Paul C(innamon) Kirby
@paulcinnamon.bsky.social
International theory, feminist political thought, “Women, Peace and Security”, masculinities and the governing of them, critical war studies, statecraft, pop cultures, another university might still be possible. Gender detective.
Terribly predictable, pretty boring, but still needs stressing given (1) the success of the TERF movement in claiming for themselves the mantle of protector of women and girls; and (2) their tendency to dismiss online male trans allies as hectoring misogynists.
The reason Israel blew up the 900 year old Beaufort Castle in Lebanon is (1) they have to fake their nationalist archaeological ancestry and can't bear any other regional history; (2) they were ignominiously defeated at Beaufort by PLO in their 1980s invasion of Lebanon & want to erase the memory.
I'm not sure folks have realized just how crazy the second half of 2026 and 2027 will be for global temperatures – on the back of a record-smashing El Niño event. Here is my latest estimate of where both years will end up compared to global temperatures since 1850.
Time to offer this seminar again I see.
Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò@olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 5d agothere are a lot of philosophical concepts that get egregiously misused out of the seminar room (and in the seminar room, to be fair). but in terms of sheer pernicious misuse "social construct" has gotta be top 5 somewhere and it's not number 5
Not wholly public, but as a PhD student I edited a journal and (based on two eviscerating expert reviews) we rejected a paper from a constructivist big shot, who then replied outraged, signing off with a latin phrase which turned out to be ‘what goes around comes around’.
Artologica aka Michele Banks @artologica.net · last wk.Hey 🧪! I was just reminiscing with a friend about the time a very senior academic called a mid-career guy's work "completely meaningless" at a meeting and now I want to hear your best (public, academic) disses
Every accusation is a confession. As a former theater operator, I can tell you from experience that the current right-wing conspiracy theory about The Odyssey’s ticket sales has currency because this is, in fact, how small ideologue studios juice their own numbers to make their sales seem strong.
Miles Klee 🦉@milesklee.bsky.social · 2w agoI love how insane everyone is becoming.
Nothing so petty and factional as those who claim to be above petty factionalism.
PoliticsHome@politicshome.bsky.social · 2w agoLabour MPs unhappy with the treatment of Starmer loyalists have warned they could make life hard for Burnham at the Budget “Andy’s Starmerite purge has created an incredibly powerful phalanx of skilled political operators who intimately know the government’s fiscal position" Harriet Symonds writes
This is a usefully revealing comment in how it shows that the US is not protecting Israeli leaders from war crimes charges because Israel is somehow manipulating the US through Epstein kompromat, but simply the shared interests of war criminals.
Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 2w agoTom Cotton: "Ultimately, it's not about Prime Minster Netanyahu and Israel -- it's about arresting Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth and Marco Rubio in the future if they ever travel abroad."
The only good thing to come out of the dipshit Odyssey discourse is that at one point I commented “if we’re worried about accuracy, then Jason Mantzoukas should be playing Odysseus,” and now I can’t get it out of my head 😄
There’s the error where you insist sheer drudgery is a really a virtue, when in reality anyone who has to that work would stop in an instant if they could. And there’s the error where, as here, you offload everything essential but still want credit for doing a great job. (This is a post about AI.)
www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/... "The transactions — alongside other payments which are the subject of a continuing Metropolitan Police investigation — mean Fiona Cottrell had a role in 35 per cent of all funds received by Reform during the election campaign."
George Cottrell opened account days before mystery Reform donation
Sunday Times revelations raise new questions over the provenance of £500,000 gifted to Nigel Farage’s party by the convicted fraudster’s mother
thetimes.com
This person in the FT comments section goes by the name Frank Talk and I can see why
It bears repeating: the contemporary defenders of masculine values and virtue despise men, hate themselves, and have standards so low that they regularly mistake aggression for personality and misogyny for culture.
Tal Lavin@swordsjew.bsky.social · 3w agoi actually think most men havent broken in to a woman's house and raped her. i dont think most men have done that
"When does an error require a correction, when does it become a scandal, and when does it become an execution?" alexiscoe.substack.com/p/the-scanda...
The Scandal and the Scale
I was bleary-eyed on a delayed flight when I spotted a New York Times article about Kerri Greenidge, a historian of Black political life and memory.
alexiscoe.substack.com
Future utilitarians living in a solar punk utopia having anguished debates about the credit owed to President Trump for supercharging green transition.
Carl Quintanilla@carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 3w ago24-hour Hormuz traffic rolling over sharply ... now at just 3. - Schwab
Venezuela is a US colony, and Marco Rubio is its Viceroy. While you can’t accuse the Times of denying that reality, it does wrap it in cutesy sycophancy and credulity (did you know Rubio speaks Spanish and sends Delcy selfies?). www.nytimes.com/2026/07/11/u...
How Marco Rubio Is Running Venezuela From Afar
The secretary of state effectively controls Venezuela’s finances, the distribution of its natural resources and its government. His grip on the country is a vivid manifestation of American power in th...
nytimes.com
And if your solution is “lol AI has rendered the very idea of universities obsolete; the future of education, and society, is people subscribing to AI services that do everything for them”, then I grant this is at least consistent but we differ about why it’s important for people to learn things.
If your solution is “Plus ça change, students have always not cared about the material and cheated, why I was even something of a lazy rascal myself” OK I guess but also have you seen the sort of thing that LLMs can do these days relative to our traditional capacity to manage the likes of you
If your solution is “I would simply teach in a constructive, clever, warm, and inspiring manner that overcame all of these obstacles and brought out the inner virtue that I know exists inside every student waiting only to be awakened” OK good for you I guess
If your solution is “I would simply fail everyone who I think is using AI”, you don’t know how universities work. If your solution is “I would simply have all assessment be in-person written or oral exams” you didn’t read to the end of Andrew’s post and also good luck in your reconstruction efforts.
If students are simply uninterested in the core bargain of a class like this, it’s hard to know what to do. You teach the material because you think it’s important they know it; they don’t give a shit, but want the credential; and the university wants their money. Your main option is “pretend”.
Andrew Heiss@andrew.heiss.phd · 4w agowoof ≈80% of assignments this summer term have essentially been just raw chatgpt/claude output, including assignments that required designing stuff in illustrator/affinity/canva. The battle is lost for asynchronous online courses.
Interesting to see a reference in this article to Daniel Foliard 'Dislocations: The Photography of War in the Middle East' (London: Verso, 2023) - a book that sounds incredible but which doesn't actually exist. Wonder what else has been hallucinated...?
MEMORY, MIND & MEDIA@mmmjournal.bsky.social · 12mo agoNew Article: Peace in every shot: How Kodak changed the way we see war by Hadas Zahavi Read it here: cup.org/40QIkfG #Kodak #amateurphotography #visualmemory
Methinks complaints about a lack of campus space for in-person exams may not grasp the scale of the crisis.
Kieran Healy@kjhealy.co · 4w agolol
Setting a standard fee for university courses and then cutting support to the courses with relatively low marginal costs feels like a very poor way to help STEM subjects
Arts Professional@artsprofessional.co.uk · 4w agoPerforming 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.
