Liz Morrish

Remember: Almost all of us are the descendants of immigrants who fled persecution, or were brought to America under duress, or sought better lives for themselves and their descendants.

Politicians who stoke fear and hatred over immigration want you to forget this.

Do not.

[quoting a tweet by fractalcounty that reads, “today I learned that there are actual people irl who get genuinely upset if they catch you using chatgpt. like they view it as a serious moral failing in certain circles”]

If you're using AI to write essays, eulogies, a text to your wife, I do think less of you as a person. Ceding your mental and creative abilities to a machine is an embarrassing thing and people should be ashamed to admit doing it in public.

Photo of a sketch of a Neanderthal. The headline reads: Scientists Growing Neanderthal 'Minibrains', Will Connect Them to Crab Robots

Go for it. I don't even care any more.

“Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty.”--Arendt

31 July 2025

Also:

Today is the last day of my wonderful
Department of English Literature & Creative Writing

60.5 years - over

The mathematics of starvation: how Israel caused a famine in Gaza Israel controls the flow of food into Gaza. It has calculated how many calories Palestinians need to stay alive. Its data shows only a fraction has been allowed in

'The vast gap between the calories Gaza needs, and the food that has entered since March makes clear that Israeli officials are doing different maths today. They cannot pass responsibility for this human-made famine to anyone else, and nor can their allies'.
www.theguardian.com/world/2025/j...

Anyway I came on here to BEG academics to stop using AI in their journal submissions. Yes, that includes for proofing, arranging reference lists etc. I am currently staring at a perfectly decent article, written by a human being, with a useless AI-generated bibliography full of errors.

It doesn't seem to have served the US military all that well.

The Pentagon Against the Think Tanks Pete Hegseth finds a new enemy.

Pete Hegseth's new war on think tanks reveals masculine fragility: "The Aspen forum did not align with the department’s efforts to “increase the lethality of our war fighters, revitalize the warrior ethos and project peace through strength on the world stage.”
www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

Turns out the "Ambition." and "Beyond." branding is from the very same firm...

And it even set the standard for the architecture of housing - the Lancaster and Winchester examples look like so many post-war 3-bed semi built by private developers across the UK. The Winchester one is the same as the house my mum lives in, built in the 1950s!

60,000 Gazans have been killed. 18,500 were children. These are their names. Palestinian children have been killed at a rate of more than one per hour since the war began.

This is the Washington Post (yes, that one): names in Arabic and English, and ages, of all 18,500 children killed in Gaza, plus portraits and stories where available: www.washingtonpost.com/world/intera...

Gilead under construction...

Can’t help but reflect on the *5 years of strikes* we did to defend our pensions, on this, the day USS announce their £10 billion surplus.

I think of this every time my £400,000 VC boasts about hiring all new staff via a subsidiary on a far worse pension because LGPS/TPS are too expensive.

This from executives who get *extra* because they’ve *maxed out* the tax allowances on their own USS and TPS pensions. It’s generational looting.

How NASA Engineered Its Own Decline The agency once projected America’s loftiest ideals. Then it ceded its ambitions to Elon Musk.

'Rather than celebrate the fragile, improvised nature of human existence, Musk seeks to optimize or overwrite it—in the name of evolution, in pursuit of profit, in the vainglorious fulfillment of his adolescent fantasies'.
Franklin Foer in www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...

Faculty Support of George Mason’s President Draws Federal Investigation

Faculty who wrote to defend their president and object to a DOJ investigation of their university...are now being investigated by the DOJ.
The most banal defense of free speech and academic freedom will trigger the full wrath of the US government now.
www.nytimes.com/2025/07/28/u...

Harvard Is Said to Be Open to Spending Up to $500 Million to Resolve Trump Dispute

Central European University decided to move from Budapest to Vienna to escape authoritarian interference. Harvard should consider how it might do so. This is simply extortion and it won't stop here.

www.nytimes.com/2025/07/28/u...

Open letter from UK university staff: Request for biometric deferral and safe evacuation of incoming Palestinian students and scholars from Gaza to UK Universities More than 40 students currently trapped in Gaza with full scholarships to UK Universities are asking for a safe route to come and study. We, the academic community hoping to welcome these scholars, ca...

An open letter has been launched today (27/7/25) for members of the UK academic community (academics and other university staff) to sign, to press the UK Home Office to facilitate safe passage out of Gaza for 40+ students with offers for UK universities.

docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

N.B. Please don't be concerned if your name isn't added to the list below immediately. At the time of writing (18:00 UK time on 28/7/25), we have almost 2000 signatories, and have not been able to update the version of the list below quickly enough. - it will update in the next days with signatures

Half the time I post something related to race on this website I get someone in the comments like, “yeah america is a racist country what do you expect.” I’m starting to think folks like this are bots or ops designed to make people feel helpless. Think we should call it “doomsplaining”

I’m just saying, we’ve had *at least* a decade of establishment parties aping Farage and playing to his politics in the belief that they can appease, neutralise or dislodge him, and during that time he has only solidified and even elevated his political prestige – largely thanks to their actions.

Decades of mechanistic talk about university degrees as if they were bundles of 'skills' and 'prep' are about to be proved completely wrong (obviously). Want to get a real boost? Do History or English.

Sometimes I have to wonder if Trump has even read Don Quixote.

Opinion | No, Israel Is Not Committing Genocide in Gaza

Unbelievable. A @nytimes.com opinion piece arguing that Israel cannot be committing genocide because they are easily capable of more killing.
www.nytimes.com/2025/07/22/o...

This is the marketised university. They are central. Academics are marginal. We all serve 'the business' in their terms. They do not serve the academic mission of the university.

A masterclass in taking down a ridiculous bully. Make sure you do it with icy contempt.

The UK needs a birth rate of 2.1 to stay stable.

Ours is 1.4 and falling. That means fewer workers, more pensioners = economic trouble.

Solutions? Force women to have more children, or more immigration.

We need people.
Immigration is good.
Stop being dicks to them ffs.