If your pet has fleas - restrict yourself on how much you treat them As One flea treatment of a medium-sized dog with imidacloprid contains enough pesticide to kill 60 million bees www.theguardian.com/environment/...

70 years ago today, (Sept 22, 1955) a General Electric scientist warned about carbon dioxide build-up. C02 “may be having a greenhouse effect on our climate” because mankind is “contaminating the earth’s atmosphere faster than nature can clean it.” allouryesterdays.info/2025/09/22/7...

A good time to reflect on his most significant piece of work, You Have Not Yet Been Defeated, composed of essays that include several smuggled out of a maximum security desert prison outside of Cairo.

Momentous news that will reverberate far beyond Egypt: A presidential pardon for Alaa Abd el-Fattah. His family worked for years for this moment: His mother went on a hunger strike that very nearly killed her to secure her son's freedom. His sister camped outside the British foreign office.

Major story from @jacobmagid.bsky.social in @timesofisrael.com www.timesofisrael.com/revealed-ton...

The first results of my FIFA-funded project are out in the world! ⚽ Why the FA's takeover of women's football from the WFA in 1993 was a "Hobson's Choice" for the WFA, & a moment of disempowerment for #womensfootball ⚽ It's open access & available here: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Think I've just had my first encounter with LLM-fabricated language data. Some Indonesian paper mill journal just published a paper containing completely fabricated Siwi data, citing me as the source. (It could have been made up by a human, but it looks like what you get when you ask ChatGPT.)

So the Meta glasses thing with RayBan. Technologically very impressive, lots of reviewers raving about them. Not one mention of Meta, the ethics of the company, the privacy concerns, the fact that Meta are fucking evil and should never be supported by any liberal minded person ever.

"With dismay we witness our university leadership making soulless choices that hollow out our institutions from within and erode the critical and self-reflective fabric of academia". [from Guest et al., 'Against the Uncritical Adoption of "AI" Technologies in Academia']

“Jews say sanction Israel now.” www.haaretz.com/news/world/2...

Yes! I just spoke to a librarian and they are spending time trying to find fake citations - they are being given pages of fake references to find via inter-library loan Again, digital asbestos - quick to produce, but so much cost and labour to clean-up.

Lots of people saying they’ve got bumper crops of apples and such atm. If you’ve too many and don’t know what to do with them, ask your local Foodbank or cooperative pantry if they could use them! Dad got 2kg to the Fishguard Foodbank earlier.

The mad king is losing it. This will destroy higher ed, tech, and the medical profession. Xenophobia has no bounds in this administration. I’m a former h1b holder

Narrator: they’re not going to eat the vegetable

Oxford has fallen. Repeat: Oxford has fallen… 🤖 #HigherEducation #academia

“It has become alarmingly normalized that faculty working on the Middle East should simply expect to be the subjects of levels of abuse that would not be tolerated in virtually any other workplace environment.” From April 2024 abuaardvarkghost.ghost.io/the-middle-e...

To help us do this, we develop a lens to help us trace the harm towards women within/by AI by examining literature, film, and other media (see the figure above), and then apply the lens (also above) to current types of technologies like voice assistants to demonstrate its use.

Sure, although I don't think AI is really a tool. That's marketing speak. More here if you want to get into why bsky.app/profile/oliv...

Celebrate a Pict Autumn With 10% Off From the 19th-22nd, get 10% off any order with code TENOFF. All proceeds to Northern Picts projects. We now have a much improved kids range and a lot more merch! Check out our new products! npixts.teemill.com

Slower speeds save lives: "...there were 2,638 people injured, including deaths, on low-speed roads in the most recent 18 months, compared with 3,520 injuries between April 2022 and September 2023, a reduction of 25%."

Stephen Yaxley-Lennon being deported twice in 24 hours - first from Colombia, then from Panama - because he’s deemed a national security threat, just a week after he led a march calling for migrants to be deported, is the kind of schadenfreude we can all savour.

Private Eye on Sabra and Chatila. Plus ca change: H/t @marchudson.bsky.social

I am so old that I can remember the dodgy dossier, 45 minutes and the attorney-general’s advice to his former flatmate Tony Blair. As per Nick Tomalin, “they lie they lie, they lie”

POMEPS is thrilled to announce a call for proposals for POMEPS Travel – Research – Engagement (TRE) grants for 2026. Awards of up to $3,000 will be offered to support research travel to the broader Middle East. Deadline to apply: Oct. 15th. More info: pomeps.org/call-for-pro...

An actual quote from the Secretary of State for Business and Trade Too often people go to university to ‘explore research and knowledge’ Look forward to Wes S saying 'too often people go to hospital to have operations' or Heidi Alexander saying 'too often people go to the station to catch a train'

New online from @contemplevant.bsky.social: “Rethinking Wendy Pearlman’s ‘silencing fear’ in the rules of Hafez and Bashar al-Assad: an affective perspective”: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Netanyahu: ‘These So-Called Genocide Experts Have Probably Never Committed A Genocide In Their Lives’ — theonion.com/netanyahu-th...

@chelsiwo.bsky.social hello! Just wanted to say how much I enjoyed your New Books Network interview - so interesting. With my history of archaeology hat on I recently examined a PhD on how interpretations of tumuli have changed in Albanian archaeology and how communist-era…

Trump says he specifically requested that Sadiq Khan be excluded from the UK state banquet: "On immigration, he's a disaster." As mayor of London, Khan has no powers over immigration.

What does #race look like in places we’re taught to overlook? In ENCOUNTERING RACE IN ALBANIA, @chelsiwo.bsky.social reveals how whiteness, Blackness & otherness are shaped far beyond the West. A #global must-read on race & #identity. www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501...

Happy to take the birthrate people seriously the second one of them is like omg, have you seen the black infant mortality death rate? We’re losing out on so many lovely black babies!

🌊🌡️📈 The warming rate over the North Pacific Ocean (NPO) the past 25 years was about 1,000% higher than averaged over the preceding 150 years! It's the rate of regional warming and the resulting climate and weather impacts that pose such a threat. 1/

Have we reached the point where it would be easier to list the universities where staff haven't been forced into industrial action to try to minimise job losses?

Countries on track to eliminate cervical cancer: -Australia by 2028 -Sweden by 2027 -Rwanda by 2030 -UK by 2040 -Indonesia by 2030 -Bhutan 2030 -El Salvador by 2030 -Canada by 2040 How? HPV vaccine. Same one RFK Jr is trying to ban. You will note USA is not on this list.

Human Rights Watch new release on Israel's actions in Syria, calling them “not legitimate acts of military necessity, but pages out of the playbook used in the occupied Palestinian territory & other parts of the region, stripping residents of basic rights & freedoms.” www.hrw.org/news/2025/09...

Quite right - universities are not just 'problem solvers', they are also curators of the full range of knowledge and 'academic freedom' has long been the tool by which liberal societies foster inquiry and exploration. Much of which requires little or no funding, but healthy universities only.

"Britain must burn more fossil fuels and bills must rise in order to power the robot that'll fire everyone. How else will I afford my next private island?"

If you’re on academia dot edu, let me suggest that you strongly consider deleting your account.

The launch of my new @manchesterup.bsky.social book Songs of Seven Dials will be at 6pm, Tues 21 Oct, at Waterstones Covent Garden. I'll be in conversation with the wonderful @julialaite.bsky.social. Please do come along. Free tickets, but register in advance www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/songs-of-s...

One for Rachel Reeves’ budget. @transportenvironment.org www.theguardian.com/money/2025/s...

“Technology firms behind artificial intelligence–based note-taking software — marketed to therapists as a time-saving administrative tool — have quietly included provisions in their terms and conditions that allow patients’ therapy records to be sold and manipulated to train other AI applications.”

KAMLAGER-DOVE: Dylan Roof, who followed white supremacist propaganda, murdered 9 Black parishioners in 2015. Do you deny this? PATEL: I'm sorry. Dylan Roof? Can you give me more information? KAMLAGER-DOVE: You're head of the FBI

This book does sound fascinating but Barry Strauss’ New Books Network interview is a great illustration of the limits on how useful “historical echoes” are as an idea, and of the fact that ancient historians don’t necessarily have insightful takes on present-day events (and vice versa):

Finally! 🤩 Our position piece: Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia: doi.org/10.5281/zeno... We unpick the tech industry’s marketing, hype, & harm; and we argue for safeguarding higher education, critical thinking, expertise, academic freedom, & scientific integrity. 1/n

Simply astonishing. Maybe Lecturer A should not have to mark over 100 essays in a two-week window in the first place? Invest in qualified staff and reduce impossible workloads FFS www.kcl.ac.uk/about/strate...

Thank you @london.gov.uk We need leadership like this 👇🏻

One of these rich dudes invested in a food company with all proceeds going to kids in need. The other started Sundance Institute, boosting the lives of countless artists. Hey modern rich dudes, don't be a typical greedy AI crypto-prick, be like these two.

Arrested for malicious communications? Really? I’d like to see this one in court…