@thatprofmaz.substack.com
Professor @ Durham University. Unravelling the mess of Tech, Education & AI. 🧶 Author of books on Disinformation | Women in Tech | GenAI | Health Tracking; reading everything else. I see we’re all Stacking now https://open.substack.com/pub/thatprofmaz
The algorithm demands we be searchable, but some truths are too visceral for the feed. 🌊
My new post is a meditation on "The Metadata of Silence." Moving from Viola’s disguise in Twelfth Night to Prospero’s release in The Tempest, I’m exploring why we exist in the Uncategorised folder.
Article on equitable health AI for #LGBTQIA+ people and communities.
open.substack.com/pub/cervixsa...
I legitimately think Sam Altman should be tried for crimes against humanity
Honestly never could have predicted that My Temu Therapist™️would figure prominently in AI adoption
Even if this system had been trained by real therapists, I would be very concerned about it not having any kind of supervision.
A close up of an Earth-like planet with the blackness of space behind. Text on the image reads "Our scientists are involved in the search for habitable worlds."
Did you know that @durhamphysics.bsky.social researchers are involved in the search for life on distant planets? They're investigating how a UK-led team could design and build a core instrument for the new NASA Habitable Worlds mission due to launch in the 2040s 👉 tinyurl.com/3fmwfyur
Oh we must read and appreciate the composition of sudden find-outness.
‘Andrew’s aghast eyes echo The Scream’: is the arrest photo the ultimate royal portrait?
www.theguardian.com/artanddesign...
My view on the Time Allocation Survey that UK university staff must complete to log how they have spent their time:
It is tiresome, burdensome, technologically clunky, bureaucratic, financialising, and generally symptomatic of contemporary university management. I have always hated it.
We’ve been told our #neurodiversity is a "#superpower" only when it produces a Return on Divergence.
I’m done with that script. open.substack.com/pub/thatprof...
Willow’s Valentine 🏹🐾
Cupid napped;
Willow swiped his spark to fire her Caturday spa day.
This grooming bath is a sovereign cure for the soul!
I hied a distempered guest, only to find my heart’s heat where Cupid first found his: in those calico eyes.
#caturday
Black and white image of Professor Mariann Hardey, looking straight to camera with the background out of focus.
🖥️Who holds power in a digital world?📱
💡 @thatprofmaz.substack.com from our Business School researches how AI, digital culture & accessibility intersect to influence modern life.
Her work pushes for tech that supports everyone, not just those it already empowers 👉 bit.ly/4tsBR7j
To watch someone through a digital ledger is to pay for stale data in the currency of your own time.
On the Patricia Highsmith Paradox, the physics of the emotional "Pang," and the mathematical certainty of becoming unreachable. The signal is now encrypted by the simple act of being truly gone. ⬛
I must add, as Willows person-butler, I adore when she sets her paws on her tail. So cute ☺️
A regal calico cat named Willow sits poised and upright on a wooden stool. She has a striking "split-face" marking—the left side of her face is orange and black mottled tortoiseshell, while the right side is solid black. She wears a bright white "tuxedo" chest and has white paws neatly tucked together. Behind her is a shelf filled with books and lush green houseplants.
In the flickering light of the Yorkiwara, one must possess eyes that see both the light and the dark.
My face is split like the dawn and the dusk-a mask worn for the sake of justice. 🏮
To catch a thief, one must move like the mist and strike like the mountain wind.
#Caturday
The SaaSpocalypse is a Case of Identity. 🕵️♂️
I woke up a Professor. By 10:39 AM, the air had turned thin, and I was a fugitive. While we play with "prompts," $830B has been spirited away into the Highland mist.
The boat is leaving. The land is yours.
E.M. Forster predicted this in 1909. The Machine Stops isn't sci-fi; it’s the 2026 job description.
We are “strangled in the garments we have woven.” We are physically static, digitally frantic, and swaddled in convenience until we atrophy.
I’ve spent 20 years acting as an unpaid PR agent for the Information Age.
Every year, I sold my students the “glossy brochure” of digital labour. The beach. The coconuts. The "Digital Nomad."
This year, I couldn’t get the words out.
"Love is the quality of time and space you willingly give to someone. It isn’t about what you can extract from them; it is about holding the line so they can exist safely with you."
open.substack.com/pub/thatprof...
We are often taught that love is "grabby" - that it’s about status or possession.
But inspired by the novel The Ministry of Time, I’m arguing for a different definition:
Amazon is the ultimate Margarine. 🧈
It mimics the "yellow flood" of care, but it contains no nutrients.
It is a simulation of sustenance served to us in a cage we are too tired to leave.
My forensic audit on why we hug the Jailer, feat. Foucault, Parmy Olson, and Asako Yuzuki. #HigherEd #Butter
We don't buy productivity books because we want freedom. We buy them because freedom is exhausting.
We are drowning in choice. We don't want a guru; we want an Administrator to absolve us of the burden of our own potential.
Why do my students prefer the Cage to the Open Field?
I don’t know if there will ever be structural or legal accountability for the people in epsteins world … but you, yes you, can shame anyone who tries to normalize them. No speeches. No gigs. No public events. Boo them in restaurants. They come to your professional meeting, put up banners.
Am I still his daughter? Or was 'Daughter' just the first architectural extension I built to please a landlord?"
I’m exploring the archaeology of the 'I' after the collapse of the 'We.' This is about moving from a temporary camp to a permanent foundation. Warning: Contains ghosts.
The Dark Portal: How to Teach the "Zeroed-Out" Generation
open.substack.com/pub/thatprof...
The title page of the book The Fatal Strand by Robin Jarvis. A central black-and-white illustration shows a hooded, skeletal figure pointing a finger, surrounded by swirling mist. The page is autographed in purple ink with the inscription "Best wishes" at the top and Robin Jarvis's signature at the bottom.
I felt like I was standing on the wrong side of the Grill this week. The stillness in seminars is a survival mechanism. I've written about how I'm using "Silent Participation" (Post-its, Red Pens, Secret Ballots) to help the "Zeroed-Out" generation take up space without being devoured.
To teach the "COVID Generation," I’ve had to go back to the sewers of Deptford. 🐭
My latest essay uses Robin Jarvis’s The Deptford Mice to explain why students are "zeroing out" in seminars.
#EduSky #RobinJarvis #AcademicChatter
A tortoiseshell cat sits on a sideboard, with the dramatic air of a Victorian heroine slighted by fate. She stares intensely at the camera, pointedly ignoring the domestic reality of scattered Lego behind her.
“Do not speak to me of kibble. My soul belongs to the crags."
She tolerates the living room with the weary fortitude of a Brontë heroine trapped in a parlor. A Wuthering Heights in miniature, judging the Lego chaos with silent, brooding disdain.
Happy #Caturday from Heathcliff. 🥀🐈⬛
City dwellers urged to take photos of the stars. 🧪 🔭 #astrophotography www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
This is the final week to apply to our Medical Humanities in Practice Research Fellowship Scheme!
⏳ Applications close 30 January 2026, 12:00 PM (noon)
Find out more and apply 👇
medhumsplatform.org/practice-res...
The #BartonFile is a forensic study in Digital Integrity. From a £516k "Hate Tax" to an 18-month suspended sentence, we’re seeing the structural collapse of a digital bully.
@thejeremyvine.bsky.social - The High Court just gave us the blueprint for containment.
open.substack.com/pub/thatprof...