Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Alix Mortimer @alixmortimer.bsky.social · 4h

And of course I was frustrated with him in exactly the same way except substitute evil tech billionaires and fascists. Which weirdly seem to be of only consequential interest to him.

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Alix Mortimer @alixmortimer.bsky.social · 4h

I had a weird insight moment when he apologised for being cross and said he was just worried for the future, his child etc and from his point of view I’m “refusing” to see the problem about Jews or chemtrails or whatever the thing was in that conversation. So it’s fear, fundamentally.

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Reposted by Alix Mortimer

Huw C. Davies @huwcdavies.bsky.social · 5h

Reading Thiel, Yarvin, Peterson et al. makes you realise what passes for intellectual iconoclasm these days is all absolute bollocks. Why anyone gives any of these people the time of day let alone credibility is baffling.

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SelineSigil @selinesigil.bsky.social · 6h

Rebellion, Activism, Imagination: Why We Need Witches More Than Ever
reactormag.com/rebellion-ac...

Rebellion, Activism, Imagination: Why We Need Witches More Than Ever - Reactor

Witches teach us how to push back — and raise hell — in the face of authoritarianism.

reactormag.com

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Reposted by Alix Mortimer

Bouba's Delivery Service @fernmonkey.bsky.social · 1d

My friend Sascha is a professional musician and he's lost a viola bow on the way to Heathrow. Please signal boost to help him get it back.

Lost viola bow on the way from Honor Oak Station to Heathrow Terminal 2. The bow slid from its bow case somewhere along the way, possibly on the train. TFL contacted already.
It weighs 68.2 grams and has got a stamped DODD next to the frog. If any info on this, please pm me.

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Alix Mortimer @alixmortimer.bsky.social · 7h

I can’t, but tbf I also can’t adequately explain how the aeroplane stays up

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Alix Mortimer @alixmortimer.bsky.social · 7h

Ah well there’s some actual news behind that however mangled, I thought we were on the chemtrails thing where people insist clouds are different

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Alix Mortimer @alixmortimer.bsky.social · 7h

Do we know what the weather thing is actually about? Like visually. Clouds and aeroplane trails look much the same to me as 40 years ago, but I did grow up in an area where there have always been aeroplanes and maybe that’s it?

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Bill Kristol @billkristolbulwark.bsky.social · 12h

Pope Leo quotes Hannah Arendt:

“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction and the distinction between true and false no longer exist."

www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news...

Pope Leo calls for news agencies to stand as bulwark against "post-truths," lies and manipulation

Pope Leo XIV has encouraged international news agencies to stand firm as a bulwark against the "ancient art of lying" and manipulation.

www.cbsnews.com

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Siobhan Thompson @vornietom.bsky.social · 7h

Lot of talk about the flagrant misreading but actually I think this is active psychosis. Nobody in their right mind makes everything about the antichrist

Sharon @sharonk.bsky.social · 13h

thiel, man, what the fuck are you talking about

He describes the plot of Watchmen, a 1986 graphic novel involving superheroes grappling with moral questions about humanity against the backdrop of impending nuclear war:

The antihero Ozymandias, the antichrist-type figure, is sort of an early-modern person. He believes this will be a timeless and eternal solution – eternal world peace. Moore is sort of a late-modern. In early modernity, you have ideal solutions, ‘perfect’ solutions to calculus. In late modernity, things are sort of probabilistic. And at some point, he asks Dr Manhattan whether the world government is going to last. And he says that ‘nothing lasts forever.’ So you embrace the antichrist and it still doesn’t work.

Thiel later finds biblical meaning in the manga One Piece, discussing how he believes it represents a future where an antichrist-like one-world government has repressed science. He believes that the hero, Monkey D Luffy, represents a Christlike figure.

In One Piece, you are set in a fantasy world, again sort of an alternate earth, but it’s 800 years into the reign of this one-world state. Which, as the story unfolds, gradually gets darker and darker. You sort of realize, in my interpretation, who runs the world and it’s something like the antichrist. There’s Luffy, a pirate who wears a red straw hat, sort of like Christ’s crown of thorns. And then towards the end of the story, transforms into a figure who resembles Christ in Revelation.

Thiel, along with a researcher and writer at Thiel Capital, explored these ideas at greater length in an essay for the religious journal First Things earlier this month.

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Alix Mortimer @alixmortimer.bsky.social · 7h

I know someone like this and I’ve worked around it, but the sad thing is he’s also getting more aggressive about it, and I’m wondering if workarounds are even an option much longer. If that progressive aggression is inherent, these people are, very sadly, dangerous.

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Dmitry Grozoubinski @explaintrade.com · 16h

This is an exact encapsulation of why I moved to Bluesky.

No amount of handwringing in the Atlantic about how I owe some eternal Promethean suffering to the discourse is going to make me stay on a site I hate, that stopped doing anything for me professionally years ago.

Well – no. Bluesky may or may not be, as one centre-right friend who felt unwelcome put it, “self-righteous island”. But the idea that’s why we went is nonsense. That I’ve largely stopped posting on a site that’s done more to shape my career and social circle than the rest of the internet combined is less about avoiding rival opinions (I love arguing with people who are wrong!) than with the fact the site simply became unusable. It stopped generating the things (good jokes, interesting debate, clicks) I wanted; it became extremely good at generating the things (racists, pornbots, racist pornbots) I did not.

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Alix Mortimer @alixmortimer.bsky.social · 10h

I thought the latter as well. Or even more than “fine for adults” maybe “you’re strong, you can take it”.

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Alix Mortimer @alixmortimer.bsky.social · 15h

Reorganise departments into schools

<sequel ten years on>

Reorganise schools into departments

Marjorie James Keenan @unenthusiast.com · 19h

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 · 19h

"The chancellor approved it"

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Alix Mortimer @alixmortimer.bsky.social · 15h

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 · 17h

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 · 18h

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 · 18h

It also has ping pong to tie it all together

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Alix Mortimer @alixmortimer.bsky.social · 19h

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 · 1d

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 · 1d

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 · 1d

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 · 1d

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 · 1d

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 · 1d

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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