The best arguments for liberty have always emerged from the pettiest of bans
English
Felice Basbøll
1.3K posts
Felice Basbøll
@fbasboll
History student at Trinity College Dublin, optimist.
Dublin City, Ireland เข้าร่วม Mart 2020
1.3K กำลังติดตาม1.2K ผู้ติดตาม
Glasgow students vs a bill to limit the frequenting of taverns in 1716: “People might be justly punished for the abuse of Liberty; but to take the Liberty away to prevent it being abused, was a Tyrannical Practice that ought not take place among free people.”
English
Interessant for demokratiet også at et flertal af vælgere gerne vil have _mindre_ magt til at forme politiske partier og sammensætningen af Folketinget og beder om at få frataget deres ansvar for at vælge de rigtige kandidater.
Peter Kurrild-Klitgaard@kurrild
Konsekvensen ville være, at stort set intet folketingsmedlem nogensinde ville turde være uenig med vedkommendes partiledelse om noget som helst. = ekstrem centralisering, partidisciplin o.s.v. Det ville også kræve en grundlovsændring. bt.dk/politik/flerta…
Dansk
@vrijomslachtig Yes, and one can be academic and ambitious! I was just challenging the idea that the ‘academic’ and curious students don’t read anymore, bc I think they do. But there are traditionally ‘ambitious’ students, per this study, who can get away with reading less and still succeed.
English
incredibly reductive dichotomy. channeling your ambition as a student isn't done solely by jumping through the academic hoops set up for you. if anything, this preset path constraints ambition, and narrows the range within which it can be expressed
Felice Basbøll@fbasboll
I wonder whether this is because the "ambitious" and the "academic" students aren't the same. Academic students still read, ambitious ones don't. What has changed is that you can now get a First without reading, and ambitious students therefore spend their time on other things.
English
Wonder too whether this is related to the fact that if you say you’re doing a masters in 2026 people assume you couldn’t get a job, not that you’re academically impressive
Felice Basbøll@fbasboll
I wonder whether this is because the "ambitious" and the "academic" students aren't the same. Academic students still read, ambitious ones don't. What has changed is that you can now get a First without reading, and ambitious students therefore spend their time on other things.
English
@wartsandbrawls Short teaching terms would actually be fine if they released reading lists in better time and professors could reasonably expect students to read in the breaks. Even worse when short terms are combined with continuous assessment over exams.
English
Reading books is wonderful and important, but the modern university is not a place set up to encourage or enable it. Reasons include:
- Short terms and modularised teaching
- Teaching to the assessment
- Edtech run amok
- Rise of coursework over exams
- ‘Efficiency’
English
The worst part about university today is that you need to have developed a full-fledged critique of its present incentive structure to get anything out of it
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@Guy21Nerdy Often, even ambitious people choose low effort courses so they can pour themselves into extra curriculars that are more likely to get them jobs anyways. Not sure that's the case here (econ seems hard!) but similar principle. Academic = not worth it.
English
I wonder whether this is because the "ambitious" and the "academic" students aren't the same. Academic students still read, ambitious ones don't. What has changed is that you can now get a First without reading, and ambitious students therefore spend their time on other things.
James Marriott@j_amesmarriott
Agree. Some of the most depressing statistics trace the collapse of reading among ambitious students. The most academic kids used to read much more than their peers. Now there isn't really a difference. Everyone is just scrolling.
English
Someone could make a great account of well-dressed cool people with cute toddlers around Copenhagen. Those women also have sourdough though
Verena@heteroplasmic
I think this kind of parenting ‘aesthetic’ is much more appealing and aspirational than the tradwife sourdough sack dress homeschool 21st century does 19th century vibe pushed by Twitter pronatalists.
English
Felice Basbøll รีทวีตแล้ว
The easy way to get rigor back in university courses to get rid of anonymous student evaluations but nobody in university leadership wants to do that
Daniel Buck, “Youngest Old Man in Ed Reform”@MrDanielBuck
Harvard faculty report that they've had to "trim some readings and drop others entirely, switch from novels to short stories, and that it’s difficult to keep assigning reading in the face of increasing student complaints."
English
Felice Basbøll รีทวีตแล้ว
Was introspection a trick invented in (((early C20th Vienna)))? For @unherd I have written about Marc Andreessen, Sigmund Freud, & the cult sociologist John Murray Cuddihy👇
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We stole the concept from Belgium where it was a whole weekend
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Felice Basbøll รีทวีตแล้ว
@yeppjane, whose reputation as a poetry scholar is growing fast, has written a wonderful appreciation of WH Auden for the @NewStatesman. I particularly liked the way her essay hints, via Auden, at what an "English attitude to religion" was, is or might be
newstatesman.com/culture/books/…
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Felice Basbøll รีทวีตแล้ว
Should Peter Thiel be burned at the stake? I have written for @unherd about the billionaire philosopher king, Pope Leo XIV, AI, & the Antichrist.
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Felice Basbøll รีทวีตแล้ว
What drives Trump 2.0? | @brendanpsimms
engelsbergideas.com/essays/what-dr…
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Felice Basbøll รีทวีตแล้ว
"Rather than external barriers getting in the way... the barriers to Rooney's modern love is all internal... and whats going on in their own heads"🤕💌
@Ella_M_Whelan @ Living Freedom 2025... "Normal people? Love in contemporary fiction"💕📚
Find out about 2026 below 👇
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Felice Basbøll รีทวีตแล้ว
My latest essay for @unherd – on anarcho-tyranny, civil war, Restore Britain's new policy paper, & the principle that an Englishman's home is his castle.
English