I’m not It isn’t. It should be, but you’re working very hard to ensure it isn’t.

Kind of feels like a big deal that a Reform/Brexit Party former MEP has been convicted of taking bribes to promote Russian interests in Ukraine, and it feels like a bigger deal that this isn’t being treated as the major scandal that it clearly is.

3. ⁠this is not the moment for an incredibly expensive increase in state surveillance infrastructure to be run for profit by private tech firms just before Labour ushers in an (even more) authoritarian right wing government. FIX THE GODDAMN COST OF LIVING INSTEAD YOU FREAKS.

🚨🚨🚨 Survey Researchers! WE HAVE A HUGE PROBLEM!🚨🚨🚨 I have access to the Comet browser by Perplexity. I asked it to pretend to be a human, take the survey, and give me feedback. IT DID!

Yeah man we should really fight back by staying on X

I guess it's kind of obvious, given the design, that LLMs will hallucinate, but interesting to see Open AI researchers showing that the "majority of mainstream evaluations reward hallucinatory behavior" arxiv.org/pdf/2509.04664

The problem is that the centre-left can't win every election. And trying can make them cautious, when they need to be bold. Really successful govts - Attlee, Thatcher, Blair - secure the things they believe in by forcing their opponents to change. But that requires a confident project of their own.

Spot on: "Adopting nativist discourse and policies does not win back far-right voters. It leads to losses for centrist and leftwing parties. Moreover, it raises the salience of the topic and the expectations of the government, which will always fall short" www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

definitely watch this video. excellent for a linguistics class 🐦🐦!

Disgraceful. Absurd. As with the Kimmel situation, politicians across the world want to suppress protest and creative resistance. They hate opposition. They hate protest. They hate satire. They hate art. Soon we will wake up and find our mouths gagged, our hands tied, our pens and laptops taken away

A new book chronicles one Cherokee citizen’s odyssey of working to revitalizing the Cherokee language.

The past tense of ‘to go’ is ‘went’, but this form used to belong to the verb ‘to wend’. We call such verbs suppletive. Surprisingly, ‘to bring’ is suppletive too: ‘brought’ comes from a different verb. My new graphic tells you all about their past. In certain varieties of English, ... 1/

Tha sinn air ar dòigh gu bheil Rannsachadh na Gàidhlig gu bhith air ais! Cuiribh taic ris agus sgapaibh an naidheachd.

My colleague @thejohnsimpson.bsky.social has done a terrific deep dive into the financial links between US tech billionaires and Tommy Robinson Well worth a read observer.co.uk/news/nationa...

🚨 BREAKING | 1,339 people have now been arrested on "terrorism" charges in 2025, with almost all of them busted for holding signs at pro-Palestine protests. This is more than any year on record, by far. (Source: Home Office)

Until we make Twitter Lawful Again, our government are presiding over the de facto decriminalisation of racist abuse in Britain. I am unclear if they simply haven't noticed, don't particularly care to prioritise it, have no idea of how to stop it, or are just frozen by fear bsky.app/profile/sund...

New ALILI! Back in Scotland for Episode 39, as @davidadger.bsky.social and I have a lovely chat about Scottish Gaelic. We discuss the language's history, from Dál Riata to the present day, and much more. Listen here: Acast: shows.acast.com/a-language-i... Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/27Pm...

New podcast! @dannybate.bsky.social and I chat about Scottish Gaelic, mediaeval sea kingdoms, the spread and retreat of Gaelic in Scotland, influence from Pictish, sounds borrowed from Old Norse, and much more 🐦🐦 podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/a... or wherever you get your podcasts :)

good question. What is the endgame? www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Hot off the press, the British Academy's Cold Spots: Mapping Inequality in SHAPE Provision in UK Higher Education report. Read it if you care about universities or access to the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences for the rising generation. 1/5

Bravo Banksy. 👏 “A new mural by elusive street artist Banksy has appeared on the side of the Royal Courts of Justice building in central London.”

More fear and the stoking up of prejudice causing fear and danger in Nuneaton as American footballers are targeted as asylum seekers www.coventrytelegraph.net/news/local-n...

Good job if you care about the arts and humanities. Executive Director for Portfolios, Partnerships and Engagement at the Arts and Humanities Research Council - £91k-£99k fa-evzn-saasfaukgovprod1.fa.ocs.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/Candid...

Slightly diminish a book The Word for World is Coppice

Het is heus waar, It is truly true, Lidia Postma, 1975. #OwlishMonday

Come be my colleague! 🐦🐦

Labour, Tories and Reform are talking about trying to shrink the UK’s working age population by curtailing immigration. Here’s an excellent summary of why this approach is catastrophic even solely on economic grounds. www.bearlypolitics.co.uk/p/nans-not-b...

Well worth applying for these if you are eligible. I was a bit skeptical about the partial randomization at first, but it's improved diversity in the awards and I'm now a total convert

In case this is useful to anyone, this is what I sent to my MP, asking him to request Parliamentary scrutiny of the EHRC advice on the Supreme Court Ruling. Roughly based on a letter by @nonbinarybarrister on insta. I think there's not much time on this one

Finally! 🤩 Our position piece: Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia: doi.org/10.5281/zeno... We unpick the tech industry’s marketing, hype, & harm; and we argue for safeguarding higher education, critical thinking, expertise, academic freedom, & scientific integrity. 1/n

It's finally here! I had so much fun talking with @parasynthetic.bsky.social about the many creative choices behind translating Because Internet into Spanish, and now that the Spanish ebook is available all over, you can listen to our chat!

Led By Donkeys have got Fartrage's number.

Angela Rayner accidentally pays less tax than she should have, resigns, and the media gives her hell. Nigel Farage deliberately pays less tax than he should have, and the media gives him a free pass. That, right there, is the problem.

Farage uses tax avoidance vehicles meaning he paid only 25% corporation tax on profits, instead of 40% income tax, but his supporters see this as a virtue and of course there's a very legal difference between this kind of avoidance and evasion www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

'The first of its kind to track sentiment before and after the 12 May 2025 speech, the report by the Public Opinion Analytics Lab identifies a significant electoral cost to the Prime Minister’s remarks: support for Labour fell among its erstwhile voters by 4 percentage points.'

Good example of the malaise in "centrist" politics. Can anyone explain what politicians think is the purpose of universities and the role of overseas students? No, there isn't supposed to be a simple answer. That's the point. Balance multiple conflicting objectives. www.politico.eu/article/brit...

Just about ten years now in the making: The IE-CoR database paper has finally been published. C. Anderson, M. Scarborough, [ ... 96 further authors ... ], R. Gray & P. Heggarty. 2025. The Indo-European Cognate Relationships Dataset. Scientific Data 12:1541.

Am very excited as @backlisted.bsky.social are doing the Tombs of Atuan this week (did they do aWoE? I’ll have to check). I tracked down the same edition I borrowed from Glenwood library in maybe 1978 or 79?

🚀 We’ve launched! The Enhancing the Impartiality of Political News project is now live with our brand new website where we will share updates & findings as the project develops. 🔗 enhancingimpartiality.com More info 👇 #impartiality #impartialityproject #mediastudies #journalism #polsky

grim, but unsurprising given Phillipson's profoundly inadequate performance in the commons debate on this topic

As an aside I’m sorry that Turing’s name keeps being affixed to things that don’t deliver. Hasn’t he suffered enough?

gotta love Margaret Atwood

so true

oh ffs, are they actively trying to lose their left flank so Farage can come through the middle? Aside from the basic ethical awfulness of this stance, it's politically moronic

oh I do so love Edwin Morgan

Et voila! Case proven. #solar

"It’s shunning time in Madison County, Virginia, where the school board recently banished my novel The Handmaid’s Tale from the shelves of the high-school library. I have been rendered “unacceptable.” "How dare I question the school board’s motives? I do dare. After all, it has questioned mine."

If you’re waking up to yet another news programme on tv or radio that is over platforming REFORM with 4 MPs and not mentioning any other opposition party, you know what to do. Sign here and get anyone else you know to sign. Fair coverage now. Takes 30 seconds petition.parliament.uk/petitions/71...