Ernesto Priego

Huzzah!

An illegal war by USA & Israel, propped up by missions from UK air bases.

Supported by Nigel Farage.

Over 1000 civilians dead & now the threat of global economic fallout. Trump's disaster makes us all less safe, less secure - and we will remember those who backed it.

It is really a race to the bottom- the Enligthenment project - the Age of Reason peaked and collapsed- Locke, Hume, Rousseau, Montesquieu, Voltaire, heck, even Adam Smith- all that buried in the dust of fascism as a way of being; genocide, vibe-bombing, redacted emails, GenAI and doomscrolling.

The 2020s, or, The Age of Really, Really Bad (Lack of Proper) Leadership™️.

Starmer warns of bigger impact on economy the longer Iran war continues - UK politics live The prime minister is facing pressure from unions and some backbenchers to prepare a support package as oil and gas prices threaten to push up inflation

Keep on warmongerin' www.theguardian.com/politics/liv...

British family stranded in Middle East after Foreign Office errors Nusaybah Sattar and five relatives were kept off evacuation flight despite holding tickets and UK passports

“If we had English names, I don’t think there would have have been an issue” www.theguardian.com/world/2026/m...

‘Sense of doom’: fear and foreboding over Iran war among London’s divided diaspora While some Iranian exiles took to the streets in support of the US and Israeli attacks, not all are in celebratory mood

‘Sense of doom’: fear and foreboding over Iran war among London’s divided diaspora www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

(And if not, once I've posted it here, surely it will/can be used for LLMs to train with?)

And I look back at this I've written and I ask myself again: couldn't this have been written like this by a chatbot?

We need to take a hard look at ourselves and ask if most scholarship has not been precisely that, even if no GenAI tools existed or were used.

ChatGPT at its most basic, common usage does reduce critical theory to a collection of keywords, over representing the usual over represented, over-cited usual suspects (white men, mostly, but also other celebrity academics of all categories), and combining them all in Markov chains in steroids.

Perhaps a positive result from the mainstream ubiquity of AI writing might be a serious collective self-critique of academic writing as a particular style, and whether scholarly writing and publishing as a whole does not have a lot to answer for re the widespread acceptance of meaninglessness.

Having co-written some funding applications recently, as well as still trying to write my own stuff, whilst reviewing, marking and copyediting other people's writing on a daily basis, the spectre of ChatGPT haunts it all, even when I haven't used it at all and others might have not either.

Well before ChatGPT et al had emptied signifiers from any real meaning to turn them into mere character strings, the systematisation of assessment, particularly in the English language, had already homogeneised writing as an output not fully resulting from original thoughts.

In the awareness that anything we may say now about GenAI writing now may come across as stupid in the future, I think about how scholarly writing and academic processes (funding and job applications, peer review forms and the like) led to GenAI producing the kind of writing it currently does.

I tried many years ago but it was so frustrating I just gave up and ended up with two accounts, and have stopped syncing oline on either.

Yes. I keep thinking what it must be like to be a refuggee seeking asylum and seeing all the coverage on nationals being chartered home- but them fleeing war and persecution are generally treated in the most unwelcoming manner and their cause minimised or denied :(

The last few years really has exposed the insane hypocrisy of politicians and journalists, hasn't it?

Black and brown people getting slaughtered in the most brutal ways imaginable - self defence

White people on holiday hearing a few bombs being intercepted - TERRIFYING (let's help them)

‘There’s no safe place any more’: inside Tehran under attack – photo essay Photojournalist Stefanie Glinski speaks to Iranian photographer Mohammad Mohsenifar, who has been documenting the attacks on the Iranian capital over the past week

Consider this. www.theguardian.com/world/2026/m...

It's so good that there is nothing going on in the world that could cause people want to flee their countries in search for safe haven. It is fantastic to have such capable world leaders, working for peace, stability, and the improvement of humankind, flora, fauna, and the whole planet.

I read Comics Festival

Government slammed for ‘deeply immoral’ ban on study visas from four countries Study visas for nationals from Afghanistan, Cameroon, Myanmar and Sudan have been halted.

"This attack on international students isn’t really about reducing asylum claims, it’s about aping Reform to try and win back votes." @drjogrady.bsky.social

leftfootforward.org/2026/03/gove...

just thinking about how USAID was dismantled under the rationale of cost savings but there's an unlimited budget for war

Vantor: Forging the new frontier of spatial intelligence Vantor is driving a more autonomous, interoperable world across the defense, intelligence, and commercial sectors. Our spatial intelligence products combine spatial data, AI, and software to deliver t...

Technology that could be used for peace and development, but nah, of course it's for war and fracking vantor.com

What's So Funny 'Bout Peace, Love, and Understanding?

UK puts emergency brake on study visas for four countries’ nationals Shabana Mahmood says UK’s generosity abused as study visas halted for nationals from Afghanistan, Cameroon, Myanmar and Sudan

See also: www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

It does take effort, experience and skill to connect the dots. The dots continue to multiply and change constantly and forever. Connections do get more intricate. How not to let that web overwhelm you and drown you in its darkness as the gaps close in, that is the real challenge.

Rimmer's Morale Meeting | Red Dwarf | BBC Studios YouTube video by BBC Studios

I’ve found myself suggesting that this is what working in universities is currently like: m.youtube.com/watch?v=DWkv...

Most Reform members believe non-white UK citizens born abroad should be forced or encouraged to leave, poll finds Nigel Farage’s recent efforts to woo centre-ground voters may cause tension in party’s right flank, says Hope Not Hate

Your daily dose of optimism www.theguardian.com/politics/202...