New Blog by Hirah Azhar generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk/history/2025...

Ep 5 of The War We See out today! Delighted to talk to Rebecca Newell, Head of Art at the IWM about war art, the evolving role of the war artist & questions around documentation, representation & access. Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/a... Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/1lTD...

A complete stranger pointed at me and shouted “dirty little socialist!” when I was parking my car this morning. I am, yes, but how does he know???

Introducing "The War We See", my podcast on the history of war imagery, feat. conversations w/ some truly excellent guests. Trailer’s out today & first episode drops on the 24th. Pls give it a listen + subscribe/share if it’s of interest! Spotify: lnkd.in/d4y4_-TT Apple Podcasts: lnkd.in/dHkgp-Mg

AI’s been an amazing case study disproving the concept of supply and demand

There's something otherworldly about forced starvation. It's not explicitly violent. It's slower, more systematic. It kills differently, depending on your physiology. It is so unbelievably cruel, it defies understanding. How can anyone bear this?

Every post about Palestinians in Gaza being systematically starved attracts a long line of the worst people you can imagine. Sneering, jeering, labelling everything "propaganda", denying what's visible & has been legitimately validated. I can't comprehend this level of cruelty.

interesting thing about the ai discourse is that you will say "companies pumped a trillion into glorified chatbots" and get the answer of "well ai will revolutionize medical diagnosis/chem research etc" and its like ok but those companies didnt fund those, they very pointedly funded the chatbots

here we go again with the heavily fetishised bombing of brown people

They were careless people, they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness.

I do genuinely think that if a lot of people knew just quite how horrendous and inhumane the UK's immigration system is there would be fewer people claiming that it needs to be made harsher. Not all obviously, but a number. Too many don't pay attention though. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

who the fuck are you to demand anything

If you stop thinking that Germany's response to anything Israel is about Holocaust guilt and instead about rewriting German history, you'd understand German politics better. 🧵

Every day, good people desperately push the limits of how they tell the story of this genocide so that those with power can finally be moved to take action. The question then is not “why won’t you do anything?” but “how do I dismantle the system that gives people like you control?”

What else should I care about when a population is being deliberately pummelled and starved in this brazen, shameful dismantling of international law, norms, and basic human decency? “This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal".

It messes with my brain so much that there is widespread consensus on the active genocide in Gaza, but then... nothing. More death, more hunger, more trauma. I hope this photo & thousands more haunt those with the power to enforce change until their last breath. (Anadolu/Getty)

Please can someone tell me how one is meant to joyously assimilate into British society when all public discourse, every bleeding moment, tells us we’re not wanted, we need to be disincentivised from staying & crueler, harsher policies are needed to make us leave & keep us out?

On the anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, we thought we'd answer a question that's often asked, "If they raised the Mary Rose, why not raise the Titanic?" Allow our scaled diagram to explain...

Jesus Christ can’t you people just let millennials express some entirely deserved outrage and anger over getting hit with yet another major financial crisis without parachuting in to finger wag at us about it

Some days I think we didn't mourn the death of print media as long and as hard as we perhaps needed to.

Tech bros cheering on the cuts to grant funding built businesses and wealth on the back of decades of university R&D work. Much of that knowledge was given away to the public. This is basic pulling-up-the-ladder nonsense via rewriting history. They owe the public, not the other way around.

OpenAI complaining about Deepseek: oh horrors, the plagiarism machine got plagiarised.

Worth noting that Biden also wanted to facilitate the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. Most of the Jordanians I interviewed at all levels at the time always thought this was the endgame of the Abraham Accords paradigm... www.reuters.com/world/egypt-...

Disgraceful bigotry at play. Badenoch and her fellow dog whistlers would do well to spend time talking to people working at Women's Aid and Rape Crisis. She would find there is a 'rape culture' here which needs addressing. Her government cut community funding which worked to change attitudes.

Hard to overstate just how much of the tech industry’s horrifically dystopian present grew right out of its transparently misogynistic past

70k tons of bombs dropped on Gaza. Millions displaced. Millions traumatized by injury, arrest & loss. Astronomical no. of people killed. And this genocide is sullying its third calendar year. What a failure we are as a species. Peace is an empty word. May the new year bring justice.

This is excellent 👇 If you haven't had the chance to watch this lecture or read the article version yet, it is well worth your time.

Too much of a procrastinator to start; too much of a perfectionist to finish

No sleep tonight as Syria frees itself 💚💚

The NYT tech reporters who actually cover Musk and his businesses the most don’t parrot his PR and propaganda like this. Unfortunately it’s another hallmark of the politics desk.

This almost took my breath away.

This is a brilliant and super helpful threat!

It’s so depressing to see some of the loudest, most cherished voices for Palestinian liberation refuse to offer that same respect and agency to the Syrians. We have been shoved back in time to 2011.

"Western universities are increasingly prioritizing ideas of neutrality over a principled commitment to free speech and the pursuit of truth". theconversation.com/universities... #Palestine #EndGenocide

It's hard to be pleasant when every single thing you were taught as a child - kindness, empathy, respect, loyalty, compassion for the poor & marginalised - has been stomped on by capitalists, pissed on by fascists, & completely snuffed out by quiet bystanders.

Revealed: Israel used US weapons in strike that killed journalists www.theguardian.com/world/2024/n...

Israeli airstrikes have now killed 3,500 people in Lebanon. It was 3,000 barely two weeks ago. That's 500 killed during this recent period where reports of ceasefire talks making progress have made the rounds. Via @aljazeera.com.

The Biden admin has lied to congress about what it knew, that Israel was in fact blocking humanitarian aid to Gaza. Two separate government bodies told them. I repeat, in very clear terms: the Biden admin knew that Israel was starving children and lied about it. www.propublica.org/article/gaza...

Gaza’s brave and incredible journalists. Many killed and injured by Israel with execution targets on their backs like Hossam Shabat, victims of Israel’s genocide of Palestinians, that they both live, and report on. Absolutely horrific.

Trump Locks Bathroom Door So Elon Musk Can’t Follow Him In theonion.com/trump-locks-...

Everything about this is horrifying. Hundreds of women from Sub-Saharan African countries reportedly raped in past 18 months, people being beaten and abandoned in the desert, by a police force Europe is funding. Starmer should not be ‘learning’ anything from this www.theguardian.com/global-devel...

An introduction of sorts I suppose!

A self-reflection on growing up in Quebec from a Bangladeshi student. Sigh. It's taking me a long time to grade these testimonies about racism in white-majority nations.

Me, cheerfully writing the most awful shit about something other than my research:

Hello to followers old and new! I’m on a wee break between teaching classes, so I’m stomping around on crunchy leaves in this gorg place, trying to make eye contact with a dog so that I can get some cuddles in.