News coming through that @sheffielducu.bsky.social members have rejected their employer's blackmail threats. We need to urgently rush support to the branch! Invite speakers Raise (big) donations Sign petitions Send solidarity messages 👇

Excellent letter which highlights one of the many problems with Nurse and RS's stance that science exists in an asocial bubble.

Following coverage over the weekend of Sir Paul Nurse's comments that suggested that the only reason that a Fellow should be expelled from @royalsociety.org is scientific misconduct, I have written to him to explain the risks such an attitude poses of increasing sexual harassment in STEM.

Good work from @thierryaaron.bsky.social responding to this piece. One thing that is implicit in this though is the way in which natural scientific expertise is given broad scope to pontificate in areas (such as social science) where they lack the knowledge, theories and methods to explain.

And more job opportunities: @univie.ac.at aims to fill 40 (!) doctoral positions in the social sciences, humanities and cultural studies careers.univie.ac.at/en/praedoc/p...

I've been talking about both doctoral study (with academic jobs as the goal) AND tenure for YEARS in terms of RISK MANAGEMENT. It is a very calculated, and increasingly speculative, risk. You have to treat it that way. Faculty hate it when I do this. Especially about tenure.

i made a helpful reference

Is Joe Rogan really just a voice of the right? Our new @csmapnyu.org piece for @goodauth.bsky.social shows he’s just as much a space for the left and the center, too. A look inside today’s surprisingly complicated podcast information ecosystem. 🎙️ goodauthority.org/news/podcast...

As things wind down for the holidays, @sheffielducu.bsky.social members are facing a threat of 100% pay deductions from January, thanks to our Scrooge-like management. We’ve now set up a fundraiser to bolster our local solidarity fund. If you can spare some change, please do! gofund.me/ac2b3adcb

Our case is the ambiguity of categories obtained by community detection algorithms in networks. We offer an implementation of our ambiguity visualization method in Gephi Lite, which you can try online right now! lite.gephi.org

Day 15 of strike action at the Uni of Sheffield. 495 jobs already cut. Now they tell us another £50m will be cut from staff budget in coming year despite bar charts of coffers which look like this and a VC on a salary of nearly £400k. #SheffieldUCU

✊ It was an honour to join friends at Southampton Solent #UCU Branch (not on BSky) this pm to lobby their university's Board of Governors. The Governors were meeting to decide if to 'fire and rehire' staff using a subsidiary company, to deny staff a decent pension. #SouthamptonSolent @ucu.org.uk

Check out this post about our current situation from a colleague at another university. @sheffielducu.bsky.social

I need everyone, esp anyone working in education or tech (but really everyone) to WATCH THIS CLIP of @drtanksley.bsky.social discussing the technologies infiltrating our schools & psyches and how she is addressing it with our young people. youtu.be/5mtcSL4S3HQ

Day 3 Sheffield Uni UCU strike against threat of extensive redundancies. 400 academic staff gone. Nearly 100 more now confirmed. They want another £10m staff saving this year, despite being in a strong position financially. #SheffieldUCU @sheffielducu.bsky.social www.ucu.org.uk/article/1423...

Good rally today with @sheffielducu.bsky.social and Sheffield Hallam

Heading to picket line for day 1 of @sheffielducu.bsky.social strike against compulsory job losses ✊✊🏼✊🏾 www.ucu.org.uk/article/1423...

RED ALERT: the University of Nottingham is threatening to close its Department of American Studies, putting all staff at risk of redundancy, and ending any American specialist knowledge in the Faculty of Arts. Sign the petition here to save jobs: www.change.org/p/save-ameri...

crazy IG em_clarkson

Misinformation *is* central to democratic problems today, but the solution is *not* to correct such epistemic failures directly. Instead, we must address them at their roots, in social identity. Or so I argue in a new post for @apaphilosophy.bsky.social. blog.apaonline.org/2025/11/12/t...

Monday night's elite-level Clipse gig in Manchester. Almost all the new album and a back cat of certified bangers.

score one for "the pundits are projecting their own preoccupations onto the electorate"

Today I did something I should have done months ago. I went to an 'asylum seeker hotel protest' to speak to all involved. Protestors, live stream vlogger, police, counter-protestors. My main take away is that anyone wishing to understand this movement should do the same. Chat. Listen. Reflections🧵

Striking women! In or passing through Sheffield before 4 Nov? Get yourself to the _Winter Gardens_ to check out the wonderful comic and archives from Prof Anitha Sundari's work with Prof Ruth Pearson on the 1976 Grunwick Strike and 2005 Gate Gourmet dispute. sheffield.ac.uk/spir/news/ne...

I'm excited to finally have a preprint of this paper up, a few years in the making. In it we argue that industry-driven manipulation of social media research is well underway and that norms and institutions in the field are ill-prepared to resist tech's influence. arxiv.org/abs/2510.19894

Early train->Skegness (with some keen sunseekers ☀️ ) en route to York for the White Rose DTP Welcome Event Reconnecting with our fantastic students, hearing their hopes & fears for the coming year and unveiling our Digital Tech, Communication & AI training programme wrdtp.ac.uk/training/tra... 🤓

"We focus on Israel during 2023, a period marked by intense political polarization...We find that exposure to toxic behavior by ingroup members is the primary driver of contagious toxicity, compared to smaller, less consistent associations with outgroup toxicity."

Gillian Tett: is AI a cargo cult? www.ft.com/content/f202...

At #aoir2025 I’m presenting on what I term “platformed nostalgia”, which I explore via an analysis of Automattic-era Tumblr’s efforts to commercialise historical social media nostalgia in its marketing (particularly in response to the X-odus). I’m in the Memes panel at 9am tomorrow. Sneak peak 👀

Trailer for Synthetic Sincerity which I wrote , directed by Marc Isaacs which will have its world Premiere in competition at IDFA in November

Great evening of knowledge, wordplay and truths from Chuck D at Leeds International Festival. “They treating the masses like them asses” 🫡 #LIFI25

On way home from superb Cultural Climate Models meeting in Graz with @davidhiggins.bsky.social @caroschwegler.bsky.social et al. Looking forward to seeing in print the new approach to modelling from this truly interdisciplinary international collab gewi.uni-graz.at/en/unsere-fo...

Excellent analysis of the dilemmas presented to the IPCC by AI! The question of whether there should be an IPCC chatbot is crucial. Given close control over communication products in the past, an “official” chatbot would signal a v different attitude to risk.

New working paper out: "Four scenarios for an @ipcc.bsky.social navigating Artificial Intelligence" Led by @hollyjeanbuck.bsky.social, with @shinasayama.bsky.social and Oliver Geden Thread 🧵 1/13

How can the #IPCC navigate generative AI? What does it mean for scientific assessment more broadly? New working paper looks at scenarios for AI adoption & resistance, w/ @dralaaclimate.bsky.social @shinasayama.bsky.social and Oliver Geden Reflections welcome! www.swp-berlin.org/publications...

We need an associate lecturer in history of modern science @stsucl.bsky.social www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/...

"Common decency stigmatizes people that do not participate in it—removes them from voluntary association. We indeed have to live with one another, but terms and conditions apply." me on why Ezra Klein should be ashamed / why shame is Good Actually www.bostonreview.net/articles/how...

I am a new Expert Voices columnist @science.org and my first article just came out! In it, I argue that scaling technology has a dark side, particularly when it comes to alleviating inequality and injustice. And I suggest what scientists, engineers, and policymakers can do about it.

"Epistemic oligarchies: capture and concentration through science reform", a new preprint by Sven Ulpts (not here), Sheena Bartscherer (also not here), @nicolecnelson.bsky.social and me. Read it here: zenodo.org/records/1713... 1/

If you have a spare 15 minutes today and care about the kids X smartphone debate, then read this excellent, excellent article: www.tes.com/magazine/tea...

Everyone with the internet has access: it's free to read.

A third of survey respondents *had not heard* the argument that the richest 1% emit twice as much as carbon as the world's poorest 50% 😳 Communicating climate change as apolitical is good for some.... Data -> climatebarometer.org/climate-baro... #climatechange

We're hiring a new lecturer @stsucl.bsky.social. We're looking for someone with particular interests in the environment. Please share widely www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/...

Scraping tools like @digitalmethods.net Zeeschuimer, @lescarr.bsky.social WDRA are *vital* for social media research but how widely are they used? 🤔 If you use these tools or similar in your work, please reply 'teaching' 'research' 'both' 👇🏽 or via email if preferred 🤗 #AcademicSky

Our data stewards have started recommending that we no longer use US-based infrastructure for #openscience practices, given the risk of (near-future) censorship, from pre-print and data hosting to preregistration and more. That includes OSF.

Please read our amazing interview with @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social in @hammerandhope.bsky.social where I share brilliant, earth-shattering, once-in-a-generation comms insights like the following:

The future of AI superintelligence is already here, it is just not evenly distributed yet #genai #llms #cogsci #chess https://tomstafford.substack.com/p/superhuman-intelligence-already-exists

On Sunday @npr.org the UK's independent reviewer of international terrorism laws said about Palestine Action, the law applies whether you are a "hairy foreigner, or you're some nice white old lady sitting in the road". I can't stop thinking about the casual racism coming from the King's Counsel.

To concur, I think LLMs in their current design & use are inherently flawed because they rely on a confusion of information with text. (& specifically with a specific type of text that mimics written human language) But information is very much not reducible to text.