Why's it called 'AI piracy' when they use work by an original artist to feed a large language model and not 'Sloplifting'?

I feel like "the left should be less woke/less interested in identity politics" is a minimally important strategic consideration to "the left should be being given 5 Million quid on a casual basis by businessmen who don't even live here"

Academic departments deserve to be saved, supported, resourced, allowed to grow even if they're not "best in the country," "first in the REF," "top-ranked," "at a Russell Group uni," or whatever other austerity-brained nonsense senior managers have been using to flimflam you out of solidarity

"Gay elements next..."

My speculative take on the whole Streeting debacle is that he wasn't planning to seriously run but thought he could use the threat of resignation and statement of no confidence to bargain for one of the Great Offices of State (I'd guess Home Sec) and Starmer called his bluff.

www.thestar.co.uk/news/politic... what are we even doing here

Having ADHD today seems to include 'having to make a really conscious effort to make sure the Milton sterilization tablets are as far away as possible from the electrolyte ones for after a night out'

time to watch BBC news again

OH THANK GOD

You know this opens the door to an incredible amount of grim shit. They know this opens the door to an incredible amount of grim shit. They're rolling the pitch for a Reform government, and they wont just be against people that don't like genocide.

One possible reading of UK right wing politics shifting from Conservatives to Reform is a project – in line with multiple decades of Rentierization – to shift the British economy decisively from primarily extracting from others to one which is primarily extracted from.

Adam Curtis licking his chops at this one surely

So far enjoying this greatly. No reason Jazz shouldn't be about the Bigg Market knats.bandcamp.com/album/a-grea...

I don't even know the word for it but there is this media sensibility when it comes to elections and parties on similar percentages get RADICALLY different seats that somehow its the parties fault for not understanding the rules of an incredibly rigged game.

I've got really good news for you about king Xerxes

"I accurately predicted 20 of the the last two wolves, so you should hear me out on this one"

Made a 'real' political spectrum following the principles of @brandyjensen.bsky.social* and @marika.bsky.social * yalereview.org/article/bran...

BREAKING: in April 2026, *every single one* of the 1,570 refugees admitted in the United States were white South Africans. In FY 2026, the U.S. has admitted a total of 6,066 white South Africans, three Afghans (back in November 2025), and nobody else.

It feels like as a society as a whole we might be experiencing some kind of rift between LLM 'AI' use and its economic bubble, and the rest of the world, which continues to work without it.

I'm Lead Judge of the James Tait Black Prize for Fiction, awarded at University of Edinburgh since 1919 and due to be announced this month. But the university is currently withholding 100% of my pay for participating in a marking and assessment boycott. So, at present, there will be no prize.

was used to generate the fake paper (e.g. “in the style of” or “using the framework and arguments from” in the prompt). I am getting rejection emails for papers I didn’t submit, a new level of crazy.

If you are the editor of a journal and you have received a submission from me that looks a bit weird (weirder than usual) please assume it is a LLM-generated paper from a ghost author. This has happened four times in recent weeks. In each case it is possible to see how a genuine published paper 1/2

Once again Morris Dancers have lost out in the annual contest between 'the problems of a 4am start to the day' and 'Morris Dancers'

The Purpose of the OfS - established by a conservative government to achieve conservative social outcomes - was always heading this way. A government at all concerned with Universities long term well being should disband it. Who could take it seriously now?

The man simply embodies the deeply held British value of being AT IT on all occasions, especially AGAIN

Dunno where else to put this but that Geese marketing thing is another bit of reality collapse. Every take on it I've seen ignores that Cameron Winters solo album was a sleeper hit among critics and word of mouth and contains songs widely agreed to be actual classics?

What should we make of the gendered cultural legacies of revolutionary women? Clara Vlessing considers the lives and afterlives of anarchists Emma Goldman and Louise Michel. www.historyworkshop.org.uk/public-histo...

I'm a historian and my province is the past not the future but this is going to end badly

Every time I read about these ppl it's hard not to think about Verwoerd's assassin Tsafendas, who occupies a sort of historical superposition depending on your politics as either possessed by guilt, absolute moral clarity, or a Schizophrenic tapeworm.

Every accusation is a confession as well. Why do Mail journalists think the Greens would do even some of this? Because its what THEY would do if they were trying to implement a transformative political agenda. Which they are , just in the other direction.

Look this is all fun but it is only recently that Hagia Sophia was returned back to full religious use by Erdogan and I think that's what he's getting aaaaa [is dragged away and forcibly tonsured by Eastern Roman Nerds who want to enjoy their moment]

Trump: now you remember Alexios Komnenos *crowd cheers* he had a little problem just a little one, with those Sell-jukes, just a little one and he needed some help, so I make a deal, Alexios, I say "we can solve your little Nicea problem, but we get Antioch" and he didn't lift a finger! *crowd boos*

Posted this yesterday but It really deserves reading - so many o of the debates, discussions, ideas, ethical assumptions and the basic groundwork of good geographical research are being evaporated by precarity.

University management spent £80 million on new building that wasn't needed (presently for sale at £14 million) and now decide 600 staff should go to 'save' £50 million. This is the math currently shaping future of UK HE. Staff paying the price for mismanagement. Govt looking the other way

An important, powerful paper by @oliviamason.bsky.social on #precarity in academia: "the experiences of what it means to enter, get a job in, and then stay in the neoliberal academy are defining mine and others' experiences of being an academic." rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Instead of Police, people whose job is this.

Durational Film: Tarkovsky: Look at the world in the process of change, the vibrancy of decay. Béla Tarr and Ágnes Hranitsky: everything is the slow unwinding towards the end, the impossible persistence of the humane amidst collapse. Wim Wenders: The library is pretty.

Very sorry to hear that the poet J.H. Prynne has died, at the age of 89. Here, from 10 years ago, is my attempt to describe the man and the work

Bear in mind who else you hear this language coming from.

The reduction of local elections to a kind of mid-term evaluation of national government is itself a pretty stark symptom of the hollowing out of local democracy in this country.

Why is ICE buying so many warehouses, and what does this have to do with the warehouse's shifting place in the US economy? In Places Journal, I chronicle the long arc of Warehousing's carceral geography and the speculative building boom that ICE is absorbing. placesjournal.org/article/the-...

A difficult time to be one of the people who knows that St. Augustine is Bad, Actually but not for the reasons the most prominent person who thinks he is bad thinks he is bad.

Not right now, Boards of Canada

Can't stress enough how much cutting the welfare bill to pay for armament a) puts tax money directly into the pockets of private arms suppliers of dubious allegiance b) erodes public morale in defending the country. It undermines any real or practical national defence.

I have...many questions.

And, for the love of god, try to understand that if we take the money we should be spending on climate mitigation, and spend it on weapons, then we are guaranteeing the extinction of the "national way of life" we declare ourselves ready to die to protect.

South Africa’s digitized housing market entrenches apartheid’s racial inequalities under the guise of neutrality. This conversation examines how credit scores now gatekeep access to homeownership with “color-blind” algorithms. With @jmigozzi.bsky.social

Wonder if there's a 17th century lad Sidling up to Republicans like "Psst. Kid. Hast thou heard of the fifth monarchy?"