Today's Mail headlines are yelling about "campus wokery", but I've just been blocked from talking to a UK government dept (about women in STEM) because I was critical about UK government policy (unrelated to women in STEM): a thread 🧵 [1/7]
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Kate Devlin
@drkatedevlin
Reader: AI & Society . Part of . Humanists UK patron. Open Rights Group board. “Fairly outspoken, left-wing academic” say UK government.
Kate Devlin’s Tweets
This is not the appointment for my hysterectomy; this is the appointment to talk to a gynaecologist about having it. A 71 week wait. The NHS is on its knees and it’s not striking that’s causing it.
Care about the people who care for us and support the strikers.
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As academics, it's our job not only to inform and shape policy, but to challenge it as well. In fact, maybe a government that doesn't want to hear criticism is a government that really ought to be scrutinised a wee bit more closely. [7/7]
Raab using the words “In setting the threshold for bullying so low, this inquiry has set a dangerous precedent” sounds a lot like something a bully would say.
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Dominic Raab, his resignation letter.
The bully, and as with all bullies, defends, denies....
They are all cowards in the end 
Now they’ve deleted it, so here is the receipt:
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What. The Actual. Fuck. twitter.com/BBCWorld/statu…
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Last week I got an email saying the Ministry had blocked my talk “because you had made a criticism of government policy via social media” and that they would not sign off on speakers who had any historic social media content which was negative of the government in any way. [4/7]
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But... isn’t the government promoting the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill? Aren’t the govt pushing fines against institutions that block speakers who voice unpopular opinions? publications.parliament.uk/pa/bills/lbill
O, irony. [6/7]
My absolutely top favourite moment on this app? 4th March 2018 when, after blatantly liking and retweeting each other’s tweets for months, my Twitter Crush and I admitted we fancied each other. Reader, I married him. #RIPTwitter
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A pause of longer than four seconds on Radio 4. #ThingsThatLeaveBritainReeling
🧵 Content warnings: a short thread.
Today's Times banged on about content warnings. They used this quote: “Real life doesn’t come with a content warning — we can’t protect people from difficult ideas for their whole lives, nor should we try to.”
They ENTIRELY miss the point. 1/5
“I only hurt you because I love you so much”
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#UPDATE | Statement from AC Helen Ball following #ClaphamCommon vigil
"We absolutely did not want to be in a position where enforcement action was necessary. But we were placed in this position because of the overriding need to protect people’s safety."
news.met.police.uk/news/statement
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I am openly critical of some govt policies: I’m a board member of the and, as such, I am opposed to the Online Harms Bill in its current form. (My criticism comes from years of research, and I certainly don't confine it to the current government.) [3/7]
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As someone told me, this isn't new – there was some controversy about this last year: civilserviceworld.com/professions/ar [5/7]
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Recently I was asked to give a lunchtime talk to a group in a major government department about women in STEM, to take place on Ada Lovelace Day (which is tomorrow). As might be expected, I was told they’d do due diligence on my social media. [2/7]
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We’re being no-fault evicted for the 4th time in 5 years because our landlords have decided it’s not worth keeping their property portfolio, what with tenants maybe getting more rights soon.
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I'm ungovernable now, Andy. I might say controversial things like "the government's Rwanda deportation plan is inhumane and appalling".
I am on strike today along with thousands and thousands of other university workers. We’ll be portrayed in the media as Schrödinger’s Academics: simultaneously workshy and lazy but also causing huge upheaval to students by withdrawing our labour. #ucuRISING
Latest on our govt blacklisting from . I particularly like ’s quote: “The civil service code does not apply to me and if I want to call Jacob Rees-Mogg a wazzock I am well within my rights.”
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If you think it's some kind of freedom to make someone sit through something they find hurtful, hateful or painful, then *you're* the problem. Everyone should have the freedom to recuse themselves from something they already know about first hand. 5/5
Idea: Elon Musk gets taken into the cave in a reverse rescue and then waits for his own submarine to get him out.
Yep. I was supposed to give a lunchtime talk on women in tech to a civil service group. It was cancelled because of my social media history which included a tweet deemed anti-monarchy (I expressed some eye-rolling) and anti-government (I retweeted Parody Liz Truss). Seriously.
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This happened to @drkatedevlin for the crimes of being left-wing, mildly criticising the monarchy and… retweeting me. But you don’t need to compare it to the Soviets, Britain has a ‘rich’ history of black listing — the BBC’s appointments were all vetted by MI5 well into the 80s.
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A content warning flags issues in a text/source. It doesn't do this to "protect people from difficult ideas", it does it to warn people who have first hand experience of particular types of trauma. It's for those who already KNOW about that content personally. 2/5
Twitter: “my god, the police have double standards!”
Me and everyone else who grew up in Norn Ireland: 😐
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I thought I’d get a t-shirt with the results of my Subject Access Request. This is how I was described in government emails. (Cc. )
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3.5yrs ago he slid into my DMs on this hellsite*. Reader, I married him. cc.
*(he disputes this origin story)
🧵Thought I’d curate all of my weary sighing replies to those who don’t approve of the strikes here in one handy place. #OneOfUsAllOfUs #UCUstrike ⬇️
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Content warnings let me say that we will explore topics that can cause distress to groups of people affected so they can opt out if it's too much – *plus they already have that knowledge*. Why would anyone want to force someone to relive pain they're already familiar with? 4/5
Fuck you, Prime Minister. Fuck you.
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Theresa May to oppose vote on Northern Ireland abortion law trib.al/r0GvjP9
Eeeesh. Your regular reminder that the Turing Test is a test of deception, not a test of sentience.
Four and a half years ago we met on this hellsite. One year ago today we got married with a tiny Covid wedding. The smart, kind, and wonderful makes me smile every day, even though the honeymoon period is now officially over (and also we didn’t get a honeymoon).
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Example: I taught a module that looks at sexism, racism in online games. We read a paper that evidences racism against Chinese people. Many of my students are Chinese. Content warnings don't shelter these students from new ideas; many of those students face racism regularly. 3/5
It is very useful having a cynical piss-boiler as a husband, I’ll say things like “oh look! An organisation called Happy Bright Futures wants me to speak at an event!” and he’ll say something like “they’re a eugenics-led thinktank funded by the military and they hate ducks”.
Facebook: “We definitely do not, not ever, listen in to your conversations, not ever.”
Real-life real-world coffee with my friend this morning and she tells me she sponsors a rat that detects landmines. My phone is in my pocket, unused.
Facebook just now:
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For people saying Open University tuition fees are lower (which they are, and it's a good institution) – wait 'til you hear how much Scottish and Norn Irish students pay in tuition fees...
If you want to be angry about fees, start with the government.
That was about as climactic as having Steve Arnott in your bed. #LineofDutyFinale
Dear department: please note l will be unable to chair the 10am meeting this morning because I am too busy swooning and crying. #TimHunt
It’s my kid’s 8th birthday tomorrow and I am feeling ridiculously guilty because I bought a cake instead of making one. The bought cake is way better than anything I’d be arsed doing. Parenthood is 95% feeling uncertain about shit.
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“Why don’t you sit beside my wife and talk about girlie stuff” at a conference dinner. I was an invited speaker. (I did sit beside his wife, because I felt sorry for her, having to be married to him.)
My wonderful mother, managing to make my birthday card sound like a threat 🤣
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“When we looked at the circumstances leading to Shana’s murder, we felt we may not have done the very best we could”
NO SHIT, SHERLOCK.
Idk, if I did an interview confessing I took money off people who thought they were donating to a good cause and then I spent it on luxury goods, I might not want to be pictured smiling in a bath of money. Optics, eh.
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‘I’ve heard it all: she’s a fraud, a liar, a thief’: Jack Monroe on alcohol, addiction and answering her critics theguardian.com/society/2023/j
Daily Star doing its bit to allay AI fears.
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I am at my sister’s house in deepest Fermanagh. She and my brother-in-law found a colouring book about dinosaurs in the charity shop.
BUT WAIT! This is no ordinary dinosaur colouring book. This is a Christian home-schooling colouring book. And God made the dinosaurs.
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If you want to use language like “no-platforming” then I was no-platformed by the same government who are trying to push through a no-no-platforming law via the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill. Hypocrisy indeed!
Looks like I’m all out of *checks notes* PRETTY MUCH ALL OF THESE INGREDIENTS.
Literally all I do as Senior Lecturer in Social and Cultural Artificial Intelligence:
That’s a bad idea.
That’s a bad idea.
That’s a terrible idea.
That’s a bad idea.
That’s a really bad idea.
That’s a bad idea.
FFS, not Sophia the robot again.
That’s a bad idea.
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Literally all I do as a geologist:
That’s quartz
Quartz
Quartz sand
Still quartz
Feldspar
Sorry, that’s pyrite, not gold
Quartz
Not a meteorite
Yellowstone is not about to erupt
It’s always quartz twitter.com/indyfromspace/…
“What did you do today, Kate?”
I FINISHED THE FULL AND COMPLETE DRAFT OF MY BOOK ON SEX ROBOTS, that’s what I did. 😁 BOOM!
bit.ly/2IpcCwf
Insomniac me: “Hello Darkness, my old friend”
Darkness: “Nah, I’m not your friend. Do you know who’s your friend? Sleeping tablets.”
A month ago my mum stopped to ask contractors in the woods near home what they were doing. And then she launched a campaign to save trees under threat from a car park expansion by the Council. 52,000 people have signed her petition so far. (bit.ly/3w0cDOJ) She rocks.
Lazy lawmaking might mean a #sexban indoors but since outdoors is fine and car showrooms are open you can always try some government-sanctioned dogging.
#BadStockPhotosOfMyJob (I searched for "robot ethics".)
IT IS VERY IMPORTANT WE MAKE OUR ROBOTS SEXY. LOOK: SEXY BOOBS. ON A MACHINE.
Starting my morning with my letter in the Times:
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I have harvested 4 cherry tomatoes from the two tomato plants I have grown from seed. I need about 630 more tomatoes to break even on the cost of soil and plant food.
Merry Christmas from me and — we cooked a Christmas dinner for 10 and now can get pissed while everyone else does the washing up.
This. ⬇️ Don’t stop your meds without talking to your doctor. I don’t hugely care what causes my mental health conditions, I just know that SSRIs work *really* well for me as part of my weaponry against relapse.
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"Serotonin imbalance may not be the cause of depression" is not the same as "SSRIs don't work" or "Depression is never caused by chemical imbalances." The media is really screwing up coverage of the latest review on this
I’ve just heard Prof Sunetra Gupta on the radio say that students are a closed community so we don’t need to impose COVID restrictions. Maybe they are in Oxford, where she works, but that’s absolutely not the case for the majority of universities. How very town and gown.
It’s almost like students have been sold a complete lie about an in-person university experience.
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BREAKING: Students are to be ordered not to go to pubs, parties or restaurants in a bid to stem a spate of coronavirus outbreaks at Scottish universities bbc.in/3cs8Ilv
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Your boss sets the bar pretty low but you’ve just managed to crawl under it.
I’d love to hang out with alpacas, yes. You know what I’d love more? I’d love universities to tackle to the workload issues, precarity, below-inflation pay, pay gaps, and pension losses — all of which are having a huge negative impact on wellbeing that can’t be fixed by alpacas.
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We've been delighted to welcome alpacas Pearl, Dante, Kya and Gisela to campus as part of a wellbeing initiative.
They've met students and staff across the University over the past few weeks, including in @WarwickHistory and @wmgwarwick.
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Academics' paradox: "We want you to produce research for REF but you can't have workload allocated time to do this superamazing research unless you can show us you've got a strong track record of doing research."
(Also known as "why I've been doing research in my spare time".)
Jordan Peterson: “The gender pay gap figures are bad stats because they’re skewed because men have the best jobs and so earn more”.
Everyone else: 🙄
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I go above and beyond for my job and it takes its mental toll. Sure, the flexibility is good: I can pick which 60hrs a week I work. But after this strike is done, I’m going to stop working weekends and I’m going to take holidays because academics’ goodwill gets taken for granted.
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“There are clearly things that universities could do to lessen modern academics’ sense that however fast they run, they will still barely manage to stay on the treadmill”
timeshighereducation.com/opinion/academ
More proof of book in the form of a book proof. First time I’ve physically held it in my hand. It’s embargoed at the moment so this is extra exciting. Pre-order here for all your #sexrobot needs: bit.ly/2IpcCwf
We were promised snow. Lots of snow. There is no snow. They might as well have written the weather forecast on the side of a bus. ☹️ #Snowmageddon
A decade ago I was being wheeled into an operating theatre for the perfectly mundane miracle of extracting a baby. Yeah, it’s her birthday but I’ve done all the heavy lifting (including five years entirely on my own) so I get to drink champagne in the bath at 9:30am.
BBC R4 news: “A man has sued his parents for disposing of his pornography collection.”
My 10yo kid: “What’s pornography?”
Me, thinks: THIS is the time I get to shine as a parent! This is what my academic research has given me — I’ve got this!
Me: “It’s for grown ups.”
Channel 4 news time: This is the Mic Wright Danger Face. It emerges when someone says something outrageously ludicrous.
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Me: “go to sleep, brain”
Brain: “but there are so many things to think about!”
Me, crying: “I’ve only had 4 hours sleep for the past 2 nights”
Brain: “imagine if bees made petrol instead of honey”
Sitting here having just taken 30mg codeine for period pain and thinking that nothing much changes. twitter.com/Photos_Freaky/
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Hello, I’m an academic. You might know me from my greatest hits such as “sorry for the delay in replying to your email” and “I know the deadline was last week but...”.
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Hello, I’m an fMRI researcher. You might know me from my greatest hits such as “I know only a few areas are in color, but in fact the entire brain is active all the time” and “there are some important differences between what I’m doing and the pseudoscience of phrenology.” twitter.com/FlyingTrilobit…
Fascinating thread: twitter.com/bofh453/status
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After my third experience in four years of landlords evicting us because they’re selling up, we’ve found somewhere new to live. Checked my credit report, which is normally stellar, and it’s dropped a bit because “you may have moved too many times in a short period”. Uh-huh. 😡
It’s almost like I’m suggesting it should be better regulated and more professional and not just down to investment whims.
Today I’m a visitor at but from 1st Sept it will be my new place of employment – I’m joining as Senior Lecturer in Social and Cultural AI.
AHAHAHAAAAAA. How many kids do you have?
This happened to , it happened to me, it happened to , and there are at least four other people we know of who had this happen to them. While this was happening, that same govt pushed through the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill. O, irony.
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The government that is putatively against "Cancel Culture" bars me from a conference on getting rid of chemical weapons. AFTER inviting me. Because I have opinions on things unrelated to my work.
thetimes.co.uk/article/c43a06
Oh lord. My breakfast is peak hipster. It’s beautiful but I’m embarrassed to be seen with it.
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p.s. I love my job. I genuinely love it. I feel lucky to be able to do it. But we deserve better working conditions. We deserve to be valued for pouring our hearts into it.
My book has gone to press! Any errors in it are now unfixable and if anyone in the acknowledgements pisses me off from here on in then I’ll have to go round the bookshops with an angry face and a permanent marker.
You know those fecking annoying people who post that they feel blessed? That’s me today. Two months of summer funemployment ahead of me. Time to breathe, write, and play with the kid. New flat next month. New job in Sept. Book out in Oct. In love and in love with the world.
The govt says guest speakers "should offer value for taxpayers’ money".
1) I was speaking for free;
2) My research is partly funded by the taxpayer via UKRI grants and therefore it would be good value for money for the government for me to disseminate it.
More in this article:
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Whitehall blacklists academic speakers over social media posts - Research Professional News researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-pol
Good morning from London where the R rate is above 1 and university teaching – with students promised face-to-face seminars – starts in two weeks.
I quit my job three weeks ago. I am still up to my ears in work. I still am nowhere near unpacked from my house move. But I have taken the time this evening to sit on my arse and drink gin on the balcony while watching the boats go by and I am feeling very lucky indeed.
If you’re wondering how my morning’s going, my husband found a kid’s Bontempi organ in the charity shop for £6 yesterday and is upstairs giggling to himself as it wheezes out a one-finger version of the theme tune to Sesame Street.
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It is arguably one of the most bewildering trends of the pandemic: the nerds have become cool. 
These data-wiz lads have become rock stars. Pumping out bestselling books, TV shows and radio gigs, even sold-out live tours
thetimes.co.uk/article/phwoar
These data-wiz lads have become rock stars. Pumping out bestselling books, TV shows and radio gigs, even sold-out live tours
thetimes.co.uk/article/phwoar