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Academia Free-For-All

And Chest-Puffing Ensued

July 22, 2025 126 Comments

Time, I think, to dip a toe in the world of academia. Specifically, some lively rumblings on the relative importance of electricians and sociology lecturers. I suppose you could start here, with this, but there are plenty of tangents and pith, and moments of slightly comical indignation.

Among those moments, this one:

Societies lived without electricity for millennia. Some still do. Don’t give me this shit.

By contrast, societies have ALWAYS needed individuals to assess their societal needs and propose solutions.

That by nature is The Sociologist. https://t.co/A0xifaYrXW

— Tim Gill (@timgill924) July 22, 2025

You see, Dr Tim Gill, our associate professor, is “an authority on society and everything in it.” Being an “intellectual,” he can “diagnose entire societies.” And then issue instructions to people of less importance.

Update, via the comments:

From one of Dr Gill’s own students:

“This class is very easy… However [Dr Gill] has an ego…”

A data point, I suppose.

Quoting this,

You see, Dr Tim Gill, our associate professor, is “an authority on society and everything in it.” Being an “intellectual,” he can “diagnose entire societies.” And then issue instructions to people of less importance.

Rafi adds,

But he didn’t see the pushback coming…

Which does rather suggest a gap in his model of the world.

At one point, Dr Gill boasts of never having used a lawn mower. Because apparently that’s a credential. Readers may also note Dr Gill’s use of the word handyman, complete with connotations of something other than respect. Still, you’ve almost got to admire the imperviousness of someone who responds to accusations of being arrogant and haughty and unmoored from reality by being arrogant and haughty and unmoored from reality.

Regarding Dr Gill’s rumblings of alleged profundity and intellectual heft, commenter Chow Bag draws our attention to this.

No laughing at the back.

And it must be quite strange to be rendered indignant by something – assumptions about a field, its standards, and the kinds of people it attracts – that your own indignant replies are pretty much confirming.

The thing is, the field of sociology needn’t, I think, have become so disreputable. I see little that’s inherently dubious about an attempt to study human society. But the field’s near-total occupation, or colonisation, by smug, delusional leftists, with all of their blind spots and baggage – and the consequent near-ubiquity of faulty default assumptions and predestined conclusions – has, inevitably, taken a toll.

The kind of people who, like Dr Gill, want to use a pretence of academic rigour to propagate their own rather weird and implausible political preferences.

Which is why we get supposed social scientists who find it problematic that Wikipedia entries written by men about pop culture topics that tend to be liked by men are often longer and more detailed, more nerdy, than entries by women on topics that are more likely to be of interest to women. As if men and women were somehow – and must be – identical in their psychology, their preferences and priorities, and as if any difference in Wikipedia entry length must be a result of some social oppression, some invisible downtroddenness.

And likewise, it’s why we get a social science lecturer being bewildered by the inegalitarian distribution of litter, and fretting about how to “narrow the gap” in discarded fag packets and food-smeared detritus, while studiously avoiding any acknowledgement of obvious differences in behaviour between social groups, as this would presumably offend his own egalitarian assumptions. And who gives no thought, none at all, to how the litter gets there in the first place. As if it just fell from the sky, randomly, like overnight snow.

And among Dr Gill’s peers, thinking of this kind is hardly uncommon. Hence the reputation.

Consider this an open thread. Share ye, and so forth.

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Written by: David
Academia Free-For-All

Have You Tried Using Cheese?

July 14, 2025 60 Comments

And in brief British heatwave news:

Dr Ben Roberts, a senior lecturer in healthy buildings at Loughborough University, said applying yoghurt to the outside of windows can lower the temperature by up to 3.5C.

It was a month-long experiment. Behold your taxes at work.

In May, Dr Roberts and PhD student Niloo Todeh-Kharman conducted an experiment on two identical test houses at Loughborough University by putting yoghurt on the windows of one, but not the other. The experiment found the indoor temperature of the house with yoghurt on the windows was on average 0.6C cooler, but up to a maximum of 3.5C cooler when it was “hot and sunny.”

And before you ask,

[Dr Roberts] told the BBC the yoghurt smells for “30 seconds when drying” but that as soon as it has dried “the smell disappears.”

Oh, and should you be tempted:

For their experiment, the scientists at Loughborough University used a supermarket-brand of Greek yoghurt that has a fat percentage of about 10%.

Do let us know how it goes.

Should clarity be required, this is not some miraculous property of yoghurt, even of Greek yoghurt at 10% fat. It’s merely a function of any substance that can be smeared onto windows before drying white. Presumably, similar effects could be achieved by gluing toilet paper onto your windows, which would also alert neighbours to your cunning. Or by purchasing any of the commercially available window films that do much the same thing, only better.

Consider this an open thread. Share ye, and so forth.

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Written by: David
Behold My Anus Free-For-All Parenting

The Person That He Is

July 12, 2025 103 Comments

Lifted from the comments, which you’re reading, of course:

It was an act of celebration to be finally able to put myself out there confidently, to forgive my past and to own my present, to manifest my future, and to ultimately feel good about the person that I am.

Said the man flashing his arse to elementary-school children.

Consider this an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.

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Free-For-All Travel

Because You’d Never Tire Of It

July 6, 2025 59 Comments

Attention, rail commuters. I bring fresh hell.

Britain is an embarrassment. wtf is this? pic.twitter.com/nfD17EHtu7

— Hazel Appleyard (@HazelAppleyard_) July 5, 2025

You see,

It might be the end of Pride Month 2025, but with Thameslink, journey with us with Pride all year round… Our railway is for everyone and we’re proud to celebrate love, diversity and togetherness, with our #ThameslinkTrainbow, of course!

And remember, if you’re gay, everything is about TRANSVESTISM, VAMPING AND GLITTER.

Oh, and for those of you mystified by the chanted number,

Text 61016 if ever something’s not right.

Should you see something untoward during your journey.

No, don’t go. I have more.

Consider this an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.

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Written by: David
Free-For-All Policing The Thrill Of Endless Noise

The Sound Inside Their Heads

June 30, 2025 64 Comments

From happy-clappy Portland – on day 21 of the ongoing intifada:

A Portland resident confronts Antifa for blaring music past midnight at the ongoing ICE facility occupation:

“I’m coming back every night and I’m breaking your sh-t. We the people need sleep. You’re worse than ICE, terrorizing us every night. Go f-ck yourself.” pic.twitter.com/gpDBdPYiuP

— Katie Daviscourt 📸 (@KatieDaviscourt) June 29, 2025

Attention, comrades. You will learn to love the explosions, fires, and shouting, the round-the-clock banging of things against other things, and the shrill, unending high-frequency tones, heavily amplified. Because sleep is a luxury of the bourgeoisie.

I paraphrase, of course. Though not, I think, unfairly.

From the replies:

Immediately after the resident complained, Antifa increased their noise disturbance.

Because spite is the sweetest plum.

Immediately after the resident complained, Antifa increased their noise disturbance.

The group has created a makeshift LRAD system, blasting it at the ICE office around 1 am. Federal police responded so a vehicle could exit.

Note: none of this noise is coming from ICE/DHS. pic.twitter.com/O03uagtIi2

— Katie Daviscourt 📸 (@KatieDaviscourt) June 29, 2025

Update, via the comments:

Quoting this,

Immediately after the resident complained, Antifa increased their noise disturbance.

Rafi adds, drily,

The little people should know their place.

That would seem to be the implied dynamic. The new and immensely radical pecking order.

And readers with a taste for irony may appreciate the exchange in the first video, around 30 seconds in, during which Generic Antifa Bint says to the disgruntled resident, “Talking to us calmly would be a hell of a lot better.” The same Generic Antifa Bint whose comrades carry megaphones, fireworks and drums, and who spend their evenings torturing local residents, and presumably any pets, with a loudspeaker sound cannon.

Update 2:

For readers intrigued by the lack of law enforcement, Andy Ngo has been querying the inactivity of Portland’s Police Department.

Which is, we learn,

committed to protecting individuals’ rights to express themselves peacefully.

Even, it seems, when those individuals are quite literally disturbing the peace. Such that local residents are being robbed of sleep, night after night, and despite such protests – or, more accurately, fits of sociopathy – violating Portland’s laws on public noise.

Laws that clearly forbid,

Operating or permitting the use or operation of any device designed for sound production or reproduction in such a manner as to cause a noise disturbance; or operating or permitting the operating or use of any such device between the hours of 10:00 p.m. and 7:00 a.m. so as to be plainly audible within any dwelling unit that is not the source of sound.

Such is policing in an age of progress.

Consider this an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.

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In which we marvel at the mental contortions of our self-imagined betters.