"Any time in the last 20 years, Simon Baron-Cohen could have asked the autism community or looked beyond his own biases at the existing literature […] but he was too busy being galaxy brained about autistic people." @ejwillingham.bsky.social on SBC, in our newsletter. buttondown.com/TPGA/archive...

Some news from me! I quit GameSpot to launch something new. Introducing @lookingfor.game, an independent weekly newsletter where I highlight upcoming PC games and deliver demo codes straight to your inbox. Sign up at lookingfor.game 🥳

50 free advance eprints available of my review of Katherine J. Parkin, The abortion market: buying and selling access in the era before Roe www.tandfonline.com/eprint/FMHAH...

Going through an issue of the TLS from last December, I find a philosophy pun courtesy of Nigel Warburton that surely deserves wider currantsy.

But tell me again how gender is fixed, innate, and binary.

Have been on the same dose of Prozac for 22 years, after doctors trying different SSRIs/dosages throughout my teenage years. SSRIs have saved my life: they're not 'happy pills,' they're not shameful, and eugenicist bastards like RFKJ are precisely that - eugenicist bastards.

Genuinely thrilled to have collaborated with the amazing Zara Slattery on this comic based my research on sexual health and cultural value. Huge thanks to @drannehanley.bsky.social and @claireplmartin.bsky.social for facilitating it, and to @leverhulme.ac.uk for funding the underlying research.

Given that academic job interview season is in full swing, for those of you who are in permanent positions - maybe check in on your precarious colleagues. I can guarantee a lot of them are having an awful time which is exacerbated by the fact that they have to do this every year.

Feels like reality is setting in that there's been no oil getting through the strait of Hormuz for 2 months and countries are literally going to run out. Europe is on the verge of being out of jet fuel. Meanwhile, the stock market is st all time highs. None of it makes any sense.

This is one of the most upsetting and disgusting things I've ever read.

I'm very pleased to be supporting Dr Alice Hall and Dr Melissa Oliver-Powell in running the brand new research network, Reproduction and the Humanities, at York. We welcome members working on themes relating to reproduction across a range of disciplines reproductionandthehumanities.wordpress.com

Biological sex does not mean "the thing we assume you are based on your genitals observed at birth." It's mostly a misnomer, but insofar as it describes anything real at all, it's a collection of biological attributes, many of which can be changed with HRT. It's neither binary nor immutable.

👇🏻🎯Mandatory reading for my cis followers

It's actually really fucked up watching so many people clamor to watch a new television series created by a woman who has proudly bragged she'll use the money she makes to try and kill my entire community.

This week’s horror is our introductory module, which examines the literature, art, music, dialect, film and TV from the region 1500-2025 being forcibly replaced by an entire ‘success in HE’ module featuring two weeks on how to use AI. I designed my module to incorporate proper study skills…

Had an amazing day facilitating a neurodivergent zine-making workshop and doing some lino printing as part of Rebecca Worthy and Tiffany Murphy's brilliant "Different Strokes" event. It felt really good to slow down, chat, and think with and through my body rather than in spite of it.

1/3 Since I wrote this response to Nigel Biggar’s malicious and completely false attack on me and university colleagues in The Spectator he has re-published it on his subscribers-only substack with me as the poster boy for “bad” history teaching at Sussex. alanlester.co.uk/blog/smearin...

I love that these financial phantoms are all that gets quote unquote produced now. From now until the rapidly approaching apocalypse, a series of rug pulls and cries of "all my apes... ☹️".

i wind up tweeting this basically every time there's an article like this, but the fundamental thing to me: ask yourself whether you earnestly believe there's more social pressure to be trans, or more social pressure to be cis. it's actually a super easy one!

Israel has been dumping herbicides throughout southern Lebanon as part of a concerted ecocide campaign to render the region uninhabitable. This has been going on for months with Lebanese journalists & environmentalists regularly reporting on it. The BBC: we don’t know why the Israelis are doing it

Looking forward to talking eggs and autism with @amygaeta.bsky.social tomorrow as part of the @ndhumanities.bsky.social symposium tomorrow: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/neurodiver... You guys aren't ready for The Zone.

Thrilled to be performing in some new work by the amazing Danielle James as part of the Front and Centre festival at the Playhouse in Derry this Saturday. www.derryplayhouse.co.uk/event/first-... If you're in town, don't miss it.

CN: Murder Today is the Disability Day of Mourning, where we hold vigils for disabled people killed by their caregivers. George Hodgins—whose murder inspired Zoe Gross to hold the first DDOM—went to my son's school. My feelings remain raw 14 years later. -SR thinkingautismguide.com/2012/09/auti...

Delighted to read Divya Victor's fantastic "Angelical Salutation of Every Girl in History" as part of @trincollcam.bsky.social's LGBTQ+ Arts Night yesterday. Huge congratulations to Jaysol Doy and his team, Lord Smith, and @trevorproject.bsky.social for a beautiful celebration of queerness.

Divya Victor's Angelical Salutation lifts every girl into a chorus of resilience. I read it with liberation theology and Christ consciousness, then share the piece here: https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/2026/02/poem-divya-victor-angelical-salutation/685981/.

: Half of UK universities face a deficit next year. Up to 50 could close. That is a sector in crisis. Simply blaming a tuition fee freeze and nudging fees up with inflation is not a plan. Where is the long-term strategy for higher education? #Universities #HigherEducation

Apply & share! @englishpen.bsky.social writing residencies for "writers currently based in England who identify as experiencing displacement – including (but not only) refugee writers, writers seeking asylum, and writers in exile." www.englishpen.org/posts/campai...

The chaos isn’t a bug of Trumpism, it’s the business model. The more people believe nothing is true, about elections, law, history, the easier it is for Trump to claim only he is trustworthy and rule indefinitely.

Humiliated in the media, denied healthcare, attacked by the human rights watchdog, shut out by the Supreme Court, bullied by social services and the police, disadvantaged in the jobs market, death figures covered up by the State, harassment de facto legalised, and attackers deified by Ministers.

This is barbaric. There is no world where people don't die because of this policy. That's one of the many, many reasons the courts ordered these policies be changed in the first place after decades of refusal. But that's the point of this change, isn't it?

“I am somebody” shaped how millions of us saw ourselves as kids, including me. That message mattered. It still does. Rest in power, Jesse Jackson 🙏🏽

This is what "the rule of men, not of laws" looks like.

Also very excited to see this piece by @amygaeta.bsky.social and I into print in the @vaginamuseum.bsky.social's fantastic zine, Lip Service. The museum is a fantastic and welcoming space, and the launch was a lot of fun.

The commander in chief telling troops who they have to vote for is itself a presidency ending impeachable scandal.

Nothing says Valentine's Day like a discussion of sexually pathological corpses... Delighted to receive my contributor's copy of this fantastic collection. Congrats to Chris, Bridget, and Matt, and to everyone whose work features.

The NYT's is going into replies now to nitpick criticism against them by trans journalists.

I see that Trump went straight to the 'this art is degenerate and poisons the morality and lifeblood of the Reich' response last night. Very out of character for him...

Amber Glenn, a queer Texan who started ice skating at the stonebriar mall in frisco at age 5, who plays magic the gathering, is an olympic gold medalist

Like almost everyone else, I thought this was a spoof - but no

Professor Louis Appleby covered up a policy which killed trans children so that the British government could kill some more through neglect and lack of care.

You’re not crazy. The anti-trans movement is not organic; it was funded by pedophilic billionaires like Jeffrey Epstein who backed a network of conservatives to accuse the same people they were sexually abusing of being the real danger. @madycast.com exposes the truth in our in-depth report.

Richard Dawkins. Steven Pinker. Lawrence Krauss. Jonathan Haidt. Robert Trivers. Prominent atheists and scientists who have pushed anti-trans propaganda for years. They all had ties to Jeffrey Epstein. Some received huge research grants and island trips, and all of them benefited from their ties.

A couple days late because it's been BUSY, but I had such a great time doing the BSLS Winter Symposium with the wonderful @lejhouston.bsky.social on Friday! I can only echo what they say: many thanks to all the speakers, especially Aanchal and Francesca for their excellent plenaries.

Sir Ian McKellen performing a monologue from Shakespeare’s Sir Thomas More on the Stephen Colbert show. Never have I heard this monologue performed with such a keen sense of prescience. Nor have I ever been in this exact historical moment.TY Sir Ian, for reaching us once again. #Pinks #ProudBlue

Star trek had a lot of hard lines over the years, but this remains the fucking hardest

Incandescent. One of the best pieces I've read about what university means to people and their communities - and what will happen to a city and people after one closes. The *Labour* government and Jaqui Smith in particular should be ashamed of themselves and shamed into doing something. Deplorable.

Following the release of the Epstein files Jk Rowling has deleted a decade of port logs belonging to the Super yacht Samsara. What is she hiding?