Merry Christmas all!

'National security' is truly the last refuge of the scoundrel.

Thread on why even using AI as a way to brainstorm a project is a horrible idea.

The correct place for LLMs in academic life is no place at all. The correct policy toward LLMs in academic environments is comprehensive, summary ban.

Pitch perfect, sadly.

I don't want a lot for Christmas There is just one thing I need- Lacan: This is what we would call the *objet petit a*.

Jean Baudrillard says that the war on Christmas did not take place.

My god I thought you were someone to rely on / But was there not a sense in which you were ideology at its purest? #LastZizekIGaveYouTheReal

Ben Clift shared insights on how growing populism threatens technocratic economic governance at a LUISS University event in Rome. The 'Sustainable Leviathan' workshop focused on macroeconomic trust and democratic responsibility, featuring experts from Europe. #Populism #EconomicPolicy

Republican Elite: regular mass shootings at schools is the price we must pay to privately own military weapons, which we need to protect The People from any Authoritarians who would threaten the 1st Amendment Also Republican Elite: we are using government to shut down speech at private universities

We (@crossdale.bsky.social, Christina Pantazis, @roxana-pessoa.bsky.social, Tiê Franco Brotto and I) present the first academic peer-reviewed article, studying the criminalisation and repression of climate and environmental protest as a global phenomenon. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

#OpenAccess! CAPTURING COMMEMORATION: Reflections on the First World War Centenary in Britain by Noakes, Pennell @teachlearnwar.bsky.social, Hanna, Hughes @lornamhughes.bsky.social, Kempshall @chriskempshall.bsky.social & Wallis has now been published! Find out more : bit.ly/47FiHAL #WWIStudies

Based on our recent IO article, @fabianpape.bsky.social, Toby Pforr and I wrote a short piece for @theconversation.com about the future of the dollar - check it out! 🙂 theconversation.com/is-the-domin...

Person who actually deserves a trophy is the artist who made the FIFA peace prize trophy look like everyone in the entire world holding their head in their hands out of secondhand embarrassment

Boomers: It just sucks so much that everyone gets participation trophies now, you used to have to show real merit to get an award Also Boomers:

*weary sigh* The Europe week of my US foreign policy module is going to need some fairly hefty revisions www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Publication alert! A collaborative reflection on the UK’s biggest public history event - the centenary of the First World War. Thanks to @ukri.org for funding & my fellow co-authors @lucynoakes1.bsky.social @chriskempshall.bsky.social @lornahughes.bsky.social James Wallis and Emma Hanna.

Wow - this guy must be really, REALLY bad with money if an extra £208 per month will “ruin” his retirement. Let’s take a look at his situation based on what he told the @Telegraph Because this does NOT add up! No, this is not a “poor pensioner” scrabbling around for pennies… 🧵1/9

What a great headline

🎉 Soraya Hamdaoui has a new publication out in Third World Quarterly 🎉 "It’s the party system that matters: anti-populism in Argentina’s Cambiemos coalition (2015–2017)" examines Latin American anti-populism from a party system perspective, in Argentina. 👓 Read it here: doi.org/10.1080/0143...

Julia Welland, Pleasure and Depletion in Contemporary Militarism - @edinburghup.bsky.social, March 2026 edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-pleasur... @warwickpais.bsky.social

Why does Labour hate business?! @mattwestern.bsky.social

Great to read this table, the week after my institution announces a voluntary severance programme, to see the government introducing a policy that will cost us an extra *£13 million*

Every Labour MP, SPAD and apparatchik should read this, then read it again. @casmudde.bsky.social with a perfect distillation of why the feted 'Danish model' doesn't work. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Insightful analysis on the ways in which Trump's 28-point 'peace plan' would leave Ukrainian sovereignty in tatters while allowing Russia - and the US - to profit from its own belligerence. Meanwhile, Ukraine and EU are excluded from negotiations but left to foot the bill. A monstrous injustice.

🚨 New Publication in International Organization! 🚨 Happy to share our latest paper with @jeremymoulton.bsky.social:“The New Age of Myth: Political Narratives and the Reconstitution of World Order”, part of SI #IOFoGG on the Future of Global Governance. doi.org/10.1017/S002... @iojournal.bsky.social

Same and same. Us haters should all come out together at the same time to show our strength in numbers. I live, breathe and practice my hatred of AI as a vocational calling. It gives me purpose.

You are not going to be able to pull together the anti-Reform coalition if voters don't see you are meaningfully different to Reform. Mad reaction from the government given an increasing threat on the left.

The first Thatcher govt had a majority of just 43. Thatcher, like Starmer, was not a natural orator, but she recognised that the battle of ideas mattered. She saw it as part of her job to go out & win the argument: to shape public opinion, not just react to it. That's almost wholly missing today.

A chart from "The British General Election of 2024" (out soon!) which is relevant to this debate - here's what voters wanted (black line) and what they though Labour (red) and Cons (blue) would do on tax and spend during the campaign. Higher figures = "put them up". Some important lessons here 1/?

It makes me wonder whether Prescott actually consulted the original source himself & doctored it or simply took dictation from someone else. A person, for example, who had helped insert a right-wing lobbyist who hadn’t done journalism for over 20 years into such a potentially important position…

Since the summer, I've been wondering how remembrance and poppy politics would be impacted by the latest wave of ethnonationalism (e.g. far-right flag raising). Are poppy zealots moving from a compulsory/universalising logic ('everyone must wear one') to a more straightforwardly exclusionary one?

Clinical and really quite damning from @geoffmulgan.bsky.social geoffmulgan.substack.com/p/hollowed-o...

Those who say "Trump is taking us back to the Gilded Age" are thinking way too small: He's taking us back to a pre-Magna-Carta world. For all their talk about borders, Trump & the broligarchs & the autocrats of the world don't care abt nations: they aim to rule as warlords over personal empires.

AI is shit.

Awesome that every search engine and major social media site is forcing AI news summaries onto everyone // Largest study of its kind shows AI assistants misrepresent news content 45% of the time – regardless of language or territory www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/...

Ed Luce watching democracy die in the United States of America

Possible lesson here for Labour?

we should bring back shame actually www.bostonreview.net/articles/how...

This is my new favourite analogy for mainstream parties' problem with the radical right! If you're a mainstream party, you can talk about other things! If you're the government, you can talk about *and do* other things *and* you get to set the agenda, at least to some extent, much of the time!

Another one for the vicarious militarism file

Omg Remembrance Day this year

It’s official - “Nigel Farage is right, don’t vote for him” is a demonstrably awful strategy for Labour. Boosts salience of immigration, costs votes on the left, doesn’t persuade any voters on right (why would they accept a crap knock-off when they can have the original?)

We have a paper on how Labour's strategy is disastrous. There's an exclusive coverage in @newstatesman.com www.newstatesman.com/politics/202...

Deftly done

@adambienkov.bsky.social is spot on www.bylinesupplement.com/p/the-failur...

The BBC has apologised for Radio 4 broadcasting a critique of Robert Jenrick MP saying "I certainly don't want my daughters to live in a neighbourhood with men from a backward country" which said "these words echo a fear many people have - fear of a stranger .. the technical word is xenophobia"

'Honest Bob' Jenrick, a politician obviously & deliberately embracing xenophobia, does some weapons grade xenophobia & the BBC *apologises* for a Thought For The Day contributor calling it xenophobic. Licence fee payers need to know who makes these decisions & why. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Proud to see my former PhD supervisor Gilbert Achcar here, alongside some of the biggest names in progressive academia. Every one of us needs to raise our voice in this moment. Its a matter of basic moral obligation and civic duty. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/a...

The EU will keep warning Israel until the last Palestinian in Gaza is either killed by Israeli’s military or by its starvation policy.