Did you see this headline? Did you feel the requisite anger and rage at asylum seekers that The Sun was asking of you? Did you maybe blame Starmer because.... um... it was probably his fault🤷‍♀️ Would you like to know the reality behind the headline? Course you would!😜 Let's take a look 🧵 1/25

This is a good analogy. Very useful in carefully controlled settings for specific usages, but unfortunately being widely inserted into everything and used without training or PPE and poisoning a lot of things and people and we’re going to pay a tonne of money to remove it safely in the future

An interesting difference between county identity in Ireland and England, is that in England county identity is arguably strongest where it acts a point of distinctiveness from a generic English identity. Whereas in Ireland (and particularly in the diaspora), county identity *accentuates* Irishness

The Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood sure has put on a show… But how much is really serious & how much is just a theatre of cruelty? Here’s the TRUTH about this week’s asylum changes youtu.be/w6Nr4ccjMlM?...

My grandfather-in-law fled Nazi Germany with his parents in 1938 and settled in the US. He refused to set foot back in Germany for over 60 years, despite all the changes made in the interim. It didn’t matter that Germany became “safe.” He wanted nothing to do with the place.

youtube.com/watch?v=yRcR... Interessante Einordnungen von Lanz und seinen Gästen. Danke!

Just because it's liberating to say obvious shit out loud sometimes: this is not what "defensive" means.

So now the strategy has shifted from ending wars and creating a new board of peace to creating Armageddon? All major religions preach peace. To mobilise them as a justification for war is just not okay.

One of my favourite sides of politics/media.

I don't care how warmongers pray. No religion favours war over peace. I care about the loss of life, regardless of nationality or religion. Nobody should care about prices at the petrol station. People are being killed. Whether it's cheap to fill up a gas guzzler is not the point right now.

So I guess we’re back to the same old story of the WMD’s that didn’t exist…

Trump is boasting about Iran agreeing to talks, which is what they were literally IN THE MIDDLE OF when Trump ordered the USA to attack Iran. "Hurrah, we're back to square one, only this time the whole of the Middle East is at war. Am I the greatest President ever, or what?"

A big part of the authoritarian playbook is war. War takes over the news. War blots out criticism. War divides a nation’s people, subjecting those against it to being called unpatriotic. War grants leaders all sorts of emergency powers. War consumes everything else. We mustn’t let this war do so.

Why we should vote Green. No other major party says things like this about the state of Britain today. "We are working to line the pockets of billionaires. We are being bled dry...We have shown we don't have to accept being turned against each other at all." Hannah Spencer MP

"The most relevant question is not 'is this government bad?' or 'do they deserve it?' The most relevant question is 'will this use of military force make things better, enough to be worth the death and suffering it’ll impose?' It’s hard to see how this will." www.liberalcurrents.com/internationa...

Just naked racism from Farage and the Mail. Only British and commonwealth citizens are allowed to vote. It's not 'stealing' to legally take part in your own country's elections

I've also been struck by this. The Trump regime is normalising the decapitation of governments it dislikes by assassinating or abducting their leaders. There are good reasons why states have tended not to make this a norm.

New, from me: Why is American attacking Iran? It helps to have a coherent reason, to justify to the US public the costs in money and blood, to allies about the potential long-term risks, and to Iranians about the future of their country. Lets take a look 🧵 donmoynihan.substack.com/p/the-reason...

Just your regularly scheduled share of this masterpiece by @tomgauld.bsky.social

The most heartening thing about Gorton & Denton is that aping the language and agenda of the far right is shown NOT to be the new centre. People want hope, peace, community and nature more than the immigrant-blaming, billionaire-enabling politics of hate, greed and division. Centrists should listen.

BREAKING: A wonderful speech from Green Party's Hannah Spencer after winning the Gorton and Denton by-election. Congratulations!

The richest man owns X. The second and third richest men control Google. The fourth richest man owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. The fifth richest man owns The Washington Post. And now the sixth richest could soon take over both Paramount and Warner Bros. See the problem here?

Can we just reflect on the fact that the Tories got only 1.8% of the vote in Gorton and Denton … and bear that in mind the next time Kemi Badenough opens her mouth?

If Labour MPs refuse to see last night’s result for what it was … a clear message from the public that they want to see a more left-wing, more progressive, more youthful … (dare I say it) a more socialist offering … then they might as well give up now. Pandering to reform voters is a disaster.

The UK Green Party has nabbed a landmark win in the Gorton and Denton by-election, raising fresh questions about PM Keir Starmer’s strategy to stay in power. London Playbook has more on how the fragmentation of British politics appears to be speeding up: www.politico.eu/newsletter/l...

🧵on my new paper "Synthetic personas distort the structure of human belief systems" w Roberto Cerina I'm v excited about... 🚨 Do synthetic samples look like human samples? We compare 28 LLMs to the 2024 General Social Survey (GSS) to find out + develop host of diagnostics...

'The players in the Abbots Bromley Horn Dance' John Benjamin Stone, ca. 1900

Reflexivity and Positionality Statements in Quantitative Research "Choices about research questions, data sources, analytical techniques, and interpretation are all influenced by researchers’ epistemological commitments, their lived experiences..." By @maddipow.bsky.social & @scordoban.bsky.social

“Academic labor” is learning. He wants to free people from learning.

Crowds & Identities Feb 2026! Fantastic work by @evangelospsych.bsky.social on Crowds, awe, and ordeal: Experiences, psychological transformations and ideological reproduction. Great seeing everyone! @swedishprotests.bsky.social @dennisnigbur.bsky.social @yarazebian.bsky.social @pjsaaved.bsky.social

The Rock’n’Roll Doctor is IN

I recommend Maths World in London for children and adults with an interest in playful maths and science. The practical demonstrations, games and code-cracking kept us busy all day.

Just another day in US policy making. Danish personnel help a US sailor. Toddler in Chief sees this as a slight. Americans are supposed to be invulnerable. How dare they. Restores equanimity by sending hospital ship. Greenland says 'no thanks' to Trump US hospital boat www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

The AfD is flirting with Nazi history – but moral outrage alone won’t stop the far right | Katja Hoyer

It boggles the mind

Some may think I overstate the importance of goodwill & trust in diplomacy and negotiations, but amid this tragic tale is the nugget that one of the reasons US/UK intel was not believed was the trust lost over their dodgy dossiers on Iraq two decades earlier. www.theguardian.com/world/ng-int...

I failed this week. A break in teaching looked like a great opportunity for writing. It turned into a week of reviewing ethics applications and manuscripts, preparing teaching and presentations, planning conference visits. Creating headspace is a bigger challenge than working through the to-do list.

I can’t believe you lefty Luddites hate tech so much that you embrace mRNA vaccines, heat pumps, electric bikes, hybrid work, renewable power (and awesome advancements in storage), space telescopes, and hot/cold running water but reject the planet destroying plagiarism enrich the worst people bots!

Understanding the “new” disruptive behavior at live music events: Group normative (mis)alignment and collective self-regulation Now published in ASAP journal. Please share. spssi.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

“Jim Ratcliffe’s comments were outrageous. They are offensive and they were deeply wrong. We do have a problem in our country, and that problem is inequality. It’s not immigration.” Ellie Chowns on #BBCQT, rejecting attempts to blame migrants for country's problems.

The university funding crisis finally starting to make it into newspaper editorials www.ft.com/content/82f5...

How long are we going to hear about “legitimate debates and concerns about immigration?” It’s time we told the truth and deal with it. Net migration is low, we need more migrants, we are an ageing population. Highly skilled and low paid jobs are dependent on migrants. We need safe and legal routes.

Calling on other UK immigrants and pro immigration citizens, today is the last day (til 11.59pm) to fill in the public consultation on the proposed changes to Earned Settlement, most notably moving the timeline from 5 years to 10 years www.gov.uk/government/c...

The scale of a bison casually walking in the traffic.

Children need their families. Refugee children are no different. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Just beyond parody at this point

@jimallthetime.bsky.social Church of England hits out at far right’s use of St George’s Cross to ‘intimidate’ after flags row flip.it/BnlhmN

Labour continue to stampede down the Reform path, burning votes as they go. This type of extreme cruelty is not what their voter base signed up for.