can't wait for the wellness podcast that also explains why America must prepare for holy war against Islam

Instead of giving that engagement-bait Guardian article the quote-sharing it wants, share some recent Horror journalism that’s actually good. For example, @sharai.bsky.social’s dissection of how @shudder.com is making us all better horror watchers and critics through diverse programming?

(10) Having used centrist media outlets like The Atlantic and New York Times to publish a steady stream of right-wing culture war grift about higher ed repackaged in softer terms to make it digestible for the PMC, the Right will have made its view of higher ed the 'new normal' for elites.

(9) The Right is using the threat of research funding at Ivies to force hires of conservatives in fields like government, public policy, history etc. who will then turn elite undergrads into a new PMC ideologically indoctrinated to support & govern the AI economy. www.thecrimson.com/article/2026...

(8) Moreover, having destroyed real cultural knowledge through the evisceration of real humanities & social science departments that just so happen to produce the research casting doubt on the drive for AI hegemony, big tech will have no intellectual opposition to its project of economic dominance.

(7) now, industry has conquered that part of the university that it had yet to make instrumental to its profiteering - humanities/humanistic social science. Just as industry profits on STEM university research, now the Right will use colleges to produce workers who serve the ends of the AI economy.

(6) Instead, the right-wing center hires "scholars" who do "research" that affirms their various reactionary goals, none more important than deregulation of the market (basically, an American Enterprise Institute becomes the totality of the "humanities" at public R1 university campuses)

(5) real humanities research dedicated to producing the cultural knowledge we need & which challenges the economic interests of big tech dies because actual academic humanities doesn't exist in public research universities after the right-wing takeover.

(4) Since traditional academic departments like History and English will have been defunded in these public institutions, there will be no alternative on campus to the right-wing humanities institute for someone who wants to study English, History, political thought, etc.

(3) at public institutions that have been forced to house these centers, like the University of Florida/Hamilton School or UT Austin/School of Civic Leadership, the centers eventually become THE dispensers of a right-wing humanities curricula to the undergrad population.

(2) these "intellectual diversity" centers become the main place where humanities are taught in public higher education as the right+admin deny hiring requests from traditional departments which slowly shrink and die & create a hostile environment that real humanists can't tolerate, so they leave

The defunding project works like this: (1) right-wing legislatures demand that public universities create 'intellectual diversity' centers using taxpayer dollars and/or by accepting big donations from conservative billionaires like the Koch brothers (who also fund AEI, which produced the report)

The most destructive effects of the right's reinvigorated culture war on higher ed won't really be felt at Columbia, Oberlin, or other elite private universities, or at least not immediately. Rather, right-wing legislatures will use these reports as "evidence" to justify defunding public higher ed.

Democrat parents won't read Ann Coulter or Rod Dreher. But they will read the establishment media pieces softly asking if universities are too woke and indicting the humanities as the source of that wokeness and begin to worry they're paying for little Tommy's indoctrination at Columbia. AND YET ...

Establishment media (NYT, Chronicle, The Atlantic) is deliberately working to repackage right-wing culture war nonsense in a somewhat softer way so that it's digestible for the PMC. I've said it many times before, the Right has not had a new idea about higher ed since Joe McCarthy.

The Chronicle's dominant position in the higher ed media ecosystem is one of the biggest problems that we face. Endless right-wing grift, just like the New York Times.

The Economist is pure shite on every issue it touches but this is especially egregious. If Britain had a “George Floyd moment” then it was the murder of Stephen Lawrence and subsequent failures to deliver justice by the institutionally racist Met Police and judiciary, surely

www.arte.tv/en/videos/11... 11 minutes, but a good watch.

Yes. Every time you see the word “remigration“, replace it with the word “pogroms”. Because that is what is at the end of the road that the far-right and its enablers are walking us down.

Yes. And the conversation that is not happening often enough: about the mass violence that would be necessary to get countless people running for the exit. I am not saying this mass violence will get rid of everyone that the fascists want gone. But I *am* saying that it will cause years of misery.

There's definitely some kind of two tier policing at play here, just not the kind Barry down the pub has deciding it's worth throwing a bin at the police over.

Salma Yaqoob and her family were victims of arson on Wednesday and the first I heard about it was from a Jeremy Corbyn solidarity post. I can't even find it in the news apart from this article and one in The S*n www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midland...

i'm not falling for that hot take. that's clearly someone with a fetish for capital. i refuse to participate in that kind of perversion

To our dismay, the artist and author Marjane Satrapi has passed away. As she wrote, ordinary Americans and Iranians have more in common with each other than we do with either of our governments, which have far too much in common with each other. We honor her memory and oppose the war.

To say that NHS staff cannot wear Palestinian symbols or protest against genocide because it would upset Jewish patients again conflates British Jews with Israel and its oppression of Palestinians, and makes Jews less safe. It is the British state following its own agenda and using Jews as a shield.

Suella Braverman, as actual Home Secretary, summoned Tommy Robinson to Remembrance Day to "protect" it from pro-Gaza protests. Tommy Robinson & his mates turned up, drunk, high, pissed everywhere, and fought the police. This was 2.5 years ago.

Watching the UK collapse into frothing far right conspiracism is the real decadence. Too many people letting it happen

RIP Marjane Satrapi.

MAX ROMEO TIME

Whenever the Midwives of Gilead (ie transphobes) go off and say "Pratchett would have stood with us" even when Rhiannon Pratchett, *his daughter*, came to mind, I think about bits like this where Detritus, a troll aka a bloody huge sentient "metamorphorical rock", stands up for Cheery.

Jess O'Thomson dedicates themselves body and spirit to fighting one of the most demoralising and gruelling political fights in the world. They contend with constant abuse from professional transphobes both online and off, and are thanked by people in our community calling them cis and privileged.

At one point Brown's Canadaland had a sort of rep as a breath of fresh air re the 🇨🇦 media landscape, even as a right-leaning libertarian. He had a good team, who actually did the real work - editing, reporting, producing etc. He's driven away most of the team, & turns out to be a raving bigot.

The British Government, whether through the UK Supreme Court or through direct legislation & messaging, is a eugenicist, anti-immigrant, anti-refugee, anti-trans/LGBT+, anti-human entity. If you still believe "they're still not as *as bad* as Reform", you're on the side of eugenicists & fascists.

But "ReFoRm WiLl bE wOrSe!".

I've obviously not a fan of Mahmood so maybe I'm reading it too harshly but it certainly seems like she, at best, isn't refuting the absolutely bullshit claims the police give preferential treatment to minorities.

Don't worry though, she also took the time to falsely claim the knife used in the murder was a Kirpan.

The fash are screaming white supremacism and trying to stir up race riots. So of course Mahmood condemns the "dangerous undercurrent" to commentary that might cause cops to get hurt.

It's Tuesday, I'm not in the UK these days, but I'm already bloody tired, man.

It's Pride Month! A fantastic month to stand up for the rights of trans people, and a perfect time for transphobes to shut the fuck up.

Just your regular racist Labour MP

Yes ! Meta needs some fort of perma unbalanced panopticon is seen as DESIRABLE. Social media and the space of it should be moving into infrastructure now .. and infrastructure isn’t sexy. It can be lucrative but not sexy ( Also PLUG THE Book please)

Rustin also wrote "The pride and shame of being a gender-critical author" on her substack. She was also caught out trying to get interviews for a transphobic trans DIY care piece, and had to furiously lie and backtrack about it on Twitter/X. Part of the TERF "Guardian Sex Equality and Equity Group".

Where the US is going, Britain slavishly follows.

New issue of the newsletter: bsky.app/profile/citi...

"Batman may be committed to never taking a life, but Batman is also friends with the police commissioner; these principles can be a far heavier lift when the cops, the nominal legitimate keepers of the peace, are prepared to shoot you on sight."

Anything smart i say on this i got from @gonebabygone.bsky.social ‘s reactormag.com/daredevil-bo...

This, from Lorna Finlayson, expresses my view on universities better than I ever have myself. The process is farther along in Britain than elsewhere, but something of this trend is visible in too many places. newleftreview.org/sidecar/post...

these days, if you're the kind of person who e.g. owns a mug that celebrates a loyalist death squad, the woke world will refuse you give you prizes.