the Tolkien estate the right to extrajudicially execute these clowns at will"
My students will be SHOCKED and OFFENDED to find that Descartes didn’t actually use the phrase ‘I think therefore I am’ in the Meditations, and if they cite him as having said so, I’ll know they’ve not read the book.
Students will be SHOCKED and OFFENDED when I DESTROY their favourite Voltaire quote by dedicating my full-year Early Modern history module to proving it was in fact HOLY, ROMAN, and—yes—an EMPIRE
Be ready to be shocked and offended at university, students told.
These fools are about to be absolutely fuckass mad, just infuriated and offended beyond all belie, when they find out that truth does not consist in a proposition corresponding to facts but rather is a disquotational device used for blind ascriptions.
Really enjoyed this. Building public trust and consent for universities is the central problem we have to address to achieve enough government attention to gain much needed reforms
It’s important to recognise the lived reality of students in any discussion, especially one that is as emotive as AI usage in coursework. It’s soul destroying to read, takes up time we don’t have, but the story behind why a student has used it may be surprising.
Excellent article: “Students are not operating in leisurely academic spaces. […] many are balancing close to 50 hours a week between study, travel and paid work, with average employment hovering around 17 hours per week. […] AI does not feel like a shortcut. It feels like a flotation device.”
Opinion: There is no free-speech right to a university platform | UCL News - UCL – University College London share.google/hZbgCMPh6uTk...
The Prof nails it here
A large white waterfowl with orange feet stands in front of a door. On the door is a cardboard sign secured with tape that reads, "DO NOT LET THE DUCK IN." Adding insult to injury, I think the duck might be a goose.
Whatever you do,
Thanks!
My light googling has failed to reveal any rationale for the festival name, but I would be interested to know what they were getting at. 5/5
And with the enlightenment itself, this again is an act of the rational soul: sapere aude, dare to think/know. Certainly no waiting about or preparing a place for light to “get in”, which places the mind in a passive mode. Passivity in the mind is instead associated with dogmatism and ignorance 4/
With Descartes’ lumen naturale, rationality acts as a light to see through error, but only when we train our will to follow a rigorous method. Most famously, Plato’s cave has the light of the sun outside, and the prisoner must be forced out into the light, a light he cannot “let in” to the cave 3/
The history of western philosophy, while it does often associate truth with light, the emphasis is on the human activity of doing something to get to it. 2/
To read too much into the least important part of this, “how the light gets in” strikes me as an oddly unphilosophical name for a purportedly philosophical event. Truth as “letting light in” implies a revelation, some masked reality we’re ignoring, if only we start to listen. 1/
Why is everything that uses the word philosophy outside of academia just evil?
This festival is deeply, deeply odd
