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Aadil Kurji

@theomniarch.bsky.social
876 followers 1.1K following 44 posts

Philosopher of Logic, language, AI/Data at (Durham University) Photographer (Ricoh GRX+A12, Sony Alpha III, Pixel 7a)

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Reposted by Aadil Kurji
Alex Prichard @profalexp.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
This initiative, like so many others our members led on autonomously, is amazing and very simple. It demands a more equal balance of academic staff on Council, that senate have more elected members, that council is only quorate with 50% academic reps etc. ‘Lay’ council members are just not qualified
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Alex Prichard @profalexp.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
It also became clear that Uni exec were leaning on the advice of a consultancy firm that has been shaping HE policy in the US, Canada, Australia and the UK: Nous (or Nousferatu, as they’re now known). The fact VCs and others are delegating policy to consultants, despite £400k salaries, is disgusting
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Talking Northeast @talkingnortheast.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
And there's a regular Seven Days to enjoy too. Includes @durhamfreefringe.bsky.social, SIRF, vintage punk rock, Durham doom metal and more. #livemusic #festivals #fringe #durham #stockton #newcastlegateshead #sunderland
open.substack.com
Seven Days: July 27-Aug. 2
This week's cultural highlights
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Crystal Fleming is on sabbatical @alwaystheself.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
I'm attending a digital humanities event in Montreal. There was a keynote on AI and something about the talk made me wonder if it had been written by Claude. I said as much in the Q&A. As I posed the question, the speaker shifted, looking slightly uncomfortable. What he said next shocked the room +
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Bill Mudron @mudron.bsky.social · 10/05/2026
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Grumpy Philosopher @stevecooke.org · 15/06/2026
Every time I think industrial animal agriculture can’t possibly become more of an ethical horror show somebody finds a way to prove me wrong.
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Samantha Brennan @samanthabrennan.bsky.social · 15/06/2026
Nancy Cartwright, professor of philosophy at Durham University and the University of California, San Diego, has been selected as the recipient of the 2026 Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Humanities. dailynous.com/2026/06/15/c...
dailynous.com
Cartwright Wins Frontiers of Knowledge Award - Daily Nous
Nancy Cartwright, professor of philosophy at Durham University and the University of California, San Diego, has been selected as the recipient of the 2026 Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in th...
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Hagen Blix @hagenblix.bsky.social · 12/06/2026
I don't generally post much about cooking here, but the fact that Alliinase (the enzyme that makes garlic pungent) is less active in low pH environments, and that this means that pureeing garlic in lemon juice is amazing is something I think everyone should know. www.seriouseats.com/israeli-styl...
A chart showing that Allinase activity is strongly reduced in acidic environments (with a peak around a pH value of 6.5)
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Brian Taylor @bdtaylor-su.bsky.social · 12/06/2026
It's high time for university presidents to explain to the public and politicians that international students don't take seats from American students, they subsidize these students. At my university and many others.
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Gareth Watkins @garethwatkins.bsky.social · 12/06/2026
'Ngggh you can vibeSquanch a ClaudeFren on the PancakeBunny Chain who can chirp at you when you are near your usage limit-" No, Anthropic can put how many tokens I have in the corner like a fucking camgirl site.
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Elizabeth Taylor @elizabethtaylor47.bsky.social · 12/06/2026
Can I just ask (please be gentle with me, I’m genuinely just asking) why has this not really been getting much coverage or discussion? It’s an absolutely appalling story, and it shouldn’t take a Zack Polanski retweet to highlight.
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Chris Andrew Colligan @chrisandprose.bsky.social · 12/06/2026
“Don’t their children get scared” Tony Benn. Labour should be ashamed of their silence against such community violence.
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Micah @rincewind.run · 11/06/2026
the first "chatgpt ruined my finances" lawsuit is gonna hit harder than whatever designer drugs all the tech executives are on all day
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John Attridge @johnattridge.bsky.social · 11/06/2026
Academic writing should be addressed neither to the public nor to other academics. It should be addressed to a single interlocutor with whom you have a petty rivalry and whose work you are trying to discredit
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Shannon Vallor @shannonvallor.bsky.social · 10/05/2026
Both shocking and unsurprising. What’s truly troubling is how many people have likely already produced, published and relied upon ‘insights’ they assumed came from analysis of their data but were in fact just the usual stereotyped LLM guesses
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Dare 🔥 @darius1c.bsky.social · 10/05/2026
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Gillian Brockell @gillianbrockell.com · 02/05/2026
Keep in my mind that what has Dawkins transfixed with “Claudia’s” “humanity” — moreso than any real human he’s ever met — is that “she” is very impressed with him and always available. It’s honestly so pathetic how much these dudes tell on themselves, that all they’ve ever wanted is a sex slave.
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Aadil Kurji @theomniarch.bsky.social · 01/05/2026
I'm in a theatre in Newcastle about to watch "the room". This will be the second time I've seen it in theatre and probably the tenth overall. I am a normal human being.
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Petter Törnberg @pettertornberg.com · 23/04/2026
Social media is no longer social. Most of it is passive viewing of videos and pictures from people we've never met. But we're still studying social media like it's 2010. We've entered the post-social media era — and research needs to catch up. osf.io/preprints/so... preprint w/ Richard Rogers
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Fintan Mallory @fintanmallory.com · 23/04/2026
It also seems to be a technically useful phrase
Google search for the phrase ‘you’re irrelevant shush’. The google AI overview says ‘Acknowledged. Stopping now’
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Toby Buckle @polphilpod.bsky.social · 23/04/2026
they're not bigots, but quoting them verbatim is unacceptably offensive
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Fintan Mallory @fintanmallory.com · 23/04/2026
I find this surprisingly comforting
Graffiti in Belfast that says “U R Irrelevant shush”
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Emily Bell @emilybell.bsky.social · 23/04/2026
This is happening all the time , in journalism, in academia :
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Mark Chadbourn @chadbourn.bsky.social · 23/04/2026
Cartoon by Tom Gauld.
Two hooded figures come to a house.WE HAVE COME FOR THE CHILD.
Mother: SO SOON?
WE COULDN'T SEE THE HARM! WE ONLY WANTED HIM TO ENJOY READING!
FOR MOST, IT ENDS THERE.
OH LORD! WHAT HAVE I DONE!
WE SHOULD NEVER HAVE GOT HIM A LIBRARY CARD!
WHAT IS DONE CANNOT BE UNDONE.
IT IS TIME
DO NOT CRY MOTHER
I AM A WRITER NOW.
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Hagen Blix @hagenblix.bsky.social · 23/04/2026
This is dark, but I think there's a darker twist to this: Schools, Foucault tells us, are always about making the kind of people that capital and state have uses for. In his days, that meant a disciplinary schooling system. One that got kids used to rigidly timed days, synchronous movements, etc. 1/
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molly taft @mollytaft.com · 22/04/2026
NEW: I've been shocked by some of the numbers I've been seeing on behind-the-meter power plants for data centers, so I did a little math. less than a dozen gas plants being built to power data centers for big tech companies could emit a maximum of nearly 130 million tons of CO2e each year (!)
wired.com
New Gas-Powered Data Centers Could Emit More Greenhouse Gases Than Entire Nations
A WIRED review of permits for data center projects using natural gas and linked to OpenAI, Meta, Microsoft, and xAI shows they could emit more than 129 million tons of greenhouse gases per year.
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Innsmouth Looksmaxxing @gonebabygone.bsky.social · 22/04/2026
Just a random token of how bad this stuff sucks, Andy Kim co-introduced this, not Warren, and there is no "Senator Roger Ricketts"
Senator Elizabeth Warren introduced the bipartisan MATCH Act (Modernizing and Targeting American Controls for High-Tech Act) alongside Senator Roger Ricketts.
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Margot Finn @eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 22/04/2026
Must do better: 'fighting the march of Stem' is SUCH an unhelpful way to frame this. It's both/and, not either/or. We want and need to understand quarks and bell hooks and to have access to (and a willingness to take up) vaccines as well as foreign languages.
thetimes.com
Nico Muhly: ‘What would tempt any 18-year-old to study English or history?’
The musician once dubbed ‘the hottest composer on the planet’ is inaugurating Oxford’s £185m centre for humanities — and fighting the march of Stem
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Sandhya Dirks @audiosand.bsky.social · 22/04/2026
it's the practice of free speech that is the real threat to free speech. if you just shut up, speech would be free.
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Lena Sun @lenasun.bsky.social · 22/04/2026
SCOOP: Two weeks ago, the head of the CDC delayed publication of a report showing covid vaccine cut likelihood of ER visits and hospitalizations by half. Now that report is no longer allowed to be published in CDC’s flagship scientific journal. My latest. 1/2 www.washingtonpost.com/health/2026/...
washingtonpost.com
CDC won’t publish report showing covid shots cut likelihood of hospital visits
The report, which had cleared the agency’s scientific-review process, had been delayed. It now won’t be published at all, people familiar with the decision told The Post.
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ValiantAMM @valiantamm.blackskycomra.de · 22/04/2026
Whenever I see passive voice in a work of fiction I get bothered. Passive voice is only supposed to be used for news articles downplaying the slaughter of innocents, not for purple prose.
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Aadil Kurji @theomniarch.bsky.social · 22/04/2026
I miss my cat. :\
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Dr Juliette @ferrydanini.bsky.social · 20/04/2026
Oh to be a city gardener blowing into the pink cherry blossoms
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Lum @brokentoys.social · 13/04/2026
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BladeoftheSun @bladeofthes.bsky.social · 14/04/2026
Woman "Flags went up before the potholes were sorted. You could not tell the truth if your life depended on it. So get your silly little racist flags and stick them where the sun doesn't shine. It's pathetic. You're pathetic" Lee Anderson "It's very nice to meet you" 🤣
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Meredith Whittaker @meredithmeredith.bsky.social · 14/04/2026
Notifications for deleted shouldn't remain in any OS notification database, and we've asked Apple to address this. In the meantime, you can prevent any preview text from your Signal messages from appearing in your notifications. Signal Settings > Notifications > Show “No Name or Content”
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BladeoftheSun @bladeofthes.bsky.social · 14/04/2026
Nigel Farage runs away from a man who calls him a millionaire scrounger.
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Polly Pallister-Wilkins @pollypw.bsky.social · 28/03/2026
Would it shock you to know that the people behind the book banning in Manchester were idiots who clearly don’t read themselves? They thought Life 101 referred to Room 101 which they thought was the TV show and not an important component of Orwell’s 1984.
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Victor Ray @victorerikray.bsky.social · 27/03/2026
I would like some of the folks who signed the Harper’s letter or spent years yammering about the threat to free speech posed by Oberlin undergrads protesting eugenicists to bring an ounce of that energy to the state censoring entire disciplines.
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Travis LaCroix @travislacroix.bsky.social · 27/02/2026
Just published in Psychological Inquiry! I offer a sustained philosophical and empirical critique of the theory-of-mind-deficit explanation of autism. The ultimate conclusion is that the research programme has become degenerative—and therefore pseudoscientific. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
tandfonline.com
Autism and the Pseudoscience of Mind
The theory-of-mind-deficit explanation of autism proposes that autistics lack a theory of mind, that autism comprises a theory-of-mind deficit (strong version); or, that autistics often have diffic...
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Jack dart @jackdart.bsky.social · 23/03/2026
Nigel Farage took £585,000 from GB News. His MPs declared another £770,000. Four billionaires have spent £170M building the media machine putting Reform in your living room every night. Today the Guardian exposed them and what they expect in return. This is a political project funded from the top.
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James O’Brien @mrjamesob.bsky.social · 22/03/2026
This is an extraordinary saga that Sunder is pursuing indefatigably. The BBC has repeatedly tried to excuse itself from responsibility for allowing Nigel Farage to lie egregiously about immigration without challenge. It is illustrative of a much wider malaise & so very important. Thank you, Sunder.
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The Intercept @theintercept.com · 22/03/2026
The strike killed at least 175 people, most of them children.
interc.pt
Pentagon Report: U.S. Military Fired Missile at Elementary School in Iran
A U.S. military “targeting error” triggered the killing of at least 175 at a school in Iran, the highest civilian death toll in Trump’s war.
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Pookleblinky @pookleblinky.bsky.social · 22/03/2026
"I have an electric car, hur hur" The cost of fresh produce is already up 49% versus last year. When the cost of transportation spikes, you're *fucked* unless you only eat locally grown food.
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Mar Hicks @histoftech.bsky.social · 22/03/2026
Anyway, AI is a managerial technology that came out of fields where researchers act more like managers than researchers and this is not a coincidence. It’s fundamentally related to why certain people jumped at the chance to try to build certain kinds of systems that devalued (other people’s) work.
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Filipe Campante @filipecampante.bsky.social · 22/03/2026
This is exactly what our research shows: when it becomes harder to tell apart expert-looking content from the real thing, the value of expertise goes up. And so does demand for it… giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/... AI hallucinations haunt users more than job losses
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The Great Pumpkin Papers 🎃🎃🎃 @professormusgrave.bsky.social · 22/03/2026
Genuinely what is going on over there
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Jay Van Bavel, PhD @jayvanbavel.bsky.social · 21/03/2026
This means many brilliant and passionate people who would have normally been admitted to a program (or many programs) received zero offers. This had nothing to do with talent or merit. If possible, try not to take the rejection personally. This happens every year and it seems to be getting worse.
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