Pekka Väyrynen
@vayrynen.bsky.social
Philosophy professor at University of Leeds. Metaethics | academic life | "a satisficer with really high standards" (said by a colleague, fairly). https://vayrynen.org
"Government has got to stop wasting money on extraordinarily high-margin generic intermediaries to buy in teaching it could commission directly from the starving universities that already provide it."
Letter: Don’t pay consultants if universities can do the job
From Amanda Goodall, London EC1, UK and Andrew Oswald, Coventry, Warwickshire, UK
ft.com
Saw Mogwai (@mogwai.scot) both nights at the glorious Brudenell Social Club in Leeds (capacity 400). Friday was very, very good. Last night was superb. Very little setlist overlap. Monumental sound and a treat to see them at one of my favorite music venues anywhere.
Glad someone senior from the sector is pushing back. Labour MPs need to understand the serious real anger from graduates and the people who produce them. And the dangerous financial situation they have allowed to fester, or indeed worsened, in one of Britain’s leading sectors.
Labour has harmed universities as much as Trump, London School of Economics head says
LSE vice-chancellor Larry Kramer points to domestic student fees freeze, international student limits and rise in employers’ national insurance
ft.com
Come for the nice typesetting, stay for the footnote that references both Quintillian and Lenin www.tandfonline.com/doi/epdf/10....
Asking a Question is a Proposal in Shared Inquiry
tandfonline.com
It's called The Humanities and it's being systematically dismantled due to HE cuts. 😡
Financial Times@financialtimes.com · last mo.Universities should arm students with AI ‘eval’ powers ft.trib.al/KP8p07e | opinion
A single poll result which is starkly at odds with the assumptions underpinning most economic models
YouGov@yougov.co.uk · last mo.If you had a choice between instantly receiving £50,000 or a 50% chance to win £1m, which would you pick? £50,000: 73% 50/50 chance of winning £1m: 21% yougov.com/en-gb/daily-...
this has the potential to be the funniest half of football of all time, easily beating the current record held by the first half of this same match
I’ll take this paragraph! Higher Education and Universities are a success story. The chaotic destruction of the sector is avoidable, undesirable, and self defeating.
Tim Bale@timbale.bsky.social · last mo.Just one para from @jdportes.bsky.social brilliant (and beautifully written) @theguardian.com piece on Burnham and the economy. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
This just in: Mick Jagger admits in a NYT interview that he is reading philosophy, specifically Kant, because it is fashionable. Well, vaguely, but still. Also: so many arguments! #philsky
Excellent Day 1 yesterday at the 2026 conference of British Society for Ethical Theory, held in Leeds this year (www.bset.org.uk). Day 2: Let's go! #PhilSky
Just out: a very helpful Philosophy Compass piece on the metaethics of normative vagueness by Kaj Zeller, a philosophy PhD student at University of Leeds (@leedsprhs.bsky.social). Available as open access! #PhilSky compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
Normative Vagueness: Metaethics
The apparent vagueness of normative predicates such as “permissible,” “wrong,” and “responsible” raises a number of intriguing questions and has prompted a growing body of philosophical literature. I....
compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com
The entire editorial team at a journal of a for-profit publisher resigned and formed a new open-access journal. It has now published its first article...
The New Open-Access Journal Philosophical Logic Is Now Publishing - Daily Nous
Last December, all of the editors-in-chief and associate editors of Springer Nature’s Journal of Philosophical Logic resigned and formed Philosophical Logic, a new "diamond" open-access journal (detai...
dailynous.com
Excited beyond belief to be seeing Mogwai (@mogwai.scot) on their 30th anniversary tour at the fantastic Brudenell Social Club (capacity 400) on both Aug 21 and Aug 22. Artist pre-sale jackpot through jammed servers, tickets coming back up after going unavailable, and all that. 🥳
It’s wild that politicians don’t seem to grasp the degree to which universities contribute to the economy- local, regional, national. The failure to intervene is a stain on this govt - a shocking dereliction of duty to every worker, every local business, every student, every area that is suffering
Stephen Shapiro@stephenshapiro.bsky.social · 2mo agoUK to Universities: drop dead archive.is/PN5y7
The Philosophy department at Exeter is exceptional. It has both a concentration of world leading researchers in the philosophy of the biological and cognitive sciences, and a unique departmental profile in the UK. It would be a catastrophic loss to the UK philosophy scene.
Ben Phillips@benphillips1989.bsky.social · 2mo agoA statement from Exeter UCU branch @ucu.org.uk - please share far and wide.
Two new papers just landed! Each is about evaluative language, focusing on specific phenomena about evaluative gradable adjectives (e.g. 'good', 'rational'). Each is a side project to a seemingly interminable book project on normative explanation. Titles, blurbs, links in the thread. 1/3 #PhilSky
Hey #UCU, I just released v1 of another @ucucommons.org project: JNCHES vs Inflation. Site: jnchesvinflation.streamlit.app Blog post: ucucommons.org/project-jnches-vs-inflation/ It's depressing but may be helpful!
Project: JNCHES vs Inflation
We're happy to announce a new UCU Commons Project: JNCHES vs. Inflation. We've extracted pay spine point data going back to 2005 and plotted it in a number of ways against several inflation measures.
ucucommons.org
BBC Question Time now doing exact same with AI they did with Farage? This ‘expert’ panel on AI is a disgrace: not one critical voice. Gilbert works for Tony Blair to promote AI. Jones is govt chief AI booster (& Blair flunky). Riparbelli is industry. Gawdat is ex industry. And a Tory MP
Darren Jones MP@darrenpjones.bsky.social · 3mo agoLooking forward to talking about the future of the UK tomorrow on BBC Question Time and how we’re applying Labour values to the big challenges we face as a country. 👇
website that picks the Rothko closest to how the weather feels in your location (by Joonas Virtanen) rothko.joonas.wtf
Latest data due tomorrow but your regular reminder: net migration is *plunging* without these plans being enacted.
The Guardian@theguardian.com · 3mo agoBurnham to back Shabana Mahmood’s immigration changes, allies say
“Academic science is not only about productivity but also deep understanding, creative solutions & training critical thinkers as next generation of researchers. Now is the time for our community to evaluate whether AI products help or hinder these.“ @lmesseri.bsky.social & @mjcrockett.bsky.social🧪👇
The uncritical adoption of AI in science is alarming — we urgently need guard rails
Artificial intelligence is rapidly accelerating scientific output, but risks narrowing inquiry, weakening judgement and undermining how scientists are trained.
nature.com
With disgust I learned Olga Tokarczuk uses AI to help with writing her latest novel - article in Polish, my translation of relevant bit in posts below mycompanypolska.pl/artykul/olga...
Olga Tokarczuk zapowiada ostatnią powieść w karierze: „Pisanie długich opowieści jest dziś ekonomicznie nieopłacalne”
Czy w świecie powszechnego pędu i pośpiechu jest jeszcze miejsce na duże, wymagające opowieści? Olga Tokarczuk wyraża obawę, że ta era dobiegła końca. Dlatego najnowszą powieść, uważa za ostatnią w ka...
mycompanypolska.pl
My list of Bluesky Philosophers is now 2,284 strong. 💪 But I’m always on the lookout for new additions—particularly students, early career researchers, and those doing #philosophy in other languages. DM me with any suggestions or if you’d like to be added! #filosofi #filosofie #philosophia
Today’s Education Select Committee report on higher education is the best report on HE to come from Govt/Parliament in ages. It takes a rounded view of the whole system, moving away from the more atomistic or narrow accounts we’ve seen 🧵 committees.parliament.uk/committee/20...
“A very serious problem”: No clear government plan for universities risking insolvency, MPs find in new report - Committees - UK Parliament
Today MPs on the Education Committee warn that the government has no clear plan for universities facing insolvency and that protections for students are inadequate, as the Committee publishes a new re...
committees.parliament.uk
Coincidentally, the number of staff currently at risk of redundancy (2700) at the University of Nottingham is the same as the number of jobs at risk at British Steel. Yesterday, the govt said they aren't neutral on job losses & so pledged to save those steel jobs. Watch as they blithely ignore HE.
The media have to just stop interviews with Farage when this happens. But they *never* do and Farage knows it, which is why he gets prickly and threatens to walk away. He knows they want/need their story and that's exactly what happened here. Stop fuelling the beast, FFS.
Peter Stefanovic@peterstefanovic.bsky.social · 4mo agoReform UK leader Nigel Farage has said there was "no obligation" to declare a £5m gift he received from a billionaire backer before he became an MP. Sky’s Beth Rigby points out the rules
