Our national superpower is torpedoing everything that actually works, just so the next PM can solemnly announce a "national conversation" on rebuilding it. First "the relationship with our EU friends & neighbours". 5 years from now: "our University sector" ​Absolute Olympic-level incompetence. 🤡

Grumpy Philosopher@stevecooke.org · 4w ago

A direct result of government policy: 1) a disastrous funding system, 2) removal of student recruitment quotas, 3) restricting overseas recruitment. Now, the richest universities are over-recruiting, to the detriment of students & every other university. A problem that’s been known about for years.

It's possible to criticise how Labour and Tories destroyed an international student based business model they once pressured unis into adopting while also questioning whether such marketised models undermine the strategic purpose of unis and further ed for the UK state, economy, military and society

Sunder Katwala (sundersays)@sundersays.bsky.social · 4w ago

Sunday Times research finds universites down £550+ million on international (aggregate across the 55 universities with lower international fee income of 128 surveyed)

Many people are wondering if there is any way for Cambridge to repair its reputation, short of immediately offering a professorship to a different black British professor in his 30s working on logical positivism? Its hard to see how else they could go forward really.

aaron swartz is the most vindicated person of all time

Shannon Mattern@shannonmattern.bsky.social · last mo.

"In 2022, Wiley removed over 1,300 ebooks from academic library collections; [they said] perpetual access is not an option for subscribed content. In 2025, Clarivate,... announced they would stop offering libraries perpetual access licenses for ebooks and primary-source digital collections."

Bridget Phillipson, reflecting on her years spent standing idly by while UK higher education crumbled into the abyss and tens of thousands of university workers implored her to do something, literally anything, to save their jobs: BUT WHAT ABOUT ME THO www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

‘It hurts to lose a job you love’: Starmer loyalist Bridget Phillipson fights on despite cabinet demotion

Exclusive: The former education secretary on her new role as Labour chair and continuing as the minister for women and equalities

theguardian.com

Every kind of crappy reasoning in just one (free!) clickbait article. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Could AI be conscious?

Experts believe it’s at least possible. We urgently need a plan to navigate the ethical implications

theguardian.com

This World Cup would have looked grimly different without locally-based communities who showed up to bring their love to matchdays. Given travel restrictions and exorbitant prices diaspora supporters have made this World Cup. Arguably, they have saved this World Cup. www.nytimes.com/athletic/739...

How the love of the diaspora has helped give this World Cup soul (Gift Article)

This World Cup would have looked grimly different without the locally based communities bringing their cultural pride to matchdays

nytimes.com

Last angry post of the day, promise, I've put some cumbia on thanks to @bsrg1.bsky.social and everything will soon be hunky dory, but IT IS NOT FRIGGIN AI WHICH HAS DECIPHERED THOSE SCROLLS: it's super smart scientists using smart technology, thank you.

rogueclassicist ~ david meadows@rogueclassicist.bsky.social · 2mo ago

(707) AI is Unwrapping COMPLETE Herculaneum Scrolls - BREAKING ARCHAEOLOGY NEWS - YouTube www.youtube.com/watch?v=51XH...

What happened between 2015 and 2020 taught me that, should that awful day come and we, settled EU migrants, become the target of Reform, the Great British Public will do nothing to protect us. Friends will be appaled but powerless. A few marches, some nice, principled words, that'll be all.

Peter Walker@peterwalker99.bsky.social · 2mo ago

NEW: EU nationals in the UK are increasingly alarmed at Reform UK’s plan to target their rights to accommodation and employment, saying this is a betrayal of promises made in the Brexit referendum 10 years ago. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

The Philosophy department at Exeter is exceptional. It has both a concentration of world leading researchers in the philosophy of the biological and cognitive sciences, and a unique departmental profile in the UK. It would be a catastrophic loss to the UK philosophy scene.

Ben Phillips@benphillips1989.bsky.social · 3mo ago

A statement from Exeter UCU branch @ucu.org.uk - please share far and wide.

Insane, imbecilic, dangerous. Countries which have banned VPNs: North Korea, Belarus, Iran, Russia, UAE, Myanmar...bit of a pattern here. The UK next?

Open Rights Group@openrightsgroup.org · 3mo ago

🚨 First the social media ban, now the government wants to restrict VPNs 🚨 VPNs are a vital cybersecurity tool for businesses, politicians, journalists and families to protect data and communications. Banning or age-gating VPNs would increase cybercrime risks and expose IP addresses to predators.

Our statement on the UK gov't's demand that all content on all devices sold or used in the UK be scanned, on the presumption of nudity, using a dystopian combination of age verification & content scanning. This proposal will not safeguard children. It endangers us all. signal.org/blog/pdfs/20...

absolutely incredible levels by u.s. immigration to unite the world in sympathy for *a referee*

🚨NEW BOOK ALERT🚨 Effective Metric Structure Theory by @johannamath.bsky.social et al., Springer 2026. link.springer.com/book/10.1007...

Effective Metric Structure Theory

Book discusses the increasingly popular topic of computable metric structure theory which unifies methods from effective analysis and computable algebra.

link.springer.com

Hey #UCU, I just released v1 of another @ucucommons.org project: JNCHES vs Inflation. Site: jnchesvinflation.streamlit.app Blog post: ucucommons.org/project-jnches-vs-inflation/ It's depressing but may be helpful!

Project: JNCHES vs Inflation

We're happy to announce a new UCU Commons Project: JNCHES vs. Inflation. We've extracted pay spine point data going back to 2005 and plotted it in a number of ways against several inflation measures.

ucucommons.org

Since September I've been working with an international group to develop what we hope can be a response from the mathematics community to artificial intelligence in maths. The Leiden Declaration is now posted and open for signatures: https://leidendeclaration.ai/ #LeidenDeclaration

Leiden Declaration on Artificial Intelligence and Mathematics

This declaration calls for action to address the challenges posed by the use of artificial intelligence within mathematics research.

leidendeclaration.ai

JOB! We're hiring a Lecturer in Philosophy on a 2-year fixed-term contract (partly to cover my teaching over the next few years). Please share widely! www.bristol.ac.uk/jobs/find/de...

“Like many people of Jewish ancestry of my age, I’m descended from three generations of asylum seekers.” Every few months I feel the need to roll this out again. (I wrote it ten years ago.) blog.oup.com/2016/01/gene...

This appalling fat cat wants to shut the door on all my mature students, many of whom left school after GCSE and give up a lot to go to university. I can tell him that they’re the hungriest for education and far from being unable to graduate, they regularly get the highest grades. Hateful man.

The Guardian@theguardian.com · 6mo ago

Vice-chancellor calls for review into student loans for those without A-levels

Not just the nth confirmation that BrewDog was not quite the right-on enterprise it claimed to be, but also another illustration of why and how carbon credits and PIUs are a godsend to grifters. www.theguardian.com/business/202...

BrewDog sold highland estate for knockdown price after abandoning reforestation plans

Self-styled ‘punk’ beer company bought land in 2020, pledging to plant Scotland’s ‘biggest ever forest’

theguardian.com

I also want to note we'd be very happy to hire someone with a PhD in mathematics or computer science. We're advertising this position on MathJobs.org, so please pass on this link to anyone you think might be a suitable candidate. www.mathjobs.org/jobs/list/28...

MathJobs from the the American Mathematical Society

Mathjobs is an automated job application system sponsored by the AMS.

mathjobs.org

Benedict Eastaugh@beastaugh.bsky.social · 6mo ago

Realising I haven't advertised this here—I'm hiring! Walter Dean and I have a project on measuring the strength of mathematical theorems used in philosophy, and we're looking for a postdoctoral researcher to join our team. www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DQO344/r...

We are calling on the UK Government to not introduce a levy on higher education provider income from international students, reduce visa costs to attract global talent, and to review higher education funding to create a sustainable model www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/documents/58...

If Arsenal do win the Premier League this season, they'll need to have the parade in the Cardiac Care unit because that's where everyone will be.

If you're a USS member of @ucu.org.uk , then you've probably heard some talk of Conditional Indexation. It'll likely be on the agenda at this year's HE Sector Conference, and I've written a very basic primer for anyone that's interested. open.substack.com/pub/dyfrigjo...

What is Conditional Indexation?

A very quick guide for UCU members who are interested in the USS pension scheme

open.substack.com

Realising I haven't advertised this here—I'm hiring! Walter Dean and I have a project on measuring the strength of mathematical theorems used in philosophy, and we're looking for a postdoctoral researcher to join our team. www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DQO344/r...

Research Fellow (11324-0226) at University of Warwick

Discover an exciting academic career path as a Research Fellow (11324-0226) at jobs.ac.uk. Don't miss out on this job opportunity - apply today!

jobs.ac.uk

UK Home Office now only accepting 4.5% of Ukrainian asylum seekers because it’s a “safe country”. Families sent to cities being bombed, told to use noise cancelling headphones to block out the horror. news.sky.com/story/ukrain...

Ukrainian family denied UK asylum told to block out bombs with headphones

Thousands of Ukrainians were welcomed to the UK in 2022 after Russia invaded. But Home Office figures show there has since been a dramatic reduction in the numbers now being approved for asylum.

news.sky.com

Realising I haven't advertised this here—I'm hiring! Walter Dean and I have a project on measuring the strength of mathematical theorems used in philosophy, and we're looking for a postdoctoral researcher to join our team. www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DQO344/r...

Research Fellow (11324-0226) at University of Warwick

Discover an exciting academic career path as a Research Fellow (11324-0226) at jobs.ac.uk. Don't miss out on this job opportunity - apply today!

jobs.ac.uk

Teaching the diagonal lemma today, I wondered about its connection to the second recursion theorem. Moschovakis's 'Kleene's amazing second recursion theorem' (BSL 16(2), 2010) proves the diagonal lemma from the second recursion theorem (p. 201), but presumably one could go the other way too.

People explain the real impact of politically-motivated changes to the settlement rules on their lives, the Home Office responds with "We make no apology ..." IME people in power who use the "no apology" formula know full well that they are doing something very wrong

‘Treat us fairly’: skilled workers face having their dream of settling in UK snatched away

As government mulls doubling requirement to 10 years, the uncertainty is putting many who came to Britain to work under strain

theguardian.com

Is it more intimidating to give an academic talk at a conference or colloquium, or in your own department? On the one hand, your colleagues might be kinder than the median conference audience. But on the other, you have to live with them—and their judgement of you—for (hopefully!) a long time.