Fabulous book post today from @nightjarpress.bsky.social! Many thanks to @nicholasroyle.bsky.social

Something about even more societal impact for Norwich University of the Arts :) #ref2029

Obliterating public trust in the programme with bias to populist weirdoes probably more of an issue than podcasts.

This is so tragic it's actually incredibly funny

The cruelty of this.

Narratively having Ever Given getting stuck in 2021 to set up Hormuz in 2026 is great foreshadowing. You want your audience to understand the basics of international shipping in a lower stakes context so you drop the real plot without a lot of saggy exposition about the minutiae of cargo logistics.

It took longer than i thought for the REF to get weaponised this way, but this is horrifying and so blatant

A field trip to one place has generated field notes on a seaside town. Free newsletter out now.

more like scammerly, amirite?

Heartbreaking

drive.proton.me/urls/GHR5697... my periodic demand that you should read Computer Power and Human Reason by Joseph Weizenbaum

"If degrees are meaningless because they do not reflect skills anymore, then academia is also damaged beyond repair; as well as society in general in our ability to have experts" There's also something about faculty, and whole systems, becoming dependent on "tools" that hollow out all the expertise

Yay new Nightjars arrived via #RoyleMail - looking forward to devouring these over the weekend @nightjarpress.bsky.social

BACK ALL WILL RISE on KICKSTARTER if you're into 💜 citizen sleeper x ace attorney 🔥 revenge against the epstein class 🤑 marxist-animist weirdness 🃏 card-based narrative 🇮🇳 set in alternate india ✨ dreams of dead gods 🍃 branching stories ✊ WE NEED YOUR SUPPORT www.kickstarter.com/projects/spe...

The thing I really don't get about academics using LLMs to generate ideas/write papers is: that's the part of my work I 💯 love: creative challenging & fulfilling. I pay the piper by sitting in committees, doing loads of paperwork & abiding by lots of procedures. Why give up the best part of the job?

okay, Ill bite. What do you think the point of reading for and writing a literature review is? The process of reading and writing is crucial for THINKING. Your ideas are shaped by all of this, offloading it to gAI, no matter how "good" you think gAI is at it defeats the purpose entirely.

My half-cooked theory about this is that affordable housing, free education and free healthcare (so, high taxation economies) create the conditions for morally responsible business, because they remove the need for everyone to absolutely maximise their earnings every stage of employment

Opening up a new front on settlement (not migration) is politically stupid as well as morally obscene.

Also, hope for a better world is actually appealing to people.

This week's post is about #AI, #metaphors and magic, and, inspired by @davemurrayrust.bsky.social and @mlucel.bsky.social, how to deal with the enchantment through design makingsciencepublic.com/2026/02/27/m...

Nice AI-image-generating tool, but it will never be as great an artist as Onfim, a child who lived in the Novgorod Republic in the mid-1200s and who scribbled these drawings and schoolwork writings on birch bark at the age of 6 or 7.

what even is the fucking point

"It could never happen here" isn't even a political position, but a bunting-infused bit of political nostalgia. The only reason things never happen is because active measures are taken to stop them. Let's make the UK a place it can never happen, rather than optimistically just hoping that's the case

How can playful creative activities help teams from different disciplinary backgrounds collaborate? We’re launching our Library for Transformative Play at Wageningen University & Research, Netherlands, tomorrow, 24 February, 16.00–17.00 CET. It's one of the outcomes of Playing with the Trouble...

Paired with @danlockton.com next month, In Splendid Isolation, a debut story by RL Doughty.

Very excited about 'Halls of Residence'—published next month by the wonderful @nightjarpress.bsky.social. My first published short story.

A lesson about networks that I’m kind of proud of: at the beginning of the year, I gave my 200 students a dumb survey: fav books, foods, etc. I told them they could use pseudonyms and that I’d share their responses with the class. We’ve been using that data in various ways: to make points about +

For anyone familiar with New Metaphors imaginari.es/new-metaphors/ this is the same daymark, near Coleton Fishacre maps.app.goo.gl/M1x5qTUjibE5... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingswe... featured as a possible metaphor in the card deck.

WE ARE LIVE! Dying with nerves and excitement. Please help us realise All Will Rise by supporting our kickstarter! Plot your revenge against the billionaire class and play the demo now! #indiegames #indiedev #gamedev

Fascinating to read the (AI?) description here—including that the DwI cards are "a widely respected behavioral design and UX strategy tool used by designers, researchers, product managers, and innovation teams." www.ebay.com/itm/19797979... $135 (download them here imaginari.es/wp-content/u...)

Strange how hostile most newspapers always were about ‘media studies’, can’t imagine why.

Have you heard of “The Populist Playbook?” A few years ago, I posted what I still consider one of my most important messages. It was about “The Populist Playbook” that I’ve watched play out often over my 33+ years of city planning. Since then, it’s only gotten worse. Do the steps sound familiar?

by popular request i have turned the meme into a blog post, which explains how it works, links to the template file and includes a selection of examples from the thread #KirbyFraming

With Trump’s increasing belligerence, the UK urgently needs to establish digital sovereignty. Our country’s day-to-day functions should not rely on a handful of US-based tech giants. I am calling for a UK digital sovereignty strategy. Write to your MP! action.openrightsgroup.org/protect-brit...

There are so many knock-on effects of degrading US regulatory standards, which will inevitably drive down standards everywhere else. I don't know about you, but I want the next plane I get on to be a lot better than "good enough".

And there’s the irony: in the attempt to avoid inserting itself into the argument, a news organisation which fails to distinguish empty statements from evidenced ones is doing exactly that. You cannot, in 2026, report passively and hope to be truthful. /ends

To my eye, some reporting also conflates the rather Victorian notion of truthfulness as “offering primary sources without attempting to interpret them“ with reporting any government statement as a primary source.

Many thoughts about this, but as @apiln.bsky.social has detailed so well over the years, "fury at X" has become the default pattern for what was once proper local journalism. Also, imaginaries of real places as slogans/utopias/dystopias are fascinating to see in practice, from NL to Baltimore.

In these times of trouble, something a bit niche but also a bit soothing - a post where I dug out some old roots of #metaphor theory that we have largely forgotten makingsciencepublic.com/2026/01/23/f... #histling

I think partly what's dismaying with Airport Book Policymaking (as @ifbookspod.bsky.social @michaelhobbes.bsky.social @notalawyer.bsky.social have demonstrated so well over the years) is just how easy it seems to be to capture the minds of supposedly thoughtful, critical public figures, with what's

Reminder that it was Young's father who coined the term 'meritocracy’, if you were beginning to doubt that the universe has a sick sense of humour

I've had enough.

Imagine what Nigel Kneale could have done with this!

Some interesting ideas here.

According to this FT article, Sir Paul Nurse says: “I’m afraid there’s many bad people around, but they have made scientific advances.” The ‘but’ in this quote says it all… So don’t blame us when we lose faith in institutions that regard integrity as irrelevant to designating scientific greatness.

removal from app store + google play probably fatally wounds the entire global right wing movement and significantly hinders musk’s own ability to get involved with elections both here and abroad

I sit, silent, cold, and armless, on the edge of my seat as the poltergeist once again levitates the mysterious laptop, book, and headphones all around me