Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Alix Mortimer @alixmortimer.bsky.social · 1h

Reorganise departments into schools

<sequel ten years on>

Reorganise schools into departments

Marjorie James Keenan @unenthusiast.com · 4h

In honour of spooky month, share a 4 word horror story that only someone in your profession would understand.

rm -rf ~/

hammancheez @hammancheez.bsky.social · 5h

"The chancellor approved it"

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Alix Mortimer @alixmortimer.bsky.social · 1h

Ah right so my associations are posey student politics because that’s how it manifests in the UK but this term has an actual history

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Alix Mortimer @alixmortimer.bsky.social · 3h

Absolutely. And religion is a good wayfinder for this, but perhaps we also have to interrogate the idea that it’s not natural to our way of thinking. At the very least that is variable across any population so it must be *more* natural to some of us.

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Alix Mortimer @alixmortimer.bsky.social · 3h

Embellishing my theory of yesterday that the pagan animists are going to save us due to ancient environmental cosmology, with the addition of the Catholics due to culturally embedded thundering conviction

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Alix Mortimer @alixmortimer.bsky.social · 4h

It also has ping pong to tie it all together

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Alix Mortimer @alixmortimer.bsky.social · 5h

Have had this thought and tbh I also don’t like it, am I being awkward there? It’s a kinda student politics posey vibe and these are not those times. I’m much happier to be anti-fascist.

Ify Nwadiwe @ifycomedy.com · 12h

I think we really should stop using antifa and just fully say anti-fascist and get them saying they are against anti fascism. Using antifa is giving them some distance and I genuinely think some of their base don’t even know that’s what it stands for.

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Ify Nwadiwe @ifycomedy.com · 12h

I think we really should stop using antifa and just fully say anti-fascist and get them saying they are against anti fascism. Using antifa is giving them some distance and I genuinely think some of their base don’t even know that’s what it stands for.

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Ben Williamson @benpatrickwill.bsky.social · 17h

The alarming aspect of this deliberate "anti-woke" algorithmic biasing of LLMs from an educational perspective is our institutions all bought in to an imaginary of innovation, then got locked in to enterprise contracts, and now the models are being recoded so they undermine educational values

Marcus Luther @marcusluther.bsky.social · 18h

Genuine question: for those enthusiastically pushing AI tools into every part of our education system—what checks/guardrails are there around algorithmic biases like this?

Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 23h

The administration “is currently pressuring OpenAI and other AI companies to make their models more conservative-friendly.”

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Huw C. Davies @huwcdavies.bsky.social · 17h

Imagine using Meta’s AI in educational contexts or having it integrated into edtech products. When it’s overseen by MAGA representatives like this, imagine asking it what Antifa means, if there is a relationship is between race and IQ or what is causing climate change.

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ianlevely.bsky.social @ianlevely.bsky.social · 1d

Makes sense: for the last couple of years we had students that spent high school at home. Now we have students whose COVID experience was early enough that they had a chance to have a normal transition to young adulthood..

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Alix Mortimer @alixmortimer.bsky.social · 1d

I’ve had two colleagues remark separately on how engaged and present students are this year, and what a pleasure to teach - both undergrad and postgrad. It’s only week 2 but a high starting point. Some kind of pandemic long tail?

Margot Finn @eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 1d

'It is no secret that student attendance has plummeted in recent years, with near-empty lecture halls a staple of the post-pandemic world.'

Really? I lecture to all our 1st years. Lecture hall is full, not near-empty. Student engagement picked up last year and (early days) seems stronger again. 1/2

Fiction ‘brings lectures to life’ as academics face empty classes

University ‘whodunnit’ inspired by attempts to tackle poor attendance as scholars look for novel ways to engage mainstream audiences

www.timeshighereducation.com

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Alix Mortimer @alixmortimer.bsky.social · 1d

Tarka line?

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Ros Taylor @rostaylor.bsky.social · 1d

No one still alive has seen as much of the Tory party as Heseltine. He was involved in Concorde negotiations… When I research More Jam Tomorrow, he keeps popping up.

Watching the Conservatives’ extinction must hurt him profoundly in ways it’s hard for Bluesky to imagine.

BBC Newsnight @bbcnewsnight.bsky.social · 4d

“You described Reform and other parties across Europe today as among the 'right wing equivalents of the fascists in the 1930s'. Why?”

“Because that’s what they are”

@vicderbyshire.bsky.social asks Lord Heseltine about remarks he made at Conservative Party Conference.

#Newsnight

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Alix Mortimer @alixmortimer.bsky.social · 1d

Peter Capaldi as the Dr: “these are attack eyebrows”

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Alix Mortimer @alixmortimer.bsky.social · 1d

John Boyd Orr by the way is a new one on me and apparently the most Scottish-looking person ever to exist

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Alix Mortimer @alixmortimer.bsky.social · 1d

Or even those that do. I suppose you could say I have been intellectually brought up within humanist rationalism, and I’m quite happy here and clearly fit in, but tbh it doesn’t inspire me to march very much, or whatever we’re going to need to do.

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Alix Mortimer @alixmortimer.bsky.social · 1d

The hope for me is animism/indigenous cosmologies already being a model for how to deal with this. Religion/spirituality is an already proven concept for mass motivation. Obvs a lot of people are going to have to let go of their skeptic ego but that’s a tiny problem compared to the Armageddon fash.

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Alix Mortimer @alixmortimer.bsky.social · 1d

“we must first understand this simple fact: we are up against an ideology that has given up not only on the premise and promise of liberal democracy but on the livability of our shared world… The forces we are up against have made peace with mass death.“

This does actually end with hope.

Soraya Nadia McDonald @sorayanadiamcdonald.com · 1d

"To put it bluntly, the most powerful people in the world are preparing for the end of the world, an end they themselves are frenetically accelerating."

The rise of end times fascism | Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor

The governing ideology of the far right has become a monstrous, supremacist survivalism. Our task is to build a movement strong enough to stop them

www.theguardian.com

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Research Professional News @resprofnews.bsky.social · 1d

Nobel-winning economists to move from US to Zurich.

Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee moving from MIT to create new research centre on development.

www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-euro...

Nobel-winning economists to move from US to Zurich - Research Professional News

Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee moving from MIT to create new research centre on development

www.researchprofessionalnews.com

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Alix Mortimer @alixmortimer.bsky.social · 1d

This is like when people who win Oscars and Grammies and are at the top of Best Sexiest of All Time lists etc are described as nerdy

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Alix Mortimer @alixmortimer.bsky.social · 2d

Well now that’s in my head all day

a man in a suit and tie is standing next to another man in an elevator and says not great , bob .

Alt: Peter Campbell in Mad Men: “Not great, Bob.”

media.tenor.com

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Reuters @reuters.com · 2d

'When authoritarians seize power, it is crucial to recognize courageous defenders of freedom who rise and resist,' the Norwegian Nobel Committee said as it announced Maria Corina Machado as the winner of the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize

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Murph @murphtracks.bsky.social · 2d

The Mark Bray situation is so completely fucked right now and if you're a journalist you need to start saying how it's fucked because you're fucking next. They won't stop at academics.

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Matt Gabriele @profgabriele.com · 2d

I know this case is all over - & it should be - but Turning Point USA has waged a harassment campaign against faculty for more than a decade. I know of at least a half dozen other faculty, personally, who have received death threats and several of those who felt so unsafe they too left their homes

David Ho @davidho.bsky.social · 2d

Are we great yet?

Mark Bray, a Rutgers University professor and expert on anti-fascist groups, is fleeing to Spain with his family due to death threats that stem from a campaign by Turning Point USA and other conservative groups to get him fired, falsely labeling him as an antifa member.

Antifa expert at Rutgers University says he is moving to Spain because of death threats

An expert on anti-fascist groups who teaches at New Jersey’s flagship state university is moving his family overseas.

apnews.com

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Alix Mortimer @alixmortimer.bsky.social · 2d

Ah I’m so sorry. She’s adorable. The back and forth also sounds like an entirely normal way to grieve.

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