Now Alice Sullivan is complaining that Bristol University didn't book Wembley Stadium, run a national advertising campaign, and hire a private militia to provide security for the opening gig of her global 'how I (deliberately) got (myself) cancelled' tour. These people are totally shameless.

At 97, Ms. Betty Reid Soskin was named Glamour Magazine Woman of the Year. By the time she was 104, she had lived many, many lives and bravely reinvented herself over and over again. May she rest well. 👑🙏🏾💐 #BlackSky 🌱 www.glamour.com/story/women-...

Unfortunately we have institutions like the BBC platforming them without question.

The so-called AJA has no membership base and no statitstics of any kind - or evidence of having members It's just an astro-turfing website, run by an unhinged whacko Zionist drunk and his stay-at-home son. It's not an "association" of any one People should treat it accordingly

The reason I ask is because, like most culture wars bullshit, it is just that - culture wars bullshit that was pre-arranged. Nothing organic about it Everything you see and hear around this needs to be questioned and verified

One of the more heartening things from this year is the rise of the Green Party, showing that not everyone is happy with the continued drift to the right of the other parties.

A reflection on what happened in Bondi Beach a week ago, and an appeal - from this Jew - for humanity over hate and persecution of all kinds. With memories of holocaust survivors, and Muslims who crossed boundaries of division as the brave Ahmed al-Ahmed did. open.substack.com/pub/bendicke...

itcouldbesaid.substack.com/p/it-could-b... ICYMI write about why trying to reduce immigration actually exacerbates the problems it claims to cure. Sometimes the electorate doesn't know what it wants!

The “AI” has not read the book. Even if the book was in its training data, it has just absorbed it as a set of statistics. It will juggle you a “summary” that might or might not relate to the conclusions of the actual text. The only way you’ll know is to read it yourself.

Also screw the BBC for its naked agenda. It refused to carry a hugely expensive first ever YouGov survey we commissioned showing how awful trans lives in the UK have become because it was "not strong enough" but there's no piece of anti-trans hatred too petty for it to platform.

Deep breath Ok I'm going to try and stay calm But I'll point out that AI translation is literally causing translators to be fired (see the whole Harlequin line in France) (1/?)

💯 Years ago I worked at a large game company with language editors for 14 languages. They felt passionately upset when people assumed it was as easy as just pushing a button to translate. They used cultural, regional, & industry knowledge to craft an appropriate equivalent to the English version.

Palestinian reporters have paid a terrible price in another horrific year for journalist killings | Jane Martinson

In the course of the evening, frustrated that I couldn't locate a poorly cited reference to the sermons of Caesarius of Arles, I tried asking Google AI for the correct citation, but not only did it not know, it also made up several incorrect answers, citing articles that did not back it up.

9 - Insofar as AI obeys rules, it plays by Wikipedia rules - it doesn't do original research. All it can do is tell you what researchers have already said on the subject. My job, as a researcher, is to say something new, and give my carefully checked reasons for thinking that new thing.

8- When I ask Google AI this question, it answers with a reasonable summary of the 1990s Harris/Scheidel debate, citing both of them appropriately. That's pretty good! It's exciting that it can do that! But it doesn't move us forward. And more importantly, it's never going to suggest moving forward.

1 - I read a newspaper article somewhere (I don't recall where) about the Orphan Trains (1854-1929) that carried 1000s of children (most of whom were *not* orphans) every year from NYC and Boston to the Midwest, where they were given to farm owners to help with farm work. Demand exceeded supply.

Here's a 🧵 on how I came to write the article I'm working on right now, and you can decide for yourself whether AI was ever going to go in this direction:

Israel’s Gaza proxy strategy is collapsing The killing of gang leader Yasser Abu Shabab, a known felon and drug lord, by one of his own men has exposed the bankruptcy of Israel’s vision for the Strip. www.972mag.com/israel-gaza-...

“It is our responsibility in these moments to balance the anguish we feel upon seeing the murder of our Jewish siblings alongside the need to say defiantly and clearly: We will not let this horror be weaponized to advance divide-and-rule politics.” www.972mag.com/bondi-massac...

PODCAST: Who’s afraid of Palestinian Christianity? John Munayer highlights how Palestinian Christians have resisted their depoliticization, following in the tradition of anti-colonial liberation theology. www.972mag.com/podcast-pale...

From cash brokers to crypto, Gazans struggle to stay financially afloat With banks and ATMs destroyed, and Israel blocking new banknotes, Palestinians face a liquidity crisis and an economy shattered by Israel’s war. Ahmed Ahmed reports. www.972mag.com/cash-brokers...

Their demands are reasonable, their treatment is disgraceful. The government's intransigence is killing the #PalestineAction hunger strikers. Just as its complicity has assisted the genocide in Gaza. It needs to wake up right now to the moral consequences. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

Painting by James McIntosh Patrick ‘December Sunshine, Angus' 1949. Oil on canvas. Dimensions 75 x 100cm.

Bad actors are going to make "AI" even more of a shitshow than it already is ...

I did, yes. There was also a paper demonstrating that small semantically irrelevant changes in inputs generated large task-irrelevant divergence in outputs, suggesting that these systems do not respond solely to semantics.

Did you see this from a couple of months ago? www.anthropic.com/research/sma...

Even in the idiomatic sense, I guess I’d dispute that LLMs can code, write or reason very well. Yes, they can generate code or grammatical sentences that might be adequate for some purposes. But there’s more to coding/writing/reasoning than that. So the idiom doesn’t apply. It codes like an amateur!

William Parr, the electrician from Wigan who went down to the engine room of the Titanic & kept the lights on & the lifeboats davits working as it sank. 👇 BBC News - Titanic hero who kept the lights on as doomed line sank - BBC News www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

From 10 years ago. Not a thing has changed. America keeps failing people. www.vox.com/policy-and-p...

A tad cod psychology, but the call to action is good.

What I see at the moment is a lot of people captivated to a concerning degree by the human-like nature of what LLMs appear to be doing. As with the old adage, if you have a hammer then everything looks like a nail. I’m seeing it applied to way too many inappropriate contexts.

Bluesky's a progressive suburb It's nicer and quieter than the Big City, and a lot of folks mean well in trying to make it a more inclusive place, but for one reason or another it is pretty hostile to genuine diversity and will likely remain a small, quaint place

A big part of that comes down to 1) People in countries like Yemen have bigger problems than caring deeply about mostly US-coded right-wing movements 2) Bluesky is aggressively white and seems dedicated to remaining that way

I say this as someone who logs onto Twitter probably once every two weeks A big reason a lot of people of my background (researchers following world affairs) haven't is because people from the countries we study have not 1/2

Olive grove by olive grove, sheep pasture by sheep pasture, village by village — over the past two years, Israeli settlers, often with Israeli military support, have escalated their unrelenting campaign to seize land and erase its Palestinian presence. Paywall free: nytimes.com/interactive/...

Palestine Action activist on hunger strike taken to hospital

Bail them. Release them. They are not terrorists. Shameful government of utterly contemptible cowards

The UK media’s silence on the Palestine Action activists’ hunger strikes is a deliberate editorial choice blogs.lse.ac.uk/medialse/202...

No shit Sherlock

Now *that* is a client list.

It won’t make the blind bit of difference to Labour’s policy. Their immigration stance has never had anything to do with reality.

We shouldn't be surprised, but this is still shocking. In Gaza, Israel has committed countless war crimes against the deceased. They are now enforced disappearances. Bulldozed corpses & unmarked graves, CNN investigates the fate of Gaza’s missing aid seekers: www.cnn.com/2025/12/03/m... #ICC

Judge Sebutinde cites The Free Press article - 'revealing' that starving children often have other health issues, and recently panned by John Oliver... in a section about "the challenges in verifying the accuracy and authenticity of information". This is absolutely *mortifying*.

Genuine LOL at this. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/19/n...

Israeli soldiers shoot Palestinians during settler attack - https://www.middleeasteye.net/live-blog/live-blog-update/israeli-soldiers-shoot-palestinians-during-settler-attack

Wow, France is offering more services (safety checks, etc). to make up for fewer letters. "La Poste delivers home meals to isolated or vulnerable people priced between €22 and €100 per month. 15,000 of t150,000 daily meal deliveries are made by La Poste— they're largest operator in this sector."

The Michelle Mone-linked PPE firm has been liquidated – but does that mean £148m is gone for good? Legal tools exist to recover it - but does the will exist? #MichelleMone #PPEscandal #CovidContracts #VIPlane #UKPolitics voxpoliticalonline.com/2025/12/21/f...

OMG!! The crowning achievement of All British Intellectuals 😊 - my letter has actually been published in the @lrb.co.uk (*and* features references to nonmonogamy and collective childcare). Friends, Revolution is near! www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

In September last year (2024, you read that right) I gave the @bsatheory.bsky.social lecture on Academic freedom and the politics of free speech, with reflections on performativity, ontology of social institutions, and - of course - Palestine. It's finally up: www.youtube.com/watch?v=jH5S...