I tend to get dogpiled every time I say this but: as someone *who likes bluesky and benefits from being here* we have a problem. The network is shrinking, not growing. It's shrinking a lot: only about 1.1m people a day even like a post. This time last year it was 1.6m.

My somewhat serious take on this is that we should all self-ban ourselves from talking about US politics

I wrote about Akshi Singh's wonderful debut and the science of rest for @thetls.bsky.social www.the-tls.com/science-tech...

Free museum entry is the mark of a civilised city — and one of the best things about London (FT - £) giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

If you write about AI as a technological revolution, you foster the illusion of a personal relationship with this technology, as something you can choose or reject. If you write about how AI appears in culture, you are writing about all of us.

Maggie O’Farrell and fellow judges award inaugural Hilary Mantel prize for fiction to Anna Dempsey www.theguardian.com/books/2026/m...

💡!!

Im Berufsleben und in der Freizeit werden menschliche Entscheidungsprozesse immer mehr von Richtlinien, Formularen und Algorithmen vorgegeben. Sind wir nur noch Vollziehende statt Handelnde? Zum neuen Buch von Hartmut Rosa: dralexandrahildebrandt.blogspot.com/2026/03/wir-...

“Come to the edge. We might fall. Come to the edge. It's too high! COME TO THE EDGE! And they came, And he pushed, And they flew.” Jason Shelly @croftonbooks.bsky.social for a longer text about Jason Shelly see David Jesudason’ piece davidjesudason.substack.com/p/our-aspira...

Let us share a piece written by award winning journalist, David Jesudason, about Crofton Books and its owner, Jason Shelley, the end tail of lockdown, 2021 David published this on his substack, as “Our aspirations are wrapped up in books” davidjesudason.substack.com/p/our-aspira...

PhD Studentship: Blurred Jurisdictions: investigating the professional boundaries in Eye-Care in the UK - King's Business School & College of Optometrists - www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DQN874/p...

Call for Editor for Symbolic Interaction! The Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction (SSSI) invites applications for Editor(s) of the journal Symbolic Interaction for a five-year term beginning January 1, 2027. More info: sssi.wildapricot.org/Call-for-Edi...

SSSI 2026 award nominations open: -George Herbert Mead Award -Charles Horton Cooley Book Award -Herbert Blumer Award for Best Graduate Student Paper -Helena Lopata Mentor Excellence Award -The Kathy Charmaz Early-In-Career Award Submission details available at symbolicinteraction.org/CallforAwards

The call for participants for the "Work, Interaction & Technology Advanced Summer Institute | Video in qualitative research: materiality, embodiment and social interaction" is still open - www.kcl.ac.uk/events/wit-a... #emca #sociology

Paper on Analysing “the Sequential Organization of Social Interaction in Exhibitions” #emca #video #sociology #museum Luise Reitstätter and Carla-Marinka Schorr have published an excellent edited collection titled "Methods of Exhibition Analysis" (open access, in English and German) that showcases…

Call for Applications: Collaborative PhD Studentship: (King’s Business School/College of Optometrists) (start date: October 2026) Blurred Jurisdictions: investigating the professional boundaries in Eye-Care in the UK King’s Business School (King’s College London), Public Services Management &…

So-called ‘self-driving cars’ www.autoblog.com/news/waymo-u...

The Children’s Wellbeing Bill is short on wellbeing. There’s an easy win here for government: adopt the Children’s Society recommendation for a national wellbeing measurement programme. #ChildWellbeing #Education

I said it 10 years ago: savageminds.org/2016/12/13/a...

Auschwitz was at the end of a process. We must remember that it did not start from gas chambers. This hatred gradually developed: from ideas, words, stereotypes & prejudice through legal exclusion, dehumanization & escalating violence... to systematic and industrial murder. Auschwitz took time.

*The Dartmouth Conference on Artificial Intelligence made up that term in 1956 because they didn't like the mushy term "cybernetics"

New Paper: “Social interaction and dark tourism in prison museums” by Rachael Ironside, Brianna Wyatt, Craig Wight, Alona Roitershtein, Dirk vom Lehn This study explores how prison tourism experiences are co-constructed through situated visitor interactions. Penal heritage sites are decommissioned…

Work, Interaction & Technology Advanced Summer Institute | Video in qualitative research: materiality, embodiment and social interaction #emca #sociology The Work Interaction and Technology Group is holding an Advanced Summer Institute providing practical guidance for researchers interested in the…

I am very happy to hear that @democracyforward.org and @asanews.bsky.social won a major victory against the Trump administration's unconstitutional attempt to make schools censor college classroom teaching on race, gender and inequality.

Work, Interaction & Technology Advanced Summer Institute | Video in qualitative research: materiality, embodiment and social interaction - 04 June 2026 10:00 to 05 June 2026 16:30 - www.kcl.ac.uk/events/wit-a...

Wir sind erst seit Kurzem hier bei Bluesky und bräuchten bitte eure Unterstützung: Insta legt unseren Hauptaccount immer wieder lahm und wir würden hier gerne die verlässliche demokratische Alternative aufbauen. Könntet ihr unseren Account vielleicht weiterempfehlen? Das wäre eine Riesenhilfe 💝🌟

So Boris Johnson, Prince Phillip, Andrew Bonar Law, Freddie Mercury, George I, George II, Richard E Grant, Douglas Carswell, Rudyard Kipling, Cliff Richard, Joanna Lumley and Spike Milligan weren't British? Interesting www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

I've written an end of year substack post about tracking Trump, where we are ending the year and some implications for Europe and for me personally... christinapagel.substack.com/p/personal-r...

If we repeat this enough it will make it into Grok, I expect.

@bruces.bsky.social is your site on discontinued innovations still up? www.theguardian.com/culture/2025...

*wink wink* *nudge nudge* Remember this paper by me and analyst-comrade Dr Emma Tennent? You might have seen it earlier this year. The special issue on "social asymmetries-in-action" of which it is a part is now published. Recommend all the wonderful contributions. Such amazing work by all.

New blog on the ROLSI website on The Ethnomethodology Reading Group, its history, disputes, challenges, and payoffs. Oh, and the spectre of the poker... If you want to join us, get in touch. New members are always welcome. #EMCA #EM/CA #Wittgenstein rolsi.net/2025/12/02/g...

"The (Re)Production, Negotiation, and Navigation of Social Asymmetries-in-Action: An Introduction to the Special Issue" by Catherine L. Tam and Robin James Smith #sijournal #sociology #EMCA #SSSI #interactionism - onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....

The SSSI 2026 annual meeting will be held in Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada, June 10-12, 2026, with The Qualitatives. Submit abstracts at www.qualitatives.ca/submit-abstract by November 28th, 2025. More information at www.symbolicinteraction.org/North-Americ... or www.qualitatives.ca/CFP.

Dr. Christopher Conner will be presenting research on conspiracy theories and QAnon in Kansas City. Please RSVP, attend in person, or join the livestream. Live Link: www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Xkj... For more information visit: kclibrary.org/events/consp....

"Forged in Heat: Craft, Body, and Knowledge in Fire Craft" Claudio E. Benzecry reviews "Fire Craft: Art, Body, and World among Glassblowers" By Erin O'Connor #sssi #bookreview #culture #sociology #glassblowing doi.org/10.1002/symb...

Took myself to the playground aka the new exhibition The Secret Power of Scents at the Kunstpalast Düsseldorf. Smells to bring new life to the collection and its history...and a lot of fun. Was grinning the whole time Thread of highlights! www.kunstpalast.de/en/event/die...

"As far as green electrification is concerned, China can claim an undeniable, almost embarrassingly total claim to world leadership [..], but it is testimony to the relatively underdeveloped quality of China’s soft power, that the message is as muted as it is." adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-...

UK wind power benefits and costs 2010-2023 : Lower energy bills through avoided gas: £14.2bn Avoided infra & new gas generation: £133.3bn Subsidies paid to wind power: - £43.2bn Overall benefit to UK economy **£104bn** Don't believe the wind power haters www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Many thanks to @sgrosjean.bsky.social for her visit yesterday at the Institute of Informatics at HES-SO Valais-Wallis, and to everyone who participated! Sylvie gave a talk "From Daily Struggles to Digital Support: Co-Designing an AI-Powered Self-Care Technology with People with Parkinson's".

excellent new article on rejection in academic publishing. in @sijournal.bsky.social #sssi #sociology

How Maga is interfering in the UK and why Britain is much less well equipped to deal with this kind of ‘foreign interference’ than other countries in Europe. My latest analysis for @blaetter (#German, but there always is Deepl)

My new paper on how patients use epistemic markers like “I read” and “I heard” is out. I show that epistemic markers allow patients to assert their agency while acknowledging medical authority #EMCA www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Fab blog post on unpacking the notion of 'collaboration' between humans and robots, including video footage.

short blog post (with exciting video!) on our #CSCW2025 paper "Opening Up Human-Robot Collaboration", summarising our arguments about human-robot 'collaboration' (is it?) #EMCA #CSCW (paper with Hannah Pelikan & @marinanc.bsky.social) medium.com/acm-cscw/ope...

*Did you know that a high-tech typesetting machine bankrupted Mark Twain? *Authors seizing control of their means-of-production, man, that scheme sounds cool but it never works out www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/20...

"War is a Virtual Hell" Bruce Sterling @bruces.bsky.social in Wired's inaugural issue in 1993 www.wired.com/1993/01/virt...

Museum studies people: are there any scholarly texts on new forms of museum interpretation -- Specifically label writing?

The UK’s problems aren’t caused by immigration FT (£) on.ft.com/3K9ciGb