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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

They do this because they have control over regular migration (regular migrants are rule followers) and they mostly don't over irregular migration and asylum (irregular migrants are not, and asylum has a different legal process). This bait and switch never works with the electorate.

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

That’s why I think carefully working through this example gives both an explanation for why Labour is doing what it’s doing on immigration / settlement now and also why it won’t work for them.

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

This non story seems to be resonating because it sits at the intersection of Labour’s anti-intellectual philistinism and increasing propensity towards anti-immigrant slop.

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

The suggestion of some kind of anti-Scottish bias at one of the most traditionally Scottish institutions is facially without merit. The University’s statement explains well.

news.st-andrews.ac.uk

Classism has no place at the University of St Andrews | University of St Andrews news

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

Formally this makes sense. But as a an economic migrant who’s filled out multiple 80 page forms where things like “have speeding tickets” or “didn’t pay for electricity by direct debit” could be construed as “lack of good character”, I can see why the politics of asylum has become tricky.

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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 · 21/09/2026

Isn’t this also the modal opinion on here?

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Louis @genericpoints.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

I found the piece a little odd because while the author is grappling with things not going exactly to plan, she doesn’t interrogate what about her thinking was wrong. And then at the end, decides it was fine, leaving a mystery.

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

The reason is that, usually, the losing candidate’s party feels they blew it. Kamala’s case will be that she did a good job, considering the almost impossibly weak starting position and deserves a clean run at it.

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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

This is not really an accurate depiction of what happened in the UK.

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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 · 04/09/2026

It’s a kind of motivated nihilism that’s popular on here: “Nothing matters, so you might as well do this thing I like.”

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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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Louis @genericpoints.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

I have been very surprised that Uni Ghent seems to be getting no criticism for having funded a project that seems closely adjacent to “great replacement”. Cofnas is qualified to work on this, and that is itself a problem!

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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 · 21/08/2026

You’re rediscovering the mid 00s, when the cool thing was being able to keep various identities without doing some specific performance.

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

SS and also Atlantic Tyler are essentially arguing that, because Arday’s work is on this thing they don’t like, everybody should have known it was fraudulent, and hence, he was only hired for identity reasons. But that is obviously wrong.

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

I find this whole thing frustrating because the anti EDI people refuse to recognize that the sector and its regulator really like EDI and WP. Every university has specific mandates on both of these. Arday’s CV looks strong because he’s impactful in both areas! Which are his specialty!

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

Anybody who has ever done an online class test followed by an actual exam knows you get a different grade histogram. This was true immediately post COVID but pre AI and is more true now. www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty...

insidehighered.com

Brown Professor Suspects Most of His Class Used AI to Cheat

Brown University leaders’ response to the alleged cheating incident has been “meek,” the professor said.

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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 · 15/08/2026

I agree, and I think you're pointing at a blind spot a committee of academics could easily have. Arday's work, especially in impact areas, relies on his personal story to an extent that is unusual, and I could imagine nobody checking it. I expect any inquiry will look at this.

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Louis @genericpoints.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

But he seems to basically meet the brief and is filling an institutional need. That means he’s hirable for the position. It’s not a trivially avoidable tragedy, but a case to tighten the process a lot.

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Louis @genericpoints.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

Arday is a TED talk guy who’s advised the government, which is strong impact. He’s a university level leader in EDI (which SS doesn’t like but the OfS does). He has what looks like a reasonable number of citations. Against this, I guess no major funding or PhD students.

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Louis @genericpoints.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

As a somewhat literal person, I assume that he was hired because he scored well on whatever matrix the committee was using. And contra to a lot of the takes on here, including, weirdly, by both SS and SKB, he seems perfectly hirable if you don’t know his scholarly work is fraudulent.

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Louis @genericpoints.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

What actually happens is that they warm up during the day and then radiate the excess heat inside at night. It’s much cooler here, so no need for AC, but the same house would be unpleasantly hot in the south.

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Louis @genericpoints.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

I am highly skeptical about this: “Most UK homes are built to retain heat, not shed it.” Where I live, most of the houses are piles of rock or brick, with single glazed windows.

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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 · 12/08/2026

British people really like banning stuff!

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