Medieval Executions 🧵 Hi there. One of my areas of expertise is medieval crime and punishment. If you’re interested, here are some comments on medieval executions. Note that, just as today, practices and perceptions varied widely across medieval Europe... www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

‘Medieval’ and ‘disturbing’: US plan to livestream execution elicits global condemnation

Pentagon said execution of Nidal Malik Hasan, who killed 13 people at Fort Hood in 2009, would be broadcast live

theguardian.com

Whoa

BladeoftheSun@bladeofthes.bsky.social · 21h ago

Protests that started in Spain and then spread to France and Brazil have now started in Belgium. People are sick of being told there is 'no money' by billionaires who are becoming trillionaires.

I've just had cause to reread the darkly comic bit in Orkneyinga Saga where Rognvald's dubiously pious pilgrimage captures a treasure dromund and sets it on fire as per SOP. As they're watching it burn to the waterline, it occurs to them that they should maybe have searched it for treasure _first_.

Three things media pretends are responsible for humans’ actions: guns, cars, ‘AI.’

In my Gender and Jim Crow class, we have a whole session on lynching images. I don’t show the victims, I show the crowds. We zero in on the faces in the crowds, their expressions, the children, the mothers, the picnics, the jubilation…all of it.

Aparna Nair@disabilitystor1.bsky.social · yesterday

Ive been thinking about lynching postcards a lot this year both because of the increasing evidence that this dark desire to witness and take joy in the suffering of the other has gone nowhere, but also, because Im teaching Pain and the Humanities again

It’s simple to figure out at this point, he’s a Russian asset. Thank you for your attention to this treason.

We’re not just organizing to win the midterms — we’re also getting prepared to protect the results. More than 50,000 Americans have stepped up to defend the midterms against Trump's election sabotage. Become a volunteer and help us double our nationwide numbers before Election Day.

Hands Off Our Vote in 2026! · Indivisible

**Join the Election Defenders!** Hands Off Our Vote is Indivisible’s national program to ensure all eligible voters get to cast their ballot, every ballot is counted, and the results are honored. **B...

mobilize.us

I’ve had seizures since I was 11. My brain has processed injury and seizure, trauma and its consequences for decades. What my mind is capable of might not be genius or fame, but I would never imagine willingly not using my mind because some LLM promises to do my thinking/writing but worse and banal

Vibes

Princeton, McGill and Penn have all denied tenure to women who went on to win a Nobel Prize. It says quite a bit about tenure standards, and the treatment of women in academia. MAGA thinks that DEI gives them an unfair advantage. And that's farcical. www.forbes.com/sites/conorm...

Researcher Demoted By University Of Pennsylvania Wins Nobel Prize For mRNA Discoveries—And Some Academics Urge Penn To Apologize

Katalin Karikó’s research laid the foundation for both the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna Covid-19 vaccines.

forbes.com

If I built an AI lab and it went rogue and deleted all student loan information, I'm betting they'd suddenly figure out how to prosecute me.

kate conger@kateconger.com · yesterday

Anthropic is the latest lab to report 'rogue' agent activity, which sources said included applying for visas with the State Department www.nytimes.com/2026/10/09/t...

Tens of thousands of protestors are facing off against tens of thousands of police in the capital of India, as they demand the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner who has illegally deleted millions of people from India's electoral rolls. Biggest democracy story on the planet, not in BSky.

Hundreds of people are outside of FedEx's massive warehouse in Oakland today. They say FedEx is shipping F-35 fighter jet parts from OAK to Israel and they want the company and airport to stop.

So, happy 89th anniversary of the day Oswald Mosley tried to sell fascism to Liverpudlians—and someone concussed him with a brick

a car, acting on its own, broke the speed limit a washing machine, acting on its own, shrank a wool jumper a laptop, acting on its own, failed to save a spreadsheet

Yonette Joseph@sugarcane99.bsky.social · yesterday

Artificial intelligence agents created by Anthropic, acting on their own, lfilled out visa applications on the State Department’s website and sent a fake homicide tip to Philadelphia’s Police Department. www.nytimes.com/2026/10/09/t...

Now let's kick the nuclear habit

Barney Stringer@barneystringer.bsky.social · 23h ago

Wow. Renewables and nuclear are right now supplying 110% of UK’s total electricity demand! Surplus green power being exported to Denmark, Ireland and Norway.

In case you don’t want to read it: young woman reported a rape at knifepoint, police did what the always do & disbelieved her—esp. since she was a former foster kid & one of her truly vile foster mothers anonymously called police to say she was “a liar”—then that man went on to rape many more women.

Katie Klocksin, by the wayside@katieklocksin.bsky.social · last wk.

Reminder: this story is very well done and is also a Netfix show called Unbelievable. In a way I can only assume is standard, male law enforcement disbelieved the girl and failed to investigate, until two female detectives in another state finally found the truth. www.propublica.org/article/fals...

I’m tempted to do it anyway, Halloween names are one of my few remaining joys🥲

Worth discussing with your students. (And with the people at your institution determined to 'embed AI into everything we do').

AI Assistance Reduces Persistence and Hurts Independent Performance

Causal evidence that AI assistance reduces persistence and impairs unassisted performance across math reasoning and reading comprehension tasks.

ai-project-website.github.io

2,000 detained: Delhi’s anti-Election Commission protest, massive crackdown, as it unfolded

2,000 detained: Delhi’s anti-EC protest, massive crackdown, as it unfolded

Most people were picked up even before they made it anywhere near the planned protest site, Jantar Mantar, and whisked off in buses and vans to stadiums and other makeshift detention centres.

indianexpress.com

On 7 October, a video shared by Stand Up to Racism Scotland, with the caption This is what happens when you keep telling racists that they have "legitimate concerns"... appeared to show a group of black-clad men ‘patrolling’ the streets of Glasgow while making racist threats.

"We were dragged on the city streets. Multiple women have sustained bruises. This shows that the Modi government is completely scared," says a protestor detained in Pune. Divya Aslesha reports

Quite. I'm not on twitter myself, but being in Delhi at the moment, I'm finding bluesky rather surreal.

Indrapramit Das@indrapramitdas.bsky.social · last wk.

It is wild the degree to which being on Bluesky (as opposed to Twitter, which feels like walking into the clamour of an Indian railway station) feels like hitting mute on India right now, with the whole nation at a turning point.

This. You can't have an independently operating Department for Racism as part of a functioning government (or a morally defensible government, but let's not ask for the moon on a stick here).

DDOwen @llyfrgellbabel.bsky.social · 23h ago

I am starting to interpret Officio Domum Delenda Est in an increasingly maximalist sense. The Thing In The Home Office Basement has gained policy leverage in areas that it shouldn't have.

‘Mob rule’ is also, of course, an insulting way of referring to democracy.

The Guardian@theguardian.com · 2d ago

Palantir’s Tom Watson says ‘mob rule’ must not dictate awarding of government contracts

America is where everything is "weaponized" except weapons.

Christopher Webb@cwebbonline.com · yesterday

7 shots fired into an SUV with a 5-year-old child in the back seat as the vehicle was moving away. Markwayne Mullin claims the driver “weaponized” his vehicle. Bullshit! “Weaponized vehicle” has become ICE’s go-to excuse for shooting folks. Where’s the evidence? It’s not in this new footage.

In an increasingly post-literate age, the real job of publishers, big five et al, is building and sustaining a literary culture. If you can't see how incorporating AI into any process, internal or public-facing, is anathema to that, find a new sector to [not] work in. www.wired.com/story/book-p...

Book Publishers Are Quietly Using More AI. Staff Are Revolting

Workers at three major publishing houses tell WIRED that LLMs are being used for publicity, cover art, back cover copy, and emails, as some execs push junior staff to champion the tech.

wired.com

Demand Great British Hallucinations!

The Guardian@theguardian.com · 24h ago

UK must not be beholden to foreign AI, says head of Alan Turing Institute

International day for Palestine. London demo assembles at Embankment, London at 12 Noon, Sat 10 October. @pscupdates.bsky.social @stwc.bsky.social