www.theguardian.com/commentisfre... 👇👇👇

The takedown of Jason Arday has overjoyed the right, and must be a wake-up call for the left | Jason Okundaye

The Cambridge academic has rightly now resigned. But that won’t end the targeting of senior black figures or the lazy way institutions promote faux equality, says Guardian columnist Jason Okundaye

theguardian.com

there is no greater measure of cultural collapse than the fact that in 2019(?) we had “washing your legs” and now, in 2026 we have “wiping your arse”

Ben Collins@bencollins.bsky.social · yesterday

Oh my god the dietician who is telling everyone in the White House to only eat steak and sauerkraut doesn't wipe his ass.

I don’t actually sort and organise the facts, I go panning for details in the river of time, picking out little morsels all over the place, an obsolete diagnostic category here, an asylum statistic from 1876 there, and just history them together in a great big omelette

Aparna Nair@disabilitystor1.bsky.social · 2d ago

"History involves sorting and organizing hundreds of thousands of facts" I remain astounded by how loud and wrong people are about what history actually is.

What more fitting way to remember Rod Liddle’s life and work than by making nasty jokes about someone who can’t answer back

the hate is the source of the fantasy of course, rather than the other way around

Adam K, Constant@adamcadmon1.bsky.social · 2d ago

It's like dudes please. You don't have to be so mad at the thing you made up.

Shocking news about redundancies in the Humanities at the University of Hertfordshire, despite their exceptional research activities. I have signed the petition against these actions: it would be great if you would as well: c.org/kDQynZV7J4 @bbkhistorical.bsky.social @bisa-bkk.bsky.social

Sign the Petition

Save the Humanities at the University of Hertfordshire

c.org

In late 2023, the Society spent a day with Hertfordshire’s historians. We saw the quality, creativity and distinctiveness of teaching, research and engagement. We were told by a (now departed) senior manager that History was ‘a portfolio the university will guard very carefully’. bit.ly/4hLediN

Glen O'Hara@gsoh31.bsky.social · 4d ago

So it's farewell to the History subject area at the University of Hertfordshire, not the first nor the last to go. One of the best departments in the country, just extinguished like a snap of the fingers. Think of the waste. (1/2)

“marmite” is an appropriate description for someone who is broadly inconsequential and annoys or delights people in a way that fits into personal preferences, rather than a poisonous racist domestic abuser

"For Hesse, metaphors were not passive representations of things but constituted conceptual tools actively shaping scientific thought." This is precisely why I've cited Hesse in my (much less profound) writing on scientific metaphor. aeon.co/essays/why-a...

STOP PUSHING THIS SHIT ONTO PEOPLE WHY DOES THIS JUST POP UP AND INTRUDE ON AN ARTICLE I AM TRYING TO READ

if the head of the *established church* in England is too *woke* for you may i humbly suggest you are an extremist

Adding this post on the affair, which I think raises several of exactly the points the institutions involved need to address. bsky.app/profile/rory...

Rory Waterman@rorywaterman.bsky.social · 5d ago

Some notes by little me on recent, hugely damaging, shamefully shameless events at Cambridge University. rorywaterman.substack.com/p/notes-on-a-cambridge-debacle If you read only one article about what has happened, try the new piece by Lanre Bakare in the Guardian, linked in my blog post.

there are plenty of questions we might ask about the diagnostic parameters of ADHD, and the changing interpretation of them, and of the thresholds for medicating children, and the way withdrawal of other services pushes people into labels, but this question is both damaging and stupid

it’s extremely jarring to see this merger described as “the UK’s first super university” and a “model for others to follow” given it is a symptom of a broken financial model for a floundering sector trapped in unworkable structures, shedding jobs at an alarming rate

UK’s first ‘super-university’, merging Greenwich and Kent, to launch in September

The new London and South East University Group will be UK’s third largest higher education institution

theguardian.com

Roses are red Sinner plays tennis

Listen- If you are going to feed my unpublished paper into an AI data set, can you at least delete the prompt from your review before submitting? Not only is this unethical but it's a goddamn waste of my time. I'd rather have gotten a desk reject.

youve heard of failing upwards. well academic careers in 2026 encapsulate the reverse: succeeding downwards. so many talented, highly qualified people, being punished for their achievements

I’m not hugely worried about this because I obsessively save doc versions whenever I make edits, so I’m on like version 15 within a couple of weeks, and the incredibly incremental way anything ever gets written can be traced back. And that’s not even counting google drive version history

Greg Jenner (Historian)@gregjenner.bsky.social · 7d ago

I’m starting work on a new book this summer, and I may just film myself typing it out. I fucking hate AI, and I will never, ever use it, but how do I prove that?!

i am really struggling to care about another christopher nolan film, and i am struggling even more to care about someone's review of it that has somehow become an opportunity for the tone police and the concern trolls, but i guess if a film is being discussed vigorously it is doing its job

the speed and frequency of rail travel in the 19th century, the impossible volume of newspaper articles - just too much news - was also said to be among the reasons that asylums were filling up

Stan Stewart (muz4now)@muz4now.com · last wk.

Modern Life May Be Overloading the Human Brain, New Research Suggests #MentalHealth

yes yes redistribution of wealth fine, just not *my* wealth, or the wealth of anyone I know, just the wealth of people orders of magnitude richer than me, ok?

Jack Saundrs@jacksaundrs.bsky.social · last wk.

No one ever says this about poor people and existing regressive taxes, do they? "Why we must abolish council tax!" citing a renting family paying for a big home they don't own

a weird thing about revising an article now: when it gets difficult and i don't know where a chunk of argument goes (whether i should bin it or adjust the framing) i feel a bit better (morally superior) about the infuriating work, as people who produce slop with AI miss the point of this process

can four red pandas in a trench coat pass the Turing Test? can a pack of Tesco pasta lasagne sheets FaceTime Pablo Picasso? can AI build a train?

I would like to ask the obviously very clever people behind this article in _Nature Genetics_ what they think Borderline Personality Disorder *is* at its most basic level because I have a feeling I’d be horrified at the answer www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Huge study finds first genetic clues for borderline personality disorder

Largest genetic analysis of the condition so far finds 11 linked locations in the human genome.

nature.com

there’s a bit of bait and switch going on here wirh “value hard hat as much as graduation cap” (fine) which then in the details becomes “reorient post-14 education to the needs of local businesses” which is not the same, or even close to the same

How about we make education about the fundamentals of being able to navigate the world and democratic citizenship, and leave workplace training until the actual workplace. Local business needs aren't one thing, and they change quickly (and even more quickly). www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Burnham to tell schools in England to adapt teaching to local business needs

PM wants curriculums for students aged 14 and above to be more responsive to local jobs market

theguardian.com

If you're interested in/concerned about the state of UK higher education (esp. in England) and don't understand why franchising agreements matter, this HEPI blog is a good place to start. It's short, but not sweet.

The franchise cliff edge - HEPI

What happens when higher education franchise models meet tighter regulation? This analysis examines the risks for students and providers.

hepi.ac.uk

doing a prequel to a Christmas Carol (which has the backstory literally built in) is just as stupid as doing a backstory for Nurse Ratched (from Cuckoo’s Nest) whose whole point is she is blandly applying the rules of the system she is in, she is monstrous because of the system…

Royal Historical Society open meeting (online) for historians working in universities, 4 Aug 2026 - ‘The crisis in UK higher education: the future for history’ www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-crisis.... It’s a definite sign of the times that places are almost gone.

The Crisis in UK HE: the Future for History

An open meeting for historians in UK higher education on what is needed to best support and protect the profession and discipline.

eventbrite.co.uk

it’s the process, not the product

Dr. Lindsay Stallones Marshall (she/her)@lindstorian.bsky.social · 3w ago

One of the reasons why we are letting AI destroy our children’s education is because we have failed to root out the false idea that education is measured by what students produce. 1/