It’s nice to see everyone’s textual analysis of The Odyssey It’s almost like the humanities give you entertainment, feelings, pleasure, and fun/interesting stuff to talk about, as well as lenses into both past and current society
Alix Beeston
@alixbeeston.bsky.social
Writer and academic | Author of *In and Out of Sight* (Oxford UP) and coeditor of *Incomplete* (U Cali P) | Coming in 2027: *Image Encounters* (Penn State UP) and *Women, Sisters and Friends: Selected Plays and Screenplays of Kathleen Collins* (U Cali P)
Hard to think of a more deeply damaging start to Burnham’s premiership than giving green light to new oil & gas in N. Sea, if true. It won’t lower bills or lead to greater energy security but will drive an even hotter planet. What a terrible signal to give to rest of the world #ClimateVandalism
BBC Breakfast (@BBCBreakfast) on X
Andy Burnham will announce plans for new oil and gas drilling in the North Sea when he becomes prime minister on Monday, the BBC has been told. The announcement will form part of a flurry of policy m...
x.com
So I'm starting a podcast about friendship and aesthetic experience called "Some Marvelous Experience." I've posted a brief teaser that explains a little bit about the main idea and will drop the first episode soon. Please subscribe and help me spread the word! podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/s...
Some Marvelous Experience
Arts Podcast · Updated Biweekly · A podcast about friendship and art hosted by Brian Glavey. For each episode I'll talk to a pair of friends about a work of art or aesthetic experience that they share...
podcasts.apple.com
Every day a new abomination. "LLMs hallucinate, yet some confabulations can have social affordances if carefully bounded. We propose critical confabulation (inspired by critical fabulation from literary & social theory), the use of LLM hallucinations to "fill-in-the-gap" for omissions in archives…"
Critical Confabulation: Can LLMs Hallucinate for Social Good?
LLMs hallucinate, yet some confabulations can have social affordances if carefully bounded. We propose critical confabulation (inspired by critical fabulation from literary and social theory), the use...
arxiv.org
Peter Whitewood@pwhitewood.bsky.social · 2mo agoRebranding a hallucination as a ‘critical confabulation’ that can fill archival gaps is a big no from me.
UK folks, let's jump on this AI regulation petition the Society of Authors emailed out! It's an actual parliament one so the government HAS to respond if it reaches the signature threshold. It calls for regulations to make AI developers disclose copyrighted works trained on. Sign & repost!! ❤️
Petition: Protect creators' rights: require AI firms to disclose training data
We ask the Government to introduce a statutory duty requiring AI developers to disclose the copyrighted works used to train generative AI in enough detail for creators to identify use of their work, e...
petition.parliament.uk
‘The REF has now morphed into a hugely expensive, attention-engrossing status marker. Few things would improve the intellectual culture of universities more quickly than the complete abolition of this flawed and coercive exercise.’ Stefan Collini on universities www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Stefan Collini · Squadrons of Pigs: Bonfire of the Universities
The problems with Britain’s universities are systemic and deep-rooted, not just local or contingent. Yet political and...
lrb.co.uk
actually i kinda *do* think using genAI should be such a social faux pas that the user is marked as a pariah and no longer feels welcome in the community. "AI is bad" is no longer an abstract (it never was), my city has been under a boil water advisory for a week because of AI data centers
Academic departments deserve to be saved, supported, resourced, allowed to grow even if they're not "best in the country," "first in the REF," "top-ranked," "at a Russell Group uni," or whatever other austerity-brained nonsense senior managers have been using to flimflam you out of solidarity
Timid librarian in plea to save my workplace from making a huge mistake. A whole floor of Cardiff University's main library is under threat of being repurposed to teaching facilities with the removal of 7km of shelving holding valuable books. Pls share x you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/sa...
Save the second floor of Cardiff University's Arts and Social Studies Library (ASSL)
Dear current patrons, past patrons, and future patrons of Arts and Social Sciences Library (ASSL) at Cardiff University. On Friday 17th of May, library staff of the ASSL were informed by University Li...
you.38degrees.org.uk
Hey Bluesky folks. If you’re in education or just follow for my thirst traps, would you please sign this if you can, and share far and wide? c.org/dCKk9vjqxY It’s much appreciated. My university is cancelling all UG humanities degrees. We need support and love right now x
Sign the Petition
Save the Humanities at the University of Hertfordshire
c.org
The signs that your UK HE has entered the death spiral (may have started years ago) and is most probably getting advice from one of few HE consultants, such as Nous. 1. Losing your joint degrees if you had them, terrible for modern languages
Dr Dave Hitchcock@davehitchcock.bsky.social · 3mo agoThere are many ways to divide up the current set of universities in the UK, but I increasingly think the most revealing one is this: Universities that offer only single honours degrees. vs. Universities that offer combined honours and derivative discipline degrees. 1/2
English media analysis of recent seismic changes don’t really grasp the very different forms of nationalism in the other nations. Whereas English is negatively based on Imperial nostalgia the others are formed by their negative experiences of British colonialism. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...
‘Seismic change’: how election wins for nationalists in Celtic nations could reshape UK
With polls suggesting Plaid Cymru, the SNP and Sinn Féin could be in power after May vote, constitutional challenges may lie ahead
theguardian.com
Meet the sideshow FREAKS who REFUSE to use the work-stealing, planet-burning, minority-choking, teen-killing, water-guzzling, brain melter that gets most things wrong and makes the user decide whether they give a shit enough to do their job correctly or if they've given up completely on themselves.
Iris van Rooij 💭@irisvanrooij.bsky.social · 3mo agoMeet the academics refusing to use generative AI Researchers say they have their reasons for avoiding AI tools — and they’re sick of arguing about it. www.nature.com/articles/d41... h/t @maartenp.bsky.social
My favorite Sam Neil fact will always be that he designed a future Australian flag that replaces the union jack with the aboriginal flag for Event Horizon and insisted the film use it.
Every day I watch the tech industry build The Boot On the Neck Of Humanity Machine and watch universities say “we are going to sustainably and ethically prepare our students to become innovators in The Boot On The Neck Of Humanity Machine space”
In my first year as a host at @newbooksnetwork.bsky.social, I've interviewed seven excellent film and literary scholars about their recent books, their ways of working, and the value of the humanities You can check out the episodes here: newbooksnetwork.com/hosts/profil...
Almost everything we argue about is a substitute for the thing we should be arguing about: the immense wealth & power of an oligarchic class, which captures governments, ruins lives and wrecks the living planet. This class redirects our rage at scapegoats. To resist its lies is to resist its power.
Please listen to my conversation about ARCHIVING THE PAST @ucpress.bsky.social with @alixbeeston.bsky.social on the @newbooksnetwork.bsky.social podcast! 🥳🥰 newbooksnetwork.com/archiving-th...
Aurore Spiers, "Archiving the Past: Women's Film History in France, 1927–1978" (U California Press, 2026) - New Books Network
newbooksnetwork.com
All I'm going to say that: If I had never done a thing, I wouldn't be so quick to jump into discussions about whether "AI" can do the thing.
I don't know how to clip a segment (sorry), but the bit I really want you to watch starts at 29'10". It's about the deep roots of the attack on Iran and why it's just as well Starmer is "no Winston Churchill". I'm surprised this aspect isn't more widely discussed. 🧵 www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/epis...
Question Time - 2026: 05/03/2026
Fiona Bruce presents an hour of topical debate from Kettering. On the panel are Stephen Doughty, James Cleverly, Shashank Joshi, George Monbiot and Annabel Denham.
bbc.co.uk
It's just so entirely grim that underlying all of this is the fact that there are really just one or two institutions that can be expected to hire at all for the foreseeable future, even on a replacement basis. Just total ecosystem collapse.
Margot Finn@eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 5mo agoRaises some important issues but also ignores the fact that many Humanities staff outside the magic circle are facing redundancy. They are naturally willing, indeed desperate, to apply for entry-level Oxbridge posts. The situation is grim. 1/2
“The children are always ours, every single one of them, all over the globe; and I am beginning to suspect that whoever is incapable of recognizing this may be incapable of morality.” James Baldwin
Reliance on the US, neglect of key industries, reluctance to raise taxes to fund public services, reluctance to re-embrace Europe, inconsistent foreign policy, commitment to reducing immigration, transphobia, illiberal positions on drugs and sex work are not serious contemporary policy approaches.
One cool thing about unequivocally hating AI is that you will be proven right over and over again every single day
"The UK pattern is one where people have the skills but jobs don’t let them use them." extremely familiar...
Margot Finn@eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 5mo ago'Their most recent task-based analysis in Oxford Economic Papers (2024/25) found that the growth of graduate skills requirements in the British workforce slowed markedly after 2006 – the demand side stalling while supply kept expanding.' 1/2
everyone loved the tech industry's free music and friendship machines of 20-30 years ago. it's unclear what could be causing people to feel the opposite about the industry's new racism and insanity machine