If people admire you, they put your name on buildings. If you have to do it yourself, well… that’s different.

Happy that 'Habit, Speculative Pragmatism, and Social Transformation' – based on my 2024 John Dewey Memorial Lecture at Universidade de Évora, Portugal – is published! ✨🎄This is likely the final piece from my habit and social change project, which started back in 2013. 📕 muse.jhu.edu/pub/60/artic...

"An academic discovers a paper attributed to him that does not exist has been cited 42 times" is a sentence with an actual referent in 2025.

The White House claims the vote to rename the Kennedy Center was “unanimous.” That is false. I was muted on the call and denied the opportunity to speak or register my opposition. That is not consensus. That is censorship.

More or less done with the reading list for History of the Database. You could take a lot of different approaches, but this is the one I went with.

A nice collection of @timeshighered.bsky.social essays all in one place about the value of the arts and the humanities www.timeshighereducation.com/campus/makin...

Computer scientists: "So with machine learning we can extract subtle patterns from massive datasets. What shall we do with it?" Business school professors, every single time: "You know, I think phrenology got a raw deal in the late 1800s."

I’m not even going to publish a copy of Trumps comments about Reiner and his wife. But occasionally he reminds me that he is simply one of the worst, most degenerate individuals who has ever existed in American public life. Hard to think of any more vicious, vile and sociopathic.

My wonderful colleague (and indefatigable discipline lead) Professor Michael Greaney is celebrating Jane Austen's 250th Birthday at today's @lulibrary.bsky.social Archive Research Centre

I guess it's fitting that it's a reimagined, worse version of someone else's artwork

My impression is that the most rapid and really brutal university cuts are now revving up. Each of the threefold tumblers of White Paper, Budget and strike ballot failure have turned and made the situation much worse. In some places the cynicism and speed is frightening. (1/2)

I'm super excited to be a Co-Investigator on our new AHRC BRAID-funded project 'Animals in Translation: AI, Ethics, and the Future of Interspecies Dialogue', led by the wonderful Delphine Grass at Lancaster University! ✨🐋🤖

❕NEW RELEASE ❔ 𝗔𝗿𝗲 𝗬𝗼𝘂 𝗮 𝗦𝗼𝗳𝘁𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗨𝗽𝗱𝗮𝘁𝗲? w/ 𝗔𝗹𝗯𝗲𝗿𝘁𝗼 𝗧𝗼𝘀𝗰𝗮𝗻𝗼, 𝗔𝗹𝗲𝘅 𝗤𝘂𝗶𝗰𝗵𝗼, 𝗡𝗼𝗿𝗮 𝗢’ 𝗠𝘂𝗿𝗰𝗵𝘂́, 𝗡𝗼𝘂𝗿𝗮 𝗧𝗮𝗳𝗲𝗰𝗵𝗲, 𝗧𝗲𝗴𝗮 𝗕𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗻 & 𝗦𝗮𝗺 𝗟𝗮𝘃𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗲 & 𝗪𝗮𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗺 𝗭. 𝗔𝗹𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗱𝗶 ✦ PRE-ORDER ✦ aksioma.org/are-you-a-software-update

To read more about our vision for the Leverhulme Centre for Algorithmic Life - and to explore & apply for our 7 research fellow positions, see leverhulmecal.webspace.durham.ac.uk/call-for-fel... and get in touch if you have questions #MachineLearning #Algorithms #Interdisciplinary #postdoctoral

I swear maybe once a decade in public, and this is the moment. This fucking racist and all the gibbering racists nodding along behind him are the ruination of our country. Our fucking job for the next fucking year is to fucking destroy them in the next election. Fuck them.

Excited to announce @leverhulmecal.bsky.social posts - we are looking for 7 interdisciplinary fellows to join our Leverhulme Centre for Algorithmic Life, closing date 30 January 2026 (1/3) durham.taleo.net/careersectio...

Yet more cutting of HE provision in the South East that's not London. The coastal towns in England are among some of the most deprived in the UK - it's not just that present and future students are losing out, it's also the amount of JOBS being lost.

Want to hold a major academic conference in the humanities and social sciences? We offer up to £20k (and sometimes £25k) for a conference on any topic to be held between April 27/March 28. Apply by 29 Jan 2026. www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/funding/sche...

I’m a past winner of the Orwell Prize & won partly because I exposed Vote Leave’s unlawful activities. Michael Gove was its co-convener & refused to answer a single q. He’s now a judge of the prize & our world is truly one that Orwell would recognise bylinetimes.com/2025/11/25/m...

“exiting the market”

My @vanityfair.com oral history of PLANES, TRAINS & AUTOMOBILES, released on this day in 1987:

Because people *still* don’t understand that overseas students subsidise home students. This is punishing everyone involved.

💥 New publication out on the alignment of AI & authoritarianism 💥 We argue that AI is not simply extending, but actively modulating, key dynamics of authoritarianism, and present a flexible analytical framework to account for these changes. rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Are you worried about the devastating cuts we are seeing to arts, humanities & social sciences in UK universities? Last call for my lecture in Leicester this Thurs 27th Nov on the value of these subjects and how they support UK security, cohesion and prosperity www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/shaping-a-...

The first internet message was sent from UCLA fifty-six years ago 🌐 Watch PBS SoCal's "Lost L.A." host Nathan Masters visit UCLA Library Special Collections with internet pioneer, Prof. Leonard Kleinrock to see the logbook firsthand: www.pbssocal.org/shows/lost-l... @uclasamueli.bsky.social

I am advertising a funded PhD scholarship on my new project LivePlatforms: Livelihoods in the Platform Economy Ecosystem. More details here: www.ucd.ie/ics/vacancie...

Joint book launch at King’s 🌟 Featuring: • @jwyg.bsky.social, Public Data Cultures • @nsrnicek.bsky.social, Silicon Empires • @mayameme.bsky.social, Auto-Correct In conversation with @noortjem.bsky.social & @joannazylinska.bsky.social 📅 3 Dec, 19:00-21:00 www.tickettailor.com/events/kings...

“Since September 10, when Oracle announced a $300bn deal with the chatbot maker [OpenAI], its stock has shed $374bn in market value” on.ft.com/4p8LViA

Postocs working on cultural heritage and digital culture, ahoy!

very funny to read these emails and then remember summers wondering whether the leaky pipeline in stem was because women are inherently bad at math

Farage, Boris Johnson & Rees-Mogg apparently plotting assaults on UK democracy with Bannon, who was reporting back to Epstein. Nothing to see here, newspaper folk… www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Just to say, I am a supervisor here: UKRI AI Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) in Responsible and Trustworthy in-the-world Natural Language Processing www.responsiblenlp.org/2026-student... If you are reading things like this and planning PhD project, do reach out: www.ft.com/content/e5b7...

Multiple someones in the highest level of government are going to have a very hard time indeed when they find out the hard way that universities are anchor institutions for towns and cities pretty much everywhere. Wonder who's going to be holding that particular hot potato?

The Epstein files are clearly more damning than we assumed, which is saying something.

I’ll be in conversation with Sana Ahmad next Monday, November 17 at @weizenbauminstitut.bsky.social about our new @commonnotions.bsky.social book on digital workers’ inquiry and my forthcoming @datasociety.bsky.social report on climate action in and against the tech industry

As Karoline Leavitt concludes her press briefing and walks off, @andrewfeinberg.com asks: "What was the president doing with Virginia Giuffre for hours at Epstein's house?" She did not respond.

You’re telling me the guy who bragged about groping women on tape and bragged about barging into dressing rooms with young girls and who wrote a poem about pedophilia to his pedophile best friend is a pedophile?

ICYMI: Carolyn Pedwell, 'Bernard Dionysius Geoghegan, Code: From Information Theory to French Theory' - reviews an outstanding book offering a new history of cybernetics and digital media with far-reaching epistemological and ethical implications. (Open Access) journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Around 10,000 university workers being made redundant this year. Labour policies are definitely cutting through in higher education …

Human Geography at Leicester is facing closure. Staff contracts are to end in June 2026; students are to be relocated to other universities, or taught out by a maximum of two (!) teaching-only staff. Other departments and subjects are facing closure, too. Please join the demo!

Hats off to our Toronto Blue Jays. 🧢⚾To go from last place in 2024 to coming within (less than) an inch of winning the World Series in 2025 is pretty spectacular. And Game 7 was CRAZY. They had a damn good run. 🇨🇦 👏

Worst hitter in the series hits a HR in the top of the 9th AND THEN Vlad just barely misses to the deepest part of the park AND THEN force out at home by a split second AND THEN leaping catch with outfielder collision on the warning track I mean, come ON

As part of @technologyreview.com's big new package on conspiracy theories, I went long on weather modification — what's possible, what's not, what's happening and where, and why people will probably always find ways to blame weather disasters on shady forces:

🥂✌🏾

…!

"To the 18th inning we go. It matches a World Series record for the longest game. | Top 18th Blue Jays 5, Dodgers 5." www.nytimes.com/athletic/liv...

It's worth adding that while the hack of 2+ years ago has been dreadful for British Library users, it is also been awful for BL staff, who cannot fulfil readers' requests and are then confronted by their consequent frustration. With no end in sight.