🧑‍🎓Can democracy promotion strengthen support for democracy in terrorism-affected regions? ➡️ Using a randomized experiment in Burkina Faso, S Yameogo @anjaneundorf.bsky.social & @aykutozturk.bsky.social find that democracy promotion videos boost democratic support www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

If the UK government had a Culture Secretary, that person would be in a position to take a view about whether child porn on demand was a good thing, or a bad thing. thecritic.co.uk/brin...

If the Palestine Action hunger strikers die - which they could do at any moment, as they are now very close to the end - it will be the government that killed them. Today’s column explains why. Please share, and write urgently to your MP. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Even in 2026, this should still be shocking. It is. www.whitehouse.gov/j6/

"Once they dismantle the epistemic integrity of democracy, really anything can happen" Important segment from my interview, with a shoutout to @lewan.bsky.social who not by co-incidence would lead the efforts for the anti-autocracy handbook; see here as well: wiki.savescience.eu/index.php?ti...

One example of how Grok is being used to target women. Swedish Deputy Prime Minister Ebba Busch being sexualised, degraded, and humiliated step-by-step by Grok. All the images accurately reflect the prompts provided.

Trump’s apologists defend his actions on Jan. 6, 2021 by claiming he merely told the mob to march “peacefully and patriotically.” The truth: Trump’s speech writers added that phrase. It’s entirely inconsistent with the rest of his incendiary speech, which included about 20 uses of “fight.” More:

Have made a couple of minor clarifications to the overall timeline - see below. Substack is up to date too. christinapagel.substack.com/p/the-paper-...

"American dominance" is our new foreign policy. And it will create a counter-reaction, everywhere. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

So little was known 18 years ago when I started researching climate comms. I'm blown away by how much we now know. This study, led by the incomparable Jan Voelkel with his all-star band, and released today in @natclimate.nature.com confirms that many distinct message strategies can work...

Trump is threatening to take Greenland. A U.S. move would implode NATO from within and hand Russia a strategic victory without firing a shot. Something Moscow recognized and tried to exploit years ago.

I stand with Senator Mark Kelly.

amazing how the entire machine can pivot within 24 hours. no need to slowly upsell the argument; just issue new marching orders

I think the "if you are lucky" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in @benansell.bsky.social great thread about the "uneasy" academic David Betz: bsky.app/profile/ben... 1/10

Siri, show me the most galactic inversion of moral standards? "President Trump is deadly serious about getting back the oil that was stolen from us". Not the Onion but Secretary of War: www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPnZ...

I wrote this only last week, after saying that Trump seems about to wage war on Venezuela. It seems pretty relevant to what transpired today. UK and Europe *must* reduce our dependence on America and its technologies as rapidly as we can. christinapagel.substack.com/p/personal-r...

Donald Trump, obliged to withdraw the military from the streets of US cities, now directs that foreign sovereign states be bombed.

I've been tracking the spread of nonconsensual deepfakes on X for more than two years. Here's a timeline of how Musk's leadership allowed the practice to flourish from a once-underground market to a viral trend, with little recourse for victims or legal enforcement. spitfirenews.com/p/grok-csam-...

Ghastly OpEds by Jay Bhattacharya in 2025 -His justification for canceling funds for mRNA vaxx R&D -His argument that no pandemic preparedness is needed As Seth Berkey says: "Magical thinking has no place in public health." We must condemn these "misguided policies" www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Lots of stunners here: 1. calling a sociopathic narcissistic idiot a "genius". 2. tacitly linking a fabricated hate campaign against Somali-Americans to the equally fabricated hate campaign against Jews by the Nazis. 3. doing it in broad daylight.

I remember maybe three or four years ago someone introduced me to yarvin and said among other things that what makes him so dangerous is he’s really steeped in history and philosophy. Sophisticated stuff. So I read some stuff and well, no. This is the stuff you say after you read one thing …

"‘It’s surreal’: US sanctions lock Intl Criminal Court judge out of daily life. Canadian judge Kimberly Prost is unable to use credit cards or access everyday services (Uber, Alexa, Ticketmaster...) in what she calls an attack on the independence of the judiciary." www.irishtimes.com/world/us/202...

Indeed. But it's not just Putin. It is also Trump, Musk, and the other plutocrats. I don't think this is about Russia v. EU, it's about plutocrats and oligarchs v. democracy.

Oh look, Jonathan Turley mentioned me in one of his “angry old man on porch” pieces again. He just can’t help himself. He does it a few times a year, as I explain below. You’d think a preeminent legal scholar wouldn’t concern himself with a 36yo mom but NOPE open.substack.com/pub/wicziped...

President Trump has shown, again and again, he can’t be trusted as a reliable ally. The Prime Minister needs to stop hoping for the best and start dealing with reality.

💯

Let’s talk about something not many people are chatting about and what’s actually happening right now. You might wonder why Imran Ahmed and the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) suddenly became targets of the U.S. government. The honest answer is that their research hit where it hurt.

Die Stellungnahme der EU-Kommission zu den Trumps Anti-DSA-Sanktionen lenkt vom zentralen Punkt ab: Seit Monaten setzt die EU-Kommission das EU-Digitalrecht nur mutlos um. Die Strafhöhen sind zu niedrig, die Verfahren zu langsam, Sanktionen ja werden nicht verhängt. Das muss sich jetzt ändern!

Merry Christmas everyone!!! A bit of real cheer for us all! 🎅🎄🤶🌲

A small (personal) example of this book’s intellectual dishonesty: My father-in-law is reading In Covid’s Wake, and excitedly told me he found a passage where I’m quoted. The quote in question is me saying the FBI worked to censor speech on social media. Huh? When did I say that?!

Very good statement from the Cambridge Summit organizers.

It begins. The EU lawmaker who was in charge of digital affairs during 🇪🇺President von der Leyen's first term has been banned from entering the United States, because the 🇺🇸 tech giants and government don't like the EU's tech laws. What will be the 🇪🇺President's response?

Superb video by @simonoxfphys.com Simon Clark on how truth on climate change is twisted and dismantled by Trump administration: www.youtube.com/watc.... 1/2 1/2

Want to see how they lie? I published this last week: Matt and his assistant Andrew Lowenthal cutting emails in half and lying about what they said to spin up the antivax rage machine. The Twitter Files were a propaganda campaign. And here we are now. open.substack.com/pub/reneedir...

The US State Department is now going to be deporting people and/or revoking visas over Benz, Taibbi, and Shellenberger’s “censorship industrial complex” hoax. Let that sink in. This is what the Twitter Files pretext was actually about. Water boys for authoritarians. www.state.gov/releases/off...

Trump, FDA Make Misleading International Vaccine Schedule Comparisons www.factcheck.org/2025/12/trum...

Sadly, i fear they are likely to sit and watch and pretend it out of existence.

Definitive proof that in Sadiq Khan's London, Christmas has been cancelled altogether www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Help reimagine how @psychonomicsociety.bsky.social communicates about the amazing research and researchers in cognitive psychology. Psychonomic fellows - Apply for the role of Science Communication Editor by Feb 28th. www.psychonomic.org/page/2026_Sc...

when your censor is in the house - or is head of it - govt no longer needs to make a direct order. this is proceeding precisely as planned.

The story of Farage and Putin, told by British-Ukrainian soldier Shaun Pinner on a destroyed apartment block in Kyiv.

Apparently this is not the onion: www.lee.senate.gov/2025/12/patr...

It gets even more pathetic— x.com/RepBeatty/st...

We are seeing religious communities traumatized with armed state power in a manner reminiscent of the traumatic European wars of religion.  Modern liberalism is largely how Europe healed itself from that trauma, with religious freedom and prohibition of torture as two of the main elements. 1/10

Is the tide turning? New post on my Brexit & Brexitism Blog. Renewed talk of a customs union may well come to nothing, but rapidly changing geo-politics mean the UK needs urgently to face up to the failure of the entire Brexit ‘strategy’: chrisgreybrexitblog.blogspot.com/2025/12/is-t...

“Project Censored’s List of Buried Stories Hits Half-Century Mark” My review of @projectcensored.bsky.social Top 10 Stories for @randomlengthsnews.bsky.social. Independent media stories—ignored/marginalized by M$M—frame a different worldpicture. 1/12 www.randomlengthsnews.com/archives/202...

On second thought, the "will not" does a lot of heavy lifting here. The deafness and imperviousness is perhaps better explained by "do not want to"? The pursuit of anti-democratic goals is too persistent and too strategic to be explained by anything other than, well, strategy.

It's out!! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... Big thank you to my coauthors @small-schulz.bsky.social and @lorenzspreen.bsky.social, and to all participants who discussed 20 political issues over 4 weeks in 6 subreddit, 3 experimental conditions and let us observe.

How many times do we need to point this out? By appeasing the far right, you do not weaken it. You strengthen it. While weakening your own position. There's a vast amount of academic research showing this. But Labour will not listen. www.theguardian.com/law/2025/dec...