‘Freeports and bonded warehouses, free-trade zones and forged bills of lading, under-invoicing and over-invoicing: all these things provide opportunities to camouflage the flow of illicit money.’ John Lanchester on money laundering. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Or should VCs and the academic members of their senior teams instead be required to lead and teach 1 undergraduate module per term/semester, including all module admin and marking? Non-academic members of SMTs could all annually take a module, completing all assessments. Serious counterproposal. 3/3

Really looking forward to this talk and the discussion to follow. You can join by Teams or in person if you are near Oxford.

A new study claims charging VAT on Scottish private schools will leave the state worse off by £180m a year. That’s a big claim. But it rests on some VERY shaky assumptions 🧵

This helped me understand why I couldn't get any writing done while working in an administrative job & why I'm struggling to decide how best to use my time in my new academic job

Reinforces my belief that HBO's Silicon Valley is the most accurate depiction of the tech industry

‘Here’s the uncomfortable but universal truth – the recording, posed as a safety net, was actually a trapdoor.’ thetab.com/2026/03/13/c...

1. A short thread on a Bluesky phenomenon that might be described as "They are a dead-eyed cultist who must be cast out lest the heresy take root!" OP has blocked me for mocking them - I'd usually obscure their name but since they themselves were quote-dunking to demand someone else be blocked ...

Commentary: I Am The God Of Your Children. I Am The Final Parent.

And okay, yes, concerns about "cheating", but I'm more worried about general demoralisation of students and how they understand the purpose of their lives, their agency, their capacity to think and create and engage with the world-- to do meaningful work.

‘America’s radicals developed a distinctive language of freedom, as far away as possible from the white man’s freedom to dominate others. These radical traditions have always been embattled, but they have not vanished.’ @adamshatz.bsky.social’s Winter Lecture: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

We wrote a thing about AI, fascism, and why framing this as "hype" is too apolitical www.liberalcurrents.com/deflating-hy...

Walking to and from South Bank last night, there was evidence of unambiguously Far Right behaviour (I saw a Hitler salute), and also a lot of extreme drunkenness. A couple in their 50s trying to walk to Waterloo, and barely managing it etc

This is one of the most beautiful things I have witnessed, the craft here is impeccable.

‘Much of what universities spend a great deal of time discussing - such as global strategy, impact & innovation, development & philanthropy - even research… [has] very little effect on the bottom line.’ Useful primer on HE finance by @profserious.bsky.social profserious.substack.com/p/understand...

Piazza is a course discussion platform used by many colleges and universities. Piazza requires students to provide the following information when signing up. From 2017-2019, Palantir Technologies paid Piazza $916,000 for access to this data. www.sec.gov/Archives/edg...

👀!! Just out - A sociology of dragons: danah boyd on AI, Trump, and critique @zephoria.bsky.social talking to @busedoyu.bsky.social www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

UCU members at @ucuedinburgh.bsky.social are striking today over University of Edinburgh plans to make £140million in cuts and threaten jobs We're fighting against these reckless proposals Share to show your support ✊

Congratulations to Dr. Noteboom! All of us at EFI and @technomoralfutures.bsky.social are so proud to have supported your PhD research and very grateful to get to work with you. Congrats also to your amazing supervisors @jenr.bsky.social and @karengregory.bsky.social!

I'm very happy to share that I've officially completed my PhD in Sociology on datafication & higher education at the University of Edinburgh! I passed my viva late last year and have been working on some corrections over the last few months alongside my day job @edfuturesinstitute.bsky.social .

No real negatives since our delivery van went electric other than people occasionally shouting Judas at us.

Lots of great details in @semaforben.bsky.social's latest; extremely helpful for mapping out who is influencing whom on the right. Have been thinking for a while that private groupchats are at least as crazymaking as public social media, and much harder to study.

I've always wondered where the 1% come to their consensus, couldn't just be X, makes sense they opt for Bounded Social Media Spaces like Whatsapp or Signal as they claim they have to go private in "a soft authoritarian age of social media shaming and censorship" www.semafor.com/article/04/2...

Really interesting.

Absolute power can be a terrible weakness. On Trump, and how to mobilize against him www.programmablemutter.com/p/absolute-p...

I got to write a short piece – On Compost – for the LRB. (If you know me irl, you’ll understand that this is a happy thing)

"Data Kindness" is a concept that @jesgilbert.bsky.social and I developed during our book tour for The Secret Life of Data. We've never written about it. Til now. time.com/7273469/data...

a great deal of the problems with the UK debate are that people try to import American policy analyses as if they were strange tasting candy, then sell it from opaquely financed central London locations, also like candy.

The group chat is one of those omnipresent media forms that don't get five percent of the attention of a TikTok or Twitter

I’m not spending another 15 years of my life on this. It suffices to say: 1. How do you ask “right questions” with “zero education”? 2. Who would want that? 3. Are you afraid enough in your white collar job to finally accept that AI is pure labor busting?

🧵 PLEA-RANT In the midst of all this I'm still going to be puffing 🎥 @sapphiregoss.bsky.social and I made for @edfuturesinstitute.bsky.social and @jcultecon.bsky.social that releases on Feb 20 YouTube & in person. I want to explain why it still matters efi.ed.ac.uk/event/opens-...

Students in Serbia are at the forefront of nationwide protests and institutional occupations, which have brought higher education—and the whole country—to a halt. I wrote a text explaining what it is all about, please read & share, thank you! 🤝 #students #highered #Serbia

Today I sketch the threat posed to democracy in the UK by the emerging mix of technology and oligarchy in the US

The Sorrowful Tale of the Dread Pirate Roberts. Ross Ulbricht's pardon, and the squalid bargain between Trump and the Silicon Valley right www.programmablemutter.com/p/the-sorrow...

Duolingo reports a 216% increase for users learning Mandarin Chinese in the U.S. following a transition from TikTok to Xiaohongshu, also known as “RedNote.”

All I can think about is

I saw a post about Warren Zevon’s cyberpunk album this morning and it is awesome: ‘There's a prayer each night that I always pray / Let the data guide me through every day…’ youtu.be/k7hZivXj8E0?...

It was great talking to @neilselwyn.bsky.social about my recent paper exploring university students' experiences of platformisation. Have a listen below, and if that piques your interest you can find the full paper (open access) here: doi.org/10.1080/1743...

Revisiting Les Back's take on the PhD viva (goldsmithspress.pubpub.org/pub/7bq2w058...) and the closing paragraph made me chuckle...

This is a very good read www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

www.programmablemutter.com/p/after-soft... After software eats the world, what comes out the other end?

Just out! New paper on #EdTech with Janja Komljenovic & Sam Sellars: "Turning universities into data-driven organisations: seven dimensions of change" #datafication #HigherEducation #data #assetization #universities link.springer.com/article/10.1...

“I was stunned to learn that eduroam WiFi can be used to identify and locate anyone on university campuses,” they added. “I don’t think students and staff would be comfortable using eduroam if they knew they would be snooped on like this.” theferret.scot/edinburgh-un...

Really valuable new article on the work of university data stewards. Interesting that stewards are cynical/resigned about privacy but think students are 'indifferent'/'careless' (my research shows resignation/cynicism a big part of the picture for students too): journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Putting my career on the line to make a run at Goliath: www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2... Please share.

We now have a zoom link for this, drop me an email [email protected] if you’d like it. 🥁 @rachelodwyer.bsky.social @karengregory.bsky.social @busedoyu.bsky.social @gemmamilne.bsky.social

Sign-up for this event is now open! @rachelodwyer.bsky.social's lecture feat. @karengregory.bsky.social Donald MacKenzie & Philip Roscoe - attendance in person or Zoom - www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/tokens-bit...

Feeling seen by this essay on risk (by Pamela Richards) in Becker's Writing for Social Scientists...