Version of LinkedIn but for pervert glasses which invites you to upgrade to Premium to find out ‘four other people’ who filmed you today
Will Davies
@will-davies.bsky.social
Contributing Editor @lrb.co.uk Substack https://substack.com/@willd10 Subscribe for latest writing etc at Williamdavies.blog
The long, doleful story of how the University of Kent sank. Can't vouch for all the details, but apparently it took 7yrs, £29m in restructuring and £2m in consultancy to accept the inevitable: effective takeover. My view? You can delay, but not avoid, the inevitable. shepwayvox.org/2026/08/05/u...
University of Kent Financial Crisis: Cuts, Consultants and Merger with Greenwich
For six years the University of Kent cut jobs, closed subjects, sold financial breathing space and promised recovery. It spent £29.4 million restructuring itself and awarded at least £1.9 million o…
shepwayvox.org
I've written about Neets for the LRB. It is odd listening to recent debates about this completely ignore the overwhelming fact of this current crisis, that it is one of inactivity, disability, mental ill-health and neurodevelopmental disorders (as I discuss) www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
William Davies · Young People Are Different: What do Neets need?
The majority of Neets are not looking for work, but living outside of the labour market and the education system,...
lrb.co.uk
the Arday discourse on X is now at 'VC of Cambridge needs to resign and a KC needs to be appointed to investigate the whole affair'
“The tragic implication of Plümper and Neumayer’s analysis is not that individual scientists are unusually dishonest, but that a system designed to incentivise truth-seeking has been incrementally transformed into one that often rewards its distortion” blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofb...
Is publication, not truth, now the driving pursuit of science? - LSE Review of Books
The Credibility Crisis in Science by Thomas Plümper and Eric Neumayer explores how researcher incentives and publication bias distort scientific knowledge
blogs.lse.ac.uk
There's a new curse stalking social platforms It involves writing Not any writing Not just even LLM-generated writing This kind of writing And I get the feeling actual humans are doing it
The Rod Liddle biography suggests a certain post-1968 'type' who was just idiotically drawn to norm-breaching, moving via adolescent rebellion, punk, revolutionary socialism, and eventually ending up at racism, because by the 21st century that was the most efficient transgression still on offer
Heatwave Diary Day 53: I simply cannot face any more salad
Just better hope the guy who was an absolute *delight* in person never held a job in which he shared horrific ideas with people who never got to meet him
What happened between Rod Liddle being a BBC editor and Guardian columnist, and him being the 'humorous' face of Far Right banter?
New post: those wanting Jason Arday to face 'justice' of some kind are not going to get what they want willd10.substack.com/p/how-the-ja...
How the Jason Arday affair will fizzle out
Truth is a social system. Sorry.
willd10.substack.com
New post: those wanting Jason Arday to face 'justice' of some kind are not going to get what they want willd10.substack.com/p/how-the-ja...
How the Jason Arday affair will fizzle out
Truth is a social system. Sorry.
willd10.substack.com
Remarkable piece of journalism, using the reputation of the journalist and newspaper (which some will no doubt discredit) to try and circumvent the heat surrounding this case www.theguardian.com/education/ng...
Playbooks, plagiarism and a pig’s head: new claims surrounding a star Cambridge professor
Jason Arday was regarded as an academic superstar, but then questions about his work prompted scrutiny of his backstory and counterclaims of racism
theguardian.com
NEW PODCAST: Daniel Trilling in conversation at the Bookshop with William Davies about his new book IF WE TOLERATE THIS, which examines how far-right ideas have come to dominate the political agenda Listen here: podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/d... @trillingual.bsky.social @will-davies.bsky.social
Weird headline here, given Kramer a) doesn't appear to name Labour b) identifies a series of policies - frozen tuition fees, TEF, REF, OfS freedom of speech - that arose from Tory-led administrations. Starmer's first HE policy was to raise tuition fees www.ft.com/content/e14d...
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
Aside from @mansfieldvonrank.bsky.social being unjustly airbrushed out here, a remarkable detail: that 6 Music was for Cameronism what Fox & Friends is for Trumpism
Duncan Robinson@duncanrobinson.bsky.social · 5d agowww.economist.com/britain/2026... Wrote about our indie music loving elite and how Burnham is...just another 50-something bloke interested in the exactly same thing as others of his generation
very interesting from @jburnmurdoch.ft.com - cross-over in graph on left coincides precisely with Global Financial Crisis www.ft.com/content/6a35...
I am now criticising Joyce Carol Oates www.theguardian.com/film/2026/ju...
‘The crude language of Maga folks’: Joyce Carol Oates criticises Emily Wilson for criticising Nolan’s Odyssey
The novelist suggested Wilson should have been ‘a wee bit more thoughtful and respectful’ towards a film-maker who may have helped boost her book sales
theguardian.com
the Spectator can't believe that academic recruitment panels don't pass an applicant's PhD thesis through a plagiarism checker, prior to appointing
Am assuming that at least 50% of the courses ‘in AI’ that universities are currently blanket advertising will be cobbled together and/or out of date, and taught by people whose own skills - coding - have already been rendered defunct by AI
Having made the unpopular (amongst our kids) decision to take our summer holiday in Donegal, am now wondering whether I can spin some nonsense to a Travel supplement editor that this is a bleeding edge trend of 'Climate Tourism'
[cut to university admissions wondering why the average age of a clearing applicant is now 55]
Will Davies@will-davies.bsky.social · 6d agolog in to facebook to find wall-to-wall ads for university clearing places, including many from ThePresitigiousRussellGroupOfUniversitiesTM. August is going to be a fight to the death.