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Rob Mullins

@robertmullins.bsky.social
1.1K followers 839 following 4.3K posts

Associate Professor, University of Queensland.

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Rob Mullins @robertmullins.bsky.social · 11h
'Gender isn't real' and 'trans people don't change their sex'. OK so what do they change? Because they change something. Some absolutely braindead bigotry going around..
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Hourly Garth Marenghi's Darkplace @hourlydarkplace.bagpuss.org · 20h
Do you like Scotch food, Liz? I know a little place we can go.
20:56
S01E05 Scotch Mist 26 February 2004
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Rob Mullins @robertmullins.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
The Lesbian bar story vindicates Jonathan Richman on two fronts. First: other bars are just alright, but lesbian bars are *Friday night*. But second, and more importantly: we need more parties (especially but not only in the USA).
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Rob Mullins @robertmullins.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
A lovely tribute to the late Alexander Greenberg from Leah Trueblood: leahtrueblood.substack.com/p/the-greenb...
leahtrueblood.substack.com
The Greenberg Principles of Philosophy
On the loss of my friend Alexander the Great
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Erin @fujoshi.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
It was pretty embarrassing to me seeing how they rounded on Gordon Guyatt when he expressed reservations on this
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Rob Mullins @robertmullins.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
There has been a noticeable acceleration in right-wing efforts to co-opt academic institutions to try to build an alternative 'academic consensus'. I've been dismayed at how willingly universities have played along.
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Rob Mullins @robertmullins.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
A lovely tribute to the late Alexander Greenberg from Leah Trueblood: leahtrueblood.substack.com/p/the-greenb...
leahtrueblood.substack.com
The Greenberg Principles of Philosophy
On the loss of my friend Alexander the Great
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Rob Mullins @robertmullins.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Has anyone written anything about the tendency of AI legal writing to read like it was written by a self-represented litigant?
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Rob Mullins @robertmullins.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
If you live in Qld/NSW this is your equivalent of Crossfire with William Buckley Jr
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Lawrence Solum @lsolum.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Sevel on Joseph Raz’s The Authority of Law Michael Sevel (The University of Sydney Law School) has posted Joseph Raz’s The Authority of Law…...
legaltheoryblog.com
Sevel on Joseph Raz’s The Authority of Law
Michael Sevel (The University of Sydney Law School) has posted Joseph Raz’s The Authority of Law (Leading Works in Philosophy of Law, Routledge, forthcoming) on SSRN. Here is the abstract: Joseph Raz was one of the leading moral, legal, and political philosophers of the English-speaking world for more than a half-century, from the early 1970s until his death in 2022. He amassed a corpus of over five thousand published pages, written over a period of sixty years, one of the largest among philosophers of the last century.
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Rob Mullins @robertmullins.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
I continue to think that because Australians don't read we have been saved from the worst aspects of British print media.
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Sam Freedman @samfr.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
New post out: England's schools are now the second highest performing in the world outside the far east, according to the OECD's PISA study. Is this because of policy? Attitude to technology? Cultural factors like immigration? And where can we still improve? samf.substack.com/p/why-englan...
samf.substack.com
Why England’s schools are doing so well
And what we need to focus on next
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Kay @gothwhoreofbabylon.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Returning to this point several days later, I wrote something about this the summer after FWS. The book it’s going to be in hasn’t been published yet, but I’ve been given the go ahead to put it on SSRN. I don’t know how useful anyone else will find it, but I found writing it psychologically helpful.
papers.ssrn.com
Trans Surgeries and Reproductive Justice
This chapter demonstrates that abortion and trans surgeries have been conceptually linked both as an institutional matter and by activists campaigning for and a
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noam @noamchompers.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
i've spent 15 years cultivating my complaints about how philosophers of mind are dumb and annoying, and i'll be DAMNED if some johnny come lately thinks he can just WALTZ in without DOING THE READING and THINK THEY ARE DUMB AND ANNOYING in a LESS SOPHISTICATED WAY THAN THE WAY I THINK THAT
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Rob Mullins @robertmullins.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
A brief thread on the definition of 'sex' in UK law before 2004 for those interested/to help me think it through. bsky.app/profile/robe...
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David_j_roth @davidjroth.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
This is good, and has an appropriately acid punchline. www.thedriftmag.com/the-last-day...
thedriftmag.com
The Last Days of the Danube Institute | A Report from Postliberal Budapest
By Brian Goodman. In the wake of Viktor Orbán’s defeat, Budapest’s postliberals face end times.
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Rob Mullins @robertmullins.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
I will assume that reddit posts on this topic are made-up*, but it doesn't matter because this exact scenario is extremely plausible. And the school have got the law as it stands wrong. The intersex girl's sex is a question of fact not law and would need to be 'discovered' by a court.
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Jayne Persian @drjpersian.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
maths 🤔
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Rob Mullins @robertmullins.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
I think George Eliot expressed the worry about 'a priori philosophy' best: 'Men may dream in demonstrations, and cut out an illusory world in the shape of axioms, definitions, and propositions, with a final exclusion of fact signed Q.E.D.'
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Dr. Carol Tilley 🏳️‍🌈 @anuncivilphd.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Annie Dillard's books have been a lifeline for me beginning at age 16. A beloved h.s. science teacher introduced me to her work. I re-read Holy the Firm nearly every year. A college prof was friends with AD, and I learned from him that she took ping-pong v. seriously. I still find that delightful.
nytimes.com
Annie Dillard, Meditative Author of ‘Pilgrim at Tinker Creek,’ Dies at 81
Her Thoreau-like account of journeys in the woods, published when she was 28, was the first of many ruminations on life and nature, good and evil.
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Rob Mullins @robertmullins.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Zack Polanski doing languages is just him trying to copy Mamdani, right?
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Rob Mullins @robertmullins.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Until recently it was verboten in British legal circles to say that this was naked bigotry and I hope that changes.
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Rob Mullins @robertmullins.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
I'm resharing my FWS paper in its close to final form. It's been heavily revised, thanks to comments from two excellent reviewers and some of you. I'm proud of the new title. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
papers.ssrn.com
Reassigning 'Sex'
<p><span>I argue that the Supreme Court’s conclusions in <i>For Women Scotland v The Scottish Ministers </i>[2025] UKSC 16 involve a series of compounding inter
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Rob Mullins @robertmullins.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
It is kind of interesting how many people who we were told only a year or two ago were just feminists with concerns about self-id have revealed themselves to be pretty run-of-the-mill social conservatives.
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Rob Mullins @robertmullins.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
I think Terence Tao is the greatest public intellectual Australia has ever produced.
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Terence Tao @teorth.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
A group of 25 Fields Medalists, including myself, have made a joint declaration on Math and AI: mathandai.org . We welcome additional signatories. See also this article in the Economist announcing the declaration: www.economist.com/science-and-...
mathandai.org
Declaration — Math and AI
Read the declaration and add your name.
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Rob Mullins @robertmullins.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
I think this is one of the most practically important contributions I have read on FWS (along with earlier work by @anuragdeb.bsky.social and @clairebradley.bsky.social ), and I'm pleased to see it publicly available.
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Rob Mullins @robertmullins.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
I thought that the Court would want to have a look at a section 7D, but all things considered Giggle's arguments were very weak so this is probably for the best.
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Rob Mullins @robertmullins.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Re: trans people in sport, I have come around to the view that the metaphysics of sex is a distraction. The real question is whether you can define categories that respect acquired gender in which cis people and trans people can meaningfully compete with one another. I think you can.
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Rob Mullins @robertmullins.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
I think any decently self-interested political party would be out milking this Milliband thing for all it was worth already.
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Trevor A. Branch @trevorabranch.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
This is seismic news for fisheries scientists. Northern cod is *the* iconic symbol of total fisheries collapse due to overfishing (and other factors) *and* the iconic symbol of a complete failure to recover for decades afterwards. This is like announcing the complete recovery of bison on land.
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Rob Mullins @robertmullins.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
I'm on strike with @dylanlino.bsky.social and the NTEU
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Lewis Graham @lewisgrahamlaw.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
Happy to see this out. The case we discuss is really important for lawyers and academics working on information rights, precedent, proportionality and sections 2, 3 and 4 of the Human Rights Act. We’re likely to see this one go further, possibly as a leapfrog to the Supreme Court, in due course.
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Rob Mullins @robertmullins.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
You can be 20 replies deep in a thread that has devolved to meaninglessness, and someone with a username like 'defrocked tadpole' will post 'can a 20 year old self identify as under 16 to play rugby?' And then bam the same 10 people will like it every time.
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Rob Mullins @robertmullins.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
I often think about the conversation I had with an uber driver last year. He told me that he worked 6 days a week and that on most Sundays to unwind he liked to stay at home and watch YouTube shorts for 12 hours.
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Rob Mullins @robertmullins.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
There is a parallel Bluesky which is just the same 10-20 transphobes baiting different people into having arguments with them and then liking every single transphobic reply. Call it Bluesky B. They all mainly seem to be blocked from Bluesky A.
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Rob Mullins @robertmullins.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
Stop asking me questions about my secret postgraduate farm. It's a normal thing all academics have.
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Rob Mullins @robertmullins.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
I think allowing a student to live with you is one of the basic examples in my university's conflict of interest training. (I have to resit the training yearly.)
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Rob Mullins @robertmullins.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
I'm just going to put the view out there that there is a difference between legally admissible evidence of what parliament intended* when enacting legislation and evidence that laypeople can use when identifying the intention** of parliament. These disputes seem verbal to me.
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Rob Mullins @robertmullins.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
What exactly are students supposed to be paying for? www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
theguardian.com
Macquarie University swaps in-person psychology classes with AI chatbot for two subjects
University’s move is part of trend that critics within academia say will lead to further staff cuts and loss of ‘everything that makes the job worth doing’
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Rob Mullins @robertmullins.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
I suspect that lots of people who don't think of themselves as racist are still wedded to the folk conception of race, because they don't want to admit to themselves that something they saw as 'naturally' or 'biologically' given is socially constructed.
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tom westland @tomwestland.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
Also I have to say that the scientific literature on this is methodologically *so bad*, some of the worst I've ever seen. It has lasted because sexology has a major journal that has been in the editorial control of the same people for decades and they're committed to it
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Rob Mullins @robertmullins.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
Once in a while I read one of the canonical homophobic texts. Today it was Midge Decter's 'Boys on the Beach'. It is astonishing how many transphobic tropes are just warmed over homophobic tropes that have been forgotten. www.commentary.org/articles/mid...
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Rob Mullins @robertmullins.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
Hugely clarifying, as Roland says (I'm not saying he agrees with me). The extent to which this is just illiberal busybodyism hasn't been remarked on enough. Why does she get to decide? Why does anyone who isn't trans (or who doesn't have a trans kid) get a say in this?
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Ruth Pearce @notrightruth.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
This is the most fucked up and immediately harmful policy decision I think I've ever seen in adult trans healthcare in the UK, and that's saying something. The Welsh Gender Service is one of the best in the country. It is widely praised by the patients it helps. That is why it is being targeted.
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Rob Mullins @robertmullins.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
People I respect on here have no time for Jo Maugham, and I can't even really defend him. But he's one of the only members of the British legal establishment who I have seen meet this with the outrage it deserves. Maybe it's a form of moral luck, but it is still to his credit.
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Elizabeth Taylor @elizabethtaylor47.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
bsky.app/profile/shif... Read the accounts in this Reddit thread. Frankly I don't even know what the response to this should be. It's actually getting to the stage where you've got to wander what democratic levers trans people have left. Heartbreaking doesn't even begin to cover it.
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Rob Mullins @robertmullins.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
I spoke about Bette Davis for too long in my lecture and the students started laughing at me.
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Chris Bertram @crookedfootball.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Pretty sure that academic freedom, as people high-mindedly talk about it, no longer exists when funders have the sway they do over university leaders.That's bad, but I also think that we are not obliged to tolerate expression in the academy that is unambiguously racist and exterminationist
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