They are *loathed* as Jolyon puts it because (1) they seem every day to go out of their way to make life more difficult for the most vulnerable in society: trans people, immigrants, and disabled people; and (2) their complicity in genocide in Gaza. At least, that’s my two cents.
In the wake of the Gorton and Denton result, I saw so many Labour MPs saying “our base is angry at us for not implementing enough progressive policies”. But the biggest reason for anger is not the progressive policies they haven’t implemented, it’s the reactionary policies they have implemented.
Sorry yes, you’re right - she made it onto the Register of Hereditary Peers, i.e. the list of people eligible to appear on the list you linked to. But the general point stands.
In 2022 a trans woman, Matilda Simon, made it onto this list - but only because under the 2004 Gender Recognition Act, trans women with Gender Recognition Certificates continue to count as men for the purposes of agnatic primogeniture…ridiculous country 🙃🙃
16 dark chocolate brownies sat on a sheet of baking paper.
Spent the afternoon baking salted miso brownies for my students’ final tutorials of term
I learned last week that Edmund Burke is my cousin 9 times removed, and tbh I don’t feel great about it
My new video is out on YouTube now:
"Why the New York Times Loves Stupid Questions"
youtu.be/ztQJ7XGuPhc
Philosophy Should Be Among the Most Diverse Disciplines, Not the Least
The productive engine of philosophy depends on novelty and difference. A fair and flourishing discipline would treasure rather than repel those who have historically been excluded.
schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2026/03/phil...
Schopenhauer reading me for filth: “Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them in: but as a rule the purchase of books is mistaken for the appropriation of their contents” (from “On Books and Writing”)
FULLY FUNDED PHDs IN POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY
I'm looking for *two* PhD students to join my ERC project on refugee-led approaches to displacement justice. The positions are funded for four years, and you get to join our lovely community in Bristol. Please share widely!
philjobs.org/job/show/30997
Anna Milioni has a paper on methodological nationalism and hermeneutical injustice forthcoming at Ergo (accepted more than a year ago but still not published…) which I think you’d like - one to keep an eye out for!
I'm co-running a weekly online reading group on trans philosophy. We're now meeting Thursdays, 16:00-17:00 UK time. If you want to be added to the mailing list, please drop me a message :)
🏳️⚧️🏳️⚧️🏳️⚧️
There’s a fairly good biopic of Juana Inés de la Cruz called I, the Worst of All - which raises the question, best film about a philosopher?
Elijah Milgram’s The Great Endarkenment as well!
CFP for Oxford's annual graduate philosophy conference: www.philosophy.ox.ac.uk/oxford-philo...
This Sasha Velour performance deserves to have more views, it’s so good youtu.be/y0MTQSzRGPE?...
Trump is screwing up the science of sex -- and that has implications for everyone's health care. My latest:
www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...
I also wanted this at the time, but actually ‘a low-key home-summer against a pair of middling sides in a renewed team at the start of a new cycle’ now sounds like as good a way as any to begin a run batting in the top 7 (hopefully)
The real ones know that Rehan should be opening for the test team too
Out of interest, is this unusual in your experience? I’ve sent half a dozen papers to more than a dozen journals over the years and only once have I got reviewer reports back in <7 months (worst was a 5-month no-comment desk-reject…)
The new policy denies trans people access to surgery, clothing or toiletry items that align with their gender identity. People behind bars on hormone medications will be forced to taper off them. Instead, the primary treatments will be therapy and psychiatric medications like antidepressants.
a trans woman i know is being deported back to the USA due to the Home Office messing up paperwork.
her wife is desperately trying to raise the funds to prevent this. they have 48 hours before she’s put on a plane and might never be able to return.
please, help if you can. they’re both terrified.
Completely obsessed with Alysa Liu’s gold-medal-winning skate, it’s just sooo joyous: youtu.be/5iPjzBl-f_U?...
Less surprising than one might think: studies find ethicists behave no better overall than non-ethicists (aeon.co/essays/how-o...), and on some measures behave worse - e.g. ethicists are significantly more likely to steal library books than non-ethicists (www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....)
You make good points! (Not arrived at by my original “look at the bookcase opposite my sofa” methodology.) Also Agamben’s Homo Sacer has >32,000 citations, etc…I’m sure we could go on and on
(I assumed there was some arbitrary “since 1950” cutoff since no one from before then appears not just Marx, but yes indeed)
Re-reading this essay by Daniel Lavery on rapid onset gender dysphoria/what it means for something to be irreversible/"a reflexive, implicit horror of flesh" with a surprising and beautiful take on Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, one of my all-time faves: www.thechatner.com/p/is-flesh-a...
We are organising a conference!! Our main goal with this is to bring together the awesome emerging philosophical work in the social, political, aesthetic & ethical dimensions of language.
CfP now open - deadline 2nd of April :)
philevents.org/event/show/1...
@cardiffphilosophy.bsky.social
Metropolitan! (Not actually set on a campus, but)
Fwiw I learned a lot from this recent doctoral thesis on Feyerabend on scientism: api.repository.cam.ac.uk/server/api/c...
