ok so it has been a glorious spring for all the wisteria and lilacs and cherry blossoms though #TinyJoys

somewhere out there, there is a person who through some twist of fate and dexterous fingers has always pulled exactly one wet wipe every time and they don’t even KNOW

Big Wet Wipe knows how to make wet wipes that can be removed one at a time but refuses to do so because they make so much money when you pull them out in clumps

yes i think it would be hard to share good job news online these days

waves of voluntary redundancy here put people in horrible positions before we even get to the even grimmer realities of forced redundancies. i still don’t think there’s a social consensus about whether we say “congratulations” or how those who take it respond without saying “thank god im out”

absolutely. same attitude I have with students. just so hard to say this to a friend without sounding like I am personally bitter at all the sh*t that has gone down. i am of course *also* personally bitter but it’s just realism to say “do not do this to yourself”

how many humanities departments will be left in 10 years? more than zero. but honestly who thinks it’s a lot more than zero?

friend asked me for advice on returning to university and aiming for an academic career. it’s so hard to realistically portray for someone how unrealistic that is in 2026 without sounding incredibly bitter and pessimistic. but honestly who would advise someone that this a good career path?

this is awful. im sorry

step 1: write program that responds to any email with a survey link with random responses to every Q.
step 2: push this to all colleagues/students
step 3: hit 100% participation on all surveys and complete “university”

yes data will be garbage.
but guess what? it already is and that ISNT THE POINT

im sure there must be an academic literature in management studies/politics about how neoliberal institutions replaced democracy with surveys

this is it.
i can feel it.
if everybody in the university can just increase their survey participation rate by 200-300%
that will fix EVERYTHING

bargain

I’ll take two!!!

Google result for Christie's https://www.christies.com › lot › lot-5531445: Maria Blanchard (1881-1935), La tireuse de cartes Maria Blanchard (1881-1935) La tireuse de cartes signed 'M BLANCHARD' (lower left) oil on canvas laid down on board 35¼ x 45 5/8 in. (89.4 x 115.7 cm ... Read more £133,250.00 • Free delivery

free delivery!

shoulda flecked the androids face with some unidentified liquids and made it fall over immediately after th line, that would be even better

what everyone making t he same joke about other machines that can do this much faster don’t get is that a car or whatever might be quicker but wouldn’t look absolutely terrible, as this robot does, and which is fundamentally the point of doing marathons

Opening page to the RHS guide to becoming a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. With full abstract: :Fellowship is one of several ways to join and belong to the Royal Historical Society. Fellows are elected to this position by the Society in recognition of their work for the historical discipline and profession. There are many different routes to Fellowship, just as there are different kinds of contributions and careers within the discipline of history. Today’s RHS Fellows are history practitioners from a very wide range of backgrounds (within and beyond higher education) who have contributed to historical understanding and knowledge through a body of work. These contributions take many forms: from academic publications of different formats, to editorial and curatorial work, history programming and public history. This post addresses common questions asked by those considering applying to join the Fellowship of the Royal Historical Society. If you are interested in making an application, we hope this helps."

The Society's Fellowship is a UK / worldwide gathering of historians who've contributed to historical understanding and knowledge through a body of work.

If you're interested in joining them, we've a brief guide to the many activities of RHS Fellows and how to apply bit.ly/3OzhoxK #Skystorians 1/2

You'd only know it if you consulted the public record, so here it is: lordslibrary.parliament.uk/office-for-s...

As someone whose entire academic career is advocating for the human rights of trans people, I would like to use my free speech to say that Bridget Phillipson has no idea how universities actually work, and that our duty to protect our students from harm - including speech harms - is paramount.

absolutely terrifying honestly

OfS free speech complaints scheme to start in September Long-delayed grievance process will allow scholars who feel free speech rights have been impinged by universities to seek redress

'The Office for Students (OfS) is being handed the power to investigate cases and recommend that institutions review decisions, pay compensation or alter their processes.'

Think of the volume of speech and thought in any single English HEI in any given year, and OfS's record in such cases. 1/2

"Shock Block Doctrine." And what is so effective about this labile and protean philosophy is how seamlessly it has partnered with academia to defuse dissent. For example, using philathropy to fund research that produces an alternative set of facts and engender doubt--as with climate science denial. We see this happening everywhere with respect to AI and arts and culture, whether it's Refik Anadol being supported by the UN to create an Al-installation "raising awareness" of climate crisis, or the Schmidt Foundation funding an AI post-doc at the Met to every university rushing to set up an AI and Humanities Lab. Some of this work is for the purposes of data extraction and model traning; but much of it is intended simply to get into the public's field of vision and to diffuse ideas about the potentials of AI, even if those potentials have never materialized. The purpose, as Mirowski shows, is extreme agnotology, shocking the system with so much conflicting information as to immobilize people in a perpetual state of doubt. And he marvels that so few academics have figured this out. But he points to

My comments with respect to AI and agnotology from this talk I gave this past week. cdh.princeton.edu/events/sonja...

extra important to sear duck meat before slow cooking

(the mallard effect)

Historian here. You'd be surprised what you can live through.

It's like "since time memorial".

Julia Donaldson slash

“He has knobbly knees, is terribly strong,
And his turned out toes are terribly long.

His eyes are orange, like terrible fire,
And his purple prickles are tougher than wire.”

Aha! Oh no! It’s THE GRUFFALO’S LOVE CHILD

*pandora rubbing her hands and nodding* “oh yeeeeeeah, the world is going to LOVE these woims hehehe”

all of this of course predicated on the idea that this skill should be human. the ai tools that “detect” ai writing is a whole other can of worms that pandora has already opened