I have to that I’m pretty confident that UK physicist @briancoxtalks.bsky.social did not in fact use the word ‘math’ as a diminutive form of mathematics when addressing an audience in … *checks notes* … Redditch www.nytimes.com/2025/12/27/w...

Labour has quietly gutted funding for Britain’s struggling regions – it’s an economic and political disaster | Larry Elliott

Yet another example of what Michael Lewis has described as “an experiment in capitalism with too much money”. Searching for this kind of ‘spatial fix’ not new, as @quinnslobodian.com describes in Crack-up Capitalism. www.ft.com/content/b127... Tech elites are starting their own for-profit cities

Yet another example of what Michael Lewis has described as “an experiment in capitalism with too much money”. Searching for this kind of ‘spatial fix’ not new, as @quinnslobodian.com describes in Crack-up Capitalism. www.ft.com/content/b127... Tech elites are starting their own for-profit cities

Apart from the Truss/Kwarteng mini-budget, when in the last 50 years has a UK budget not factored in the likely response of the financial markets, given the open nature of its relatively small economy?

Enjoyed watching Netflix’s The Beast in Me, despite its many flaws. My key takeaway, however, was that if she can master the accent then Claire Danes would be perfect as the lead in a ‘Glenda Jackson: The Westminster Years’ biopic. Need to give the Dan Hodges role a bit more thought though.

A Nottingham-based example of the financial returns possible from successfully leveraging affect: Games Workshop is now valued at over £5bn. on.ft.com/3KpJycC How Warhammer won

I'm constantly shocked (but not surprised) by how little we discuss the additional financial burden placed on young people by the Clegg-Cameron student loan regime. @rmcunliffe.bsky.social is one of the few journalists who brings it up continuously - once again in the wake of the budget 👇

If you’re in or near @uonresearch.bsky.social tomorrow (Tuesday 25/11) then why not come along and see me present research, jointly undertaken with @allanwatson1.bsky.social, on music and platforms. The Music Dept is an important part of UoN’s research & teaching ecosystem: long may it continue!

A useful reminder that above all else financial capital hates inflation because it erodes the real value of wealth over time. Lots of useable quotes here. on.ft.com/488mVmh What big bond investors want from the UK Budget

The honest budget speech... "This year we're putting pensioners ahead of growth. We're prioritising reform voters over growth. Incumbent businesses. Tax advisors... And the party opposite can complain, but they did exactly the same thing. In UK politics, this is called change"

Create Music backs catalogue-buyer Circuit Capital with $500m The latest entrant into the catalogue-buying game is Circuit Capital, a new fund launched by management collective The Circuit Group. It’s backed by $500m in capital from Create Music Group (CMG), which it plans to use to acquire…

Most of the discussion around America's AI strategy abroad has focused on the AI Action Plan - but perhaps more important was the Executive Order on exporting the AI stack. 🧵

Sam Watts, composer of #TheTraitors theme and UoN music alumni, shares his thoughts on the newly renamed University of Little England course closures... #StopTheCuts #SaveHE c.org/pdK6xxk6yf

After that, I kind of wish the assassination attempt on Nick Mohammed’s character had been successful at the end of the latest series of Slow Horses.

Next time someone tells you that train drivers "just push buttons" show them this from the BBC

Today is the official UK publication day for Silicon Empires! I'm excited to have it out and hear what people think. There's an enormous amount happening every day in AI, and it's difficult to gain a stable perspective. I wrote the book to try and get some secure hold on that constant flux. 🧵

Or, as @brettchristophers.bsky.social’s put it in relation to the renewables energy sector, the price is wrong. It’s not supply and demand so much as profitability that matters. giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/... New homes: even if you build them, there’s no one to buy them

Co-authored with @andrewleyshon.bsky.social for a forthcoming special issue of @finandsoc.bsky.social, this essay takes Elon Musk's planned FinTech makeover of X as a provocation for a critical analysis of so-called 'embedded finance' and the evolution of FinTech www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

If you enjoyed @kateconger.com and @rmac.bsky.social's Character Limit, and wondered about Musk’s ambitions to turn X into a fintech behemoth, then you might be interested in a new Open Access paper by @paullangley.bsky.social and me on fintech's 'disappearance'. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

New post just out: "On the edge" On my unexpected week in hospital and five things I learnt about the state of the NHS. (Free to read) open.substack.com/pub/samf/p/o...

"Sometimes you have to ask yourself: How did I get here—sitting in Saudi Arabia, listening to Louis C.K. do jokes about Barely Legal magazine?" I went to Riyadh to see the transformation of a country with the world's biggest cultural chequebook. Gift link: www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

This thread should be of interest to all those working in Departments of Geography at UK Universities who sometimes ponder why their UG student intake often skews to the privileged. This skew is then exacerbated through the use of exotic field classes as marketing and recruitment bait on Open Days.

It's alive!

David Harvey at 90: A Verso Series www.versobooks.com/en-gb/blogs/... @versobooks.bsky.social First essay by Eric Sheppard now posted.

If you want to know what a new UK digital ID for immigration would mean, read "States of Ignorance" a book that came out of an ESRC project comparing the development of UK control with two countries with ID. From this research, I think it's a dangerous idea 1/ www.cambridge.org/core/books/s...

Kyle perhaps should be more interested in rigour than vigour: then he might not have conflated Stanford with the entire US university system. There are historical and geographical reasons why students who want to be founders might chose to go to Stanford.

today, Rachel Reeves meets BlackRock & Blackstone bosses to ask what British derisking state can do for them. New Rip-off Britain project by @cmmonwealth.bsky.social shows what institutional ownership has done for us: 200bn from our pockets to Big Finance!

Farewell Evernote, it's been ... expensive 🧵

I've finally deleted my Evernote subscription, which I started using in 2012, intially for taking notes in the meetings I was having as HoS, but stuck with it for ease of online clipping. I've ended up with a large collection of notes & notebooks. But it's got ridiculously expensive over time . 1/4

Music platforms pushing back against AI music with the use of detection software. Deezer calculate 33% of tracks uploaded are AI (!), but account for only 0.5% of streams. But if one gets through, & makes a playlist, it can generate a lot of income. www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/nearly-a-thi...

Music platforms pushing back against AI music with the use of detection software. Deezer calculate 33% of tracks uploaded are AI (!), but account for only 0.5% of streams. But if one gets through, & makes a playlist, it can generate a lot of income. www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/nearly-a-thi...

Interesting that @pjtheeconomist.bsky.social argues that financial market concerns that a populist party might win the next UK election helps explain the interest rate premium attached to UK debt. Might this see PR being mobilised as a necessary step to remove a punishing burden on growth?

More reporting on how electricity rates for individuals & small businesses could rise as tech companies build data centers: “Despite tech companies’ professed desire not to burden others, they often push regulators to impose some of the upgrade costs on everybody.” www.nytimes.com/2025/08/14/b...

From the piece, a pair of paragraphs about money and banking as close to perfection as you’ll ever see. Shot:

Since search is dead, how soon do you think Google Scholar is headed for the Google Graveyard? I'm betting it's soon, and academia is NOT prepared

We are greatly saddened by the passing of Michel Callon, a key contributor to debates in our journal about economization, marketization, and ecologization. RIP www.csi.minesparis.psl.eu/articles-ved...

Late to this: a good example of the difficulties most artists have in making a living in the contemporary music economy. Long-standing indie band @fieldmusicmusic.bsky.social moonlight as a Doors cover band to make ends meet. I'd happily pay to watch them in either form! tinyurl.com/49b37t54

A cultural industries colleague, who studied science fiction, argued it was 10/9/2008. This was the day the Large Hadron Collider was switched on which, she argued, led to the proliferation of infinite multiple universes. This version of ourselves just happen to be living in a wrong track universe.

Balancing a desire for innovative growth through fintech expansion with the pervasive fear of another systemic financial crisis, personified here by UK CEx Rachel Reeves and BoE Governor Andrew Bailey, has shaped the evolution of fintech economies since the GFC. #FinTechCapital on.ft.com/44ShfuP

As @andrewleyshon.bsky.social and I show in our forthcoming book, JPMorgan Chase has been competing against, partnering with, investing in, and buying up FinTech startups since at least 2014. They have long been leveraging their monopoly position in US banking to shape FinTech economies

They are clearly doing this on purpose now.

This is definitely getting worse.

@jonawils.bsky.social may be a great football historian, but he’s got his arithmetic wrong here. John White was 21 when moved to Falkirk: he wouldn’t have been 25 until 1962, after he’d won the double with Spurs.

Such an important feature on TotalEnergies by ITV Cycling and Matt Rendell on the Tour de France rest day programme this evening. In support: a repost of this drawing.

The Economy and Society Early Career Paper Prize 2026 is now live. £1000 prize. Submission deadline: 15/12/25 Details here and in the News and CfP section of our website files.taylorandfrancis.com/economy-and-...

“Nothing can possibly go wrong!” www.theguardian.com/business/202...

Really good follow up essay from Gillian Tett on Geoeconomics, revealing more sources & some useful interviews. Still bemused by the lack of reference to 1980s Japan & the concerted US campaign against Japan’s perceived mercantilism. Worked too. on.ft.com/40b9ayH The new age of geoeconomics

Better late than never I suppose re: Thatcherism. on.ft.com/44iwZHl The roots of the British malaise lie in a sick economy