Lawsuit against cement company over the impact of cement / concrete on livelihoods. www.reuters.com/sustainabili...

The map's form: waste It shows: freight Its purpose: obscure

Sea Library Advent Calendar 17th sea letter is from Emmy (7): "I have seen .. real jellyfish pink ones about the size of a steering wheel. .. There is also a beach called the secret beach that’s not so secret." sea-library.com/2025/12/21/0...

Houseleeks were a spectacular sight in the Swiss Alps. Here are Cobweb Houseleek Sempervivum arachnoideum and Wulfen's Houseleek Sempervivum wulfenii.

When illegal slave ships were intercepted by British, French, Portuguese and other antislavery patrols in the 1800s, African captives were not freed - they were sent into indentured servitude. More than 700,000 souls. It’s a huge story in the history of abolition.

Have you ever wanted to read a PhD dissertation, but been turned off by how long and boring they are? Honestly, that's fair! So I turned my anthropology dissertation into a YouTube video to make it more interesting. Enjoy!

mattdinan.substack.com/p/the-ai-ske... Matt Dinan on teaching writing amidst the apocalypse @mattdinan.bsky.social

'Human Law is not the only legal system on the planet, it turned out. There are as many systems as there are species... The fact that we didn’t know any of this only seemed to strengthen the bears’ case at the expense of our own' dark-mountain.net/bears-with-l... #multispecies #morethanhuman

THREAD. In her exclusive interview in today's Daily Telegraph Magazine, the actor, influencer and designer Philippa Islington-Smythe (pictured) discusses the price of fame, her controversial new perfume, working with Margot Robbie and how becoming a parent changed her perspective on the world...

Hell.

I have finally finished my list of 12 essays by Indigenous trans women in North America (plus some extra audio/video links). Please please please spend some time getting to know their work. Too often people use Indigenous trans women as a figure to weaponize rather than sit and think with them.

“cats vocalized more frequently (meows, purrs, chirps) when greeting male caregivers than when greeting female caregivers. On average, cats produced 4.3 meows in the first 100 seconds of greeting men compared to just 1.8 with women” phys.org/news/2025-12...

Join us for our annual lecture on 16 December! We will delve into the wonders of animal seismic senses, from spider webs to elephant rumbles, with Dr Beth Mortimer 🐘🕷️ 16 December 17:15, in the Life and Mind Building, Oxford & online 👇 www.biology.ox.ac.uk/event/biolog...

Want something not hideously depressing? This documentary about Indigenous teens paddling the Klamath River for the first time after dam removal is beautiful! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FuGuWeAra4

OK, I totally dropped the ball on Noirvember. Noirs are all feature films and that's too much for me (especially since I often need to rewatch the movies I'm teaching on top of that). But I'm determined to have an Alanis Obomsawin December. I'm ready to immerse myself in the work of a master.

Dr Ben Carrington delivers the inaugural ASA Culture Section Stuart Hall Award Lecture: “‘The university is a critical institution, or it is nothing’ - Stuart Hall, The Elephants’ Graveyard and the Sociology of Race.” 📅 Wed 10 Dec 🕕 10am (Pacific) / 6pm (UK) Register: emory.zoom.us/meeting/regi...

This whole convo is fantastic - 1.5 hours of very informative chat on climate justice vs the gross economics of tech Ft @naomiaklein.bsky.social @profwhw.bsky.social @profhvdv.bsky.social, hosted at @ccj-ubc.bsky.social youtu.be/27BHQhkK52I

“Her library estimates that 15 percent of emailed reference questions it receives are now ChatGPT-generated, and some include hallucinated citations for both published works and unique primary source documents. ‘For our staff, it is much harder to prove that a unique record doesn’t exist.’”

Our livestraem about David Graeber's work is starting now Please come along and ask your questions in the chat!!!

Tech elites are starting their own for-profit cities. What could wrong? www.ft.com/content/b127...

My dad abhors any negative comments about immigrants. Asked him recently why he’s so strong on it: ‘Because we’re always happy to take the rich and clever ones. Which means it’s not about disliking immigrants. It’s about disliking the poor and vulnerable. And that’s a bad human instinct.’

🌊 NEW RESEARCH: When rivers become legal persons Within months, Colombia, New Zealand & India all granted legal personhood to major rivers. Full article by Rahul Ranjan + Axel Borchgrevink: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.... #RightsOfNature

“When participants used ChatGPT to draft essays, brain scans revealed a 47% drop in neural connectivity across regions associated with memory, language, & critical reasoning. Their brains worked less, but they felt just as engaged—a kind of metacognitive mirage.”🧪

Cool to get some coverage in the New Scientist. I might have rephrased a couple of small things! But the closing paragraphs from Jerome Lewis, especially, are fab. www.newscientist.com/article/2507...

Piplotti Rubens, Pipi (pronounced pee pee), Ruby, Pookie, Punkin, Punky, Punk-sutawny, punky my little monkey who’s a little bit chunky, little monkey. I’ve had her exactly a year.

Cat names should evolve like avant-garde jazz. By the time of a cat's fifth birthday the name by which it is generally known should have zero resemblance to its original name.

The map's form: accordion fold It shows: vanishings Its purpose: to reveal

Great culture can save lives. Literally. Amazing letter in today’s @thetimes.com about Tom Stoppard

Are you interested in doing a PhD about what humans infer about animal minds? Check out this opportunity @northumbriapsy.bsky.social with me, @mdconstable.bsky.social and Lee Shepherd! Deadline 23 Jan 2026 www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

The university has made the recording of my talk available at the link below. In case of interest and you missed it. m.youtube.com/watch?v=kML5...

Ancient Andean scales reveal a world where measurement blended with morality, reciprocity, and sacred landscapes. New research shows how wipis and khipus shaped social balance across the precolonial Andes. #Anthropology #Archaeology #Andes #History www.anthropology.net/p/weighing-t...

Here is a list of reasons why some of my hearings and trials this year have been delayed and kicked off into the long grass, stuck in our record court backlog. Serious allegations which will now be tried *years* after the event. 🧵👇

The pit is open.

AI … is a crisis… History shows us that the right to literacy came at a heavy cost for many Americans, ranging from ostracism to death. Those in power recognized that oppression is best maintained by keeping the masses illiterate, and those oppressed recognized that literacy is liberation.“

Quietly terrifying. www.wsj.com/economy/aida...

Science will often take you to unexpected and delightful places. In this study, researchers hypothesized that riders in a crowded subway car would be more likely to offer their seat to a pregnant person if there were someone in the subway car dressed as Batman 🧪🦇 www.nature.com/articles/s44...

everyone who spent the 90s laboriously and lovingly making mixtapes just dissolved into ancient dust

We're an undeniable border violation. We exist and we show that the border between male and female is both permeable and not simply a hierarchy. So we have to be dealt with the way border problems are - extreme violence or a complex series of exceptions.

Interesting...

Until we recognise that resilience requires inefficiency – that robust systems must have slack – we’re just optimising our way towards collapse. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

“At the summit, Britain’s prime minister, Keir Starmer, said the slave trade was abhorrent but countries should be “looking forward” and addressing current challenges such as climate change.” Some philosophers — Nuti and Táíwò among them — might have a thing or two to say about that ‘but.’

🧵2) @gwenburnyeat.bsky.social is a lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh. In this blog she introduces her work researching people seeking to create and nurture relationships across complex political divides: relationshipsproject.org/bridgebuilding-in-colombia-and-britain/

small light, soft light {along an open field} #classicmono #monochrome

😀

Terrible news. Had brilliant interactions with folks in IAD ☹️ Seems like a waste of potential & retrogressive move.

Three excellent books on what the #ClimateEmergency means for higher education & how universities should respond 📚 🧵 1️⃣ Universities on Fire: Higher Education in the Climate Crisis by @edufuturist.bsky.social www.universitiesonfire.com

For those wishing to stay up-to-date with developments around university climate action, I've assembled this starter pack of thinkers and doers who have inspired me on this topic... go.bsky.app/R51quRA

“The question of who gets to live as long as they should isn’t moral but systemic. We often say that death is the great unifier as it’s the one thing that we all have in common. But sometimes, I look around and wonder if even the after-life is segregated.”