absolute beast mode

donald trump endorsed zohran mamdani before chuck schumer lmao

Dear colleagues, we are delighted to invite you to our DigiPol research seminar given by DigiPol visiting fellow Tomás Dodds. Wednesday 3.30pm to 5pm School of the Arts Library or email [email protected] to join online. Abstract below. Please re skeet!

Q: Are you affirming that you think President Trump is a fascist? MAMDANI: I've spoken about-- TRUMP: That's okay. You can just say yes. I don't mind.

Today is Trans Day Of Remembrance #TransLivesMatter #TDoR #TDoR2025 #TransDayOfRemembrance #TransAwarenessWeek #SayTheirNames *** Trigger warning for the following thread: Violence against trans people (especially TWOC) * * *

We're dropping this week's premium episode early. Out tomorrow: my wife joins to help us read and review an excerpt from Olivia Nuzzi's forthcoming book, CBS News (Bari's Version) hosts Dave Portnoy to talk about antisemitism, and more. Sign up now! Don't miss it! www.patreon.com/posts/055-ho...

Just to say, I am a supervisor here: UKRI AI Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) in Responsible and Trustworthy in-the-world Natural Language Processing www.responsiblenlp.org/2026-student... If you are reading things like this and planning PhD project, do reach out: www.ft.com/content/e5b7...

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve said words to the effect of “it can’t get any dumber or more insulting than this” but here’s the thing: it always can, and it always does.

If you need a reminder how Schumer handled the last shutdown situation check out who occupies the most spots in bsky.app/profile/numb...

Genuinely believe with my whole heart that the stances on trans rights taken by @zackpolanski.bsky.social are contributing massively to a load of emotionally burn-out and mentally exhausted trans people having hope for the first time in bloody ages.

A link to my new book cover and table of contents. www.upress.umn.edu/978081669906...

The Authoritarian Stack: how tech billionaires are building a post-democratic America and why Europe is next. My new project is an interactive investigation and open data platform to expose tech authoritarianism and mobilize collective power for democratic alternatives. www.authoritarian-stack.info

Glasman is an absolute weirdo.

Beyond the job losses (!), what do the students think about being ‘relocated’?!

"You cannot turn a blind eye to conspiracies about Satanic paedophile rings and expect the base will stop at the Protocols of the Elders of Zion." My column on the suppurating neo-Nazism on America's right. on.ft.com/4oxjjQj

pitching a movie in which J. R. R. Tolkien arises from the dead to take academically-coded revenge on the techbros and MAGAs who continue to grotesquely misunderstand his work

Premium Newsletter tomorrow: Meta, Google, Amazon and Microsoft must add $2 Trillion in AI revenue by 2030 or they wasted their capex. The cost of data centers GPUs may make it impossible to make a profit from AI. Here's $10 off annual. edzitronswheresyouredatghostio.outpost.pub/public/promo...

The last hospital in Darfur's el-Fasher has been destroyed by paramilitaries — hundreds of patients killed and doctors taken. n.pr/4qBqlF7

We’re gonna be running the wollaton park run next week in memory of our wonderful friend and legendary pres, Agnes, taken from us far too soon. We’re raising funds to support her beloved trade union campaigns. Please sponsor us. @uonucu.bsky.social @ucu.org.uk www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding...

Wholesome #Halloween content 🎃🎃🎃

So why does the BBC label the academic and economist Faiza Shaheen an "activist" but refuse to do the same for the former academic, turned anti-migrant activist Matt Goodwin?

A review of government social media communication literature + suggestions for future research www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcomm...

If Shaheen is an activist, then Goodwin, whose whole twitter feed is extreme and inaccurate far right nonsense, is definitely an activist. If Goodwin is an academic, then Shaheen, who has done more recent and more credible academic work, is an academic.

Wikipedia says Shaheen is an academic. BBCQT implies you can’t trust what she says b/c she’s an ‘activist’. Someone who Wikipedia calls ‘a former academic’ who now campaigns for Reform & wants to be its first Home Secretary is an ‘academic & author’ who you can trust. Maybe they use Grokipedia now.

Goodwin is a relentless campaigner for Reform, not an academic. He hasn't published an academic article since 2022.

Nobody had even heard of Katie Lam outside of Westminster until about two weeks ago. Literally all it takes to be considered "brilliant" and a "rising star" on the right of British politics now is just a willingness to say something slightly more racist than all of your competitors

Money is short and unlikely to start flowing soon. Academic professionals are exhausted and demoralised. The public is not that interested. @gsoh31.bsky.social, Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at Oxford Brookes, explores the decline in HE.

Perfectly feasible that we could see a poll with Labour in fifth place, or even the Greens in second.

Our new report on news influencers and creators is out. It contains: - 5 key findings (see link) - Top 15 most mentioned news influencers and creators by survey respondents in 24 countries - A typology of different content types (and examples of individuals that primarily produce each)

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.

📢 It's out: The new @worldsofjournalism.bsky.social report ➡️rich data from 3rd wave of WJS study ➡️ survey of more than 32,350 journalists across 75 countries ➡️ perspectives from diverse media systems, political regimes, and cultural contexts Free download www.worldsofjournalism.org/reports-wjs3/

It is this background that makes me so incredulous when economists say Britain needs to start taxing its average earners more because you can't raise enough from the rich. Bitch what money are you planning to tax away? Everyone is broke!

"Within a seminar series, women are interrupted more than men... Interruptions that are negative in tenor or tone, or cutoff the presenter mid-sentence, increase for women presenters"

That scene of the Welsh BBC correspondent being the only person interviewing Caerphilly's new Plaid AM while the rest of the media interviewed Reform's loser in the background was far too on the nose.

This will not come as a surprise to any social media or internet researchers. "Today, the European Commission preliminarily found both TikTok & Meta in breach of their obligation to grant researchers adequate access to public data under the Digital Services Act (#DSA)." ec.europa.eu/commission/p...

almost as if the entire funding system for #UKHE, from the volatility of the student-fees-without-any-planning to the research-lottery-that-somehow-decides-on-whether-I-keep-a-job-or-what-that-job-is is destructive of our jobs? & needs an urgent overhaul? www.universityrankandfile.org.uk/campaigns

It shouldn't take an FOI request to see grant success rates. UKRI has a duty of care to researchers to supply this from the outset. We are judged, compared, promoted (or not) according to unbelievably bad odds.

After submitting a FOIA request UKRI, I obtained success rates by three grant call scheme and I can only say that I am disheartened by the results: - AHRC Responsive Mode 2025: 2% - ESRC New Investigator Grant 2025: 1% - ESRC Research Grant Round 2025: 1%

Looting the treasury

After the 2016 election I recalled a very brief history of Roman Britain that I had read, which had casually mentioned a 200-year period of decline. And I thought, ok, this is what we're living through: 200 years of decline. All capacity for knowledge systematically being torched

It’s barely even a Ponzi scheme. There’s no guarantee that Amazon is actually making profit on this! $105bn in capex! Perhaps they’re building capacity to provide it to OpenAI in yet another money losing revenue stuffer that will end with nobody getting anything but an IOU

So I realize I’ve reposted this all day, but I cannot understate the scale of this story. If Anthropic is spending this much on Google Cloud - or even 25% - the costs of running their business are never coming down. It’s a huge scoop, and the first real discussion of the true costs of AI anywhere.

Here are some the BFI have mentioned on their Twitter account. x.com/search?q=fro... (links in alt text) But you can nominate suggestions too! www.bfi.org.uk/bfi-national...

i think we should bring dadaism back as a response to The Horrors. it made sense during world war one

Thank goodness, we found this incredibly reliable and sturdy trustworthy basket. Now to make the obviously intelligent choice of putting every single last egg in it.

Always great to realise anew that (some of) the UK political class is prepared to sacrifice one of its very successful industries in this despicable way.

A work of art