Seriously how hard is it to say “This is an outrageous attack on our friends and neighbours who are in this country legally and have followed all the rules to get settled status, who are valued members of our communities, get to fuck frog-face”?

“If you don’t like it you can leave” update

Yeah man we should really fight back by staying on X

Calling all Victorianists with Lego Ideas accounts! (yeah, I see you) VOTE FOR LEGO CRYSTAL PALACE beta.ideas.lego.com/product-idea...

I love this programme. Helping look after it is the great privilege of my career

I think we can probably *just about* afford it until the *exact moment* Gen X / millennials start to hit retirement age.

We’ve been living through 72 nonstop hours of this exact tweet

"Sleep 8 hours and wake feeling fully rested" is a lie peddled by Big Sleep 8 Hours And Wake Feeling Fully Rested to sell more sleep 8 hours and wake feeling fully rested

I am having a hard time reconciling "Charlie Kirk was a fierce advocate of open dialogue and free expression" with "we must identify and persecute everyone who is insufficiently mournful"

Well variety.com/2025/tv/news...

austerity brain: when you’ve got nothing left to cut you start trying to cut other people’s free labour

The last REF found that 98% of UK research was either "internationally recognised", "internationally excellent", or "world-leading". If you think low-quality research is the noteworthy challenge in UK higher ed right now, you are wilfully looking in the wrong direction

There's a new blog post over at The City of Lost Books, on Amal El-Mohtar's wonderful novella The River Has Roots! @uofgfantasy.bsky.social @dimitrafimi.bsky.social @mjrsangster.bsky.social @tattersdill.bsky.social thecityoflostbooks.glasgow.ac.uk/amal-el-moht...

“Thyme Travellers is fabulous...the timing of this anthology is perfect.” Review by @melaniemarttila.bsky.social. THYME TRAVELLERS is published by @fernpub.bsky.social. #speculativefiction #palestinianfiction @soniasulaiman.bsky.social theseaboardreview.substack.com/p/thyme-trav...

The first book from @bloomsburylit.bsky.social new innovative multidisciplinary series now published: 'Theory Across Disciplines' brings together key scholars to examine how theoretical concerns from a range of disciplines operate within their respective fields. www.bloomsbury.com/theory-acros...

If I could magically make the UK public understand one thing better, it would be that immigrants pay extra to access NHS services, in addition to paying through taxation as do born citizens www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

Adjusted for inflation Spirited Away cost $22 million to make. The Triplets of Belleville cost $16.5 million, Cartoon Saloon's Wolfwalkers cost $14.28 million, and Oscar winner Flow cost only $4 million. These critically acclaimed, made by real people films, cost less than this pile of actual vomit.

I feel like this is one of the less-discussed facets of the crisis in higher education. Without some kind of collective action from universities, it's entirely possible for effective publication to become impossible (esp. in small fields)

Hey hivemind (!), does anyone know the word for when a piece of writing has that sort of blend of formal and informal that makes it feel like it's been translated from another language? ("I'll have you know, I haven't been wasting my time on this like some idle scrounger")

I am opposed to AI products and services because of the extra power they require... IN A CLIMATE CRISIS. I am opposed to AI results - texts and illustrations - because they've been created unethically, via theft and non-consensual use of the work of others. Share if you agree.

The Lemkin Institute has called for the EHRC to have its ‘A’ status revoked by GANHRI for violating the Paris Principles - by acting as a political lobby group in eroding the rights of trans & intersex people. 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 Read 👉🏻 www.lemkininstitute.com/_files/ugd/c... cc @sarahowen.org.uk

A tiny silver lining to the huge waste of time that is LLMs: renewed gratitude for the deeply human thoroughness of wikipedia en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikiped...

I just hate this tech. I've seen other people start to call it obscene and that is truly what it is. GenAI is obscene. It's an affront to humanity, pushed by tech bros and c-suiters who are forcing this rancid emptiness onto everyone else because they themselves believe in nothing.

AI's best use case will always be scams. It's scamtech, top to bottom. Everything about it is crooked. Its bedrock is theft and its legacy is the destruction of the environment, both physical and virtual. Even most of its 'legitimate' uses are a form of lying. "I wrote this." "I created this."

Well played.

Just back from brilliant Snake Summer event at Hunterian Museum of Zoology, big thanks to @tattersdill.bsky.social and @jordankistler.bsky.social. Bothrodon pridii, lost worlds, cryptid snakes and snake diversity and biology. Thanks to those who bought my tsuchinoko stickers :)

This isn't just a political claim, it's an empirical one. If "the problem is not guns" then we shouldn't see any correlation between gun ownership and oh wait platform.vox.com/wp-content/u...

I'm ded 💀 😂 😂 😂

She didn't even mean to tell the future ... she was just calculating the most plausible outcomes of racism in America

Reform UK, which has a grand total of four MPs, was just given an uninterrupted platform for an hour and a half on the BBC and Sky News channels, in order to talk about its plans for mass deportations When was the last time the Greens (with four MPs) or the Lib Dems (with 72) were given the same?

Later this week I'm in Scotland since my Monsters of the Deep exhibition is opening in Aberdeen Art Gallery. But first --- Snake Summer at The Hunterian in Glasgow, where I'm talking...

There were more people taking part in protests against the board of Sheffield Wednesday than there were people protesting against all the Asylum Hotels in all of the UK this weekend. Don't mainstream bigotry!

BREAKING: Award-winning Scottish screenwriter Paul Laverty has been arrested after wearing a T-shirt reading 'Genocide in Palestine, time to take action' Police arrested the I, Daniel Blake writer in Edinburgh this morning

apart from electing a black president nothing has driven more Americans irrevocably insane than the requirement that they participate in the collective good

OK which is funnier, tech bros or the UK govt

If you laughed Corbyn offstage for his proposals on broadband but are failing to ridicule this story at least twice as loudly, pop a quick apology to me in the chat below. Thanks! www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

The UK government will evacuate nine of the 40+ students in Gaza with scholarship at UK universities. My PhD student Shaimaa isn't included. We must now make sure they help the other students - email your MP today. www.theguardian.com/education/20...

I often find myself saying "what a time to be alive" but friends, today, defector.com/it-took-many...

@hntdove.bsky.social Hello! UK-based literary critic here; I wonder if there's a way to get in touch with you formally about a permissions issue? It's to do with 'Bonehunters'!

"What divides us now is not our political views, but our ethical beliefs"

Since algorithms across various social media platforms are making it harder to see what you enjoy, here's a thread of #paleoart I think is underrated or a tad overlooked. Kicking things off with Sam Milkovits' azhdarchid portrait

Deleting the kids baby photos so Sam Altman can make more money stealing all my work and your radicalised FB auntie can post another 7 AI sloppers of crab Jesus saying amen to a 17 fingered baby marine

a university is not for generating profit, it provides cultural enrichment via weird little gremlin people who love visigoths or haikus, and very occasionally a scientist who figures out faster than light travel

Lovely to read Dimitra's post on Tolkien's prehistoric beasts! In my forthcoming stupid book I declare that The Past Is A Fantasy World - Tolkien offers us some ways of understanding how that might work mechanically

Today’s piece for #TolkienTuesday #TolkienTrewsday examines Tolkien’s Silmarillion “beasts”, dinosaurs, and representations of the prehistoric past in Middle-earth. With thanks to @tattersdill.bsky.social for our recent conversation! 🦕 dimitrafimi.substack.com/p/tolkien-tu... @tolkiensociety.org

I have a new article out today. It's about an environmental turn in Palestinian arts and activism, and how environmental framings of Palestine and the Palestinian struggle enable different forms of identification and solidarity: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...