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Louis @genericpoints.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Based on what they say, they want Margaret Thatcher to have not been elected in 1979.

Louis @genericpoints.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Gen eds are an alien concept in the UK and Europe. I also think that economic pressure is likely to make them go away in the US eventually.

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Louis @genericpoints.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Quite famously, the UK is a very egalitarian place, with no notion of class. That’s why importing it from America was a bad idea. “At St Andrews, some students said the issue of classism was not only linked to the rise in American students.” What is the Guardian even doing here?

theguardian.com

‘It’s like the Scottish Upper East Side’: shame and snobbery as American students blamed for St Andrews classism

Online comments reflect class tensions at Scottish university between those from lower-income families and wealthier US undergraduates

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Stop AAPI Hate Action @stopaapihateaction.org · 24/09/2026

What was supposed to be a quiet car ride home from school turned into a viral act of anti-Asian hate when a group of teenagers yelled racial slurs at Vietnamese American Carly Nguyen and her mom. 🧵⬇️

nbcboston.com

BC High School calls alleged racist confrontation ‘entirely unacceptable'

Carly Nguyen, a UMass Boston senior, says two people she believes to be Boston College High School students yelled racial slurs at her and her mother.

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Louis @genericpoints.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

So Jensen agrees with everybody on here and also Nikole Hannah-Jones, the University of California, and the governments of England and Scotland that rigorous instruction in reading and math doesn’t matter.

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James Poniewozik @poniewozik.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

In the first bar things were laissez-faire But in this bar we were filtering air

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Louis @genericpoints.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

The reason is almost certainly that somebody went apple picking in Deerfield, heard this story and did a travelogue. “The Pioneer Valley is a land of contrasts. Alongside the traditional cider donuts at Atkins Farm Country Market are surprisingly avant garde subcultures…”

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Louis @genericpoints.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

I dunno. I spent my young adulthood in the Pioneer Valley, so I’m always happy to see content about it, go international. Anyway, it’s a great place, but also this is the kind of thing that happens once in a while.

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Louis @genericpoints.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

This is wrong, because this issue isn’t “good parent” or “bad parent”. It’s that the exotic pedagogical theory described in the article involves hectoring the principal constantly and also rejecting any outside information about learning outcomes. (Such as standardized tests.)

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Louis @genericpoints.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

The EV incentive change is very small compared to the big EV user fees Labour is bringing in.

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Louis @genericpoints.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

I feel like due consideration is not being given to the downstream effects on Premier League clubs looking to offload players.

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Louis @genericpoints.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Even Kier Starmer wasn’t so stupid as to give Morrissey some kind of award, despite liking his music.

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Louis @genericpoints.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Not opining on any issue, but realistically, Talarico is only competitive because he’s an unusually good candidate, in an unusually favorable environment, with an unusually bad opponent. If he wins, the central scenario is that he’s a one term guy.

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Louis @genericpoints.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

This is just really poor from El-Sayed. He spends the whole time deflecting instead of saying what his views are on the relevant topics. It is a lot easier for him to say that's unfair for people to infer his takes from Piker's after he's clearly stated his views.

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Sunder Katwala (sundersays) @sundersays.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Here @stephenkb.bsky.social seeks to remind the Labour government, old & new, that the point + purpose of recognising "legitimate concerns" about immigration was to understand how to differentiate these from *illegitimate concerns* rooted in intimidation + xenophobia www.ft.com/content/2279...

ft.com

Labour’s muddled migration policy won’t stop thuggery

A government that can’t distinguish between ‘legitimate concerns’ and open racism is only making things worse

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Louis @genericpoints.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

Make your favorite film sound as boring as possible without giving away the title. Two men retrieve a briefcase and then go for breakfast.

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Jacob T. Levy @jacobtlevy.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

People on here are starting to forget why freedom of extramural unscholarly speech is part of academic freedom, even with the firings of people who said unkind truths about Charlie Kirk in recent memory and attacks on extramural pro-Palestinian speech ongoing. www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

annualreviews.org

Conceptualizing Academic Freedom

Academic freedom is an unusual and complex set of norms and practices. It arises out of the combination of the corporate self-governance of medieval universities and the spirit of disciplinary scienti...

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Louis @genericpoints.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

It’s driving me slightly nuts that everybody on here is writing DEI instead of EDI. As an American who works in Scotland, I am aware that DEI is the American thing, the British EDI is different. More people should learn this.

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Louis @genericpoints.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

As the only person on here who’s actually done the Life in the UK test, I can report it’s like a bad pub quiz. But also not hard? I studied for a few hours and got only one wrong.

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Louis @genericpoints.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

Universities were unwilling to write off the investment in remote assessment they made during COVID and responded to AI with denial. Everybody will eventually come around to what math did right away, which was to switch back to invigilated exams.

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Louis @genericpoints.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

AI is also good at writing presentations. Summative take home assessment needs to be vivaed for at least a few minutes.

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Louis @genericpoints.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

This is the second time in the recent past that somebody took a shot from the 'stacks on a consequential story that big media organisations had and passed on. It's almost like we are back in the blog era.

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Will Cooling @willcooling.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

Do crack up at how we keep getting these announcements about Labour loosening rules to get growth going which always include new, additional requirements Labour is introducing

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Louis @genericpoints.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

If they can’t give a coherent answer to “do you still think that?”, then they probably do still think it. That’s the steelman case for taking it seriously until they give you a reason not to.

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Louis @genericpoints.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

Transmitting normative behavior and elite replication is an important part of the package.

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Louis @genericpoints.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

Labour should do some self-reflection and use the same analysis on their new idea of bringing back education to 14 they do on a classics degree at a poly: who are the employers who want that? Realistically the answer is not advanced manufacturing but more like vape shops and county lines.

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Louis @genericpoints.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

I tried to buy tickets a few days ago and it was sold out. I hope she knows this is a bold move. To British people, she’s basically like OJ.

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Louis @genericpoints.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

A pro-consumer idea that is common elsewhere in the world would be to make the listed price include tax and the default tip.

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Louis @genericpoints.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

This is just wrong, both conceptually (council tax and stamp duty distort the market, so dumping them is not facially ridiculous) and in practice (property tax works perfectly well in the US, so it’s workable).

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Louis @genericpoints.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

Burnham has already promised Pareto improvement, which this definitely won’t deliver: “Rather than having one big state that makes a mistake and then pays for it for decades, you have 30 smaller regions that can make mistakes . . . others can learn from that mistake [and] not repeat it.”

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Louis @genericpoints.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

Dundee is a strong department that fills an important role in the Scottish math ecosystem by being accessible while also delivering REFable research. Losing it would leave a big gap and probably not generate appreciable savings for the institution. www.ems.ac.uk/open-letter-...

ems.ac.uk

Open Letter to the University of Dundee – Edinburgh Mathematical Society

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James Ball @jamesrball.com · 15/07/2026

It would've come home, but it had heard about the uncertainties around settled status and ILR at the moment and decided to check out other options.

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Louis @genericpoints.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

The solution is to combine the LVT with regionalism and hypothecate it back to the local area. The model lets you do this, and then this problem goes away.

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Louis @genericpoints.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

There is this weird fact about "market rate" housing, which is that the price is the way it is because a lot of people are willing to pay it. Almost by definition, it can't be true that every house is unaffordable to every buyer.

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Louis @genericpoints.bsky.social · 03/07/2026

If Labour doesn’t at least unwind its huge tax rises on Unis, what will happen is a messy collapse in the middle part of what @igmansfield.bsky.social’s white paper called “global universities”.

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Louis @genericpoints.bsky.social · 03/07/2026

If the government wanted to help unis, it could just unwind the various costs it decided to load on the sector, which include at least the employer NI hike and the upcoming international student levy.

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Louis @genericpoints.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

Serious question: wouldn’t the economy respond to increased enforcement as if there had been a tax rise? Is there any empirical evidence from maybe the Greece bailout?

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Louis @genericpoints.bsky.social · 28/06/2026

It’s just another word for economic development. To the extent it has a specific meaning involving new full-time residents, gentrification is much better than Airbnbs taking over.

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Louis @genericpoints.bsky.social · 27/06/2026

This is an AI image. Made in a data center. What are we even doing here? Using high carbon methods to hector people about carbon is somehow perfectly on brand for UK policy.

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Louis @genericpoints.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

I don’t know what was posted below this, but I will take the opportunity to say that the East Neuk of Fife is amazing. People who want to live here full time or can afford a holiday home they don’t need to Airbnb should check it out.

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Louis @genericpoints.bsky.social · 22/06/2026

This is correct in the sense that if you liked what he said in the election campaign and voted for him, you’d be upset, since he didn’t really do those things. As he didn’t have a huge vote buffer (the majority is from efficiency), the collapse was fast and severe.

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Louis @genericpoints.bsky.social · 22/06/2026

There is something eerily similar to Kamala Harris taking over about the current political moment in England. Kier Starmer’s incapability has been recognized and acted on, generating relief and optimism. But the person being slotted in hasn’t described a clean break from failure either.

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Louis @genericpoints.bsky.social · 22/06/2026

I hope deploying AC more broadly in England is part of the plan.

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Louis @genericpoints.bsky.social · 22/06/2026

There's also the policy failures that started with the first budget, which lead to historically poor electoral results almost right away. Looking back, it seems bold to have pursued a program almost designed to annoy most of the people who liked your manifesto and voted for you.

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Louis @genericpoints.bsky.social · 20/06/2026

Trump’s main competition thinks Jimmy Carter was really great, so they aren’t making the case that Trump is the new Jimmy Carter.

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