I am so entraced by @kontinentalist.bsky.social way of publishing. It's engaging, told through data visualisation as much as the narrative form. For example, this used gameplay elements: kontinentalist.com/stories/popu...

So Edinburgh Council have decided the HUGE new data centre in South Gyle will not have to submit an Environmental Impact Assessment. This is despite having a power use demand akin to Edinburgh Airport, and that data centres are known to use up clean water supplies. inews.co.uk/news/data-ce...

I think this post by @parismarx.com addresses exactly what Glitch has been highlighting on how important the Online Safety Act actually is - in terms of regulation and preventing harm against marginalised / oppressed people. disconnect.blog/social-media...

The performance continues. The narrative of US vs China is like siblings squabbling than war, but is being used to justify mass military investment. The performance obfuscates us from seeing what is actually happening, and what the actual cost is. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

This is from a very prominent conservationist from Kenya

Our horror at the genocide in Gaza, at the mass murder of civilians on Oct 7 2023, and at today's atrocity in Manchester, comes in each case from the same, inherent part of our shared humanity. We need to assert that shared humanity as loudly as possible, and in as many practical ways as we can.

Trump's Deal is cementing the use of ethnic cleansing as suitable grounds for Development (aka corporate land grabs). USAID used to pretend that it was helping people, but now US policy is to openly support genocide to give billionaires land & power - exactly what was was denied to Palestinians.

Spoiler: it's not about growth. It's about SECURITISATION - the political shift which started with 9/11 & is designed around fear and control because it sees all things as threats. Starmer's actions are part of a global trend. Read a critique of the EU equivalent here: www.equinox-eu.com/mff2028/

Can someone please tell me which Edinburgh councillors have shares in Black Sheep Coffee? Because that's what's really overrunning the city, as well as private student housing.

How thousands of ‘overworked, underpaid’ humans train Google’s AI to seem smart www.theguardian.com/... | Contracted AI raters describe grueling deadlines, poor pay and opacity around work to make chatbots intelligent

I do miss Old Twitter, mostly for the kinds of connection and community I felt it facilitated at the beginning. But I guess we were all caught in the hype of social media connecting us rather than extracting from us back then. Also miss the international community that it fostered.

I HIGHLY recommend reading this great blog by @superrrnetwork.bsky.social on why they will not be using GenAI. It's such a powerful piece which I feel every organisation should read. It tackles so many of the issues of GenAI in an easy to read and well referenced way. superrr.net/en/blog/abou...

I've been noticing a lot more adverts with ethnically ambiguous People of Colour who look "alternative" invented by AI. They've all been for companies which embody racism. AI blackface for British military intelligence jobs? Or AI blackface for weapons / tech companies? 🤢

It sure looks like every last major tech firm is abandoning past commitments to end their use of fossil fuels. Particularly concerning given how we know that fossil fuel burning power plants are being built NOW with the explicit aim of powering data centers www.nationalobserver.com/2025/09/04/i...

Nigel Farage used to be the kind of person that the BBC would invite to speak on panels to be the token fringe person. Now the media actively share whatever nonsense he says as frontpage news. This isn't a coincidence. The more platform you give to the far right, the more they grow.

TBC it's not parody when I put it like that, Labour really genuinely are going with the message that Reform's basic message is correct but trying to say people should vote Labour anyway. I think this is suicidal comms, politically completely inept. bsky.app/profile/kier...

I've spent this evening reading about Queer / Trans "Indian" history - unfortunately it's not as diverse as I'd like - but I hadn't realised how much I needed to read about this. A big part of me yearns to travel to India and visit communities and sites of Queer and Trans importance.

Finding it fascinating to learn that NGOs and charities will do risk assessments before implementing anti-oppressionn changes BUT refuse to do the same when implementing tech changes, like uncritically using AI tools as ways of "cutting costs".

I wish @plutopress.bsky.social made more audiobooks. I keep having chats with disabled folks who want to read more interesting books (like Trans Femme Futures) but can't access them. Read-aloud tech tools aren't the same. What are the barriers? Is it the monopoly of Audible? Costs of production?

I wish people were aware of the kind of political economy shifts we're facing right now, and the world that is being built against us. The arrival of AI isn't so much about the technology but the political forces that are being shaped around it. Human rights is dead, securitization has won.

I've been reading some of Glitch's work on the OSA. While the implementation is sketchy, it's important not to dismiss some of the reasons why the Act came about: glitchcharity.co.uk/our-work/onl...

It's such a shame that so much research on colonial violence only acknowledges data collected by colonising forces. For example, 'the killing times' work that @theguardian.com never seems to credit local oral histories, but instead uses colonial literature, newspapers and report as evidence.

Former senior UN relief official Jan Eliasson has dismissed these air drops as an "ineffective sideshow". But of course, they're not aimed at stopping the genocide. Nothing Starmer does is aimed at stopping the genocide. Its aimed at managing the domestic politics of his complicity in the genocide.

Supporters of the UK government are now saying or implying that there's nothing much Britain can do. This feels like an attempt (conscious or otherwise) to exonerate Starmer et al. But it won't wash. Britain's stance matters and there are actions that it can take. Deep down, everyone knows this.

Today in the UK, the Online Safety Act (2023) came into force. This means that social media companies are required to undertake age verification for users in the UK to see "adult content". And who decides what is and is not "adult content"? The social media companies themselves.

It's incredible how this story keeps getting worse. In case anyone was unclear about the consequences of the Online Safety Act, this is @taliabhatt.itch.io's itch page viewed in the UK.

I'd love to know how r/AlJazeera is harming children so much you can't even find it on reddit. Unless you want to talk about how Palestinian children are not children in the eyes of the British government. I'm also FUMING at the AI response reddit gave instead.

The Online Safety Act comes into force as Britain's latest surveillance tool. So much effort to "protect children" without actually doing the work of actually protecting children - like, for example, tackling child poverty, increasing social housing, and actually properly investing in education.

I always vote for candidates rather than parties, but it doesn't surprise me that Corbyn doesn't want to join the Greens. Polanski is offering a lefty movement (which is what I argued for years ago when I was in the party), but there is also a strong establishment / centrist contingent.

I hold a lot of grief over my loss of faith, but to be able to still believe in Jainism today feels impossible if you are an anti-caste person. Despite Jainism explicitly positioning itself as a faith against Varna, it is now practised as fodder for Hindutva ideology.

This is exactly my tension with the "lefty" techno-utopian view. Why do you want to give your agency to a machine? What gives you the impression that it will ever be "objective" or "neutral" and not just repeat human error? And isn't the narrative of "humans are flawed" just myths of original sin?

I haven't watched Squid Game 2 or 3. I found the first harrowing enough - and when they actually decided to create a reality show about it, I was disgusted. But I can't help but draw parallels between what is happening in Gaza and scenes from Squid Game. When even access to food is a deadly game.

"Grok is not an anomaly; it is a mirror. It reflects, with algorithmic fidelity, the intellectual and moral bankruptcy of the ideology it was designed to serve." www.thedissident.news/the-algorith...

I wonder which American Tech company is now going to control all of our health data in the name of efficiency? And I wonder how this is going to be used to police and surveil us further.

On a side note, I do wish the Greens had lived up to the vision of the socialist party that @jeremycorbyn.bsky.social and @zarahsultana.bsky.social are now building. I really miss the vision that the Global Greens because it was about Internationalism. But times change.

I think a lot about what the world would look like with different systems. Like if innovation was funding in the name of creativity and greater planetary wellbeing instead of in weapons that kill us all or machines designed to control us better. What if we lived to be alive rather than to survive?

I'd love to do a long-term (10 year minimum) experiment where a group of people from multiple different backgrounds spend a couple of hours each year writing how what they think the world could look like in the future, and what they would like it to look like.

I don't think there is causation between being trans and being autistic, but more correlation. Because being autistic means always having to interrogate why things work the way they do, and therefore allows for exploration / challenges to hegemonic systems of gender like the binary.

Yep, that's the Labour Party, shifting funds from helping disabled people live to making more weapons that make more people disabled. Death is the new currency, and they're not even hiding it. They are also cutting aid to make more weapons too.

One of my young adult regrets is spending more time reading Clay Shirky than Evgeny Morozov. It's sadly so much easier to be young and focus on optimism than listen to the voices of caution and reflection.

Damn, Leverage: Redemption is really hitting the Effective Altruism cult and tech bros this season. Loving it!

If politics was high school, Labour has effectively been pushing away that the clique it was part of was (to the Greens and Lib Dems), and is now trying to attract the clique which abandoned the Tories (ie the new Reformites). It's an incredibly short-termist, immature and disloyal strategy.

Before COVID, while Jeremy Corbyn was still leader of the Labour Party, I briefly worked for the UK Overseas Development Institute (ODI). Their Comms team spent a lot of time praising Justine Greening and plotting for Starmer to overthrow Corbyn. During work hours.

As much as I love the sunshine, we really really need rain.

I've come to prefer using "accountable" rather than "responsible". Accountability allows for agency, for relationality, and for cultures of care. Responsibility, on the other hand, feels blame-heavy, individualised, and reactionary. You can make mistakes and grow if accountable, not if responsible.

1/ While our newest report focuses on the expanding use of AI in policing, border & immigration systems in Europe — its relevance stretches beyond EU borders. The UK government has also vowed to “mainline AI,” as is increasingly evident in its approach to asylum and immigration decision-making 🧵

People did vote FOR Reform. It was not a protest vote. A protest vote is people not voting (as is very common in local elections) or people spoiling a ballot. To be clear: If someone checked a box for Reform, they were voting for Reform. Stop making excuses and removing agency.

It's interesting (not really) that when you open the door to hate, you legitimise hate. And people will actually move towards it. Labour needs to realise that hate is never pragmatism, it is always intentional.

⚡️TOMORROW⚡️ In this talk, Mijke van der Drift and @fullnommunism.bsky.social discuss embracing friction as a key practice in transfeminist world-making. 🗓️Sat, May 3 ⏰1:30 pm 📍Pelican House 🎟https://buff.ly/jPg0sNF

‘Peter Mandelson’s Fixing of Keir Starmer’s Visit to Spytech Firm Palantir Raises Serious Questions’ New piece by me and Max Colbert for @bylinetimespod.bsky.social bylinetimes.com/2025/04/25/p...