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Reposted by Roger

Dan McPainInTheKnees @danmckee.bsky.social · 1h

“What’s the charge? Eating a seal?”

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Reposted by Roger

Jonn Elledge @jonnelledge.bsky.social · 2h

Gonna start a thread of articles I re-read every time I have an excuse, because after this thread I am thinking a lot about @cormacmccafe.bsky.social‬'s "No Yanks on the Thread" piece.

Feel free to add your own.

I Should Be Able to Mute America

The rest of the world should not have to know the name Bari Weiss

www.gawkerarchives.com

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Roger @rogger.bsky.social · 1h

Ive always felt like the polys were a good idea we should have stuck with and funded more. I guess the lines between HE/FE and research vs vocationally driven institutions are always going to be blurry, but the polys feel like a missing enclave at the moment somehow.

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Roger @rogger.bsky.social · 2h

I’m now wondering if there are any iconic Wedding Disco Bangers that are both not by ABBA and not insufferable?

I Wanna Dance With Somebody, maybe.

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Roger @rogger.bsky.social · 2h

Counterpoint:

bsky.app/profile/elli...

I’m so desperate to defend the opportunity to noodle over eighteenth century soup weaving or whatever that I forget there’s always been a vocational element.

Ellis Pratt @ellispratt.bsky.social · 2h

Surely degrees in law, medicine, finance, business studies, computer studies, and civil engineering have always had a heavy focus on the jobs market.

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Roger @rogger.bsky.social · 2h

Yeah. That’s the slippery one. The academic-ish vocational stuff. I probably take a too misty-eyed humanities scholarship view of the whole thing.

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Roger @rogger.bsky.social · 2h

Somehow - and I know the idea that electoral triangulation might end in squalid self-sabotaging compromises is a bit shocking, but somehow - the spin becomes the ideology and the next thing you know the only validity of a degree is in lubing up the STEM-to-spreadsheet-job pipeline.

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Roger @rogger.bsky.social · 2h

Oof. Good choices. Lady in Red is like the musical version of having nowhere to go for dinner except one of those depressing chain dessert restaurants.

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Roger @rogger.bsky.social · 2h

Gods, this.
My vibes-based and poorly-informed theory is that the missed discourse boat was in the nineties when New Labour cranked the education spending handle to make the country centre-left bourgeois, and “jobs” was a more tabloid-friendly excuse than the enrichment of human experience 🤷‍♂️

Dr Malice @atarbuck.bsky.social · 3h

We seem to have lost the understanding that you study things because you want to know more about them, not because you want them to give you a job.

'Transferable skills' are so-called precisely because they are not career specific, my god.

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Roger @rogger.bsky.social · 2h

Ooh fun.

- Hard boiled eggs (can’t explain, just no)
- Children of Men (relentless)
- Sweet Caroline (does not require explaining)

Jonathan Edward Durham @thisone0verhere.bsky.social · 1d

Introduce yourself using only one food you refuse to eat, one movie you’ll never watch again, and one song you can’t stand

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waltydunlop @waltydunlop.bsky.social · 1d

Job occupations, from an 1881 census. Every one of these sounds like something a sorely provoked Captain Haddock would should at someone in times of heavy stress.

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Roger @rogger.bsky.social · 3h

Two weeks ago I got a cold sales call on my personal number and the guy was genuinely confused when I explained that the fact he had done this had ensured we would never ever spend money with them. So probably not many.

Roger @rogger.bsky.social · 3h

I’m not sure where this trend came from of pissy little “why haven’t you replied?” follow ups to unsolicited sales emails, but I want you to know that if you have ever sent one, you are going to a corner of hell where there are no shoes and the floor is ankle-deep cat vomit.

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Roger @rogger.bsky.social · 5h

Looking at my calendar for the week and whispering “this is not a place of honour”

Roger @rogger.bsky.social · 1d

Now, let's play a fun Sunday game called Will Rogger Log The Fuck Off And Do His Fucking Ironing?

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Roger @rogger.bsky.social · 1d

Modern consumer tech is like living in a world where everything is making do with a microwave lasagne because it's cheap and you're tired.

Sometimes I want broccoli. Sometimes I want to go to a restaurant. Sometimes I want to fuck up an Ottolenghi recipe but have fun doing it, y'know.

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Roger @rogger.bsky.social · 1d

There's something here I can't quite put my finger on, but I think it's "be deliberate".

The nominal ease of The Apps is that - crudely - silicon valley surveillance capitalism will sort it all out, clickety swipe, and all aboard for A/B-optimised psychic beige!

That's fine sometimes, I suppose.

🦇🤘 Rigg-or mortis 🔶️🏳️‍🌈 @rigg.lgbt · 1d

I understand that everything is awful and people just want to make life easier, but Jesus Christ.

Get a hobby! Join a club! These things guarantee you'll have at least one thing in common with people you meet! And they'll actually be people!

Maybe I'm just an old fart.

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Roger @rogger.bsky.social · 1d

Yeah, that's the good shit.

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Roger @rogger.bsky.social · 1d

I was an extremely indoor child, and nineties/noughties forum and LJ culture gave me some of my most enduring relationships, but I just can't imagine trying to navigate it all now. It honestly sounds exhausting.

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Roger @rogger.bsky.social · 1d

Nothing makes me more suspicious that I'm self-soothing as An Old than thinking it must be dreadful to be young These Days, and yet... all of this. Dating apps and group chats and pervasive social media, algorithms and silicon valley incentives slithered in between every relationship and interaction

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Roger @rogger.bsky.social · 1d

I've tapped in to some Zen-like tier of accepting middle age where I sometimes idly think "I bet they'll have that in Lakeland".

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Ed Morrish @edmorrish.bsky.social · 1d

you know that critique of ai that says it’s like taking a forklift to the gym and expecting to get stronger? well this bit of that guardian article about people using chatgpt in dating apps kinda proves it correct

Which is why the man who greeted her inside the pub – polite, pleasant but oddly flat – felt like a stranger. Gone was the quickfire wit and playful rhythm she’d come to expect from their exchanges. Over pints he stumbled through small talk, checked his phone a little too often, and seemed to wilt under the pressure of her questions. “I felt like I was sitting opposite someone I’d never even spoken to,” she says. “I tried to have the same sort of conversation as we’d been having online, but it was like, ‘Knock, knock, is anyone home?’ – like he knew basically nothing about me. That’s when I suspected he’d been using AI.”

Rachel gave her date the benefit of the doubt. “I thought maybe he was nervous,” she says. But she’d been “Chatfished” before, so when the gap between his real and digital selves failed to close on their second date, she called it off. “I’d already been ChatGPT-ed into bed at least once. I didn’t want it to happen again.”

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Roger @rogger.bsky.social · 1d

Interesting hoover/google shaped side-note: we actually use Teams, but writing that read wrong. "Slack" feels like the more affordant expression of the category 🤷

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Roger @rogger.bsky.social · 1d

The temptation to break my own rules log in on a Sunday just to drop this onto the work Slack (we do polling sometimes) is enormous.

Laura @lauropea.bsky.social · 1d

Latest polls, Stock Photo Western European Country:

Change for Our Country (Nazi): 29%
Christian Democratic People's Party (Conservative): 21%
YEAH! (Neoliberal): 8%
Greens: 9%
Social Democrats: 14%
Left (Educated Urban Women): 10%
'Left', but make it No Homo: 4%
Assorted regional nationalists: 5%

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Hieronymous J Doom @hjdoom.bsky.social · 1d

Jared Leto is not a place of honour.

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