When we talk about Baby Boomers not getting off the stage: In 1997, the US president was born in 1946.
In 2007, the US president was born in 1946.
In 2017, the US president was born in 1946.
And next year in 2027? The US president will have been born in 1946.
The real threat to democracy doesn't come from 'family voting'. It comes from the losing side refusing go accept they've lost
Just catching up with what's happened here. (Apologies - it's a bit random what one does and doesn't see on Bluesky.) I'm very sorry for your loss. Glad to see the funeral went well, and hope you are managing OK în the aftermath.
To be absolutely clear: this is the lowest percentage of the vote in a by-election for the Conservatives or Tories since the party was founded at the time of the Glorious Revolution in 1689.
This is not a reasoned political response. Labour has spent two years making all the voting groups who backed the Greens feel unwelcome and unheard, and now attacks them for daring to back someone else. They believe Labour isn’t listening and Starmer seems determined to prove them right
It'll be interesting to see what happens! Would be quite a turn-around if the media backed it. 🤣
I'm hoping this scenario would circumvent him, but indeed. My experience from the AV campaign was that it wasn't popular with (then-)UKIP voters, because it sounded too woke and namby-pamby to them. Hence Farage has tended to soft-pedal on PR despite his various parties being held back by FPTP.
Same! 😭
The arguments from within that coalition for electoral reform would be very strong, and indeed all the right supporters' groups and policies are already in place to make them. I'm going to allow myself to hope that that might happen.
No single party is currently in a position to win a convincing majority at the next election. But there's a reasonable likelihood that the result would allow a progressive coalition government to be formed, made up mainly of Labour, Lib Dems and Greens.
I feel like I can actually see a plausible route to electoral reform following the Gorton and Denton by-election, which hasn't been the case since 2011.
sex matters trustee charlotte cadden
gorton and denton by-election result: she gets 706 votes, 1.9% of the total
underappreciated but very funny gorton and denton sideplot: the conservatives nominating literal sex matters (uk terf group) trustee charlotte cadden, only for her to get the worst result for the conservatives in by-election history and lose her deposit
It’s a running joke in academia that Matt Goodwin is bad at maths.
This sort of thing is why: the combined Labour/Green vote could have split in any way possible and Goodwin would have finished 2nd or 3rd. He did not lose because progressives coordinated. He lost *in spite of them not doing so*.
That seems like the correct number of spaces to have in a spice rack! 😉
it's bleakly hilarious to have people complaining that using the word "nazi" to describe people calling for racial cleansing and forced breeding is "rendering the word meaningless," while supporters of the US government use the word "communist" to describe having a functioning healthcare system
"Might as well give the other lot a go" is going to continue in a post-ideology politics until leaders can provide a picture to voters of why they make the choices they do because improvements won't stop severe resource constraints
Thinking this morning of George III's younger brother Henry Frederick, duke of Cumberland and Strathearn (1745-1790), who was tried for 'criminal conversation' with Harriet, Lady Grosvenor, in 1770, after being found in bed with her at the White Hart Inn, St Albans.... 1/..
oh god. It's going to be a day in which we are forced to tap the 'the world didn't start in 1900' sign every five minutes, isn't it?
Anyway, stop firing your premodernists, stop making them feel irrelevant, stop making them do just the introduction sessions of 'the real' history.
I just did the dumbest thing of my entire career to prove a much more serious point.
I tricked ChatGPT and Google, and made them tell other users I’m a competitive hot-dog-eating world champion
People are using this trick on a massive scale to make AI tell you lies. I’ll explain how I did it
HELLO I WAS A QUEER TEEN IN THE 1990s AND THE ARGUMENTS AGAINST SOCIAL TRANSITION NOW ARE INDISTINGUISHABLE FROM THE ARGUMENTS AGAINST "LETTING" US BE (at the time, for me) GAY OR LESBIAN THEN.
They all rest on the belief that it's inherently better to be straight (then)/cis (now) and that's BS.
The UK was declared measles free in 2017.
Vaccine programs completely eliminated it.
Since then, pro sickness conspiracy theorists and anti science idiots have enabled its return.
NEW ANALYSIS: China's CO2 has now been 'flat or falling' for 21 months
* Down in 2025
* Still below Mar 2024
* Clean energy wave a key factor
If this is China's peak (TBC) it's the climate story of the century so far…
www.carbonbrief.org/...
Rasha Soliman (left) and Clare Wright (right) standing together at the reception after their lecture.
Our Head of School, @emmacayley.bsky.social, has just sent me this fab additional picture of Clare and Rasha. 😊
Emma Cayley, Head of School, congratulating both Clare and Rasha.
Emma introducing Clare's lecture.
A reconstruction of the advert for the copy typing job which Clare answered, complete with the glorious typo: Right On Paddy Ashdown MP.
Emma introducing Rasha's lecture.
A great pleasure this evening to attend the inaugural lecture of two @lcsleeds.bsky.social colleagues, Clare Wright and Rasha Soliman. But I didn't expect to learn that one of Clare's earliest jobs had been as a copy typist for the "right on" Paddy Ashdown MP. I'll have to grill her about that! 😁
The law on universities and free speech prevents speakers from being *disinvited after they have been invited*. It does not require universities to provide a platform to whoever demands one.
Let's not mince words: the threat to cut funding to every university who disagrees with them is fascist.
Bezos burning the Washington post to the ground is as firm a reason for the continued bbc licence as ever there was. Eventually everything that can be owned by a billionaire will be owned by a billionaire and at that point its future will be determined by the whims of a man making 166k per minute.
Job Alert‼️We are hiring in interpreting and translation @ctilsleeds.bsky.social @lcsleeds.bsky.social
Looking for an experienced colleague at grade 8. Deadline is 25th February. Join our fabulous team! jobs.leeds.ac.uk/Vacancy.aspx...
If internet firms are defined by their fastest-growing monetized products, well, Meta is basically a Reels company, one that successfully chased TikTok into continued relevance, allowing Mark Zuckerberg to throw money at his next big chase (into generative AI). This isn’t just a formal change from the News Feed to Stories to predictively recommended vertical videos, though. It’s a long (and nearly complete) process of platform desocialization. Platforms originally defined by keeping up with people you know, or have at least heard of, become something fundamentally different.
"desocialization" (like "social deskilling") is a good term for what was once talked about in terms of "social graph" vs. "interest graph," or of "algorithmic recommendation"
nymag.com/intelligence...
