Sad to read about the passing of the great William Connolly. A wonderfully creative political theorist who has left us with such a rich body of work. I had the pleasure of hearing him speak at Essex in 2008 & chat with him afterwards. The family death notice is lovely www.legacy.com/us/obituarie...

I think William E. Connolly is so important he deserves an obit in the New York Times. He passed away overnight at 87 and I am thinking of Jane, his family, friends, students and colleagues who have such wonderful memories of his teaching and friendship. Rigour and bravery in his words.

@islates.bsky.social great messaging, eh

..and never one to be outdone on the bullshit front, Netanyahu is issuing statements cheering on Trump's "leadership of the free world"

“Our objective is to defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime.." What extraordinary dangerous bullshit. Reenact the hubris of 2003. And don't even bother giving the American people a heads up this time www.nytimes.com/live/2026/02...

This is as bad a symptom of political despair and nihilism as I've read. A tech company trying to give vague expression to some concept of the public good and the ethical, in opposition to a state regime that couldn't care less www.nytimes.com/2026/02/27/t...

"I don’t think I’ve ever encountered, outside academia, people with such a bottomless appetite for mountainous piles of meaningless, unnecessary, empty words & phrases, each genetically engineered, in whole or in part, to make any sentient being stop paying attention" coreyrobin.com/2026/02/26/o...

I'm all for a culture of (blah blah blah) "agonistic respect" @aurelmondon.com, but in this instance the only reasonable response would be to grab the microphone from this fucker, scream to the heavens and slap him in the face

Peters is such a grade A bullshitter - the love and affection he generates among so many New Zealanders, even people who would never vote for him, seems symptomatic of something very fucked up. "But have you ever heard him speak in Parliament", someone said to me recently. "He's like Churchill"

Roberto Unger has some piercing lines: Mathematics has been the most powerful instrument of natural science, the torch illuminating what otherwise seems impossible to retrieve from the shadows of the perceived world. But it offers natural science a poisoned gift: the idea of timeless laws of nature

@maxsoar.bsky.social in case you haven't seen

"The High Court judgement [on Palestine Action] is very good news for democracy, but it is further evidence of the moral bankruptcy at the heart of the current Labour Party" Interesting piece by Martin O'Neill - on how Rawls was cited in judgement martinoneillyork.substack.com/p/on-john-ra...

Documenting the hate infrastructure of the Free Speech Union. It is an entire ecosystem of Neo Nazis and white supremacists. culture-centered.blogspot.com/2026/02/free...

...to which our most abject, inner self cries out: "but how can I earn cultural capital in the doom scrolling attention economy if I spend all my time reading books"?!

Shout out to Joli Jensen for writing this engaging book about academic writing. Lots of insights that everybody knows already but which we all need to keep relearning, in the hope of more days and weeks where our knowing & doing are better squared #academicsky press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...

I wonder if people are paying attention to how much their doom scrolling is cutting into time they used to use to read books

@altnamackin.bsky.social 😬

...slightly mortified to see that an offhand sarcastic comment about an article, which I thought I was making to the editor only, was forwarded directly to the author. Trying to pass as [cue Roy Keane snarl] a "nice guy", while living the repressed existence of a demonic reviewer 2... 😃

Our new special issue is now published! "Conceptual Flipsiding and Reversal of Liberal-Democratic Notions: Discursive-Political Strategies in the Normalization of Nationalism, Populism, Neoliberalism, and the Far Right" www.tandfonline.com/toc/csos20/3...

What a tremendous loss. If you're interested in learning more about Chip's legacy as a right-watcher (well before right watching became a cottage industry), check out this brief reflection. www.academia.edu/95027577/Age...

This piece (first published in December) already has an issue number. It's a study of how far right "reactionary watchdogs" want to normalise a regime of "dark accountability work", based on an analysis of two conversations between Rufo and Peterson www.tandfonline.com/eprint/IMBKX...

@liamdubh.bsky.social Dhún na nGall abú!

THE ENTIRE TEAM OF REPORTERS FOR THE MIDDLE EAST.

It sure is dark times

This piece poses some great questions: "Can a culture be said to be narcissist, not just in the superficial sense of that word? That is, can a culture think the way a narcissist does?". And I love how they are answered in a way that affirms our capacity to refuse the bullshit

this is a wicked man who knows he is being wicked and does it anyway

When the rhetoric of science becomes a weapon for erasing trans and gender diverse people from the bureaucratic record. This is an important piece by Jay Todd & Felicity Callard. A critique of a review that has been lauded by reactionaries everywhere rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

This is the last of the three Guardian articles by @robtoes.bsky.social on digital politics - well worth reading There is a lot to mull on in this line: "The demands of the attention economy exacerbate the age-old leftist tendency toward infighting" www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

wondering if they have earthquakes on Bluesky #eqnz

When political ontology and information architecture ontology become indistinguishable

A must-read paper for UK and international social scientists: the Sullivan Review "(re)installs.. a hygienically patrolled division between ‘sex’ and ‘gender’, where a certain model of sex is ‘reality’, and ‘gender identity’ is cast merely as an individual's (psychological) ‘self-understanding.'"

"The interview inscribes Peterson’s own vision of the sensible center...The centrist choreography might seem risible, but it nonetheless gives us a glimpse into the discursive logic of a distinct form of reactionary pluralism" www.tandfonline.com/eprint/IMBKX....

"The other iron law of reactionary centrism...is that only the left and liberals really have agency. The right just reacts – everything is always backlash, never a self-generated political project." www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

New monsters are being made in the alliance of scientism, academic capitalism and AI solutionism

there is a lot of wisdom in this

🔥 NEW ARTICLE ALERT 🔥 The five spatial political logics of populism: An analytical framework and research agenda for studying the populist politicisation of space from the local to the transnational in @bjpir.bsky.social with Benjamin de Cleen & Panos Panayotu journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Ten years ago, Jason Glynos and I published our first attempt at defining populist hype It came out as a working paper with Populismus, having been rejected by three journals, with split reviews every time Amazing to see the journey the concept has been on since www.populismus.gr/wp-content/u...

Academic book publishing: the more the book costs, the less proof-reading it has received

This brings a new shade of meaning to the notion of Dark Enlightenment: the apparent traces of #Epstein and Chomsky having an amiable conversation about race and IQ over dinner

The decadence of academic capitalism: boasting about the "big surplus" one minute and decimating the sociology department the next #academicsky

"The way we do politics has changed and politicians need to wake up to this". Great piece by @robtoes.bsky.social

“The overwhelming liberal focus on disinformation misreads how digital platforms work…cutting-edge propagandists now focus less on policy messaging and more on massaging vibes”. Start of a new series by the excellent @robtoes.bsky.social

The anti-woke vanguardists at NZ First have now taken to defending "our Judeo-Christian heritage" @altnamackin.bsky.social #nzpol

I appreciate the clarity of the headline www.patreon.com/posts/get-mi...

The Pakistani's state suppression of Khan is wild "In that time, they’ve barred TV channels from taking his name on air and stopped newspapers from publishing his picture; they’ve even scrubbed him from the footage of his greatest sporting triumph".

This Theory & Society piece is quite something. A pious scientistic prescription tailor-made for appropriation by reactionary watchdogs that takes the total piss by citing Rufo to advance an argument in favour of "academic integrity, not partisan retaliation" link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Conviction politics, NZ-style. With extra brownie points ("such authenticity!") for giving two fingers to the pointy-heads

Reading Yves Citton's Mythocracy at the moment. It's really good. And I haven't even gotten to the part that interests me the most: on the left's need to generate new storylines www.versobooks.com/en-gb/produc...

The TikTok censorship and throttling of the left was a predictable outcome of the Disinformation rubric which liberal technocrats used to respond to the 2016 shock of Trump. I discussed this on QAA soundcloud.com/qanonanonymo...