Universities across the UK are calling their redundancy programmes ‘voluntary’. In today’s Sunday Times a Senior Lecturer in Humanities completely exposes that lie.

Entirely this. We tried to make this clear during our own uni's "voluntary" scheme - it was clear there were people submitting to the scheme not because they wanted to leave the job they had, but because they feared what their job would *become* after the exodus of so many valuable colleagues.

University and College Union (UCU)@ucu.org.uk · yesterday

Universities across the UK are calling their redundancy programmes ‘voluntary’. In today’s Sunday Times a Senior Lecturer in Humanities completely exposes that lie.

Optimist: The cup is half full Pessimist: The cup is half empty University administrator: Meet our new Associate Dean of Cups who will form a committee about the ossue. Also we can’t pay for cups any more because we are in austerity mode

samuel mehr@mehr.nz · 2d ago

Optimist: The cup is half full Pessimist: The cup is half empty Espresso enthusiast: I used $6000 of gear to brew this cup, but it'll save money in the long run

James Bond: you think I haven’t faced death before? Supervillain: oh, I don’t expect you to die, Mr. Bond. I expect you to suffer. *opens travel funding reimbursement software I think you will find your motorboat rental and casino reservations especially complex James Bond: no. no. pls kill me

Remember, if you see someone stealing food, no you didn’t.

academics should be slow, steady, scholars who produce solid, original contributions to specialized fields of research but also: if you want security you'd better be a personable star who can explain everything to anybody in a few small words and serve as the face of your institution's PR campaign

New content in the journal: Hautekiet, C., & Oberauer, K. (2026). Does Attending to Information in Working Memory Improve Long-Term Memory? Journal of Cognition, 9(1): 41, pp. 1–11. DOI: doi.org/10.5334/joc.... @carohautekiet.bsky.social

Does Attending to Information in Working Memory Improve Long-Term Memory? | Journal of Cognition

doi.org

The President of the United States has two airplanes. The terrorist sees him enter the golden airplane. The president sneaks out of the golden airplane in a food trolley to be safe on his other airplane. On which airplane does the terrorist think the president is flying?

Many of you will have seen the recent post about changes at OSF. If you'd like to learn more about how to use other services (particularly Zenodo) to share data and code, see my book chapter on resource sharing. bettercode-book.org/book-sharing...

and long live Smitten Kitchen! Came for the intriguing smittenkitchen.com/2013/12/eggn..., stayed for frequent staples like smittenkitchen.com/2016/04/shee... smittenkitchen.com/2008/01/riga... smittenkitchen.com/2010/05/carr... smittenkitchen.com/2011/02/gree... smittenkitchen.com/2017/10/quic...

Ravenous@weareravenous.com · 2w ago

Deb Perelman has kept Smitten Kitchen going through the rise and fall of blogging, the pivot to newsletters, and the looming specter of AI. She has no intention of stopping.

“There are dark days ahead. If we are to fight against those with untold financial wealth, we will need untold intellectual wealth….Reading for pleasure and delight are vital – but alongside that and even more urgently: reading for power”

Philip Ball@philipcball.bsky.social · 2w ago

I thought I'd repost this piece quoting the first sentence. Then I thought, no, the first paragraph. No, the first three. And I went on doing that until the final word. www.theguardian.com/books/ng-int...

"A student’s essay on Macbeth has no value as a product. It’s what you learned in the reading and writing that created it – the swiftness and resilience and suppleness of thinking you built, along with the knowledge gained – that was the point."

The Guardian@theguardian.com · 2w ago

‘I hate what AI is doing to the minds and happiness of the young’: Katherine Rundell on the view from the classroom

please make my day

Alexander Glass@alexanderglass.bsky.social · 3w ago

I have one answer.

Today is the only day you can experience Ray Bradbury’s “There Will Come Soft Rains” on the day it is set. Audio: archive.org/details/brad... PDF: thephilosopher.net/bredberi/wp-...

That means that the dream of chatbots as replacements for teachers is a nightmare. Getting rid of teachers because we all have chatbots is like getting rid of doctors because we all have the plague. eof/

The centrality of discernment to productive AI usage is obvious, and that's why I find the insistence that AI can be used as a teaching assistant (or worse, a *teacher*) so baffling. By definition, a student *isn't* an expert on the subject they're studying. 44/

“So much of what it means to be human is going on in our head. The fact that we haven’t really looked at that as economists is really quite extraordinary.” And then a collective sigh from the earth’s cognitive psychologists rippled through the atmosphere

The Guardian@theguardian.com · last mo.

Four types of thinker have been identified. Which one are you?

Last year, the great @ruthbyrne.bsky.social was awarded the prestigious Broadbent prize by @escop.bsky.social. Her research on imaginative thought now shines in the journal -- doi.org/10.5334/joc..... Come check it out!

Imaginative Thought | Journal of Cognition

doi.org

We're so very proud of this! Not much of the journal metrics per se (they don't always reflect well what they're supposed to measure...), but of the fact that we offer a reputable outlet for strong cognitive science outside of commercial logics. Send us your best papers, folks!

Gidon Frischkorn@gidon-frischkorn.bsky.social · 2mo ago

This is great to see! Also that @jcgntn.bsky.social has gained a good spot among these outlets. Obviously, I am not impartial (being AE at JoC), but it is great to see that non-profit journals that are backed by scientific societies & focused on serving the scientific community are faring well!

This is great to see! Also that @jcgntn.bsky.social has gained a good spot among these outlets. Obviously, I am not impartial (being AE at JoC), but it is great to see that non-profit journals that are backed by scientific societies & focused on serving the scientific community are faring well!

—— Open Mind is MIT Press’s Diamond Open Access Cognitive Science journal. We now have our first Impact Factor: 2.9 as of June 2026 Submit your papers to Open Mind direct.mit.edu/opmi

I am looking for a postdoctoral researcher to join my lab at Sabancı University in Istanbul for a 2-year TÜBİTAK-funded position, with possible extension. Interested candidates can email me with a CV and a brief note about their research interests. More details on gunselilab.com soon.

Gorgeous day for the Spitsbergen races!

Highly recommend this memorable exhibit -astonishing to see Escher’s work up close and the biography is enriching. Saw it years ago in Houston, was entranced for hours. www.theguardian.com/artanddesign...

MC Escher review – hallucinatory insights from the master of the mind-bending staircase

Escher’s paradoxical geometries and impossible gravities may baffle the mind – yet even his wildest works were never just fanciful, as this fun and gripping show makes clear

theguardian.com

The alt-text on this is perfect

Star Trek Minus Context@nocontexttrek1.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Very excited to have this officially published: A neural state space for episodic memories A brief thread... #neuroskyence #psychscisky #cognition 🧪 @cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social

A neural state space for episodic memories

Episodic memories are highly dynamic and change in nonlinear ways over time. This dynamism is not captured by existing systems consolidation theories …

sciencedirect.com

My favorite mother’s day cartoon from the stupendous @rosemarymosco.com

FWIW, I don’t think the major problem in my field, or related ones, is that people need to move faster & produce more. I read a lot of papers as part of the job, and I’m increasingly convinced we’d benefit from fewer papers and better ones, not more mediocre work produced ever more “efficiently.”

It's exam season, which means it is time to revise. Can AI help your revision process? Possibly. But definitely not if you let it do the important work for you. www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DQS...

AI-generated summaries: a good study aid?

YouTube video by Candice Morey

youtube.com

Bring back the ancient knowledge

I'm in @theobserveruk.bsky.social today looking at why so many unis are in financial trouble and what the government needs to do to save HE. observer.co.uk/news/columni...

Why saving universities is far more than academic

Modern Britain needs young people with degrees – here’s how to make sure they still have somewhere to study them

observer.co.uk