#oxbridge

[vinylstudies]

{20/11/23}

– Tutorial prep seems to keep me awake even if it is being done in ghostly silence. Plus, it has taken me two months to realise that it is significantly easier to get a seat on the top floor of the Rad Cam if you come when it’s hall dinnertime for students in colleges.

[sheswanderlust-txt]

Just finished watching Saltburn and I see what they are going for but feel they missed the mark. So I went back to the real source of academia inspiration for all of us since the the dawn of time: Hugh Dancy in 1990s Oxford.

[friend-of-wisdom]

I want to study in Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge, at least in the Sorbonne or some kind of college where classes are great, the infrastructure is beautiful and practical, with outdoor spaces with lots of grass to sit (for picnics with other students, or to read by yourself) and just relax. I want to be taught by Professors Researchers, and I wanna be able to take every book that i need to read from the university's library. I want cafeterias with a few normal options for lunch at a cheap price, and coffee from the uni café or from those shitty coffee vending machines.

[oxford-outis]

Everyone wants to go to Oxford University and live in medieval buildings until it’s winter and your windows are single-glazed, or your wardrobe door is broken but it’s a listed building so takes a week to get the right hinges.

[darkparisian]

[uncontrolledfission]

i actually had the privilege of visiting pembroke college at the university of cambridge last week, and let me tell you it was so beautiful! it’s a shame they don’t make buildings like these anymore, i couldn’t stop taking photos and walking around. stunning.

[metis-metis]

If you’re looking for resources for access into studying Classics/Archaeology/Ancient History at university, and/or access into Oxford University, watch this space!

@thatbarrowgirl and I are working on something, coming soon!

[beckmessering]

my department offers haikus instead of “error 404 page not found” notifications. brb i’m cryinghowlinglaughing

[coruscatingdust]

finished my first year of PhD at the University of Oxford

[lesbianchemicalplant]

One of the world’s most celebrated philosophers has apologized for writing a racist email in which he used an appalling racial slur and said he believed it was “true” that “Blacks are more stupid than whites.”

Oxford University Professor Nick Bostrom—the Swedish philosopher famed for his argument that we might be living in a simulation and popularizing the field of “existential risk”—shared the offensive message in an apology posted to his website. In the document dated Jan. 9, Bostrom wrote that he had “caught wind that somebody has been digging” through the archives of an old listserv mailing list called the Extropians, and that he wanted to “get ahead” of someone surfacing the “most offensive stuff” which could be used in “smear campaigns.” [🤪]

[...]

Bostrom, 49, who is white, then shares an extract he wrote from a thread he says concerned “offensive content and offensive communication styles.”

“I have always liked the uncompromisingly objective way of thinking and speaking: the more counterintuitive and repugnant a formulation, the more it appeals to me given that it is logically correct,” the quoted excerpt begins. “Take for example the following sentence: Blacks are more stupid than whites. I like that sentence and I think it is true.

“But recently I have begun to believe that I won’t have much success with most people if I speak like that. They would think that I were a ‘racist’: that I _disliked_ black people and thought it is fair if blacks are treated badly. I don’t. It’s just that based on what I have read, I think it is probable that black people have a lower average IQ than mankind in general, and I think that IQ is highly correlated with what we normally mean by ‘smart’ and ‘stupid’. I may be wrong about the facts, but that is what the sentence means for me. For most people, however, the sentence  seems to be synonymous with: ‘I hate those bloody n------!!!!”

Bostrom did not redact the n-word in his apology.

[...]

Bostrom, who is the director of Oxford’s influential Future of Humanity Institute, does not explicitly apologize for the substance of the comments about relative IQ. He goes on to say that he believes that it is “deeply unfair” that inequalities in access to education, nutrients, and health care lead to unequal social outcomes “including sometimes disparities in skills and cognitive capacity.”

(12 Jan 2023)

In addition to being an Oxford professor, Bostrom is also a LessWronger (“rationalist”) on the board of MIRI. I think this is worth mentioning because Race Science Truthing is one of the main planks of LessWronger / Effective Altruist ideology, referring to their belief in eugenics by the euphemism “Human Biodiversity” [HBD], a transparent fig leaf over what Bostrom wrote in the email

(MIRI is Eliezer Yudkowsky & co.’s techno-doomerist “give us money or else an Evil AI will destroy everything, or maybe a Savior AI will torture a simulation of your brain forever” scam foundation, one of many in the LessWronger / Effective Altruism cult-sphere. for some basic information about MIRI and LessWrong, see here and here)

[abotheredbadger]

Cambridge university should accept me bc who else can provide such an in depth thesis on why trossard should start every game

[vinylstudies]

{ 12/08/2023

Visited my future college and faculty buildings in Oxford where I’ll be residing from October onwards! Likewise, let’s just say I’m looking forward to my Masters and getting back into the spirit of taking photos of the extended academic journey.

[collectoroftheabyss]

Oxford c. 2013

[blackswaneuroparedux]

“Bottled, was he?" Said Colonel Bantry, with an Englishman's sympathy for alcoholic excess. "Oh, well, can't judge a fellow by what he does when he's drunk? When I was at Cambridge, I remember I put a certain utensil - well - well, nevermind.”

- Agatha Christie, The Body in the Library   

Contrary to popular perception of drinks with Dons in their SCR after a High Table dinner, weighty intellectual conversations go down as well as lead balloons. The free flowing of the sherry or the port tends to lubricate the palate and loosen tongues towards more convival conversations such as departmental intrigue, academic conference junkets on the continent, bemoaning the lack of government research investment, the England Test cricket score, college politics, and Donnish infidelities.

**The Senior Common Room (SCR) after Formal Hall in Magdalene college, Cambridge

[oxford-outis]

A frosty walk around North Oxford and Jericho

I’m not a photographer y’all I know these are terrible and taken on my ten year old iPhone but if it’s pretty I’m gonna take a picture

[latewhitenights]

🪷Cambridge, summer 2022

🪷photos taken by me