This year's theme for TAG was surely set before the host department realized the redundancies it would be facing. Archaeology has a lot of capacity to understand persistence, loss & change that can sort communities facing those things. But the theme may loom larger than other years.

Tânia Casimiro@tmcasimiro.bsky.social · 4w ago

Join us in December at Exter for tag @jrosantos.bsky.social @joaols.bsky.social

The social care system is currently a horrible lottery where 1 in 7 of us will pay more than £100,000 on the cost of our adult social care. It is grotesque how we let families down when they are most vulnerable. (1/2)

"I know the names of every woman and child murdered in Northern Ireland in the last 10 years without even having to look them up. Not a single one was caused by a trans woman — I checked the list twice just to be sure." archive.ph/oQ2Cs

I wrote this 👇 open.substack.com/pub/vicderby...

This is dementia. I am paying £6600 per WEEK for my parents and their dementia. My mother's bill alone is over £4000 per week. That's close to £20k per month! And she's only just 80. 1/n

Arthur Snell@snellarthur.bsky.social · last wk.

She wasn't eligible for any state aid. Fine, you might say, she was relatively wealthy, why should anyone else pay? Well, if she had cancer, the NHS would have taken care of her. She had the misfortune to have a specific disease for which the punishment is to pay out all of your savings.

Do not adjust your screens: Daily Telegraph, purveyor of hard-core #climate denial, has temporarily noticed reality. Don’t panic: normal service on behalf of its energy industry sponsors will be resumed shortly.

One consequence of the democratising effect of social media is too many people treat “the statements made and endorsed by a social media platform’s wealthy and powerful owner” with the same seriousness as “a random user with no influence or importance”.

Sunder Katwala (sundersays)@sundersays.bsky.social · 2w ago

There is simply no ambiguity in what Elon Musk is arguing and endorsing here.

And yet the government keep on using X!?! Please @andyburnham.bsky.social get all ministries and MPs off that place and stop (financially) supporting a man who is inciting violence against politicians

Sunder Katwala (sundersays)@sundersays.bsky.social · 2w ago

Elon Musk, owner of X, has called the editor of the Economist "a traitor to the West, plain and simple" after her recent interview with him. He now argues that "anyone who opposes remigration is a traitor" Musk has been socialising violence since Aug25: "fight or die, that's what it comes down to"

I join you from the Blaenavon wildfire in Southeast Wales, brought to you by BP, Shell and Equinor. Though it does not look dramatic, the fire has been out of control for days - for a very particular reason. 🧵

State of the Gironde fires at 09:00 French time. They are extending.

As a former financial crime compliance specialist for more than 10 years, I’ve never heard of a British political party unable to access its banking facilities *during an election* The Times reports this follows SARs being filed with the National Crime Agency. What on earth is going on at Reform?

Reform UK’s bank account was frozen after Cottrell donations

Nigel Farage’s party could not make or receive payments for two weeks during the 2024 general election campaign, Insight can reveal

thetimes.com

To every trans Londoner: this city is yours too. Today we celebrate London Trans+ Pride and reaffirm a simple truth: you should be free to live as yourself, without fear or prejudice. You are loved. You are wanted. You belong here.

Beggars belief. UKHE is in a complete and utter mess. And the government dit by and some of the media gloats

Plashing Vole@plashingvole.bsky.social · 2w ago

My dept is about to be reduced to 3 people covering 3 separate disciplines. The 25 PhD students will be left bereft of adequate supervision numerically and in terms of expertise. The government has decided that they should have no recourse (music to my university’s ears).

From the LinkedIn of an academic I have a lot of respect for.

Universities and students are not enclosed units, ivory towers separate from the rest of their local communities. They eat and drink (a lot) including spending lots of money in local pubs and restaurants. They shop. They get buses, taxis and Ubers. They put money into local economies.

For those overseas: I really cannot stress what a big deal Larry the Cat is in British political life. It's not even a bit. He's an obsession of the 'Westminster bubble' – I'm no exception – but because the British public love animals, beyond that too.

Richard M. Nixon@dicknixon.bsky.social · 2w ago

Larry laid his mouse in front of the press to be photographed. Lest you ask, this is a real photograph via the Press Association.

Was catching up on some of Marina Hyde's recent columns for @theguardian.com. I wish she was on here so that I could thank her for skewering "politicians" [we used to have decent ones around the world but now we have Trump... Hoping for better from Burnham]. www.theguardian.com/profile/mari...

I see Labour MPs still announcing stuff on X, a platform specifically designed to make people hate them, 100% shaped to push them out of public life and which would ideally see many of them in prison. Funny old world.

Great to see the Guardian champion the SHAPE (Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences) subjects, but this piece gives impression that they are expensive, whereas many are 'cheap to teach' subjects subsidising more expensive subjects, mainly in STEM and medicine. The crisis demands better understanding.

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

#SVPCA is happening this year, on September 10th, at the University of Southampton... registration info and details are coming soon, stay tuned!

Unless this “honesty” involves the recognition that immigrants are *not* the root cause of the UK’s problems *but* actually a part of the solution to them, this will be completely pointless. I cannot stress this enough. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Burnham to say UK must be honest about its challenges as he prepares to become PM

Labour leader will visit king to accept role on Monday and will start making cabinet appointments that afternoon

theguardian.com

That did not look off-side

They’ve obviously got to redo this after the final with whoever loses in the tub

kottke.org@kottke.org · 3w ago

Contender for the most remarkably bonkers sports photo of all time: a 20-year-old Lionel Messi bathing a five-month-old Lamine Yamal (taken in 2007 for a UNICEF fundraiser). [kottke.org]

The Argentinians love having a go at the REF so much that you‘d be mistaken for thinking they work in a UK university.

That was the football equivalent of a Researchfish submission

I dedicated a decent amount of my life a few years ago to investigating dodgy PPE contracts. Here’s what I made of the Covid Inquiry conclusions released today 👇🏻

The missing finding of the Covid Inquiry PPE report

🔓 Free to read...

open.substack.com

My son just told me is favourite sentence is: “I didn’t say we should kill him” because if you emphasise each different word it changes the entire meaning

'"Dysfunctionaler and dysfunctionaler!", cried Alice (she was so much surprised, that for the moment she quite forgot how to speak good English).' Well, not surprised, but rather horrified. 1/2

Levy to be charged even if student drops out, DfE confirms

Ministers decline to introduce more exemptions to new tax in its response to consultation

timeshighereducation.com

Under a Binface government, anyone who doesn’t accept human-made climate change as fact will be sent back to school, from Year 1 right the way to A Levels, to see if anything goes in the second time round. #VoteBinface

The author of this piece is a national expert on electoral law. When he speaks, we should all listen open.substack.com/pub/bestforb...

'Posh George' and dodgy donors: how much trouble is Farage in?

“If I was the Electoral Commission I would be seriously considering whether Farage or Reform UK may have used any of these donations or gifts in kind in their election campaigning or party political w...

open.substack.com