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Rasmus Birk

@rasmusbirk.bsky.social
562 followers 1.2K following 920 posts

Associate Professor in Psychology @ Aalborg University. I use qualitative methods to study mental health, focusing especially on the social, cultural and spatial contexts of experience. www.rasmusbirk.org

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Rasmus Birk @rasmusbirk.bsky.social · 16h
"In the absence of a proper system of income tax to put a safety net under society, it was left to wealthy individuals to plug the gaps in society with some of their riches." The 18th and 19th century, when the rich famously took good, loving care of the poor
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Rasmus Birk @rasmusbirk.bsky.social · 21h
How accurate is Pangram? I've now found three papers - from the same author - all around genAI and social science/the humanities that seem to be entirely written by AI (according to Pangram), and published in quite good journals. Without any AI declaration, too!
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Rasmus Birk @rasmusbirk.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
an unexpected defense of AI summaries of student readings
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Rasmus Birk @rasmusbirk.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
They don’t offer complimentary copies for authors?!
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Rasmus Birk @rasmusbirk.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
which is a thing JRM says explicitly in his (otherwise awful) youtube video, right around the time he also goes on about multiculturalism being bad etc. Like, where is the leftist/Labour politician saying, out loud, that the multicultural, multi-ethnic society is a good thing?
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Rasmus Birk @rasmusbirk.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
I had this discussion with various people a few weeks ago (and then it was over the youtube-videos he was doing), but I think this is basically because of the *abject failure* of some politicians to take some very basic stands, e.g. say out loud that you can be non-white and English
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Rasmus Birk @rasmusbirk.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
I’m struggling to see a single positive use-case for this to be quite honest. Significant regulation is needed imo
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Roger @arbejdsmyren.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
In Denmark a scientist plotted data and research findings into Claude, only to see Anthropic publish the findings as something the LLM had conjured up on its own. The theft of one scientist’s data and work translates into false claims about the model’s ability to generate research #ai #eupol
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Rasmus Birk @rasmusbirk.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
University administrators when they see the yearly intake:
static.klipy.com
Rookie Numbers Meme from The Wolf of Wall Street
ALT: Rookie Numbers Meme from The Wolf of Wall Street
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Rasmus Birk @rasmusbirk.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Not enough of a fuss is made about Jean Baudrillard and Gary Gygax sharing a birthday (niche post)
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Rasmus Birk @rasmusbirk.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Genuinely thought this was about K*rk until about right now
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Rasmus Birk @rasmusbirk.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Just do a lottery instead at this point. The work hours gone into unfunded research could have carried out the research!
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Rasmus Birk @rasmusbirk.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
It is ASTOUNDING that this apparently needs saying.
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Rasmus Birk @rasmusbirk.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Your students are blessed, Des, blessed!
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Rasmus Birk @rasmusbirk.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
I did hear this sad news recently - but did not know he was an anti-apartheid activist! His feud in a journal with Daniel Robinson is quite fun to read, too (from 2013 or so)
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Des Fitzgerald @desfitzgerald.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
I only realised now, while prepping notes for students, that Kurt Danziger died last month. Danziger was not only one of the most influential historians of psychology but also an anti-Apartheid activist and, before that, a child refugee from Nazism. A great loss. humanities.uct.ac.za/department-p...
humanities.uct.ac.za
Obituary: Kurt Danziger (1926-2026)
The Department of Psychology at the University of Cape Town mourns the passing of Professor Kurt Danziger, who died on August 11, 2026 at the age of 100.
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Rasmus Birk @rasmusbirk.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Pretty sure he’s an Arsenal fan, would’ve been fitting!
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Rasmus Birk @rasmusbirk.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Ottolenghi’s been passé for a decade?!
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Rasmus Birk @rasmusbirk.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
I was 29 😭
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Rasmus Birk @rasmusbirk.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
True story: during my PhD defense I said that 36 was middle age (I have no idea why this came up tbh)
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Rasmus Birk @rasmusbirk.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Excuse me, *early middle age*?!
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Rasmus Birk @rasmusbirk.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Genuine lol that I’ve had her earlier stuff on the reading list but not gotten around to it
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Ketan Joshi @ketanjoshi.co · 24/09/2026
Every line of this article is just completely stunning
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Rasmus Birk @rasmusbirk.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
maybe a better way of stating what I think he is doing is this: he is arguing that you can be English without being white.
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Rasmus Birk @rasmusbirk.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
(my take here is probably also very Danish - here, the defense of any kind of multiculturalism, multiethnic cosmopolitanism would be similarly unheard of from politicians!)
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Rasmus Birk @rasmusbirk.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Yes - I should clarify that I'm not implying he's in favour of cosmopolitanism. I guess it's hard to articulate what kind of vision he has - multiculturalism or multiethnic it probably isn't either - other than the clear argument *against* bio-essentialism is, at least, a starting point.
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Rasmus Birk @rasmusbirk.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Oh yes, I'm sure there's loads of scope - in general - to criticise JRM in many ways - my point is mainly that a defense of a kind of cosmopolitan ideal of citizenship (not a term he'd use or probably agree with!) is sorely needed, and it's exasperating that *he* is delivering something like it.
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Rasmus Birk @rasmusbirk.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
It’s various problems aside - and the many things one might say about JRM - it is just so very striking to me that *he* of all people is the only one willing to make a public argument against bio-essentialist accounts
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Rasmus Birk @rasmusbirk.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
The fact that *Jacob Rees-Mogg* of all people holds on to - and is willing to publicly defend! - a quite inclusive and fluid notion of nationality is quite something to behold. Has anyone in or near the UK Labour party done anything remotely similar to this?
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Rasmus Birk @rasmusbirk.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
me, when I try to make jokes during lectures:
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Micah G. Allen @micahgallen.com · 22/09/2026
So… we just found out that GPT sol can complete a complex online behavioral/cognitive study producing nearly indistinguishable behavior and subjective reports… right as we are about to launch. Is this doomsday for online cognitive testing?
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Rasmus Birk @rasmusbirk.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Can I shock you? I don’t think writing these applications is a good use of 21000 people’s time
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Rasmus Birk @rasmusbirk.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
See, especially, ‘Lazar’ by Biedermann
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Rasmus Birk @rasmusbirk.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
It will make humanity go extinct before it gets the football scores right
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Rasmus Birk @rasmusbirk.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Not sure how I feel about 2023 being 3.5 years ago
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Rasmus Birk @rasmusbirk.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
We found London to be basically priced like Denmark this summer which… is not great
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Rasmus Birk @rasmusbirk.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
I think we hold - held! - the record for games played without conceding 3.
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Rasmus Birk @rasmusbirk.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
There's an interesting schism between the amount of time we are spending fretting over academic use of LLMs, whether it's good, plagiarism, etc., and then the comparatively smaller amount of time spent on... analysing how it's becoming baked into structures of power
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Rasmus Birk @rasmusbirk.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
one thing I like about your posts is that they require an incredible amount of knowledge about local Irish affairs to make sense (is 'Cork City Council coded' a compliment or derogatory?!)
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Rasmus Birk @rasmusbirk.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Very, very different circumstances, but we assign roughly 3000 pages per semester - still! When everyone does it and it’s a course standard (100 pages per ects) it becomes slightly easier to mitigate complaints, I think
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Rasmus Birk @rasmusbirk.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
I even saw people liken it to the (now very old, boring, boorish) Sokal hoax and... come on, people. It's been 30 years!
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Rasmus Birk @rasmusbirk.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Oh, for sure. I think there's an argument to be had about whether he is *correct*, but complaining about the prose, that it is too unclear, that he doesn't offer a concise definition is something I'm not a big fan of! (I'm very strongly subtweeting a certain thread - apologies to its author)
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Rasmus Birk @rasmusbirk.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Instead of doing ‘Anton Jäger should write more clearly’-discourse, let me just recommend this excellent review in the LRB on his book: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
lrb.co.uk
William Davies · Easy to Join, Easy to Leave: Politics on Speed
This is what distinguishes hyperpolitics from the mass democracy of the mid-20th century. Symbolic political gestures...
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Rasmus Birk @rasmusbirk.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Sounds like a lot of German social theory tbh
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Rasmus Birk @rasmusbirk.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
Also: is it good/worth getting?
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Rasmus Birk @rasmusbirk.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
Wtaf
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Rasmus Birk @rasmusbirk.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
Saw this and my very first thought was ‘how did Des post about it’
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Rasmus Birk @rasmusbirk.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
It’s not even remotely the same problem!
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Rasmus Birk @rasmusbirk.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Dare I ask where this is from?
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Des Fitzgerald @desfitzgerald.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
The UK university sector is mired in absolute madness
Graduates would also receive a new “universal lifetime entitlement to careers support both while they are at university and throughout their career”, says the plan published on 9 September.
Every undergraduate would also be entitled to access artificial intelligence (AI) tools, the roadmap states, while every course should have a lecturer who is an “AI trailblazer” so that “graduates have the skills to be AI pioneers in the workplace”.
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