"Find out who you are and do it on purpose, with purpose." -Dolly Parton Damn straight.

Dr. Johnathan Flowers, Bisexual of the Blade (Alt-text or DIE)@shengokai.blacksky.app · 2d ago

Be the person Dolly Parton would’ve wanted you to be: yourself.

I don’t want to hear fake tributes to Dolly Parton from fascist republicans, I’ll never forget them defunding her Imagination Library childhood reading program earlier this year. Spare us the bullshit, we see you.

Meanwhile, the violas are fighting for their lives. As usual.

Robert Komaniecki@komaniecki.bsky.social · 2y ago

Percussion players: capable of playing highly complex rhythms Orchestral percussion parts:

… you’re giving As (and A-pluses?!) to unengaging, boilerplate writing? I think I found the problem...

Tim Hitchcock@timhitchcock.bsky.social · 6d ago

No More Muddling Through generativehistory.substack.com/p/no-more-mu...

We've let capitalism fool us into believing that every part of life must be efficient. That's not true. Automate my laundry, sure. Wash the dishes for me--yes, please. But dreaming and thinking and learning and just BEING are meant to be slow and meandering. That's where the treasures are found.

This entire disgusting situation with Arday has shown the horrible priorities of a society built for the ruling class. Our press isn't free, and it is used solely and exclusively to pursue the interests of the ruling class which owns it.

I see people lying every day - fearmongering about immigrants, trans people, disabled people, benefit claimants. Do they get hounded to death? No, they get cushy jobs at the Mail, Telegraph, Sun, Times and Express. So spare me the pretending that the press actually give a solitary shit about lying.

I’m not an overthinker everyone else is just underthinking

We have never granted a marginalized population "too many rights". Not a thing that has ever happened. You are speaking nonsense.

There is a duty on *all* of us to never behave in a way, personally or professionally or structurally, that causes this much hurt and devastation. If you think this has nothing to do with your role in academia, you are wrong.

It's so blazingly obvious that this is true. A university lecturer being fired for plagiarism would not be national news >99% of the time. It was inflated into one this time purely because it fit into racist "culture war" narratives about "DEI".

Nadine Batchelor-Hunt@nadinebh.bsky.social · 2w ago

No, that is not the alternative The alternative was treating like a normal news story, and not a trial by media - one that was so clearly turbocharged by Arday’s ethnic and social background and the growing resentment in the establishment in the UK of having more black people in high places

They should invent news about higher education that doesn't drive you insane

The seething rage resulting from seeing what mediocre white men who were once called out for their incompetence can accomplish is truly indescribable.

The Times wrote literally dozens of articles on Jason Arday, including one only a few hours ago saying he "may want to get himself a nice pair of orange trousers" that has since been deleted. The story was as much about academic accountability as GamerGate was about ethics in games journalism.

its worth asking whether this ending would have happened without the endless, gleeful, hunting and dismantling of Arday's choices on Twitter, where he represented all the sins of DEI made flesh for a range of assorted disgruntled academics who once had to go to a training and hated it

Ketan Joshi@ketanjoshi.co · 2w ago

Man, I only just caught with this story. What a tragic ending. www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/afdfd24...

I also think that if you're excited about co-authorship with AI you've probably disqualified yourself from the plagiarism convo

Well

Prof Katherine Schofield 🇬🇧🇦🇺🇪🇺@katherineschof8.bsky.social · 2w ago

*What is known of his plagiarism and fantastical claims is sufficiently bad. And he's resigned, and there's an independent inquiry underway. Leave him alone now. As I said a day into this, they're not going to let up until the poor man is dead.

lies are lies and plagiarism is plagiarism. but institutional incentives right now are, to use a technical term, completely fucked, and media coverage of academia is effectively a branch of the culture war

Whatever Jason Arday did or didn’t do, the unrelenting bullying by the media, by the race baiters, by the far right, hounded him to death. Will they learn any lesson … will they what! They and their hate filled little souls will move on, without a thought or any regret, to the next target.

Indeed. SS embodies the whole sorry mess, in that hardly anyone in it ever saw Arday as a person. For Cambridge he was a way to buff their credentials, to be discarded when he became embarrassing. For Sodha he was a prop to air grievances about “gender ideology”.

Jason Sinclair@jsinclair.bsky.social · 2w ago

Also... it didn't? Even if there was a monolithic worldview that exists only in her imagination then it didn't.

Important point - another resource is Education Support which has a helpline for anyone working in education www.educationsupport.org.uk

Education Support

The only UK charity dedicated to supporting the mental health and wellbeing of teachers and education staff.

educationsupport.org.uk

Petra Boynton@petraboynton.bsky.social · 2w ago

All I would ask is if you work or study in a uni, check in with colleagues who may need help. And continue to do so. A duty of care should apply to ourselves and each other. Help here www.papyrus-uk.org www.thecalmzone.net anti-bullyingalliance.org.uk/tools-inform... blackbritishacademics.co.uk

The university is a killing field. It is fully culpable. It must be said. Regardless of his deception. The neoliberal university made that happen. We don’t have to excuse his behavior to see how unevenly distributed resources and fucked star systems makes the university a killing machine.

The VC of the Uni of Greater Manchester has just been sacked for misuse of over £1m of university funds. Hardly a mention in the media. Not black so not newsworthy.

plagiarism is bad and it is also, critically, not a multi-week national and international story

Cambridge University should have known better, Fleet Street should have known better, the people hungrily absorbing every bit of news about it, making newsrooms feel like they had to keep going with it as a story, should have known better, horrible horrible horrible

I hope those tutting at the media also recognise that this includes social media.

All I would ask is if you work or study in a uni, check in with colleagues who may need help. And continue to do so. A duty of care should apply to ourselves and each other. Help here www.papyrus-uk.org www.thecalmzone.net anti-bullyingalliance.org.uk/tools-inform... blackbritishacademics.co.uk

None of this shit is worth our lives.

Ok how many of us with poorly regulated nervous systems feel totally mental after that alert ? I need a warning if there are gonna be warnings like that

Ah yes, my favourite time of year: fighting with federal student loan stuff season. This year’s fun: website stuck on penultimate screen for IBR recertification. Sigh. (Yes, I’ve printed and uploaded the paper form for my services but dang it, the FASFA people ought to get it together!)