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...

Pleased to share my new (and first sole‑authored) article on how people in Northern Ireland experience identity in fluid, complex ways. Interviews in Derry–Londonderry show why “two‑community” narratives fall short. Kudos summary: link.growkudos.com/1e8u77s464g DOI: psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/...

The volume & geographic distribution of protest nationwide during year 1 of Trump's second term was extraordinary.

My team at the Crowd Counting Consortium (@djpressman.bsky.social, Soha Hammam, & Chris Shay) has shared a big data update, covering all recorded US protests through Jan 2026. Some key takeaways 🧵:

Palestine Action have WON their judicial review in the High Court! A massive victory for free speech, freedom of association and the right to protest. A massive defeat for the draconian attempts by Keir Starmer's government to curtail our fundamental rights.

On the publication bias discourse, I regret that metascience has become a source of decontextualized, low-res, bean-counting-focused `science is in crisis' narratives. It is largely uncurious abt science, desperately lacking in theory & measurement. I'll quote a few takes I liked & add my thoughts🧵

Did you miss the session on "Prefigurative Politics in Repressive Contexts" with activists and researchers from Lebanon, Serbia and Turkey? Here's the recorded session, now available in the Resistance Psychology Network's Youtube channel: youtu.be/Q0S65MPOu8E

New paper, expertly led by Matthew Ivory, on whether ChatGPT could pass a psychology degree. The answer was pretty much yes (albeit a low scoring pass). A lot to unpack in the paper but tldr is we really need to rethink how we assess our degrees and what we want students to get out of university.

LLMs good performance on medical exams does not translate to accurate performance in real-world settings (preregistered n~1,300 study). This can't be explained by current standard benchmarks for medical knowledge & simulated patient interactions. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The UK government is proposing radical and punitive changes to settlement rules. This is settlement, not citizenship. The consultation is open until 12 February; please respond to it and oppose these evil proposals. Amnesty have a good guide: www.amnesty.org.uk/resources/gu...

There is long and entertaining lecture by Bell Burnell on the ytube about her discovery of pulsars and quasars. She says the term "pulsar" was invented by a journalist because "pulsating radio source" was too boffin (explained at ~47min mark). www.youtube.com/watch?v=ot1G...

An important reminder that safety initiatives can be relatively simple but have major, life saving, impacts. And that in many cases when they're suggested there's fierce opposition. Always look at who resists or opposes safety changes. There's often a link to wider harms or oppressions.

‘They are lovely men’: Compassionate exclusion used to justify a protest outside asylum seeker accommodation bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

New Publication! https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/cdp0000792

At every step, Higher Education becomes increasingly reserved for those who can afford it. And so Higher Education becomes a driver of wealth inequality.

Just re-read the last paragraph of my and Megan Birney's chapter on Milgram in this great volume. Written a year and a half ago; might as well have been yesterday.

In the UK academic recession, you will be at one of these stages since many unis buy the same cuts model from the same consultancies. It is always the same process: *Talk of belt-tightening *Incidental savings (e.g. printing, refreshments) *Travel budgets cut *Promotion freeze (1/4)

Epstein’s economic power among academics was made possible by a capitalist system that makes higher education dependent on the charity economy rather than a public good supported by taxing the rich

This reminded me of when I went to London to read for the Irish Literary Society and called in at the wrong super-posh hotel. The manager looked at me and rushed out to check what I was up to: I told him and he replied. "I can assure you, sir, there will be no poetry reading in THIS hotel tonight!"

Edinburgh. Aberdeen. Dundee. Strathclyde. Different campuses same reality. Staff are stretched, students lose out. #SaveOurUniversities #UCU #Scotland #HigherEducation

With student loans the UK government has become a loanshark. Trapping poorly paid graduates in decades of “debt” that they can realistically never repay. If it were a commercial deal the govt would be trying to regulate the company out of business.

🚨 New Pre-Print🚨 Very excited to share new work w/ Victoria Parker. Here we think about big questions regarding the limitations and barriers affective polarization interventions face in being translated from research to practice www.researchgate.net/publication/...