Pleased to be interviewed for this much needed piece on the rising transphobia in higher education. www.timeshighereducation.com/news/trans-s... (Archive link: archive.is/oYqXS)

For more than 2 years, police in Berlin - encouraged by city and national politicians - have systematically used excessive violence in an attempt to beat the Palestine solidarity movement into silence. I wrote about this phenomenon for the @lrb.co.uk

This destruction at Essex isn’t going to result in an improved learning or working environment. It will ossify research, it will diminish student learning environments, it will be catastrophic for working conditions. Hard to see what the outcome will be aside from something not like a university.

Fucking incredible dystopian shit, comparing super rich people risking millions if not billions of lives just to make more money to people that risked their life actually building incredible things that would then make millions of dollars for super rich people.

someone should research why boomers clung to youth and demanded cultural hegemony well into their 60s while millennials went to pure "we are old and going to die soon and our zeitgeist expired years ago" mode before hitting 40

Le pouvoir de la novlangue.

Also a characteristically abject response to far right vigilantism from the Home Office, amounting to: “The fascists are right but, tut, going about it the wrong way”

Labour preaching unity sounds like Valencia preaching sisterhood: www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6B-...

Welcome to Britain’s new benefits lie: disabled people are driving BMWs and Mercedes on the taxpayer’s dime. My column on Motability and the truth behind the headlines and social media myths. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Look, I know things aren’t great at the moment for (a) anyone, and (b) the Labour Party, but fuck me that’s bleak

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Hey everyone, here's the news, if you aren't a high earner, entrepreneur or a "skilled frontline worker" (whatever the fuck that means) the "Labour" Party says you aren't contributing, you're a taker!

This is so disgusting.

I live in Wales and today received my Join Us letter from Reform UK, complete with SAE which I posted back to them, immediately, empty. If every other person in Wales did this, Reform would spend over £1.5 million on postage. Not sorry. Join me Cymru.

Yeah, let's enshittify grant decisions, that definitely won't accelerate the collapse of research infrastructure. Hope that at least, when we rebuild it in a generation to catch up with China, it will be based on secure employment instead of stultifying, exhausting, permanent competition.

This article suggests the possibility of training AI on pre-existing proposals and their review reports, scores and related decisions. I.e. training them on a system which is known to preferentially award larger amounts of money to white men. What could possibly go wrong?

Predictably the post has now been deleted, it was this.

Like MAGA, transphobes have gotten everything they wanted in 2025. And, like MAGA, they've never been more vitriolic toward the institutions they've captured, more disgusted by their wounded victims, more ready to plough forth into realms of cruelty that even they would have balked at a year ago.

I'm old enough to remember (I'm over one year old) when we were all told to shut up about labour's left wing credentials because the renters rights and employment rights bills were on the way. how are those going lxds? how are my rights looking?

Les actes du colloque “Chanter sur l’air de…” sont en ligne. Édités par les Publications numériques du CÉRÉdI, sous la dir. de M. Belly, J. le Blanc, B. Porot, A. Tacaille & J. Vignes, avec la collaboration de C. Sicard, ils sont disponibles à l’adresse : publis-shs.univ-rouen.fr/ceredi/1771....

[email protected] on what really went wrong at the BBC: “Just as Gaza has proved to be a place where the failings of Western political institutions are exposed, the BBC has itself come unstuck.”

I wrote a book about féerie, thé highly spectacular, music-heavy, unabashedly commercial French stage genre, at the fin de siècle. Singing vegetables, space travel, and it's free to download, what's not to like? library.oapen.org/handle/20.50...

Obviously this government are wantonly reckless and idiotic and their treatment of universities, and see this as a disciplining of an out of touch elite. But what all of this unwillingness to intervene means is that a critical industry will collapse and a lot of ordinary people will be unemployed.

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Nesrine Malik, excellent as usual. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

"Reform would be worse" is both entirely correct and entirely irrelevant until polling day 2029. What matters right now is that Labour's approach is morally repugnant on its own terms, *and is empowering Reform*. As things stand today, its not Labour or Reform. Its Labour *then* Reform.

Cute overload! 🥹

🚨 En ce moment à Paris, sous la ligne 2, des identitaires britanniques font le tour des campements de personnes exilées, afin de créer du contenu pour les réseaux sociaux. Sur fond de propos racistes, l’objectif est clair : alimenter la peur et la haine chez leurs compatriotes.

Help! @frenchhistory.bsky.social really wanted this for journal cover next year (we’ve got exciting things coming on quantitative and computational methods) but it’s a challenge finding higher res versions/rights holder. Do YOU have suggestions to track these down OR alternative, similar images? 🙏🏻 🗃️

L’indignité. La vraie. Afin de continuer à recevoir des financements britanniques, la France ne sait plus quoi inventer pour tenter de faire cesser les traversées de la Manche à la frontière franco-britannique, au risque de mettre encore plus en danger les personnes.

‘The sections of “Restoring Order and Control” that mention children are chilling, suggesting that many asylum seekers bring their children not because they love and care for them but as a “fact” to “exploit ... in order to thwart removal”.’ Christopher Bertram: www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/no...

The fact that the person defending Labour is someone who reposts homophobic, AI-generated anti-Trump memes is almost too perfect to be true.

These are the voters that Labour strategists have made very clear over a long period of time that they don't want any more, and it's a message that has now been heard

Rob's anecdote is backed by council by-election results. Labour's support has collapsed. Next May will be a bloodbath.

Looking forward to a debate on EU nationals where Labour say we're filthy foreigners, but we're mostly white; Reform says we're mostly white, but we're filthy foreigners; Labour caves in and puts us in camps; and Polly Toynbee writes an opinion piece about how nice it is they banned plastic straws.

My Nan had a fairly extensive care and medication schedule when she came out of hospital. Pages of stuff to do and not do. My sis in her wisdom asked AI to summarise. It was nonsense. Dangerous nonsense. It missed out some vital stuff and added in others. Just read it kids.

Oh, no, I've chosen the alternative to socialism and turns out it's barbarism? Who could have predicted that?

No idea who this is, but he does the same thing that Mahmood did on Kuenssberg: he is asked a question on refugees, *does not answer* and delivers his prepared talking points on ‘illegal immigration’ (a different subject!) instead. Journalists need to challenge this.

An absolute 🤯 at every level

I predicted this. So did lots of other people who paid the tiniest amount of attention. Weird how none of them have jobs explaining politics to the public, and it's all these people performing uncomprehension and amazement for the camera instead.

Reposting for no particular reason.

Today is not the day to argue "oh so you want Reform to win then" as an argument for Labour's indefensible and inhumane anti-asylum policies. At least be honest and own that you're defending racist policies promoted with genuinely far right talking points. Don't try and pretend this is "progressive"

Be a chad like Fridtjof Nansen, protect refugees!

Ce qui est marrant quand on publie un article dans une revue de chez Springer c'est qu'on découvre que ledit éditeur essaie de faire de ses auteurs des influenceurs, en leur filant un plan com sur quatre (4) semaines Pour Facebook et "Twitter" Bon Ok

Today's Dave is called Steve! bsky.app/profile/tomm...

Have been reticent to say this (Godwin's Law…), but the more I hear self-exculpatory bullshit from Labour, the more I am reminded of the self-exculpatory bullshit from Pétain: ‘I had to do some of the stuff the N*zis wanted in order to prevent the N*zis from doing everything they wanted’.

Is this what they call the shy Tory factor?

Most of the commentariat still lives by the long-1990s idea that the more morally contorted a position is, the more correct it must be. I am sick and tired of such a sad, indigent, and philistine view of politics, and most of all, I'm sick and tired of the condescension of these people.

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Que ceux qui possèdent tout, parlent et décident pour nous soient incapables de se nourrir seuls "par principe" je ne m'y ferais jamais.