Notices by Pauline von Hellermann (pvonhellermannn@mastodon.green), page 4

#AcademicVenting #HungerGames

Well this is it. i am being made redundant.

#AcademicVenting 🧵#Redundancy It’s now been a week - what a week, with two historic elections thrown in too!

A HUGE thank you for all the lovely, supportive messages. They have really helped me, hugely. Knowing that others have gone through this (what a total experience), and that there are other possibilities. It’s early days (and there is so much work in the reduncancy process itself), but as so many of you’ve said: other doors may open.

Maybe i will keep this 🧵to share this transition?

#AcademicVenting #Redundancy Two weeks today and sadly not quite there yet with finding new ways forward - for one, there is just so much to do, get your head around, decisions to make around redundancy process itself. And this past week a physical reaction set in, just sheer exhaustion.

Also want to note once more: it really is unbelievable what is being done to myself and 96 brilliant colleagues. The “how” aa much as the “what”. And to Goldsmiths. It is total vandalism, brutal, traumatic.

#AcademicVenting #Redundancy These days I really can’t find the words to recount what’s going on. Let’s just say a lot of back and forth; chaos, incompetence and cruelty; never ending visionless mediocrity that destroys everything.

One thing to report: i have now had the privilege of an ACAS webinar. More competent than anything coming from SMT, but no faces, no in person questions, and a cheery “See you next time” screen at the end. Corporate dystopia, straight from #BlackMirror

#AcademicVenting #Redundancy

After more back and forth (a great 0.5 was advertised for us 3 to compete for - same duties, half pay - but none of us applied) and more charming communications from our “Transformatipn Programme team” (always anonymous!) I have now accepted “enhanced redundancy”. Onwards and upwards!

@inquiline thank you, it’s ok. I am honestly by now just glad to leave the place behind me. I don’t have anything else lined up, which, in the current climate, is a little daunting, but still. Just resentful that because of constant crisis and abusive world conditions i have managed virtually no writing over last year and am so behind, but determined to catch up now!

#ClimateDiary New study by Piyu Ke et al out this week.

“Record warming in 2023 had a strong negative impact on the capacity of terrestrial ecosystems to mitigate climate change”

“We may see a rapid acceleration of CO2 and global warming which was unforeseen in future climate models projections”

This sounds… pretty bad?

https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.12447

#AcademicVenting We now have a GoFundMe for our Goldsmiths #UCU hardship fund, due to 50% salary reductions for marking boycott. If you are in HE and in your union, perhaps you could ask your branch whether they could contribute? Feel awkward about saying this but: every donation welcome.

#Redundancies #HE @ucu

https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-goldsmiths-ucu-fight-mass-redundancies

#AcademicVenting we are trying to fight draconian redundancies at Goldsmiths at a time when there is a concerted effort by government, the anti-woke brigade and others to reduce the HE sector as a whole. There are more and more articles like this one, talking about how little bits of optimism amount to a collective “cloud cuckooland”.
There is a real onslaught.

https://wonkhe.com/blogs/ofs-assessment-of-university-finances-warns-of-need-for-structural-change-to-stave-off-risks-of-provider-collapse/

Says it all, really

@aral @thejuicemedia very good, as always. Thank you. I am honestly really scared about all this

Every day, more horrors, more dead, more war crimes; “red lines” a distant memory whilst #Gaza continues to be systematically destroyed. Yet waning coverage and outrage. It really is, as Glazer warned us during his “Zone of Interest” Oscar speech, that genocide is now ambient background.

I wonder how much the casualty figures stalling at 35,000 or so for months now (due to health and counting systems being destroyed) has contributed to people forgetting about it.

https://aje.io/ey50er

“Self-care in the age of collapse”

This piece, like many others by the very brilliant Jessica Wildfire before, captures so much of what I feel right now, battling in the place i happen to be caught in in the malstroem of the #polycrisis (Goldsmiths meltdown, together with everything else). It’s recognising, as JW says, that “there are no good options”, but having to find strategies somehow. 1/2 #ClimateDiary #AcademicVenting

https://www.okdoomer.io/self-care-in-the-age-of-collapse/

#polycrisis #ClimateDiary #AcademicVenting #SelfCare

2/2 Where I am at: you have to be open and really look in yourself, what works for you. Right now, self-care for me is in a place I would never have expected: standing outside Eastbourne station (with a small group of hard cores), holding a sign “Stop Bombing Israel”. It really helps me right now, somehow (along with appreciating small good things etc).

https://mastodon.green/@pvonhellermannn/112660172853110244

@urlyman just when you think your opinion of Keir Starmer couldn’t sink any lower, he tweets this. I no longer think this is just red wall tory defector chasing - i think he really means it. This is who he is.

#ClimateDiary

It's so hot in Delhi that bats are dropping
dead from trees.

https://x.com/r_gov11/status/1802859276156998021

#Gaza The opening paragraphs alone

BEIRUT (AP) — He is among the very last survivors of his Gaza family, a clan so close they knew without thinking how blood and marriage bound them across generations and city blocks.

Then, branch by branch, 173 of Youssef Salem’s relatives were killed in Israeli airstrikes in a matter of days in December. By spring that toll had risen to 270.

https://apnews.com/article/gaza-palestinians-families-israel-war-deaths-a9f8bcfe402c17f1f78903eae67b7a7d

Nice to see a wild pyramid #orchid on the edge of golf course near our house just now #Bloomscrolling #wildflowerhour

#orchid #Bloomscrolling #wildflowerhour And today a field full of heath orchids near Old Heathfield - an orchid weekend! 😊

Has it started happening? Has tue suffering in #Gaza - for those of us living privileged lives in the West - becoming “ambient” background, as Glazer warned us in his acceptance speech for Zone of Interest?

It is unbelievable how every single “red line” has been crossed; how Biden very evidently supports the complete eradication of Gaza; how genocide goes on and on and on, yet so many people don’t seem to really care.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/6/12/significant-part-of-gaza-facing-famine-like-conditions-who-says