Tonight I'm giving my favourite class of the year, in the Masters in Innovation and Research for Sustainability. We all sit around and play the board game Daybreak.

On this 🌍 World Science Day for Peace and Development, let’s remember that science is instrumental to #TransformativeChange. Science is capable of redirecting development towards regenerative practices aligned with nature-positive goals. 🏡🧪 📚 https://www.ipbes.net/transformative-change-assessment

Good piece

Remember: universities are not run by scholars. They are run by real estate speculators who always wanted a pretext to do these things.

Just in time for #COP30: my analysis is of what's wrong with global climate policy and what to do about it.

There is an excellent multi-part series on Thiel on the Behind the Bastards podcast. Well worth a listen. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/p...

Unsurprised to hear any politics that looks to address inequalities, looks to centre the poorest in our societies, anything that challenges the unsustainable status quo, dismissed as 'radical socialism'. Political analysis/commentary is pretty poor globally but in the UK it is in the sewer.

AI kills joy

This is not a dunk, and the whole exchange about the sandwich is genuinely pretty funny but I think many of the responses to this fundamentally misunderstand humour on the right. They *know* it's ridiculous but that ridiculousness obscures a chilling exercise of power.

IPCC-envy is a great term for a trend that inspired our 2017 piece, where IPXX is seen as a desirable template for knowledge production (at that time, in antimicrobial resistance) www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

What expertise would be needed (and valued) by an "IPCC of inequality"? There is already criticism of the IPCC that economic expertise dominates the social scientific expertise contributing to climate change assessments.

Global economics inequality is reaching a tipping point and the world needs an "IPCC of inquality" to help track and understand the problem. Thats the main point of todays report of the G20 Expert Group on Global Inequality - led by Joseph Stiglitz, Jayati Ghosh ipdcolumbia.org/event/landma...

It's clear that these people don't ever expect to be held accountable for this. What does this say for American democracy?

Just a reminder that it's now at least 7 years since many of us started warning people about Goodwin. At the time, a lot of his colleagues rolled their eyes, rallied around him and continued to collaborate with him. www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemoc...

Anyone checked in on how paternalistic condescension as a political strategy is working out for the political centre?

The narrative seems to be(come) that the Dutch election shows a “comeback of the political center”. We have seen this frame before, implying “the center” has an ideological substance and is stable. But “the center” keeps moving right on mostly nativist, but also often authoritarian, issues.

Now I'm no military expert...

This doesn't strike me as in any way conducive to a functional national economy or body politic.

Absolutely cracking response here. The only thing I would've added would've been to point out that for the past five years the Labour party have done everything in its power to marginalise, belittle and dismiss the left. Left-wingers have left in their droves and this has been celebrated by Labour!

Feels indicative of a trend in the sector that a national questionnaire on the use of AI in Portuguese Higher Education is so flawed:

It's quite clear that Lisa Nandy sought to misrepresent police intelligence if not outright mislead the House of Commons on this issue. Will she correct the record? www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

It's quite clear that Lisa Nandy sought to misrepresent police intelligence if not outright mislead the House of Commons on this issue. Will she correct the record? www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

I'm loving the new Half Man Half Biscuit album

How people perceive their colleagues who produce workslop.

It took Starmer less than 4 hours to condemn the banning of a bunch of far-right football hooligans but a response to a Conservative plan to deport legal migrants.... Tumbleweed Just in case you wondered where the Labour party is right now.

And for even more, read some of Charlotte's expertly curated MUP book: manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526151162/

If you're taking to the streets to protest today, know your rights.

When all it takes to prioritise your mental health is... (checks notes)... the threat of legal action.

So happy to catch @thebeths.bsky.social on the final leg of their tour in Lisbon. Absolute cracking concert

New OnlineFirst (OA) article: "Framing the Planetary and Calculating the Complex: The Controversies, Overflows, and Floods of the EAT-Lancet Planetary Diet" by George Cusworth #overflows #complexity #planetary #environmentalknowledge #scientificcontroversies journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

The thing about solar geoengineering is that once you start you cannot stop *ever* unless somehow you have already removed all the multi-billions of tons of carbon emitted since the day you started. If you stop at the higher CO2 concentration you get virtually instantaneous catastrophic heating.

There's a study to be done in political/organizational sociology to understand Home Office politics in relation to broader national politics. Are politicions given the HO brief because it reflects their worldview or does institutional thinking impact on their worldview (or to what extent both)?

One of the most insideous things about the contemporary neoliberal acadamy* is how it compels us to view colleagues as competitors for scarce resources. This piece by @smhall.bsky.social is a necessary counterpoint/push back to that compulsion: rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

One of the most insideous things about the contemporary neoliberal acadamy* is how it compels us to view colleagues as competitors for scarce resources. This piece by @smhall.bsky.social is a necessary counterpoint/push back to that compulsion: rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Labour's inevitable drift rightwards and towards obscurity continues.

Waiting for the first 34 1/2 of Magnetic Fields' 69 Love Songs.

Extremely precarious times for civil liberties in the UK. The opposition calling for a British ICE, the Labour government cracking down on protest.

Bang on point:

"Deloitte Australia will issue a partial refund to the federal government after admitting that artificial intelligence had been used in the creation of a $440,000 report littered with errors including three nonexistent academic references and a made-up quote from a Federal Court judgement."

We can be outraged and appalled and still recognize that this is a fraction of what many Palestinians have faced on a daily basis for decadesm

This article manages to name her husband before it names… her.

We're undoubtedly going to be seeing a lot of clips of Keeping Up Appearances in the next few days but this was Patricia Routledge's tour de force.

the extwitter mindset is ultimately about a contempt for knowledge. it was never about "science vs humanities." it is about the idea that it is worthwhile to understand the different facets of a complex system even if you cannot provide an immediately instrumental justification for doing so

In the whole cacophony of shite we are facing, environmentally, politically, socially, few things make me more depressed and despairing than the uncritical enthusiasm that many colleagues have for AI. www.nplusonemag.com/issue-51/the...

It's a symptom of how Westminster focused British political commentary is that in almost all the discussion on Andy Burnham's possible challenge for Labour leadership, pretty much no-one has sought to look at what he's actually done in/to Manchester. Now's your chance to read some urban scholarship

Who are we thinking? Tennant? Cumberbatch?

New Open Access paper: "Moving ideas: An agenda for expanding the political scope of the policy mobilities approach" in @proghumgeog.bsky.social. Arguing that the #policymobilities & #socialmovements literatures can be combined to study counter-hegemonic activism. 1/6 tinyurl.com/88xmursz

I think British politicians, the media and political commentators would be in a much better position to combat the far-right today if they hadn't spent the past 10 years painting every anti-racism campaigner and leftist as a crank and beyond the pale of 'sensible politics'.

An actual quote from the Secretary of State for Business and Trade Too often people go to university to ‘explore research and knowledge’ Look forward to Wes S saying 'too often people go to hospital to have operations' or Heidi Alexander saying 'too often people go to the station to catch a train'