The institutional panic that comes with any mention of Palestine. This is bad

"A breakup letter with media studies" by Nabil Echchaibi academic.oup.com/ccc/article-... "It has become impossible to identify with a field and academic institutions that refuse to answer a basic call of human decency: to denounce an ongoing genocide." #ICA26

the conference scene and the meaning of the "international" #academicsky

...currently working through my inbox to see if I can find anything "political" said by the higher-ups. Will keep you all posted. This is serious shit #nzpol

the dodgy go-betweens of an academic imprint quoting me £56 plus vat (i.e my royalty cheque) to use a 16 word epigraph in a book chapter, with the online customer service guy kindly reassuring me that if I used the quote in the body of the chapter, there would be no charge 🙂

yep. And of course New Zealand Inc punching above its weight as always

This is exactly the kind of opportunistic headline-grabbing intervention that the legislation was designed to indulge and amplify

even after everything, the very idea of "politics" is still somehow coded as an exclusively "left" and "othered" thing in the far right imaginary

just watched the Farage speech & body cam footage ....fuck, what a bleak turning point. The woke monster brought to life in vivid form. And Farage exploiting it in the most shameless way possible, with the George Floyd analogy primed to make this the biggest story on both sides of the Atlantic today

I need an appropriately grandiose sub-title for an afterword. "For a politics of left resonance" anyone? Or maybe better again merge the spirit of Connolly and Rosa with "for a radical left resonance machine"?

“those with power in society are deeply intolerant of any space in which exceptions are possible, in which something could happen” newleftreview.org/sidecar/post...

Golly gosh. A real shame this bill is being pushed through under budget urgency because automated decision-making regimes like this should be subjected to close and sceptical scrutiny in select committee — with experts and the public able to make submissions on this dramatic administrative turn.

Can't wait to play the Catholic card when the refusal to use AI becomes a performance issue at work

No one "believes" with the same mix of conviction and hollowness as the icky and sanctimonious Blair. Good piece

all the AI hype, in universities and elsewhere, is like the respectable liberal face of facistization

this is spot on

This week my chapter ‘Written on the student body: Tension between policy and safeguarding’ was published in ‘The Routledge International Handbook of Schooling in Times of Crisis'. It highlights the progression of anti-trans rhetoric in the 2019-2024 Parliament, and tracks 1/2

Back in from a gig. And so impressed by the book title of the guy talking on Al Jazeera that I need to tell everyone else: There We Are Human Again: A Diplomat's Journey to Anarchism by Carne Ross

as evil AI stories go, this one is bad. These fucking companies will soon be demanding camera access to the womb www.404media.co/researchers-...

Nothing to see here. Just a nondescript sentence in the FAQ of the staff newsletter about this rabid government's keen interest in our work: "The timeline reflects the Government’s strong interest in the tertiary sector and its desire to see timely progress on strategic direction".

The manifesto allegedly written by the islamophobic San Diego attackers is circulating -- and it offers a tour through the worst of the far right thought ecosphere. But from the very beginning, it roots itself in one malignant story: the so-called great replacement. The preferred conspiracy of… 🧵

NZ's boomer death cult politics means sacrificing real jobs and services as a ritual offering to AI, a technology that has yet to provide substantial business use cases. Endless welfare to asset owners and tech oligarchs.

There's a permanent lectureship going here in either German or French. Can confirm that the School of Languages, Literatures and Cultures comprises a truly exceptional group of serious, critical researchers. www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DRO625/l...

"And what did you do over the weekend"? "I spent the weekend killing my darlings. Don't tell me I don't live a self-actualised existence" #academicsky

interesting to see this argument being made by a senior journo, even when the self-congratulatory stuff about BBC "trust" & "transparency" invites the simple rejoinder of "Gaza". What journ struggles with more than anything else is grasping its pol underpinnings www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

I'm glad I kept my X account open on private. Because I just got to see Piers Morgan host a debate between Zizek & "one of the world's great critical thinkers" Warren Smith (the JK Rowling "think for yourself" guy), as clipped by Smith. And I think I now want to go to bed early & wake up Saturday

wobbly wobbly Wellington. Living on the fourth floor I feel every damn one #eqnz

I'm teaching a class on art and advertising tomorrow, and using it as an excuse to watch Roy Andersson clips... youtu.be/7FN8TcF0qFU?...

I'm looking forward to reading this. Great to see it published @chenchenzhang.net

This is the University of Central Florida. So many people really have no idea how much kids hate this shit.

trust the heroic entrepreneurs of the Business School to accelerate the transformation of the neoliberal university into the war university www.theguardian.com/education/20...

...spent much of my Sunday listening to YouTube of left theorists who describe other (not really) left ideas as "garbage" and who bask in the erotic charge of their own materialism...my book might just be a very long sub-tweet

One of these politicians reportedly said ‘Hitler was right’ and ‘Gas them’ and the other believes Palestinians are human beings. Guess who the Board of Deputies invited to join a rally against antisemitism

This is what normalisation looks like.

"We know all the clichés about how journalism is supposed to hold power to account. Democracy dies in darkness. Sunlight is the best disinfectant. News is something somebody doesn’t want printed; all else is advertising, blah, blah. But when it comes to Nigel Farage, there’s a nonchalant shrug".

I have v good memories of working with Maiki Sherman when at Parlt. Admired her professionalism and non-partisan approach. I'm angry she was viciously targeted in a dirty politics smear campaign and that her employers + colleagues were so gutless in the face of clearly coordinated strategies. #nzpol

This analysis by @mohanjdutt.bsky.social is bang on "Sherman's resignation will be treated, in the immediate aftermath, as a personal story ...That treatment will be wrong. It is, instead, a structural story — one Substack's success, one network's amplification, one election cycle's grammar" #nzpol

yes, but unfortunately the gutless guardians of the official public culture in so many countries find it much easier to utter the second term over the first - a convenient ready-to-hand label that won't invite any flak

@mohanjdutt.bsky.social you might appreciate...

The Free Speech bromides of NZ's right was always about surrendering our media and digital sovereignty to American oligarchs like Elon Musk.

Here’s a radical idea for the cookie-cutter Third Way Hayekian. For sure, let’s affirm the simple clarity of "the rent is too high". But spare us the folksy anti-intellectual and anti-political bullshit.

"This is the structural fact Seymour does not want to name. He is attacking, on the country's most disinformation-saturated platform, a public broadcaster trusted by voters...in order to perform for a constituency that is already hostile to professional journalism in general". #nzpol

I've been banging on about my "Wild Antagonism" book for the last few years to anyone who will listen. And after a period in limbo, it finally has a home. Coming out May next year w/ @edinburghup.bsky.social as part a new series edited by @benjamindecleen.bsky.social & @benmoffitt.bsky.social

Late-breaking job alert! 🚨 Lafayette College is hiring a Visiting Professor of American Politics, starting Fall 2026. Open to all approaches. We're a liberal arts college with strong students, about an hour from NYC/Philadelphia. Please distribute far and wide!

a hollowed out political party whose only electoral strategy is to hollow itself out more

Time to once again cite Billig's Learn to Write Badly: How to Succeed in the Social Sciences, as one of the best accounts of how a culture of mindless overproduction, & the infiltration of promotional idioms in academic prose, has debased the world of scholarship www.cambridge.org/core/books/l...

@kanehopkins.bsky.social the Habermas reference was the giveaway. Long time no talk - hope you're doing well

Plug away guys. This piece gives a context to today's BSA decision that will be obscured in a lot of the media commentary

The media reporting of the BSA decision has already moved to nostalgia pieces, I see. It's as if the conventions of the NZ journalism culture are unable to grasp the politics of the decision. Much like American journos still at sea about how to cover Trump #nzpol www.stuff.co.nz/culture/3609...