May reads #Booksky #academicsky #phdlife

Today has been the hottest day in May on record with Kew Gardens provisionally reaching 34.8°C - exceeding the previous highest May temperature in the UK by a full 2 degrees Celsius🌡️ This heat would be exceptional in the UK even in mid summer, let alone in May📈

Wait, isn’t Utah the state where they’re building a data center six times the area of Manhattan? Don’t data centers need water? www.accuweather.com/en/weather-n...

Wow some terrible reporting about Google's latest horrible ideas about how to distort information access in the name of "convenience" (or something): techcrunch.com/2026/05/19/g... A short thread 🧵>>

#ClimateAdaptation As in so many areas of security, the UK is terribly under-prepared www.theguardian.com/environment/...

I've reached Jingo in my Discworld complete reread - not only has it not lost anything, I think it's become even more relevant. Which is a huge compliment to the writing and a depressing observation about the... *gestures at everything* #BookSky

Fascinating and important piece from @alondra.bsky.social as tech companies seek to internalize what should be the public project of finding a new social contract in the age of AI.

Some theses on #slop. A thread. Slop is automated ideology. It's content made of content, optimized for circulation, prompted, shaped, and refined through feedback loops of adaptation to platform conditions 1/

Next event! 📅 On 21 May we welcome Jessica den Outer to Sheffield. In 'The Forest Fights Back', Jessica explores a groundbreaking global movement taking on the legal system to recognise the rights of rivers, forests, and mountains to exist 🏞️ Tickets ➡️ buytickets.at/festivalofdebate/2149276

📣New interview📣 'The route to transnational left-populism is simply a question of political will.' Reid Kleinberg discusses left-wing populism, nationalism and the limits of Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s conversion strategy. reacpol.net/populism-nat...

This is my Roman Empire

This Thursday, May 7, at 12pm ET, we'll be hosting @maxinejoselow.bsky.social (NYT), @manonjacob.bsky.social (AFP), and @rtakver.bsky.social (DeSmog), in conversation with CCNow's Kyle Pope about how climate denialism is evolving with Trump in office. Join us: coveringclimatenow.org/event/talkin...

Join us in Vienna to discuss inequality, economic mobility & labor markets! With @franziskadbacher.bsky.social and @izmartinez86.bsky.social I'm stoked to announce this workshop, keynotes by @emilynix100.bsky.social and @natewilmers.bsky.social. Nov 19-20, submit by June 30: www.wu.ac.at/ineq/ws26

Inspired Yoda’s look, the tarsier did. 🌌 This #StarWarsDay, let's remember that even the galaxy’s most iconic figures have roots in Earth’s biodiversity. IPBES#StarWarsDayscience shows nature’s health is the force binding all life together. To ignore the evidence, unwise it is. 🌍✨ #MayThe4thBeWithYou

New from me: We need to update our priors and start thinking about the problem of online political violence as it is, not as it once was. So I am nailing this to the wall: 14 Theses Concerning Online Political Violence medium.com/the-berger-d...

April reads. #BookSky

📣New working paper📣 Benjamin Nangle launches our working paper series by reflecting on the consolidation of reactionary politics in Lithuania. He credits this consolidation to the fusion of market fundamentalism, cultural traditionalism, and border securitisation. reacpol.net/workingpaper...

The UK govt is Palantir’s 2nd biggest customer. Why? Or, more to the point, how? Our latest @thenerve_news investigation reveals a web of cronyism into the highest levels of govt. But Palantir also has a spin machine that uses political journalists to launder its PR 1/

I'm part of the Environmental Audit Committee, and today we published our report on PFAS 'forever chemicals' 👇 It's scary how many products contain PFAS, and it's impossible to avoid them through our individual purchasing choices, so govt needs to take action. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

There's a global race to secure EV battery gigafactories & reduce reliance on China. But not all clean-tech projects are created equal. Some generate good jobs & domestic capacities, others produce ecological harm & low value-added enclaves. New paper & thread 👇 www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Men spent last week debating whether "62 million" was the right number in the CNN rape academy story. Meanwhile, the site is still online. The women in their lives noticed both things. New episode on the psychology of minimization and what it costs women. bit.ly/4tpHR0f

*Palantir execs trying to explain their glorious vision so we’ll invite them inside*

Pretty sure this will be one of my top books of the year #academicsky #phdsky #booksky

Dalyan by night #Dalyan #ancienttombs #nightphotography #riverview

'Another experiment found that users still listened to AI when it gave them the wrong answer nearly 80 percent of the time — a grim trend the researchers dubbed “cognitive surrender.”' Cognitive surrender 🥲 futurism.com/artificial-i...

@bsky.app overtakes Facebook for volume of citations to research. Worth noting we don't track profiles of people on Facebook, rather several hundred thousand public pages - some of which have millions of followers.

We're not running a full festival programme this year, but there are a few things we couldn't pass up the opportunity to platform... Come and join us #Sheffield

March reads #BookSky

Living the absolute dream today #PhDchatter #PhdLife

🚨 Call for Contributors 🚨 "Lost in Their Words: Rewriting the Political Lexicon of the Far Right" Editors: Sofia Miola (University of Pavia) & Massimiliano Livi (Goethe University Frankfurt)

🔥 to have these 3 @ Central Library 22nd April. Come hear poems of radical friendship, aromantic & asexual identity, non-binary re-imagining of queer ancestry, sex, love, queerness & political commitment. www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/queer-poet... #nationalyearofreading2026 #queerpoetry #poetry #sheffield

It's arrived! Thanks @hannamorris.bsky.social Excited to get stuck into it this week and look out for a review on the @reacpolrn.bsky.social website soon! #AcademicSky #BookSky

Great to talk to the wonderful @mirandaioss.bsky.social about this article - ecofascism and the banal NGO aesthetic legitimising populist narratives - appears in more places than you think... #AcademicSky #PhDSky

My @plutopress.bsky.social cup runneth over with this AND The Othered Woman arriving in the same week #boardgame #boardgames

February reads #BookSky

Happy to finally get my hands on this after backing its journey to publication when it was still with Unbound - congratulations to Shahed Ezaydi! The first chapter is already proof of what an impressive and vital piece of writing this is. @plutopress.bsky.social #BookSky

"It is time to accept that the far right doesn’t need to be in power to have far-right politics implemented, and that the current system can indeed accommodate the far right if its survival is threatened by other crises." Great piece from @aurelmondon.com reacpol.net/why-red-lines/

There are journal issues...and then there are journal issues! The truly epic 25th Anniversary Special Issue of the GEP journal, titled "Continuity and Change in Global Environmental Politics," is now live and free to read for the next 90 days through @mitpress.bsky.social.

Feeling personally attacked by this whilst chapter drafting... 🫠 #academicsky #phdchatter #phdsky

The RPRN's two new publications are open for submissions! Red Lines is a space for political interventions on resisting reaction. The Reactionary Politics Working Paper series aims to publish cutting-edge scholarship on reactionary politics. Submit your work below! reacpol.net/publications/

NEW ANALYSIS: China's CO2 has now been 'flat or falling' for 21 months * Down in 2025 * Still below Mar 2024 * Clean energy wave a key factor If this is China's peak (TBC) it's the climate story of the century so far… www.carbonbrief.org/...

Thanks for the share @scenor.at #AcademicSky #PhdSky

🚨New article w/ @kathleenthelen.bsky.social🚨 This paper examines how the cloud hyperscalers (Microsoft, Amazon, and Google) played a critical role in the transition from platform capitalism to the new AI economy. The cloud business model, we argue, also contributed to the new tech-maga politics.

Research shows that 9 in 10 people globally want more action from their governments on climate, and 7 in 10 are prepared to put their own money in to help. On 14 Feb, South Yorkshire Climate Alliance are hosting a free event in #Sheffield on how we can mobilise this climate majority 🌎 Details ⬇️

January reads #BookSky

Please spread this far and wide, as stories don't get much bigger than this. When the government blocks even the intelligence services from telling us we're heading for environmental catastrophe, you know we have a problem. A very big problem. Thank you. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

"No Kings" in bright lights above the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland

And so it begins...