True then, true now. open.substack.com/pub/orwell/p...

Today, we launched the 2025 Fairwork Chile Report on working conditions in the platform economy. Despite advances in several areas, significant challenges remain, including questions about the current regulatory framework's capacity to ensure just working conditions. Link: fair.work/en/fw/public...

For all those interested in the challenges that platform work creates for labour regulation (and for those in need of a solution for insomnia), here's my PhD thesis, now available in the University of Bristol's online library: research-information.bris.ac.uk/en/studentTh...

Always get caught wondering if he's incredibly stupid or malevolent before remembering he can be both.

The other day I found myself ordering coffee “with a spot of milk”. What have you done to me, UK?

Glad to finally been able to remove the “Candidate” after the “PhD”.

I silently judge people who order Americanos.

Glad that someone has finally taken responsibility for the appalling assault on democracy that was the Jan. 6 insurrection. Slightly confused that it's the Director-General of the BBC, but what do I know?

The War Game is a must-see for anyone interested in the folly of nuclear war.

Happy Halloween! (credits to the unknown author)

Missing here is another way unis are managing costs: a de facto hiring freeze across much of the sector (judging by how few jobs are being advertised)

Onwards, when people ask me about Chile, I’ll just show them this: youtu.be/UEqTIwRrWvA?...

What an admirably clear statement from the Jewish Leadership Council, especially when all of those involved must surely have been dealing with so many other urgent challenges in safety, security and grief + shock today before having this further divisive and distracting intervention to address too.

Just finished back to back seminars on opposite sides of campus.

Hate seeks to divide us. But hope endures when we stand together. Our solidarity is with the Jewish community today. #britainstandstogether

This Is Who’s Really Driving the Decline in Interest in Liberal Arts Education www.nytimes.com/2025/07/17/o...

Not every morning you wake up to hear the leader of a potential future government wants to kick you out of the country.

Un sentimiento que nos une, ¡feliz 18! 🇨🇱 La chilenidad se lleva en el corazón y se refleja en la fuerza, alegría, tradiciones y tierras de nuestra patria querida. ❤️ ¡Felices #FiestasPatrias y Viva Chile! Descubre más en 📲 www.youtube.com/playlist?lis... #ChileDiverso

It is so sad to hear about Conor Gearty’s passing. I never met him, but I've come across his work on several occasions, which is always inspiring and illuminating. A recent piece he wrote on academic writing has helped me with motivation on my last leg of the PhD. RIP.

11/09/1973, a day that will live in infamy.

Kirk’s shooting has echoes of Calvo Sotelo’s murder in 1936. I hope I’m wrong.

So, at the risk of upsetting folks, we need to be aware that two things can be true at once. It can be true both that 1) the chilling effect on speech on campus existed and was bad but that 2) the application of state power to silence academics is much, much MUCH worse.

Can't imagine how it must feel to be afraid of speaking in my mother tongue for fear of being profiled. Empeñados en hacer cosplay de los peores regímenes de la historia.

Platform companies have deployed the term "disruption" as a tool for deregulation in such an effective manner that I instinctively look for synonyms every time I want to discuss their effect on labour regulation.

The ILO Digital Labour Platform Tracker is an amazing tool for all researching the platform economy. No more homemade translations of Latin American and Spanish provisions in my papers. Great work by Uma Rani and all her team! digitallabour.ilo.org/homepage

Happy feast of Saint Alberto Hurtado sj, patron of Chilean workers. From the introduction of his 1950 book “Sindicalismo” (Trade Unionism): “It is a well-proven fact by history, that the rise of the working class has always been the result of their own efforts, having reached a mature state”

Thousands of Israelis stayed home from work, flooded city streets and blocked roads and highways across the country on Sunday, staging some of the largest anti-war protests in months as the military prepares for a major assault on Gaza City. wapo.st/4mvMVfK

One day, you decide to use an astronomical analogy in your thesis, cause, yes, you are a nerd. Then it goes out of hand, and you find yourself reading about types of galaxies and their characteristics to find the one that fits the analogy better.

I need to share the amazing new stadium my beloved football club is about to inaugurate. Man, I wish I could be there.

Sunday early morning views.

Exactly right. They simply want the end product — whether it’s an actual production of art or music or the end result of hard work like a PhD — without doing the work. It’s cheat codes all the way down.

Godspeed, Captain Lovell.

Drop an old person that you're going to turn into in the future.

Besides my disappointment as a kid of the 90s, I hope the irony of having someone known for playing the most famous illegal immigrant as an ICE henchman is not lost on anyone.

Some day, I hope to have enough experience and prestige as an academic to write a piece on comparative labour law with a section called "What to compare when you are comparing" (hopefully everyone still gets the reference by then). Will it be frowned upon, @husajaakko.bsky.social?

I am generally a big fan of the BBC - but this is a truly terrible 'both sides' *push notification* to send out to people in this country about this news event

Raise UK gambling taxes to fund removing two-child benefit cap, Gordon Brown says on.ft.com/4549YZ2

When will it become acceptable to say “somehow Palpaltine returned” as an equivalent of Deus ex Machina? Are we there yet?

No, automated grammar reviewer, I am not repeating words by mistake. There is value in repetition, cadence and emphasis in academic writing.

Nobody asks, and probably this will help no one, but I come from a country with a physical and digital ID system (Chile). Well used, it's an incredible tool for a modern society, and, despite some problems, Chile is a good example. (1/3).

The rich must be incentivised; the poor must be disciplined. The political economy of the super-elite in one headline.

"Artificial Intelligence will have an impact ten times greater than that of the Industrial Revolution," says somebody whose only knowledge of the Industrial Revolution must come from Artificial Intelligence.

More like, "Neatly play out"

Ahh, the struggle to make English-speaking academic publishers and platforms understand that we Latin Americans usually have two last names, and that I'm not "Jorge García" but "Jorge Leyton García". Don't get me started with my second name...

The most creative Human Rights academic could not have devised an exam question with such outlandish (and worrying) scenario.

Working here has its perks (like the view).

Paging...

Rocks and sand. Nothing special. Except these rocks and sand are on another planet.

NEW: Bishop Rojas of San Bernardino has dispensed his Diocese from the obligation to attend Sunday Mass due to ongoing ICE raids.