In case you thought I was exaggerating, here is the "debate" on Kimmel from Newsnight. David Frum explaining the horrific first-amendment-breaching executive overreach. British right wing hacks: bUt HiS jOkE wAs iNaCCuRaTe!

I guess the Ovenden window shifted.

Fascists ruin everything. Here I am, trying to enjoy the switch into Autumn and the fascists are off fascing. Why can't they, I dunno, bake an apple crumble or something?

I didn't realise hobbyists were being funded by universities! Here I was thinking that most University staff members have an undergraduate degree, maybe a Masters, and a PhD. Y'know, the 6-8 years of qualifications that make you a professional researcher. Hierarchy eats people's brains.

*PSA EVENT* This #Teaching & #Learning Webinar will look at using LEGO® in #PoliticalScience & #InternationalStudies as a Flexible and Effective Tool for Playful Learning’ with Dr. David Wilcox & Dr. Giuditta Fontana @unibirmingham.bsky.social 📆 19 November, 1 - 2pm, online ➡️ buff.ly/VEPbxAy

It is always sad to see yet another victim of the horrific levels of gun violence in the United States. I'm sure we all hope that such an appalling incident leads to greater political attention to this epidemic of senseless and needless carnage.

Publication alert: Commercial determinants of infant and child health: A focus on Nestlé’s baby food products marketed in Africa www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Man I'm old. After a few weeks of being away on collection day, I just thought to myself "Ooh, the recycling bins will be emptied today"

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

"Commentary *like this* about a deputy Prime Minister felt politically unsurvivable" - Chris Mason, BBC ten o'cıock news. This script over these pictures treats vandalism & criminal damage as a legitimate form of democratic voice. The BBC should avoid doing that, esp in broader current climate

The last sentence is more famous but people remember it wrong. The line preceding it is more important. Fascists mostly don’t care who being stomped on, they’re just trying to give people the thrill of being the boot.

🔥

No, Carswell and others like him haven’t been ‘radicalised’. They’ve always thought like this. The only thing that has changed is that they now realise they can get away with saying it out loud.

It's amazing with all these flags in my local area. Labour have only been in power for a year and they've managed to get people to love the country again. So many people expressing their pride in our open and tolerant society by flying the flag 🥲

Our department @yorkpsychology.bsky.social has 2 open lecturer positions (=tenure-track Assistant Prof). Social psych is one of the priority areas, so consider applying if you study social behavior, incl. intergroup relations, culture, environmental or media psych. jobs.york.ac.uk/vacancy/lect...

Reform will have to reselect in Croydon, as their initial candidate for Mayor had been dead for 6 months when they selected her, Inside Croydon report Being dead is one way to pass the social media vetting but was likely to get noticed eventually insidecroydon.com/2025/08/27/f...

The two articles are summarised here: www.ppesydney.net/all-that-has... The writing of this, among many things in my life, was inspired by @ultha.bsky.social

Congratulations here to Wes Streeting for condensing the essence of the Westminster Monoparty into just 23 seconds. Outstanding work.

I get my students to do this, essentially. They do a better job of it too.

Langdon Winner (1977) the AI field has never been short of visionaries that saw straight through much of the industry’s destructive model yet here we are witnessing the destruction time and time again

Saw such flags near my road yesterday. Not knowing the story my immediate reaction was

Slightly diminish a band: The Beastie Babies

Good to see vegans included vitamin P(etrochemical) in their diet

Arrived today, this is, deliciously ironically, my most fancy book. Also, to layer on the irony, it's older than I am and looks like it's never been read.

Anyone got a metaphor for when the government embeds the revolving door as policy? The automatic doors? The paternoster? www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

No one sums up the utter shamelessness of the British press and the ugly politics of Farage quite like Private Eye.

Being on the left, and having heard the "if you don't vote for us you're voting for the Tories"/"you don't understand political strategy"/"you have to be moderate and pragmatic" stic, it's fascinating that Labour can't even unite the centre with their current right wing politics.

I think Orwell put it best www.orwell.ru/library/essa...

🌟 Saba Joshi was awarded a BISA ECR Research Grant to consolidate her book project: 'Gender and land-use change in South and Southeast Asian resource frontiers' - examining gender & agrarian resistance in Cambodia & India 📚 Read here 👉 buff.ly/uY1SU7W @juanitamarieelias.bsky.social

Came across a doozy of a paper today. "Seeding Science, Courting Conclusions" (2005) by Freudenburg, in which he recounts the process of Exxon seeking to solicit him to write a peer-reviewed journal article for use in Exxon Valdez lawsuits. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

I just spent £30 ordering a hardback, gilded edge copy of Veblen's Theory of the Leisure Class. I hope he'd be amused.

The less Wes Streeting sees of power the better

How not to interpret statistics, case #5,302,670

Questions to which the Answer is Not Many From a Telegraph columnist - who has been on a long journey over the years.

Our book is out! A critical interrogation of interdisciplinarity as a transformative practice to confront power in a time of crisis. My chapter: "The climate crisis and interdisciplinary pedagogy". Buy it, request it for your library, and message me for my chapter! www.routledge.com/Interdiscipl...

Went on a bit of a pub crawl to lesser visited places last night. Turns out my preference for independent over corporate pubs is also a preference for cheaper pints. When did £6+ pints become normal? This is fucking Yorkshire.

"Although the new ChatGPT is more intelligent than ever, it also has debilitating impostor syndrome. So, if it appears to be in the process of overthrowing the human race, simply tell it, 'Hey, did you hear that Google Gemini got tenure?'" mcsweeneys.net/articles/cha...

Can't help thinking that Lewis Capaldi's "Someone You Loved" girlfriend is right shot of him. The lyrics from his perspective sound like a lot of emotional work

Worth a watch: Head of Signal, Meredith Whittaker, on so-called "agentic AI" and the difference between how it's described in the marketing and what access and control it would actually require to work as advertised.

Rees articulates 12 warnings from the rise of the Nazis: spread conspiracy theories, use them & us, lead as hero, corrupt youth, connive with elite, attack human rights, exploit faith, use enemies, eliminate resistance, escalate racism, kill at a distance, stoke fear. Trump's ✔️✔️

Man, of all those cool imagined futures, this is what we get. Climate change, war, and the undermining of education and journalism

Before you ask, no, I don't want to use your AI companion

Feeling the Frodo point today

Check out this piece on AI plagiarism by @rpkeener.bsky.social: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Study on London 20 mph limits shows: - collisions ⬇️ 35% - casualties ⬇️ 36% - fatal/serious injuries ⬇️ 34% - child casualties ⬇️ 46% - child deaths ⬇️ 75% - walkers, cyclists, motorcyclists killed/seriously injured ⬇️ 28% etsc.eu/20mph-limits...

That awkward first post... I'm here now as well. Interested in social and public policy, labour market and employment issues (notably self-employment), teaching and learning in higher education, politics, a good dosage of art and culture.

"Blue Labour" is exactly the sort of politics that is a red line for me voting for Labour. When all your choices are the same purple shit, what's the fucking point?

Adobe’s Acrobat repeatedly asking if it can generate a garbage summary of the article I’m trying to read