"All of this falls apart if humans don't adopt the tech. This is why you've seen Meta cram its lame chatbots into WhatsApp and Instagram. This is why Notepad and Paint now have useless Copilot buttons on Windows. This is why Google Gemini wants to "help you" read and reply to your emails."

Analysis: OpenAI is a loss-making machine, how can it survive?

Don't call it a bubble! Loss-making monster OpenAI is on the hook for $1.4 trillion (with a T) in compute commitments. How can this go on?

windowscentral.com

Change the name of the institution and the vampire consultants and this is the same story at any number of different institutions. A national scandal.

Peter Geoghegan@petergeoghegan.bsky.social · last wk.

Behind the bewildering transformation of British universities, are management consultants being paid millions Really proud to have this vital piece on our unis are being gutted from the inside by @jheathershaw.bsky.social on Democracy for Sale. Do read democracyforsale.substack.com/p/inside-bri...

A birthday card I made for a poet friend

I gave evidence to the House of Commons Education Select Committee: very short account here schoolsweek.co.uk/secondary-en...

Curriculum 'crowds out' reading for pleasure, says expert

'Teach for the test' approach and a focus on phonics are taking the fun out of reading, say experts

schoolsweek.co.uk

A deeply destructive and inexpert management consultancy class has emerged whose sole purpose is to shrink Anglosphere universities and to undermine their future - all the better to secure more work. democracyforsale.substack.com/p/inside-bri...

Inside Britain's university crisis

As teaching staff face job loss, their bosses have netted pay rises and bought advice from a “vampiric” management consultancy, writes Prof. John Heathershaw of the University of Exeter

democracyforsale.substack.com

How can anyone not want to eat in a place called George Lobster?

The Guardian gets with the programme www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

The Guardian view on humanities cuts in universities: academic departments are more than cost centres | Editorial

Editorial: Literature, the arts and social sciences must not be sacrificed as higher education funding is squeezed

theguardian.com

Meant to include @gsoh31.bsky.social

Mark Robson@markrobsoninfo.bsky.social · 4w ago

As TS Eliot almost put it: ‘Facts don’t fall from the sky like rain, they are laid like bricks into the place prepared for them’. Where ideology meets university-as-business spreadsheets are mind-maps @ducuuo.bsky.social

As TS Eliot almost put it: ‘Facts don’t fall from the sky like rain, they are laid like bricks into the place prepared for them’. Where ideology meets university-as-business spreadsheets are mind-maps @ducuuo.bsky.social

Katherine Stiles@katherinestiles.org · 4w ago

Humanities among degrees being ‘extinguished’ by hard-up universities Experts fear rise in education ‘cold spots’ and social immobility as 4,000 academic posts lost in one year 🔗⮛

I don't think we can fix the currently tattered contract between generations if we keep on doing stuff like this. It's like the reverse of future-proofing. Future damning?

Arts Professional@artsprofessional.co.uk · last mo.

Performing and creative arts university courses will no longer receive funding from a government teaching grant as part of “difficult decisions” about spending priorities, Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson has said.

The UK has now said it will actively harm or damage: *Chemistry *Nursing *High-end physics *Languages *Astronomy *Creative arts *Theatre and performance *Cultural industries *Europe-level science The UK has lost its mind. 🇬🇧

Much of the world’s violence stems from the desire to prevent the coming generations from changing the world, so as to preserve the status quo from which those in power benefit. It begins by limiting attempts to imagine that different world. This matters. www.artsprofessional.co.uk/news/dfe-sla...

DfE slashes creative and performing arts teaching grants for universities - Arts Professional

Performing and creative arts university courses will no longer receive funding from a government teaching grant as part of "difficult decisions" about

artsprofessional.co.uk

I remember a game on Twitter that allowed you to boot Farage into the sea. Did it make it to Bluesky?

Thank god Farage never had any credibility. He’d be in trouble now otherwise, but.

Education, education, ssshhhh. The sheer negligence of this highlights the contradiction between the casual destruction of higher education and every policy ambition (social mobility, growth, employability, economic health of ‘regions’, etc.). Self-interest doesn’t need to be very enlightened here.

Times Higher Education (THE)@timeshighered.bsky.social · last mo.

The Department for Education has confirmed that universities will receive £50.9 million less in teaching grants next academic year. Bridget Phillipson, the education minister has defended the reduction in light of tuition fee rises. https://ow.ly/6UWJ50ZkLlf

Wonderful that that nice Mr Trump thinks Harry Kane, scorer of of one goal, is great. I wonder why he didn’t mention Jude Bellingham, scorer of two goals? Thankfully we can’t suspect any prejudice, or else it might seem odd.

The special issue on ‘The Sentence’ that I edited for them in 2025 is currently the freely available sample issue. www.euppublishing.com/toc/count/11/1

Edinburgh University Press Journals - Table of Contents - count: Vol 11, No 1

euppublishing.com

wanna learn more about myths and lies, and truths and numbers, on lifetime employment opportunities for english majors and other humanists? we've got (free) merch! humanitiesworks.org

Anna Kornbluh@annakornbluh.bsky.social · last mo.

"Hiring of college grads is down across the board. But certain majors are able to access opportunities in a wider array of industries, new LinkedIn data shows." ENGLISH ENGLISH ENGLISH 69% VISUAL AND PERFORMING ARTS 68% www.forbes.com/sites/courtn...

Good start to the week with a couple of enjoyable days in Oxford for a @countertext-eup.bsky.social roundtable.

Kai Havertz and let slip the dogs of war …

Watching A Very Peculiar Practice partly out of nostalgia, and it’s still sharp and funny, but painful to see the normalisation of what Andrew Davies saw (rightly) as the unhinged undoing of the university.

There are plenty of things to agree with in Alan Milburn’s report on our responsibility to a generation. What is inexcusable is to make no connection to presiding over the wholesale collapse of the higher education sector and to fail to see how these are linked. Denial is not a solution.

Streeting as stalking horse theory (he knows he can’t win but sets it up for …). Hard to see who. So, who stands to gain most from showing that there are no viable candidates? Starmer. All a bit House of Cards, but … @mrjamesob.bsky.social

Watching election coverage on BBC. Kuennsberg puffs minor Reform gains, ignores Labour holding a council. Eventually says it was impossible for them to lose, discounting those who voted as insignificant. So much for democracy. No fact checking of unelected Dr Bull’s, er, bull. I’m off to bed.

Read more about our current ballot at the University of Dundee on the BBC website. #SaveHE #StopTheCuts www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Dundee University staff balloted on new strike action

The move by the University and College Union (UCU) is part of a long-running dispute over cuts.

bbc.co.uk

So what exactly is DJehosophatT doing to Jon Stewart? @thedailyshow.com

Just noticed that September is going to be great for readers of Mathias Énard: the next volume of Mélancolie des confins and a translation of La Perfection du tir from @avecsesdoigts.bsky.social and @fitzcarraldoeds.bsky.social

Maybe I’ve missed it, but I haven’t heard anyone holding Kemi Badenoch to account for repeating (repeatedly) a scripted Hegseth press statement line about stopping arrows v stopping the bow while claiming that she isn’t simply pandering to the Trump line. @mrjamesob.bsky.social

Well this isn’t scary at all. A simple spectrum from the erasure of human element in GenAI to the erasure of the human tout court. Almost as if driven by misanthropic narcissists like Peter Thiel. Thankfully no government worthy of the name would give them (Palantir et al) health data, etc.

Christopher Mims@mims.bsky.social · 6mo ago

AIs can’t stop recommending nuclear strikes in war game simulations Leading AIs from OpenAI, Anthropic and Google opted to use nuclear weapons in simulated war games in 95 per cent of cases www.newscientist.com/article/2516...

Grateful as ever to all at CounterText. A piece on Caryl Churchill in the latest issue. And thanks to Raffaella for including me.

CounterText@countertext-eup.bsky.social · 6mo ago

📘 New issue of CounterText out now CounterText 11.3 is a special issue on ‘Omission/s’, guest edited by Raffaella Antinucci and published by Edinburgh University Press. 🔗 www.euppublishing.com/toc/count/11/3