Blair putting on full display what is in many ways his special ability - to lay out a political argument grounded in his own view of global trends (globalisation in the 2000s, tech in the 2020s). But… institute.global/insights/pol...

Social media is no longer social. Most of it is passive viewing of videos and pictures from people we've never met. But we're still studying social media like it's 2010. We've entered the post-social media era — and research needs to catch up. osf.io/preprints/so... preprint w/ Richard Rogers

It was on this day 92 years ago that W. B. Yeats got ‘Steinached’ — a partial vasectomy, carried out by Austrian endocrinologist Eugen Steinach to reinvigorate the 69-year-old poet... 🧵

Yesterday marked 10 years since C‑REX was founded. This thread highlight what the center has done — research, PhDs, datasets, events, policy engagement and international partnerships. THREAD 🧵 www.sv.uio.no/c-rex/english/

Vital piece of investigative reporting from Sky. They've uncovered the X algorithm which feeds users extremist right wing material from the moment they join the site. It is a far-right radicalisation engine, by design. news.sky.com/story/the-x-...

Exactly: he wrote to Michael Kennedy “For actual coda, see end of Wells’ Tono-Bungay”.

An expert, thorough takedown of that shoddy and grossly misleading CSIS report from a few weeks back. www.justsecurity.org/122278/corre...

1/n A few days ago, an article appeared in The Atlantic with a bold headline “Left-wing terrorism is on the rise.” www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc...

Very interesting. Trump seems to finally be getting intelligence that Russia is not doing well and Ukraine has actually started to gain an upper hand in some areas. The narrative of Ukraine failure, which was always overblown, might be ending in Washington.

This is indeed a great read.

Good thread

On my hobby horse on the today programme at 1hr18 saying that in the light of the jaguar Land Rover cyber attack we need to stop obsessing about what are sometimes relatively trivial personal datasets when hackers are shutting down factories www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

This scene had me in floods of tears when I saw it as a 7 year old. In fact I’m welling up now just thinking about it

This is an excellent analysis of the situation in al-Suwayda’ that should be read by anyone interested in the situation in Syria.

We can discuss what appropriate custodial sentences are, but I cannot understand how we have tariffs that allow someone who did this to drive again, let alone do so this decade. You’ve been permitted to operate a potentially deadly machine under sufferance! You’ve proved you can’t use it safely!

In 7 days (July 18), my book "QAnon: From Conspiracy Theory to New Religious Movement" is going to be published. It's grounded in 5 years of digital ethnographic work in QAnon milieus. I never thought my PhD research would be relevant 8 years after QAnon emerged. www.routledge.com/QAnon-From-C...

I’m very sad to learn of the death of Professor Simon James. He was a lovely person, a good friend to @backlisted.bsky.social and a wonderful guest. I send my condolences to his friends and family, and I’ll miss his warmth and the breadth of his knowledge. RIP. newwritingnorth.com/journal/a-tr...

Official photo from the Trump-Sharaa meeting. Imagine going back in time to 2010 and trying to explain this to someone. Surreal

🚨 What is the "Great Replacement Theory" & who believes it? 🚨 In our forthcoming IMR paper, @jamesrdennison.bsky.social and I treat GRT as layered narratives, from demographic change to the elite plot. A representative German survey shows broad public agreement with several of these layers.

So, happy 50th anniversary to this entry from Peter Hall’s diary describing rehearsals for Harold Pinter’s No Man’s Land with Ralph Richardson and John Gielgud

This is a lovely piece by David Runciman, of @ppfideas.bsky.social. At a time when universities are running away from the lecture, the podcasting boom shows the appetite for serious, long-form and, yes, didactic content by people with specialist understanding. www.theideasletter.org/essay/podcas...

Russian internet users searched for “Michael Stürzenberger stabbed” before the knife attack on him in Mannheim, Germany, in May 2024. 1/5

Fascinating

Adolescence is an amazing drama but its social commentary is just plain wrong: @ianleslie.bsky.social explains: open.substack.com/pub/ianlesli...

🧵 NEW: Why is Britain so skint? We pay huge amounts of tax, yet the chancellor is expected to make widespread cuts. Where is all our money going? My column, and a primer ahead of Wednesday @thetimes.com 1/10 www.thetimes.com/article/e1a6...

A very informative and sensible thread.

Blown away by this erudite book by @valentimvicente.bsky.social 🤯 An exceptional combination of theoretical sophistication and empirical breadth and depth. His theory of normalization not just helps explain recent rise of far right but also warns for overestimating strength of democracy.

Here is how the White House “condemned” the threats

With all the recent discussions about communications campaigns in the PCVE space, I thought it would be a good time to re-up a study by myself, Yahye Abdi, @andrewglazzard.bsky.social, Abdullahi Ahmed Nor & Martine Zeuthen www.resolvenet.org/research/rea...

A 🧵on this article (£) and its connection to the University of Oxford Modern History: World History 1941-73 module’s finals exam paper in the year 1996. Bear with me 1/ www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/01...

‘The question Trump’s opponents want answered is whether he can get away with it. But there is another question. What happens when he does get away with it?’ David Runciman on America’s new president: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

"Rhiannon Evans, 25, is believed to be the first person to ever face charges for cyber-farting over Christmas." 😂😂😂 Who will be the first to face charges over Easter? metro.co.uk/2025/01/29/w...

Excellent, thoughtful piece by Jonathan Hall (the UK's independent reviewer of counter-terror legislation and powers) on the benefits and costs of changing how the UK defines terrorism:

Police were called five times to Axel Rudakubana's house. He was expelled from one school and delinquent in another. He had a conviction for violence and three referrals to Prevent. The weapon used was a kitchen knife. The failings here are offline. This just isn't an internet regulation story.

Whatever you think about what tends to be called online disinformation (whether it’s real or imagined, serious or minor) it’s striking that even two years ago all the talk was about what Russia (& to an extent China & Iran) were up to Today everyone is debating western actors & American platforms

Based on interviews with NCA investigators, this is the story of how pulling at the thread of a ransomware group’s extortion funds ended up unravelling a Russian money-laundering network used by drug traffickers, cybercriminals, elites evading sanctions and even the Kremlin’s espionage operations.

Absolutely superb piece. Great yarn. www.ft.com/content/eb3b...

Morning in Damascus

This is a cracking piece of journalism and a fascinating portrait of the transition.

Britain's public services are already behaving like a start-up: running out of money and struggling to find viable ways of raising it.

There is something truly excellent about a government efficiency body having two heads rather than one.

Why? In focus groups people recoil from white privilege & respond "I've never had privilege in my life" the frame is seen to ascribe blame & to minimise others experience of hardship - as opposed to recognition that racism/discrimination still exist which most people agree with