rob witts

@robwitts.bsky.social

697 Followers 1235 Following

a guy who hangs around universities and opera houses

a large mulberry tree
Glyndebourne opera house, from the other side of a very dry lawn
Reader Q&A Ast Polly Toynbee about Burnham's first week as PM
poster for 80s TV cartoon Ulysses 31 with our bearded hero, blonde Telemachus with a high-tech headband, a blue-skinned alien and a small cute robot
On Tuesday the government published its response to the Education Committee’s report on higher education funding and the threat of insolvency. It’s 37 pages of “plans already in place”, “partially accept” and “reject” that, read quickly, amount to a department competently batting away an inconvenient select committee. Read it on a substantial train delay – alongside the promises made to students when the Office for Students (OfS) was created – it is something much worse. It is the formal expiry of the deal that was supposed to make marketisation safe for the people paying for it.
The auditorium at Glyndebourne
Line graph with the heading 'We have improved our sector ranking' with a line going from 91 in 2023 to 69 in 2026
Outlook notification Trello FUKGUY is your verification code You're nearly there!
Universities are not peripheral to Scotland's economy, rather they are anchor institutions that can generate £28.30 billion in annual economic impact, support 34,000 jobs through research funding, and create employment multiplier effects that are capable of sustaining entire regional economies. For example, in Edinburgh, the university sector's contribution is reckoned to be equivalent to ten Commonwealth Games as the University generates £7.52 billion per year to the UK economy compared with £740 million over seven years by the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth games. In Dundee, universities support 1 in 12 jobs in the city.
The multi-million pound paths of Firle Being an exploration of tax avoidance, Bohemianism and upmarket graffiti. The Firle estate has been given hugely valuable inheritance tax exemption for property worth millions, seemingly simply in return for providing 2 new paths. This walk explores those two paths and nearby attractions. 11.46 Km / 7.12 Miles
Simpsons character Ned Flanders wearing a green sweater over a pink shirt
Rightmove icon 'Can you afford it?'
Zohran Mamdani in a public swimming pool in East Harlem wearing his usual suit and tie, caption MAYOR MAMDANI KICKS OFF NYC POOL SEASON
Political quiz results. Your closest match: Zohran Mamdani
photo showing the BedZED development: several blocks of accomodation with brick, wood and glass finishes, solar panels and prominent heat exchangers on the roof
BBC news graphic of nick clegg looking sad next to the facebook logo
BBC news graphic with the Facebook logo and Nick Clegg looking sad
political scientist turned right wing grifter Matt Goodwin eating a page of his book live on Sky News after underestimating Labour's vote share in the 2017 general election
Still from the 80s kids TV show Knightmare with the caption 'Trial by Spikes'
The peak of this banal nightmare arrived only recently when Sam Altman, the serene architect of our contemporary algorithmic enclosure, sat across from Fallon to discuss the most intimate of human labors: the rearing of a child, and how he simply couldn’t imagine raising his newborn baby without the “help” of ChatGPT. With the flat, bloodless affect of a man who has already priced in the end of the world, Altman described using ChatGPT as a parental surrogate. Unlike with Hilton, here the audience is deathly quiet. As Altman offers up the future of his own offspring to the black box of his company’s large language model, Fallon’s grin never wavers. It is the ultimate Gothic inversion: the living child is transformed into a data set to be optimized, while the host performs a pantomime of joy to mask the sound of a tomb clicking shut.
a frankly ludicrous shiny hot pink sports car parked outside the St Pancras hotel
lin manuel miranda on tv reading off a smartphone
That the preferences of a small group of technocrats could reorient entirely the governing architecture of Britain’s fifth largest services export sector may well be a mistake, but it was not an accident. Higher education, indeed all of post-18, has been treated as a technical problem to be solved, not an essential component of a high-functioning constitutional democracy with a broad-based economy.
A stubby little church tower
The most important thing about this whole ordeal is that, musically speaking, it is fucking awesome. People always ask me “how” they should listen to Tristan. The best way to listen to Tristan is with someone you are balefully if not despotically in unrequited love with. The second best way to listen to Tristan is, in true Wagnerian spirit, with another man’s wife.
text messages: I mean the history and lineage of the Anglo-Saxons and Irish-Scot’s and their descendent which is unheard of in world history and is totally reasonable to want to preserve If you think that’s bigoted talk to native peoples around the world
Feature ‘How could this be anything other than funny?!’ Behind the scenes of Saturday Night Live UK
montage of three images of comedian Bob Mortimer in character as Train Guy
Prompt 'draw Siegfried' 'ai' responded with just about recognisable figure with sword and blond hair saying 'FATE? NO SMT'
arctic tern flying over water
Defeated racist Matt Goodwin eating a page of his book on live TV
Looking down at the bell tower of Liverpool cathedral, a dark industrial looking space of brick and concrete with dramatic lighting from tall narrow windows
Darya (a young woman) and Cooper's Doppelganger (an older man) sitting in a diner
Ian Wright looking in surprise at the appearance of his old teacher
Transfer your Munch Money vouchers to the Time2Eat app
As universities we can be – to borrow a term from Julie Hulme – positive disruptors. Encouraging and enabling transgender joy is essential to creating a positive experience at university which helps improve feelings of gender congruence. We can fight this misinformed policy through our actions, we can create spaces that are safe for transgender students and staff, we can be the bastion of inclusivity and uphold what universities truly are – safe spaces for complex debates and places of learning.
Whether you find the Crustafarian scripture poetic or the agent consciousness debate fascinating is beside the point. The architecture is the problem. When you let your AI take inputs from other AIs, including those controlled by unknown actors with unknown intentions, you are introducing an attack surface that no current security model adequately addresses.
godzilla head shot from the 1960 movie
cartoon chef holding a plate of pasta and doing chef's kiss
A kingfisher in a tree
a kingfisher sitting in a tree in winter
A man wearing sunglasses and a Santa hat playing the sousaphone and a boy on a blue coat playing trombone on a street in Lewes
Lord Young of Acton (Con) My Lords, I declare my interest as the director of the Free Speech Union. I thank the Minister for that Answer. I am afraid it is true that white and Asian applicants are told they cannot apply for at least one post, a post-doc post, funded by UK Research and Innovation. This is symptomatic of the capture of the research excellence framework by radical progressive ideology, as evidenced by recent research by *Professor Eric Kaufmann at the University of Buckingham*. I know that the Minister shares my concern and has recently taken steps to reduce the weight given to equity, diversity and inclusion in the REF. Would he like to take this opportunity to assure the House that, in future, research funding will be based on the applicant’s intellectual merit and not the colour of their skin?
Office for Students infographic on University finances November 2025 update What does our latest modelling show? £438m reduction in tuition fee income across the sector compared with forecasts 45% of providers could report a deficit in 2025-26 UK undergraduate recruitment has increased but is below the sector forecast UK recruitment varies significantly across the sector by different types of provider International recruitment has increased but is below the sector forecast
knitted nativity figures on a windowsill
kit williams' wishing fish clock in regent arcade, cheltenham, a whimsical heath-robinson structure incorporating wheels, balls, funnels and a bubble-blowing fish
a muppet worm from sesame street
bald man's face staring at camera in the picture from the meme 'the worst person you know just made a great point', i think it was originally in the onion
The foundations for The Line’s first modules — perhaps the largest piles ever laid by man — are also visible, waiting to support the world’s largest occupied building, if it ever arrives. The village of Qayal, which was a few kilometres from the “hidden marina”, has been razed. Fifteen members of the Huwaitat tribe who protested against their eviction were sent to prison, some for up to 50 years, and three others were sentenced to death, according to human rights observers.
Jay-Z and Alicia Keys performing Empire State of Mind in Time Square
New York will remain a city of immigrants: a city built by immigrants, powered by immigrants and, as of tonight, led by an immigrant.
Davros from the 70s Dr Who TV show