iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Laura Cleaver @laurajcleaver.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

I wish human intelligence was getting even a fraction of the attention and investment being spent on AI.

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Margot Finn @eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

PwC (like, among others, KPMG before it) found to be producing 'thought leadership' advice promoting agentic AI use that is larded with AI hallucinations. Worth bearing in mind if they are, for example, one of your university's consultants.

ft.com

PwC published ‘thought leadership’ reports marred by AI hallucinations

Big Four consultant is latest firm found to have produced slapdash work while marketing expertise on the technology

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Margot Finn @eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

'Strip away the grandiose language and a pattern emerges – some combination of fewer, larger modules, almost always wedges of 30 credits, an all-core or heavily prescribed first year, reduced optionality in later years, curated pathways instead of individual module choice... [cont.] 1/4

wonkhe.com

Curriculum reform is a wedge issue

With curriculum reform converging on fewer, larger modules across the sector, Jim Dickinson argues that consolidation solves institutional problems while reallocating regret onto students least able t...

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Sig Sønnesyn @sigsonnesyn.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

Meanwhile, back where it's at:

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Sig Sønnesyn @sigsonnesyn.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

something something Canaries in the data mine something something

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Sig Sønnesyn @sigsonnesyn.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

Well said! I haven't been since 2019, mainly for family reasons, and I really really miss it.

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Sig Sønnesyn @sigsonnesyn.bsky.social · 04/07/2026

So many excellent degree programmes sacrificially trivialised on the altar of fake Nous.

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Sig Sønnesyn @sigsonnesyn.bsky.social · 03/07/2026

Now I REALLY wish I had been able to go to the IMC this year!

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Dr Ellie Mackin Roberts @elliemackinroberts.net · 23/06/2026

I am once again begging universities to realise that staff - academic, professional services, estates, all of them - are the product they are trying to sell. Without staff there is nothing to sell. No amount of flashy buildings will replace staff in universities. UKHE is in freefall.

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Sig Sønnesyn @sigsonnesyn.bsky.social · 21/06/2026

It shall stand as a reminder that, your enviable learning and impressive perspicuity notwithstanding, even the best nod occasionally. Quandoque bonus dormitat Thakkarus, one might say, if scansion had allowed.

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Sig Sønnesyn @sigsonnesyn.bsky.social · 20/06/2026

It never ceases to amaze me to what extent palaeography so often is based on vibes and deference to authorities. In contrast, I really respect the way you make explicit the grounds for your judgements. Hopefully reviewers will attend more to your arguments than to established orthodoxy.

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Sig Sønnesyn @sigsonnesyn.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

I have started to compile a list of Lonergan burns in a notebook. Some fabulously subtle but piercing stilettos there.

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Sig Sønnesyn @sigsonnesyn.bsky.social · 08/06/2026

Some well-deserved recognition for the excellent Dr Weikert (who also would deserve to have her name spelled correctly).

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Liesbeth Corens @onslies.bsky.social · 29/05/2026

Jesus Christ. Anyone, at any point, raised what *universities actually do*?? Why do we have this lot in charge, who can't even think about what it is the institutions they're 'leading' are for in the first place. In fact, why are they meeting with Starmer's *economic* advisor?

A first for me today at No.10 Downing Street, but what mattered was the discussion.

With Universities UK colleagues, in a conversation led by Baroness Minouche Shafik, we focused on some of the most pressing questions facing higher education:

🎯 How universities can do more to drive growth
🎯 Our role in supporting regional economies
🎯 The long-term financial sustainability of the sector
🎯 Keeping quality at the heart of what we do
🎯 Continuing to attract the brightest and best from across the world
🎯 Supporting young people into education and work

None of these questions are simple but together they go to the heart of the contribution universities make, both economically and socially.

What struck me most is the extent to which there is real appetite for universities to be part of the solution. The challenge for all of us now is to turn that into something tangible.

This is exactly the focus of UUK’s current policy work and it matters enormously for the future of our sector.

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Plashing Vole @plashingvole.bsky.social · 12/05/2026

This is exactly like the banking crisis of 2008. CEO’s was asked why they’d crashed the global economy, and they explained that their only responsibility was to enrich for their own institution regardless of consequences. Nobody was in charge of or responsible for the system as a whole.

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Leonie V. Hicks @lvhicks.bsky.social · 08/05/2026

Today is Mother Julian's feast. She is my favourite mystic with much wisdom. She does not shy away from difficulty or the violence of the cross, but looks them squarely in the face and comprehends the abundant love of God and all that is needful for life. 1/

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Sig Sønnesyn @sigsonnesyn.bsky.social · 06/05/2026

It struck me late last night that a good replacement for that most glaring of misnomers 'Artificial Intelligence' would be 'Fake nous', but then I immediately thought it is too obvious not to have been proposed before. Is this in fact old νοῦς?

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Sig Sønnesyn @sigsonnesyn.bsky.social · 28/04/2026

Yay! Congratulations to you, Matt, and Stephen for magnificent (and, in the case of an author whom the present skeeter is in the habit of defining with the perpendicular pronoun, extremely patient) editorial work! I will be remembering deeply missed and always admired colleagues especially today.

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Sig Sønnesyn @sigsonnesyn.bsky.social · 24/04/2026

Despite my aversion to the notion of 'The Dark Ages', I still think MacIntyre got the important bits spot on 45 years ago.

Quotation from Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue, final paragraph: It is always dangerous to draw too precise parallels between one historical period and another; and among the most misleading of such parallels are those which have been drawn between our own age in Europe and North America and the epoch in which the Roman empire declined into the Dark Ages. Nonetheless certain parallels there are. A crucial turning point in that earlier history occurred when men and women of good will turned aside from the task of shoring up the Roman imperium and ceased to identify the continuation of civility and moral community with the maintenance of that imperium. What they set themselves to achieve instead – often not recognizing fully what they were doing – was the construction of new forms of community within which the moral life could be sustained so that both morality and civility might survive the coming ages of barbarism and darkness. If my account of our moral condition is correct, we ought also to conclude that for some time now we too have reached that turning point. What matters at this stage is the construction of local forms of community within which civility and the intellectual and moral life can be sustained through the new dark ages which are already upon us. And if the tradition of the virtues was able to survive the horrors of the last dark ages, we are not entirely without grounds for hope. This time however the barbarians are not waiting beyond the frontiers; they have already been governing us for quite some time. And it is our lack of consciousness of this that constitutes pan of our predicament. We are waiting not for a Godot, but for another – doubtless very different – St. Benedict.

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Sig Sønnesyn @sigsonnesyn.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

If, say, any experimental jazz/ambient outfit are looking for a title for their long-awaited sophomore album, I'd be very happy put this phrase at their disposal, or come up with an equally ponderously pompous alternative.

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Sig Sønnesyn @sigsonnesyn.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

In some intellectual cultures, you could even say that relatedness was the majority position. For instance, the profound impact of Islamic and Judaic learning on the 12th- and 13th-century reception of Aristotle in Latin relied on a recognition of isomorphic Abrahamic Aristotelianisms.

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Anne M. Carpenter @catholickungfu.bsky.social · 20/04/2026

Augustine is like: oh man if only religion made a person good. But it doesn't. So.

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Shaily Patel @vox-magica.bsky.social · 13/04/2026

religious literacy — not to be confused with “religion” as such — is a civic good.

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Anne M. Carpenter @catholickungfu.bsky.social · 13/04/2026

What's the next sentence, Adrian. WHAT IS THE NEXT SENTENCE.

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Sig Sønnesyn @sigsonnesyn.bsky.social · 14/04/2026

Drop your crime fighting Catholics:

The front cover of James Lee Burke's novel Robicheaux

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Sig Sønnesyn @sigsonnesyn.bsky.social · 04/04/2026

I remember when CDs appeared – they all had a standard disclaimer printed on the cover stating that the sound quality was so high fidelity that it could reveal flaws on the original master tapes.

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Arts Matter Bristol @uobartsmatter.bsky.social · 30/03/2026

'While the war has been criticised as being in breach of international law, the reckless use of religion to support this war has not.' Dr Toby Matthiesen (Religion & Theology) on how leaders have used religion to justify their actions in the Middle East Read 👇 theconversation.com/god-on-their...

theconversation.com

God on their side: how the US, Israel and Iran are all using religion to garner support

Politicians from all three Abrahamic religions are using scripture to back their positions.

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Sig Sønnesyn @sigsonnesyn.bsky.social · 29/03/2026

at the still point, there the dance is, But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity, Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards, Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point, There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.

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Sig Sønnesyn @sigsonnesyn.bsky.social · 29/03/2026

This made me wonder what ChatGPT means when it uses the pronoun 'I'; this in turn made me wonder what I could possibly mean by the verb 'means' as applied to ChatGPT; which again reminded me of how eerily prescient (as well as, erm, scient) Wittgenstein was in Philosophical Investigations §115.

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Simon Hewitt @leedshewitt.bsky.social · 26/03/2026

Two things that can be true simultaneously: Trump is a volatile idiot who does things for no good reason; the Trump administration functions in the interests of a section of US capital.

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John McCafferty @jdmccafferty.bsky.social · 25/03/2026

25 Mar 1235: the canons of #Lincoln unanimously & unexpectedly elect Robert Grossesteste, scientist & theologian as Bishop of #Lincoln #otd ( British Library Harley MS 3860)

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Sig Sønnesyn @sigsonnesyn.bsky.social · 25/03/2026

If LLMs could talk, we would not understand them (Technology as grammar)

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Sig Sønnesyn @sigsonnesyn.bsky.social · 25/03/2026

'Market research' is still predicated on the predictive powers of the behavioural science model that for instance completely failed to predict the 2008 recession, is it not? But sure, let's all restructure our study programmes to align with McKinsey horoscopes...

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Surprised Eel Historian, PhD @greenleejw.bsky.social · 22/03/2026

Reposting this poem that I wrote last fall because...well... [waves hands at the world]

A poem titled "Humanities" made up of a set of 6 haikus The text of the poem reads:

Who needs history?
Literature? Languages?
Art? Philosophy?

These can only help
you to better understand
our humanity.

Best to let machines
read your books. And write your books.
Do your art for you.

You will never need
to think. Never need to learn.
You’ll learn to like it.

And when the end comes
you’ll have never burdened your
soul with any growth.

Someone selling this
sees profit in destroying
your humanity.

- John Wyatt Greenlee

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Mark Williams @mrfw17thc.bsky.social · 20/03/2026

I have a 'History Department in UKHE' joke but it's been reduced from 250 characters to 50 and is now merged with jokes from across ten other largely-unrelated disciplines while still being expected to be Just As Funny.

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Sig Sønnesyn @sigsonnesyn.bsky.social · 19/03/2026

Insert your own reading/Reading pun here?

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Karen Gregory @karengregory.bsky.social · 19/03/2026

Has anyone written a review of the restructuring going on across UK HE? Trying to understand what is common across institutions: large, team-taught courses, centralised workload models, limited to no research time, promotion directly tied to grant income. How many consultancy firms are pushing this?

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Grumpy Philosopher @stevecooke.org · 19/03/2026

Oh really? Is that because pandering to the far-right and assuming they will act rationally, reciprocally, & in good faith has always worked in the past, & because there's good evidence that Reform can be trusted? I totally trust this former Tory advisor report published by a right-wing think tank.

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Sig Sønnesyn @sigsonnesyn.bsky.social · 18/03/2026

He really did say that about you, and in a way that made it clear he meant it. He only taught me for a single semester, but I remember him very fondly. Not sure there's enough Napoleon cake to fix university politics these days, though.

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Sig Sønnesyn @sigsonnesyn.bsky.social · 18/03/2026

This article is, as they say, bang on the money.

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