The houses of ethnic minorities in Belfast didn’t ’go on fire’ last night - as my radio has told me - they were set alight

𝗡𝗼 𝗦𝗰𝗼𝘁𝗹𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗡𝗼 𝗣𝗮𝗿𝘁𝘆: 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗳𝗮𝗻 𝗳𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗲𝘀 𝗰𝗮𝗻 𝘁𝗲𝗹𝗹 𝘂𝘀 𝗮𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝘄𝗵𝗼 𝘄𝗲 𝗮𝗿𝗲 For the men's World Cup, I’ve been asked to write a series of Opinion Columns for @scotsman.com. These will discuss some of the social and organisational processes which are relevant to the tournament. 🏆 🧵

In Doppelganger, @naomiaklein.bsky.social shows how white supremacists assume the victimhood of those they oppress, presenting the evils they do as evils done to them. In Britain, where black people are 7 times more likely than white people to die after police restraint, this is what we are seeing.

“I view cinema as an act of reparation.”-Dea Gjinovci Thoughtful exchange at #Doxumentale between Senior Advisor Barbara Unger & Dea Gjinovci director of "The beauty of the donkey". They explored how documentaries can hold space for collective memory, personal histories & difficult conversations.

Dance first, think later? This is a project I have been working on for a while. If you have journeyed through clubs, raves, dancefloors, sounds and crowds of 1990s/early 2000s Northern Ireland I would love to chat!

Hi, expert on far-right extremism here, a history of domestic violence and misogyny is one of the strongest predictive variables for violent extremism, especially on the right. We've been raising the alarm on this for DECADES but no one cares.

“When our lives are bleak and we place our hopes in a change of government, we put our own tasks in the hands of a paternal authority; we delude ourselves, accepting the mythology of deputizing others to do our work for us.” ––G. Konrád Forget the politicians—WE are the change agents.

It's 100 years since the General Strike: the biggest industrial action in UK history. The PM, Stanley Baldwin, claimed Britain was "nearer to civil war than for centuries past". The Times called it "the gravest domestic menace since the fall of the Stuarts". So what was it & why does it matter? 🧵

The Worker’s May-Pole, Walter Crane, 1894.

The Prime Minister is spearheading one of the most shocking attacks on civil liberties in modern times even though independent analysis shows these changes would make NO meaningful difference to the court backlog and there is no credible evidence it will make justice swifter

Mayday protest is tomorrow in the U.S. No work, no school, no shopping, no kings!

📣 The difference between replicable and not replicable is not itself scientifically replicable. 📣 New work with Erkan Buzbas, showing that verdicts such as "X% of results replicated" are based on an inferential machinery that doesn't work. arxiv.org/abs/2604.26268

The way things are going it won’t be long before each academic has their own personal regulator.

Intelligent

Inequality kills. People in the wealthiest UK areas have 20 more years of good health than those in the poorest. Healthy life expectancy for Richmond upon Thames man 69.3 yrs, woman 70.3 yrs. Man in Blackpool 50.9 years; woman in Hartlepool 51.2 years. Deaths rising among 25- to 49-year-olds.

contemplating a move to France for a life without Teams

So this is genuinely the extent of the BBC’s front-page “investigation”: they spoke to one alleged crook and recorded him boasting, one victim of apparently unrelated abuse, one non-immigration lawyer who “thinks” there’s a problem, and Jess Phillips. It’d be laughable if it weren’t so serious 7/

Just in time for the weekend, I'd like to recommend a podcast! For decades I've argued that social categories are not fixed or natural. They are constructed, contested, & constantly shifting. In this episode, Ann Phoenix & I explore what happens when complexity is denied - & why it matters right now

This study shows that disinformation spreads, not as “false facts”, but as narratives. Compare that to how mis- and disinformation are often operationalized in the big-N quantitative and experimental research in the Nature/Science journals — that’s a major weakness in the field.

About ten years ago it was all the rage to joke that the traits you need to run a huge business are close to those of a sociopath. Now we’ve found out it’s actually true it doesn’t seem so funny any more.

NO BORDERS, NO NATIONS

We (Colin Davis, @samuelfinnerty.bsky.social & I) are happy to share our Open Access article 'Assessing claims of counterproductivity of Just Stop Oil's civil disobedience': www.nature.com/articles/s44...

Crowd psychology and the politics of co-production: Social control, democratic order and the consequences of theory bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

I put together a guide to the best tools for verifying images, spotting deepfakes, checking claims, and seeing past media bias. Most are free. With AI making fakes cheaper & faster than ever, knowing how to check things yourself has never been more important!

Orange-hued Just Stop Oil activist totally successful buff.ly/rEcaPMY

I found this really frustrating to read. Mainstream media, including the BBC, prioritised the battle of ideas/2 sides argument as a popular means of coverage. This piece suggests it happened accidentally, or even at the behest of those pushed into these scenarios /1 www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Science needs a culture of trust much more than a culture of interpersonal skepticism and suspicion. Verification is important but we cannot base verification systems on extreme distrust. Scientists' cynicism about their colleagues' values, priorities, and integrity leaves no room for social growth.

My lecture Social Equality: Then and Now for @triphilosophy.bsky.social is now available online. youtu.be/9xL1gyM4f3Q

After an academic conference on Scandals and Crisis hosted by Cardiff Law School's Centre for Law, Justice and Society our paper on accidental activism and several others (one on Grenfell for instance) are here in the Journal of Law and Society... onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/14676478...

'Understanding the 2024 Summer Riots in the UK: Three Case Studies' - These events were riots not ‘protests’ - More people were involved than far-right activists - There were significant community defence actions. @ukri.org @behaviourresuk.bsky.social onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Today’s seniors are not sitting at home knitting sweaters for their grandkids — we are engaging in civil resistance with passion and determination in many meaningful ways.

Labour MP Clive Lewis doesn’t hold back on the Gorton and Denton result in this interview with ITV

More like Matt Badloss.

BREAKING: A wonderful speech from Green Party's Hannah Spencer after winning the Gorton and Denton by-election. Congratulations!

I'm a cognitive scientist with an interest in epistemic vigilance, and this essay that's been going around gave me pause. I don't think it's straightforward to apply the concept of epistemic vigilance to interactions with LLMs, as this essay does. 🧵/ sbgeoaiphd.github.io/rotating_the...

Scientists as activists: An ethnography of the ‘critical moments’ in scientists’ transition to climate activism New from @samuelfinnerty.bsky.social journals.plos.org/climate/arti...

The scale of job losses in the sector is a disaster for research capacity everywhere, not just in so-called 'research intensive' universities. Research is not confined to these institutions and the work that does happen there often relies on research done elsewhere.

How do scientists balance science with protest? My new piece for @theconversation.com, explores how scientists transition into activism and sustain their engagement. This is based on my recently published ethnographic paper journals.plos.org/climate/arti... theconversation.com/how-climate-...

Last surviving teacher of Aberfan remembers the disaster 60 years on www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Relevant to today's conversation about AI's inherent sexism, here's an email from cognitive psychologist and early AI theorist Roger Schank, arguing to Epstein that women can't be truly intelligent, because they care too much about what other people think.

BREAKING: ‘No child should lose their plan' Children's commissioner Dame Rachel de Souza has told #BBCBreakfast the Government should publicly confirm children will not lose their education, health and care plan under its overhaul of special educational needs and disabilities in England

“Property is not theft, but a good deal of theft becomes property.” R.H. Tawney The Acquisitive Society

Struck by how supine so much coverage of the Royal Family continues to be, even now. “Business as usual” is the line I keep hearing. No, it really isn’t. And it shouldn’t be.

It’s remarkable how slow so many people have been to recognise the malevolent and disruptive behaviour of Elon Musk towards British politics. This was clear from the time of the riots in the summer…

ProPublica published children's letters and drawings documenting their sadness and suffering at Dilley. And Dilley staff are now retaliating by confiscating kids' letters and drawings. www.sacurrent.com/news/san-ant...

I. AM. SOMEBODY. ✊🏽 Rest in Power, Reverend Jesse Jackson. youtu.be/NTVwT3j_zqY?...

i think jesse jackson was one of the most important american political figures of the post-war era and i think that his 1984 and 1988 campaigns for the democratic nomination still have a great deal to teach about forging a path to a more egalitarian world. RIP.

#emca on the timeline - Charles Goodwin’s Professional Vision Rodney King Trial: “the main evidence used in the defense of the policemen was the tape showing them beating Mr. King.” - presented as an example, *when seen properly*, “of careful police craft work”… pages.ucsd.edu/~johnson/COG...