It’s infuriating to me that I need to evaluate media to determine whether it’s AI generated now. The great “time saver” technology wastes incalculable time and energy for people who want to retain their grasp on reality

this does not shock me in the slightest

The recently cleaned and restored walls of Canterbury Cathedral and a Christmas market in the precincts. What could be more uplifting?

Today's migration stats illustrate the migration doom loop in action... (from my presentation at the IMF last week)

Which is why the extreme right's waffle about values has nothing to do with Christianity.

Every late ballot counts! You have until Wednesday to post them.

Surely that's a mandolin?

"Taxation is essential for practical action in our economy because we no longer live in simple communities where need is obvious and our neighbour is familiar" Sue explores how and why, as Christians, we should challenge narratives about tax.

This is what happens when you allow your flag to get hijacked by racists.

I've been a regular user of @wikipedia.org for many years and became a regular donor about a year ago. It makes sense to support those who provide such a valuable service, and it feels good to invest in what you believe in.

"Compared with other European countries, the UK received the fifth largest number of asylum seekers in the year ending March 2025, and the seventeenth largest intake when measured per head of population" - Home Office data www.gov.uk/government/s...

My blog from mid-March 2020 argued that we shouldn't have delayed lockdown & that the stated reason (that the public wouldn't comply with lockdown) had no basis in behavioural science & that people would likely be more resilient dontpaniccorrectingmythsaboutthecrowd.blogspot.com/2020/03/coro...

Boris Johnson's inept handling of Covid demonstrates why electorates living in normal times should vote for governments as if they were living in times of emergency. Never presume you can vote for unserious people on the assumption that they will never have to make serious decisions.

Study finds nearly two-thirds of AI-generated citations are fabricated or contain errors

1/ How does the COVID Inquiry's Module 2 report align with what we said in @independentsage.bsky.social at the time? A 🧵on Transparency, Early & Decisive Action, Scientific Advice, Integration of Social & Economic Harms, Communication and Behavioural Science, Governance, Data and Preparedness

Students using AI couldn’t remember anything they’d written minutes earlier while students who used their brains could recite their essays almost verbatim The connection was severed. Thought from word. Effort from understanding open.substack.com/pub/thehuman...

"data centers already accounted for 22% of Ireland's total electricity consumption in 2024. In the Dublin/Meath area, where a third of Ireland's population lives, 48% of the electricity was used by data centers in 2023." @abeba.bsky.social & @krisshrishak.bsky.social ✍🏼 www.iccl.ie/press-releas...

Mahmood is doing that evil thing of taking ONE very, very extreme example and presenting it as if it is indicative of the entire cohort of asylum seekers rather than the wild exception that it is. The RW press have and will lap that sort of thing up. Meanwhile the flames of hate burn hotter.

I'm reading through the white paper or whatever it is. RESTORING ORDER AND CONTROL: A statement on the government’s asylum and returns policy www.gov.uk/government/p...

The govt's proposed new asylum laws are impractical, ineffectual, and outright cruel. Aping the rhetoric of Reform won't fix the real issues in this country; it will only stir up more false divisions and endanger already vulnerable communities.

Cultures don't die when they're in contact with others. They die when nobody lives them any more. The patriotic thing to do is to do something positive for the vitality of your culture. Blaming others and trying to keep them away is not patriotic.

Apart from all the rest, this is completely incompatible with encouraging integration. Even children born in the UK to refugees will presumably have to be prepared for the possibility that at any moment they and they’re parents will be deported to somewhere they’ve never been.

When modern Christians say “it’s not the government’s job to help the poor,” they’re not echoing Jesus, Paul, the prophets, or the early church. They’re echoing figures like Ayn Rand, who despised Christianity’s communal ethic of compassion and called altruism a “moral evil.”

Going to the game is a good birthday treat! Perhaps there will even be points!

I don't personally like the league tables. They strike me as an example of attempts at quantification and competition doing more harm than good. But looking at this feels nice. God knows we try, and it's heartening to see that our work for student experience is noticed and appreciated.

Gelsenkirchen ist königsblau statt braunblau. Am Sonntag alle wählen gehen, damit das so bleibt!

It was a good first day at the symposium "Sustainability and spirituality: Building ecologies of hope" hosted by the Academy for Sustainable Futures here at Canterbury Christ Church University. So many inspiring talks! Time for me to talk tomorrow and ruin everything. 😉

We've reached the "concentrate asylum seekers in camps" stage of the UK's sprint towards fascism. What's scary is this is another example of politicians saying out loud things that would have been unthinkable not long ago. Will Labour follow? www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

"Taming legends" sounds epic. It's certainly impressive.

Academics are under unrelenting pressure to accept the narrative of the inevitability of #generativeAI & to embrace it in teaching & learning. We resist - because it is ecologically destructive, ethically corrupt, & because it undermines the thinking abilities that make us both human & intelligent.

Back to the old home for a few days. See you soon for the conference and start of term! #trainsnotplanes

New blog post about a piece of research published earlier this year. I hope it's of interest. thisisablogabouteverything.wordpress.com/2025/08/21/a...

Like so many things, stereotypes don't require logical coherence. Germany is often seen as bureaucratic, but also as efficient - and there are reasons for both. So in order to renew my passport, I had to turn up in person to the embassy in London and take a day off to make this happen. [1/2]

#AcademisSky #PsychSciSky #socialpsych #polisky #sociology Now in Open Access, Journal of Theoretical Social Psychology : Group Relative Deprivation and Violent Radicalism: Moving Toward a Comprehensive Model - Guimond - 2025 - Wiley Online Library onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1155/...

Excellent new paper out by @mikeypasek.bsky.social, @jeremyginges.bsky.social et al on the connections between religious cognition and cooperation— VERY ambitious cross cultural work!

This is how insane people sound when you tell them why A.I. is bad

I don't UCU post much now but I'll do one about pay for a sec, as IMV we're headed towards a predictable fail state unless people get realistic, and quick. 1. the UCEA pay offer is comically bad 2. Going out in fall on "pay" is a terrible idea 3. Go out on saving jobs and saving the sector instead

Hard to express how annoying this is - surely after 30 years of the internet, people who make online forms should have figured out that some people’s names (as recorded in their passports) do have special characters?? (Solidarity with my fellow apostrophe owners!)

Fresh strawberries from the local farm shop. Can you smell them, too?

This helps explain why it's so hard to automate farm labor! It's not that it's too hard to make a robot pick crops. It's that humans are really, REALLY good at it. It's hard to make a robot that's BETTER at it than people.

Don’t remember where I saw this library flyer a while back but it’s great

An zwei Schalke-Spiele pro Tag könnte ich mich gewöhnen.

Great thread by @ipanalysis.bsky.social on AI and qualitative analysis (and other things). I remain completely baffled about the enthusiasm for using AI to do qualitative analysis and (reflexive) TA specifically... not least because it is profoundly unethical, exploitative, eco disaster technology

A huge thanks to my #ISPP 2025 co-presenters @nuriamartinez.bsky.social and @evangelospsych.bsky.social & our discussant Sandra Obradovic for making our sysmposium: 'The Role of Mass Events in Shaping Societal Identities: Studies of the Crowds After the Death of Queen Elizabeth II' so enjoyable

Pure relief in that scream at the end. What a great match it was from both players.

I’m in a Facebook group for translators who work in German/English. We have long debates on the best way to convey tricky words and concepts that don’t have a direct translation - such as the German way of adding -kultur to words. Essenskultur, Arbeitskultur, Fahrkultur … AI can’t do this.

Nobody would take the prize seriously any more.

Why do searche engines offer AI as the firste resulte ynstead of just a site wyth the informacioun? It ys lyke lookinge for a photographe and ynstead beinge tolde "Oh no, we have a cartoon hermit crabbe who kan drawe the photo for you but will sometymes make mistakes."

Stay tuned ⌛ @yasemingacar.bsky.social @swedishprotests.bsky.social It will be available for pre-order starting in September! www.routledge.com/Social-Psych...