Irony being that the entire Farage-isation of British politics is built on the phenomenon of white right-wingers who don't want to "integrate" with the reality of multi-ethnic Britain, don't want to accept migrants as their fellow citizens, and don't want people of colour moving into their street.

Trying to decide whether an output is of ‘profound influence’ or merely ‘lasting influence’ #REF2029

Very pleased to see this piece on HS2 and intra-green contention out in the world. Much thanks to the team at Environmental Politics, including two very supportive and patient peer reviewers. @mediacomgold.bsky.social

I'm sorry, worldwide, irrevocable, non-exclusive, transferable permission to my voice and likeness? For what now? In any manner for any purpose??? This is in academia/.edu's new ToS, which you're prompted to agree to on login. Anyway I'll be jumping ship. You can find my stuff at hcommons.org.

Very pleased to see this piece on HS2 and intra-green contention out in the world. Much thanks to the team at Environmental Politics, including two very supportive and patient peer reviewers. @mediacomgold.bsky.social

"SUV loophole" allows heavier and more polluting cars, which cause disproportionate damage to roads & increased safety risk to pedestrians and cyclists, to escape with 20x less tax than other European countries This partly explains the surge in SUV sales in UK www.theguardian.com/money/2025/s...

Let me elaborate my disagreement with @zackpolanski.bsky.social in a 🧵. The scenes on our streets are not "the consequences of decades of austerity" but of centuries of racism propagated by the British ruling classes to rationalise the social order they have constructed at home and abroad.

It's physically unsafe for people like me to go into the centre of our home city this Saturday on account of the colour of our skin. Most politicians are either failing to stand up to this or actively contributing to the situation. We don't owe any of those politicians our votes. Not one of them.

Interviewer: "A siege is appropriate? Cutting off power, cutting off water?" Keir Starmer: "I think that Israel does have that right." www.theguardian.com/world/2025/s...

Just as with higher education the extensive use of chatbots in the funeral industry reveals something that was already rotten in the business of dying.

We don't have to push children into poverty. We don't have to make life harder for the sick and disabled. We don't have to aid and abet genocide. For too long, people have been denied a real political choice. Not anymore. Join us at yourparty.uk

It is obviously unsustainable for the political class and the majority of the British public to be so utterly at odds on one of greatest, defining evils of our time. The degree of resulting alienation between power and the general public is simply too profound for their not to be real consequences

⏳Final week to sign up to the Green Party. 🗳️ Vote for Bold Leadership on August 1st.

Chatbots — LLMs — do not know facts and are not designed to be able to accurately answer factual questions. They are designed to find and mimic patterns of words, probabilistically. When they’re “right” it’s because correct things are often written down, so those patterns are frequent. That’s all.

So here’s a short thread 🧵 on what you need to know about the government’s new #NHSPlan. Mainstream consensus: it’s all the same old promises as every health secretary since the Black report, but very vague on the details how it will be delivered. (1/9)

Turning online archives into resources for training data not only exploits and devalues the archived works, but also renders these archives literally unusable. Like all extractivist business models, #genAI ultimately threatens to destroy its own foundations. It's not generative, but destructive

Read this research from Palestinian scholar Razan Shawamreh that critically unpacks the disconnect between Chinese politicians' lofty rhetoric on Palestinian sovereignty and Chinese corporations' ongoing assistance in expanding illegal Israeli settlements. lausancollective.com/2025/china-a...

In what sense?

"The government's argument sounds plausible. There's just one problem. It doesn't fit the facts. And the government knows it." www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Keir Starmer immitates Reform in his divisive speech. Accuses immigrants of causing “incalculable damage”, making the UK “an island of strangers”. Rightly faces backlash from unions, employers, MPs. Silence on class war, inequalities, profiteering, lack of public services, fuelling frustrations.

Our response to this government white paper on immigration

Labour axing care worker visa will put services at risk, say unions and care leaders. Labour pandering to Reform policies. Debate needs honesty. Without migrant labour UK economy will have lower economic growth/GDP, collapsing services. Real problem is govt failure to invest in infrastructure.

Every day dishonest dog whistles from this Labour government on migration. And every day in the UK our aging parents are cared for with huge dignity and professionalism by migrant carers from the global south.

Collective action works!

Intervention — “The Assetization of Research: How Publishers are Selling Our Work to the AI Industry” by Maxim Tvorun-Dunn (University of Tokyo) antipodeonline.org/2025/04/07/t...

If students are writing their work with AI and unis mark the work with AI, then what are we doing? It just becomes a long ritual in the middle of buying a piece of paper.

Not at all concerning to learn that Universities UK are partnering with a company to sell an AI product that offers automated feedback on student work. Who needs staff?

Arguing schools need to teach "AI literacy" is entirely corporate marketing or geopolitical "new space race" rubbish now. It eradicates the history of media/digital literacies as *critical* programs to support informed consumers and creators. It just means accustomization to prompting for BS jobs.

Ofgem's energy pricing formula enabled companies to make £514bn operating profit. Price of electricity determined by the most expensive input i.e. gas. Electricity from wind, solar, nuclear, biomass, hydro cheaper but price determined by cost of gas. Customers ripped-off. Companies make billions.

So Ofcom is publishing a report about internet adoption and digital disadvantage but my question is - Why do regulators hire consultancy and market research companies to conduct research insead of collaborating with academics who have more knowledge and experience? 🤔 www.ofcom.org.uk/internet-bas...

The issue isn't whether we are English or not. It depends how we feel, those feelings can be complex, and it's no-one else's business anyway. The real question is, are we prepared to treat everyone we share our society with as a legitimate member of that society? Can we rise to that basic level?

Right-wing coups sweeping through the West are diminishing possibilities of emancipatory change. Books, scientific journals are being censored to reshape people’s subjectivities, produce docile population The world needs critical thinkers, not foot-soldiers for corporations and the ultra rich.

In Issue 112, Richard MacDonald provides a thorough account of the circumstances that led to the making of the pioneering Thai independent film Tongpan (1976) and the Isan Film Group.

Here is a new ruse. To appease public anger fines are announced on England & Wales water companies but are not paid. Companies are allowed to fix the amount & timing of their own fines. Any wonder companies dump sewage, don't plug leaks, fleece customers. It is "corrupt", what would you call it?

Yes, of course Somehow in spite of everything the real bogeyman is still Russia (and China)

This piece on the making of 1970s independent Thai film Tongpan was a labour of love. Writing it enlarged my world. A Circumstantial Collective: Tongpan and the Isan Film Group – Senses of Cinema sensesofcinema.com/2025/feature...

“This is the first anticolonial struggle in history in which an occupied people have been up against not one colonial power, but the entire Western colonial order.” www.nplusonemag.com/online-only/...

As someone who has reported on AI for 7 years and covered China tech as well, I think the biggest lesson to be drawn from DeepSeek is the huge cracks it illustrates with the current dominant paradigm of AI development. A long thread. 1/

The UK AI plan was announced only this week, but it was already being pre-empted in education. English schools are getting locked-in to AI and automation by "turbocharged" fast policy processes, prototypes, and test-bed experiments codeactsineducation.wordpress.com/2025/01/17/p...

"This alignment of social & technical ordering will show that Labour is indeed still the 'party of the workers', but only in the sense of squeezing the last drop of work out of people while using algorithmic optimisation to decide who is relatively disposable" www.computerweekly.com/opinion/Labo...

@emilymbender.bsky.social fyi 'Labour's AI Action Plan - a gift to the far right' www.computerweekly.com/opinion/Labo...

Another hour, another call for another conference about teaching with AI. I am so supremely annoyed and bored and 💔 by this reactionary obsession: what a waste of opportunity to think about infinitely more constructive, convivial, empowering, life-affirming and existentially consequential things

The ending of this film made my heart ache and wish it could be otherwise. gon-cinema.jp/en/

Birdwatching in the shadowlands. A red whiskered Bulbul?

For a couple of weeks I couldn’t remember the name of this lovely winter flowering shrub. And then it came back to me - Mahonia.

When life gives you damsons