Oh come ON. We’re meant to believe that this teacher got a Prevent referral just for showing some Trump videos in a politics class? Really? Funny that the Telegraph didn’t bother to ask any of the students about the specifics & instead just took his word for it. www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/12...

Henryk Stazewski, Colored Relief, 1963 https://botfrens.com/collections/14377/contents/1136230

Oh come ON. We’re meant to believe that this teacher got a Prevent referral just for showing some Trump videos in a politics class? Really? Funny that the Telegraph didn’t bother to ask any of the students about the specifics & instead just took his word for it. www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/12...

As someone who recently applied for Shared Parental Leave, I can confirm that HR departments know very little about its intricacies. It fell to me to research and comprehend it, and I assume most people simply cannot be bothered (why should they!). www.theguardian.com/money/2025/d...

Extremely funny to call the pope “holier-than-thou”

Worth noting that the student admits that she just threw the thing together in 30 minutes without reading the paper she was supposed to be responding to.

Out today: a major new essay by former Artforum editor David Velasco, fired over a pro-Palestine open letter, surveying 2 years of turmoil in the art world, which was "practically designed to celebrate and aestheticize every rebellion" -- except Gaza. www.equator.org/articles/how...

Total gaslighting. Anti-trans activist; chooses to speak in person, provoking students who want to protect trans rights; they exercise their freedom of speech to tell her she isn't wanted; she gets to speak anyway; the BBC dutifully platforms her again; and now she threatens to sue everyone.

An absolutely magnificent Freudian slip! 🤌🏼

A list of the best songs of the year—not recommended by a streaming algorithm. www.newyorker.com/culture/2025...

OMG!! The crowning achievement of All British Intellectuals 😊 - my letter has actually been published in the @lrb.co.uk (*and* features references to nonmonogamy and collective childcare). Friends, Revolution is near! www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

YES. English speakers would do well to remember that most people in the world are multilingual not through privilege but the opposite: because they are from the periphery or the empire.

So if it’s just nice to have, it becomes a class luxury, and attacking language requirements as a class luxury kinda reifies that Anglo-centrism we get. Obviously, I’m speaking from a pretty personal place here.

(And here I know nobody wants to hear that, but… maybe in academia we should stop letting people get away with claiming they are doing anything “global” without ever having taken the time to learn another language).

wrote about ‘The Year in Mental Health’ @artreview.bsky.social “If there now seems to be a broad cultural consensus that everybody hurts, that everybody ‘has’ mental health – even men! – there is little agreement on where the misery comes from or how to make it stop.” artreview.com/rub-it-bette...

Even by my low expectations for Kemi Badenoch ‘violence against women and girls is something done by immigrants and nobody else’ has shocked me.

Could you be our next Creative Practioner in Residence? For 2026 we are keen to support a practitioner with interests in creative writing, particulary poetry. Monthly stipend of £1000 (up to 3 months). Apply by 6 Feb 2026. universityoflondon.smapply.io/prog/ihr_cre...

And yet I remember people being very annoyed with Owen Jones when he called Starmer a liar.

simply dreadful: "The Center for European Studies, the African Studies Center, the Carolina Asia Center, the Center for Middle East and Islamic Studies, the Institute for the Study of the Americas and the Center for Slavic, Eurasian and East European Studies are all slated to close"

Per @garretthaake.bsky.social, the extremely tacky "presidential wall of fame" that lines the colonnade to the West Wing now has obviously-Trump-penned plaques insulting or praising the presidents.

Ah yes, doctors, a famously selfish and irresponsible profession. This Labour government; I swear to god.

#OtD 17 Dec 1906 cotton factory owner Ignacy Poznanski locked out his workers in Lodz, Poland, after they protested against sackings of militants. They held out for three months but were defeated in a major setback for the local working class stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/8865...

🧵1/ Flu is surging again, & patterns look uncomfortably familiar. The lesson from covid remains unchanged: individual responsibility isn’t enough. We need systemic measures that make protective behaviours easy. @profstevegriffin.bsky.social Stephen Reicher & I offer some thoughts @bmj.com

As Donald Tusk’s rhetoric increasingly echoes Orbán, WOJCIECH ZOMERSKI sounds a warning for democratic restoration: No force is immune to populism’s temptations, including those who claim to rescue us from it. verfassungsblog.de/populism-pol...

My column for @theipaper.com on the @bma.org.uk resident doctors' strike "The Christmas strikes are on Wes Streeting, not the BMA." Read in full at: inews.co.uk/opinion/stre...

And another thing: anyone willing to allow their grievances to be weaponized by the fascists in this of all moments is decidedly not someone to be taken at face value.

#OtD 17 Dec 1970 soldiers were ordered to fire upon Polish dockworkers in Gdynia by the state to attempt to crush protests against price rises. Dozens were killed then buried, but strikes grew until the government had to back down stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/8870...

YES! So many structures and words that have been classed as AI giveaways are what speakers of English as a second language have been taught and encouraged to do.

The older I get, the more my politics mature from childish, naïve beliefs like "the world is complicated and leaders have to make hard decisions" to more serious, adult principles like "hurting people is bad and helping people is good."

It certainly gets the cause and effect the wrong way around - but isn’t TERFism what *that* Jacobin article is clumsily referring to? Or at least that’s how some people are reading it, I think.

Found this screenshotted @naylandblake.bsky.social tweet while going through some old files and think it really holds up. I shared it with students in a research methods course on gender & sexuality in art & art history

This is really, really awful. I truly believe the lack of foreign language acquisition is responsible for so many woes of this country; it’s a deeper social issue than it might seem. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

WTF are we doing here, BBC?

Curating Kerry James Marshall 🎨 An evening exploring Marshall’s practice, legacy, and the curatorial visions that have shaped his most significant exhibitions✨ 📅 15 Jan 2026 | 18:00–20:00 📍 Sir Ambrose Fleming LT 👉 Free and welcome to all: shorturl.at/01rAg

So what “question transgender women” actually means is “question all women”. Well done everyone.

Even if you *could* "fix" the nazi platform — WHY WOULD YOU BUILD ECONOMIC VALUE FOR A WHITE SUPREMACIST. I swear people are goddamn fools. "Tell your progressive friends to go buy a Tesla so that other Tesla drivers might like us better?" Money is power. Don't give Musk power. Read a goddamn book.

Part of the problem i feel is that people want to treat Twitter as a Habermasian public sphere when in reality, the ideological skew is defined by Musk

We grieve the loss of life in Sydney, Australia, where gunmen attacked a celebration of the first night of Hanukkah, killing at least 11 people. This was a terrifying incident of hate-fueled violence that no community should face.

Last week, the New School issued voluntary separation & early retirement offers to 40% of the full-time faculty & the majority of non-union staff. These cuts to the bone are an ideological attempt to decimate historic spaces of critical inquiry & social justice. Share our statement tr.ee/qQBIDCpIuj

There's a £2.5k prize offered for a piece of writing (1000-1500 words) on #sculpture by an early career scholar, deadline 4 May 2026, all the details here so please circulate widely www.burlington.org.uk/jobs-noticeb...

Well, there's a photo I never expected to see in my life. Noam Chomsky palling around with Steve Bannon.

there is a certain condescension in the idea that “racism should be publicly unacceptable and come with consequences” is an attack on the “working class.”

Ongoing decimation of British universities part 252: Apx. 1000 academic staff at University of Essex just received formal ‘risk of redundancy’ letters via email. Please share @ucuessex.bsky.social @ucu.org.uk

Exclusive: Barbican to shut its doors for a year during a multimillion renovation project starting June 2028 www.theguardian.com/culture/2025...

Check out this nonsense: "We know many fans want us to take a defined position on geo-political events. But the only way the Eurovision Song Contest can continue to bring people together is by ensuring we are guided by our rules first and foremost." OK, so where's Russia then???? Be so real.

Really unhelpful to see infectious disease 'experts' reviving the covid culture wars in the middle of a serious influenza wave. If you have flu, staying home if your employment allows, is a great idea. And if you must see others, wear a mask, its will help. Nobody is talking about mandates here.

Believe the testimonies included in this piece. An NGO worker specialised in mental health I interviewed today told me that 8 out of 10 refugees who left Mali for Mauritania since the Russian deployment suffer from serious mental health issues. This is a deliberate campaign of terror. This is Russia

Current Visiting Fellow Andrew Whiteman (Musician @ Broken Social Scene, Creative Director @ Siren Recordings & PhD student @ Concordia) discusses his project focusing on rare AV material in our Small Press Collections. The piece he's composing in response will be premiered at UCL this summer

I’m going to fight fascism by appeasing fascists. I am very clever.

Just 0.001% hold three times the wealth of poorest half of humanity, report finds