Michael Larkin

✨ New(ish!) publication alert ✨

Toward Epistemic Justice: Using a Multimodal Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis Methodological Approach in Research With Autistic Children

bit.ly/47eT8YO

Part of a special IPA issue in @ijqmonline.bsky.social

closeup of a group of four, 3-inch amethyst deceiver mushrooms, bright purple agains a backdrop of green and brown grass and branches.

Closeup of a young Amanita muscaria mushroom cap, with a bright red cap covered with white spots, on a shaggy white step growing out of brown, wet leaves.

Closeup of a large Tapinella astromentosa mushroom with a light brown cap, growing out out grass.

Closeup of a bitter beech bolete mushroom growing from grass and moss. The stem is reddish-yellow-orange and the cap is light brown.

Lotsa Rain, lotsa fungi in the woods ...

I like how it boils down to The Feels, unexpected twist

Lovely!

Career progression for autistic people: A scoping review A systematic review of exisiting literature. Relevant papers by theme in the 33 papers in the review: Adequate support (11) Desired career progression for many (7) Tailored opportunities (2) Unempl…

"Many autistic people want to progress in their careers but are not given support, tools or opportunities. Many potential barriers that autistic people face in this regard are external in nature (e.g. poor response to disclosure, inadequate organizational support, inaccessible promotion processes)."

Rosa

Ellie

Delighted that two fantastic researchers and women in philosophy, Rosa Ritunnano and Eleanor Palafox-Harris, have recently submitted their PhD theses! I will miss meeting them and reading their work but I am excited about what they will do next… #philsky #philpsy #epistemicinjustice

I need help from the Bluesky collective. I'm looking for recent (2020+) research on whether Brits are willing to travel abroad to get medical care and also if they are willing to go into debt to pay for it. I can only find research from 2014 and back. #MedSky #Health #Healthcare #MedicalTourism

Centrala - Solid Gone Presents: MUTE SERVANTS | WORKIN’MAN NOISE UNIT | RATTLE Mute Servants (blunt and uncompromising garage punk) Workin' Man Noise Unit (no-nonsense meat-feast riffs) Rattle (unique experiments in rhythm, metre and tension) + DJ's till late FREE

Playing one last show with Workin' Man later this month. Too many incredible characters involved to say no. Free entry if ya fancy an outing to Birmingham.

centrala-space.org.uk/events/solid...

A great talk by @ginnybraun.bsky.social on GenAI and qualitative analysis. Can GenAI do reflexive TA? The short answer is no - reflexive TA is a human practice. Should we use GenAI as qualitative researchers given all the harms of the tech? If you're remotely concerned with social justice ... no???

Here is the column I wrote on the theme "What I Would have liked to Know About Germany Earlier," along with the additional reflections I provided at Zeit Magazin's request. -A society governed by regulations, yet lacking individual moral judgement, is more dangerous than one with none at all. -A society that values obedience without questioning authority is destined to become corrupt. -A society that admits to error but refuses to reflect on its origins possesses a mind as stubborn and dull as granite. -Here, at a deserted street, people stop dutifully at a red light. Not a car in sight. This, I once thought, is the mark of a highly evolved society. -At the heart of bureaucracy lies a collective endorsement of power's legitimacy, and therefore, individuals surrender their moral judgement–or perhaps never developed one. They abandon challenge. They relinquish dispute. -When conversation becomes avoidance, when topics must not be mentioned, we are already living under the quiet logic of authoritarianism. -When the majority believe they live in a free society, it is often a sign that the society is not free. Freedom is not a gift; it must be wrestled from the hands of banality and the quiet complicity with power. -When people sense that power is beyond challenge, they redirect their energy into trivial disputes. And those trivialities, collectively, are enough to erode a society's very foundations of justice. -When public events of great consequence–such as the Nord Stream Pipeline bombing–are met with silence from both government and media, the silence itself becomes more terrifying than any atomic bomb. -Facts are acknowledged partially, forgotten deliberately, or swallowed by collective silence. And so we repeat catastrophe–against and again, in cycles. -When the media becomes a servant of public opinion, or avoids conflict to maintain favour with existing powers, it becomes an accomplice to authority. What we call lies are not always distortions of fact.

-Political leaders make decisions steeped in fallacy & failure. This reflects the broader political condition of a society in which most people have surrendered their awareness & even their basic agency–allowing such leaders to enact their mistakes on their behalf -When a society uses linguistic difference or cultural misunderstanding as excuses for exclusion, it has crossed into a more insidious form of racism. This is not a political opinion–it is an attitude, a stain in blood, passed down like genes -Bureaucracy is not merely sluggish. It is a cultural scorn. It rejects the possibility of dialogue. It insists that ignorance, codified into policy, no matter how wrong & inhumane it is, remains the best resistance against social mobility, against moral motion. In such a society, hope is not misplaced. It is extinguished -In the surrounding atmosphere, one sees not culture, but self-congratulation; not art, but insularity & collective reverence for power. What is missing is sincerity–honesty of emotion & of intention. In such an environment, art that grapples with true human feeling or moral reckoning is nearly impossible to produce. -A place that routinely discards self-awareness & erases individual agency is one that lives under iron walls of authoritarianism -I have no family, no fatherland, never known what it is to belong. I belong only to myself. In the best of circumstances, that self should belong to everyone. I still do not know what art is. I only hope that what I make might touch its edges while it seems unrelated to anything. & in truth, in the best of circumstances it is unrelated to me, for the "I" already melts into everything -Those things found in galleries, museums, & collectors' living room–are they art? Who has declared them so? On what basis? Why do I always feel suspicion in their presence? -Works that evade reality, that shy away from argument, from controversy, from debate–be they text, painting, or performance–are worthless.

-I understand now: people crave power and tyranny as they crave sunshine and rain, for the burden of self-awareness feels like pain. at times, even like catastrophe. -Under most circumstances, society selects the most selfish, least idealistic among us to take on the work we call "art" because that choice makes everyone feel safe. Additional reflections -In Berlin, I encounter the ever-present Schweinshaxe and Schnitzel, and I can hardly believe that such a highly developed, industrialised country offers such a monotonous selection of ingredients. Even more baffling is the sudden proliferation of Chinese restaurants–most of them noodle-based, and operating at a culinary level that any Chinese person could easily achieve at home. The variety of food and cooking methods is so limited here that people form all over the world feel compelled to open restaurants: Vietnamese, Thai, Turkish–you name it. -But the truly horrifying part? The sheer number of Chinese restaurants. I can only assume they believe that no matter what ends up on the plate, German customers will come running. In front of some of these establishments, there are even long queues–yet the food they serve bears little resemblance to anything recognisably Chinese. My favourite food in Germany is the bread and sausage–you simply can't find ones with such distinctive character anywhere else. -I'm puzzled by why so many people would willingly cram themselves into a small bar just to have a long conversation. Since I don't speak the language, I can only imagine that the young people coming to Berlin would talk about clubbing. This sort of thing was all the rage in the U.S. back in the '70s and '80s. -The Germans might be the only people who are truly the furthest from a sense of humour. This could be the result of their deep reverence for rationality. Just look at Berlin Airport or the advertisements for Mercedes-Benz cars–you start to feel that their lack of humour has become a kind of immense humour in itself

Ai Weiwei was invited to contribute short reflections on “What I would have liked to know about Germany earlier" for an upcoming issue of Zeit Magazin. His submission was first shortened and edited, then immediately cancelled after a review by the Executive Editor. Ai shared his reflections anyway:

This is a video of a bear on a trampoline. Whatever argument you may or may not have tonight is invalid.

Difficult to look at this and to avoid the conclusion that 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘯 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘣𝘦𝘴𝘵 𝘤𝘢𝘴𝘦 𝘴𝘤𝘦𝘯𝘢𝘳𝘪𝘰 of this build-out delivering socially useful technology – not exactly the most likely scenario – the means to get there will have been horrendously inefficient and environmentally destructive.

I think this applies to physical refits too - a lot of wood panelling and good furniture ends up in skips, to be replaced by moulded plastics and tubular chrome, just to create the effect that a university is in fact indistinguishable from an office supply telemarketing centre

Paraphrasing the article, Mr Wallace has found someone who isn't an autism expert to declare that autistic people are usually expected to behave like he has, and it's all the BBC's fault for not supporting him properly.

I just can't even...

Amazed to hear on Today two sane voices in quick succession - Pete Etchells and Amy Orben - on teen screen use, followed by the eminently sensible @zsk.bsky.social

Picturebook man-in-the-moon floating above the downs this evening

This is excellent, it's a conundrum I have been trying to explain to my mother for years. My parents did stretch themselves with their mortgage, especially when interest rates shot up to 15%, but the starting point was very different.

The Case for Epistemic Justice in Mental Health Nurse Education

Great #projectEPIC blog post this week from Jane Fisher arguing that epistemic justice should be part of the training for mental health nurses.

#EPIC #mentalhealth #nursing #mentalhealthnursing #epistemicinjustice

epistemicinjusticeinhealthcareproject.blogspot.com/2025/07/the-...

But the transformation worked. Some analyses suggest mortality was halved, saving hundreds of lives per year. The reconfiguration was a big success...

Neurodiversity – learning, understanding, flourishing Dr Amy Pearson, a leading autistic psychologist at the University of Durham, shares her insights into the challenges of neurodiversity.

Dr Amy Pearson, a leading autistic psychologist at the University of Durham, shares her insights into the challenges of neurodiversity. www.creativeconversation.org/video-librar...

Oh no. I'm going to the tip, so 🤷‍♂️

Mounted mixed media picture of yellow flowers.

Rye dwellers. You can now buy the work of learning disabled artists from my brother's home at Ethel Loves Me www.ethelloves.me

This is very lovely

Part of the problem is the conflation between generative AI (completely bollocks “spicy autocomplete” that’s killing the planet) and machine learning (the scientific uses to expose patterns in enormous data sets which can then be explored by humans)

'Is it down to the beach I fear?'

Thanks IS

Sad to hear that Margaret Boden, pioneer in cognitive science and artificial intelligence, has passed away.

Just a few days ago, someone reactivated the post below. I warmly recommend watching the video.

Thank you Margaret for founding and shaping our field.

www.sussex.ac.uk/broadcast/re...

Folks, do we think blatantly incorrect interpretations of vague associations might be contributing to the postmodern crisis of causal epistemology?

This is new UK SRE guidance.
HIV can be passed on.
HIV treatment prevents sexual transmission; it would help tackle stigma if this fact was in the guidance.
HIV and AIDS are not the same thing.
This is a key point that good sex education should make.
Shame the SRE guidelines couldn’t get it right.