new open access paper with colleagues @jacktaggart.bsky.social and @jptilsted.bsky.social in @ripejournal.bsky.social it offers a neo-gramscian perspective on the political economy of plastics / plastic pollution, exploring attempts by dominant actors to sustain 'plastic hegemony'

"I love you Jesus," I cry as I tuck into my fifth Easter egg of the day

Tired today, but continuing with couch to 5k because I don't want Sarah Millican to be disappointed with me

My publications are very much like buses. You wait ages for one then two come along at once. Latest is about race, jazz criticism, and afterlives of empire - part of a special issue in Atlantic Studies. Also great to be publishing new work on April Fools... www.tandfonline.com/eprint/ZRZUR...

Cartoonishly evil

Kittens facing the outside for the first time

This is a common view (see Venugopal, 2015 for example), but I find it a bit strange. Capitalism has a much longer and varied history of institutional forms and yet you don't see a common refrain being "I can't define it".

That same power - running AI compute [sic] - could lose up to $1 billion per hour.

For the UK, Norway "provides a crucial insight: alignment without representation may be a politically stable arrangement. But one with mounting costs that are difficult to sustain in an era of geopolitical turbulence." ✍️Nick Sitter & Ulf Sverdrup on Norway & the EU 🔗 ukandeu.ac.uk/norways-rela...

THAT'S NOT HOW YOU USE ALL CAPS

An article designed to euthanize the reputation of a once great journal after a years long decline 🪦 Theory and Society

I'm worried what my cat has been looking at online

the Norwegian campaign against enshittification is pretty great tbf vimeo.com/1168468796

You can't really get any more democratic than one man, one vote.

You may call it nostalgia, but I miss the old pre-corporatised internet. It was a time when men were real men, women were real women, and real websites had a permanent "Under Construction" gif

When it comes down to it, I reckon Guinness Zero is a more fundamentally transformative technology than AI.

love how we killed the old, frail anti-nuke ayatollah just to have him replaced with his young, healthy son who wants nukes and who just had his father, mother, wife, and child murdered on the same day by his mortal enemy. surely this will bring peace to the region

Actual post.

If only there was alternative energy that wasn't reliant on geopolitics. We can but dream.

Political scientists as a whole are salty about Goodwin

I know it won't happen, but it would be nice to hear "God, Labour voters are so delusional. Labour can't win, so a vote for Labour is a vote for Farage. They don't understand the British political system!"

It would be hard to design a more ideal reader for this paper; I grew up a white suburban punk/indie kid who avidly devoured the NME in the late-70s to mid-80s, who first encountered Black Britain thro' music, & who went on to become an historian. But you won't have to be me to find it fascinating

It is just me or is "Epic Fury" just a really dumb name for an Operation? It sounds like a teenage trying to be proud of their tantrums. Now I think about it, it fits well. Though "Operation Shit the Bed" may be more even more apt.

You have to love the gall of it. The US has just stuck its cock in a wasp's nest, then turns around to say

Reform win a seat: The true Volk have spoken and we all must listen. Greens win a seat: Early reports that Muslims may have ‘voted’ (an ancient Islamic practice designed to steal elections). How severely should the franchise be limited in response?

I'm generally not one to criticise fashion sense, but she might want to reconsider this particular look

2029 Only Lib Dems Can Win Here

An independent commission of inquiry into the 2022 Leicester violence has published its report here. The panel, chaired by Professor Juan E Mendez, was supported by SOAS, LSE and the Monitoring Group. [A seperate govt-commissioned inquiry has yet to publish its findings] www.leicesterinquiry.org

Written by Richard Titmuss in 1956. Imagine what he would have said about now. (Quoted in Ben Jackson’s superb Equality and the British Left.

Yesterday, those who teach Intro to Sociology at Florida colleges (as opposed to universities) received a ready-made curriculum from the state and were ordered to teach it. Yes, you read that correctly. The *state* is enforcing a curriculum on college profs, complete w/ the following restrictions:

Robin Williams warned the US about Donald Trump and his links to Miss America Pageants and underage girls in 2012. Really should have listened.

We see here "free speech" being morphed into "everyone has to listen to us"

I feel bad for getting my partner into Leicester City during the promotion campaign

Dear Bluesky Meet Harlequin and Dude

🌟PSA Mackenzie #BookPrize Shortlist 2025-26🌟 Congratulations to Dr Gabriele Badano & Dr Alasia Nuti for 'Politicizing Political Liberalism: On the Containment of IlIiberal and Antidemocratic Views' published by OUP @academic.oup.com ➡️ buff.ly/X13TKjK #Books #Politics #Liberalism

Building a house of sloppy racist cards - the pinnacle of human intelligence

I'm back in Leicester and I'm starting to think the fascists are right - living in a multicultural city is awful. Namely 1) living near a mosque means there are lots of parking spaces taken on a Friday 2) there's a shop I don't go into (Indian sweets are not for me) Put together, utter torture

Can we please retire the use of the phrase "legitimate concerns"? Or, at least, start using the phrase "bastard concerns".

At this point we seriously have to consider if Donald Trump is actually 47 crows in a suit.

But what if there's someone in charge who's not as morally upstanding as Trump?!?!

My teenage collection of music was on CDs and mp3s that took at least half an hour to download

On a brand new train carriage (they're even training staff about where things are). I feel privileged to smell the new train smell

I've been out of oil politics and international relations for a good few years, so I wouldn't say I'm an expert. But it does position me as being good at seeing uninformed opinions at the moment, and the arrogance built on those uninformed opinions. Stop parading your ignorance so fucking proudly.

just saying: it's possible that "I'm gonna dramatically constrict my state capacity while plotting dramatic imperial expansion, and expanding my set of internal enemies while alienating most of my foreign allies" is the beginning of a world-historical masterstroke. but also possible that it isn't

Starting to think "Trumped up charges" was accidentally introduced by a time traveller.

The US has reportedly been importing kangaroos for this very moment

NEW: Trump says Venezuelan President Maduro has been “captured” and flown out of the country. Full on regime change. Trump to hold a press conference from Mar-a-Lago at 11 ET.

Fascists gonna war crime