Dr Tobias Atkinson
@tobiasa1994.bsky.social
"I said who put all those things in your head?" Associate Lecturer, Lancaster University Medical School. He/they. Interested in neurodiversity, disability, gender, sexuality, critical/anti-psychiatry, affect and psychoanalysis. Shares not endorsements.
Really useful analysis from @contentking.bsky.social on predictive markets and far right currents. lofaith.substack.com/p/prediction...
Prediction markets might be radicalising your boyfriend
The Manosphere gamified radicalisation. Prediction markets gamblify it.
lofaith.substack.com
Hmmmm 14 year olds 'being able to choose' what kind of education they get in response to the needs of local employers sounds like options being closed off for them rather than an exercise in active consent (increasing young people's capacity to act).
If you work in a (ahem) provider in the lower half of the league table, your sense of how well university is - in 2026 - fulfilling its romantic 1960s progressive function of democratising cultural capital is probably quite different than if you work at Oxbridge.
university was a far better option for disadvantaged young people 10+ years ago than it is now. Part of what's happened, enabling the new 'vocational/technical' policy discourse is that - via cost of living and punitive student finance - the socioeconomic critique of HE has become increasingly valid
35 UK universities just signed up to become part of the UK war machine. ❌ We mustn't let it happen. Sign and share the national petition! 👇
Stop universities from joining the UK war machine | People & Planet
Add your voice, sign the petition.
peopleandplanet.org
With renters in every part of the country facing steep rises in their monthly payments, it is a huge mistake to rule out something that would provide significant breathing space for so many. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Angela Rayner rules out rent controls in England
The housing secretary tells the BBC that the Renters Rights' Act is already having a significant impact on the market.
bbc.co.uk
I’m glad that the walls seem to be closing in on Andrew Tate, but it took criminal investigations across three countries, dozens of outspoken victims, and a hit TV show implying he drives boys to murder girls for this to happen—and he still hasn’t been convicted yet. This is why 98% get away with it
government has responded to the Education Committee's report on insolvency. this is apparently the position on a university failing - Jacqui Smith is continuing as HE minister ...
Is welfare spending ''out of control''? It's estimated to be 11.1 per cent of GDP this financial year. That's just 1.1 per cent of GDP higher than in 2007-08, and total welfare spending has actually fallen by 0.9 per cent of GDP since 2012-13 ⤵️
We are trying to build our mailing list at NeuroHub Community as it is currently quite modest. If you're interested in the work we do and the services we provide, sign up here neurohubcommunity.org/join-our-mai... #ActuallyAutistic #autism #ADHD #AuDHD #MentalHealth
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Hi 👋 this is the kind of stuff I write about on my Substack. I'm a feminist researcher who got my PhD by studying transhumanist imaginaries. I write about how the desire to live forever leaks into the wider cultural imagination. emilyehoyle.substack.com
Jen McGowan@iamjenmcg.bsky.social · 3w agoHollywood! This is our fault www.theguardian.com/wellness/202...
VPNs are safe... for now 🛡️ The government backs down on restricting this vital cybersecurity tool. Alongside the announcement of a social media curfew for 16 and 17 year olds comes a win for privacy! Plans to age-gate or restrict VPNs have been dropped, but we're not complacent to future risks.
UK 16- and 17-year-olds to be encouraged to follow midnight social media curfew
Midnight to 6am block on some apps is latest stage of Labour’s bid to protect young people from online harms
theguardian.com
Sacrifice zones
Reuters@reuters.com · 3w agoElon Musk's xAI has installed more than double the number of gas turbines than it has publicly acknowledged to power its Colossus 2 data center project, without federal permits, and the pollution is hitting predominantly Black neighborhoods the hardest reut.rs/4bIghEm
Are you aware of the alliance between the Ministry of Defence and universities to use HE to do research & development for the arms industry? Our Government is using £182 million of public funding for this, including £80 million to fund students' degrees in this area. www.gov.uk/government/n...
Boost for skills and research as 35 universities across the UK partner in new defence alliance
A new Defence Universities Alliance with 35 UK universities will help strengthen defence research, build critical skills and support the UK's future defence capability.
gov.uk
Was glad to attend this workshop earlier this week hosted by @durhamimh.bsky.social. Very thought provoking presentations and discussions.
On a Sunday evening in NYC’s East Village, hundreds of people gather in front of a giant papier-mâché face of a woman wearing a crown. She’s the backdrop of a play, which is one of the opening events of a modern Luddite festival.
Inside the Luddite Festival Harnessing Gen Z’s Rage Against Big Tech
New York City’s Summer of Ludd festival is teaching people how to live offline amid the suffocating presence of Big Tech.
wired.com
Devastating news for the Humanities and Social Sciences as the staff in these multi-disciplines face the bulk of Exeter's cuts. What kind of society will we become without students learning history, reading literature, questioning capitalism, engaging in decolonialisation? How melancholy will we be?
Ben Phillips@benphillips1989.bsky.social · last mo.A statement from Exeter UCU branch @ucu.org.uk - please share far and wide.
internetprincess.substack.com/p/the-perpet... Really thoughtful intervention from Rayne Fisher-Quann into heterofatalism/hetero-optimism debates. Connects with some thoughts I have been having regarding these debates and wider tensions in critiques of pop psychology and confessional writing.
The perpetual present-tense
Heteropessimism, "gender war," and the perils of getting stuck in the present
internetprincess.substack.com
www.theideasletter.org/essay/reify-... "You can decide not to believe those things but still be in the reification process unleashed by the data distributions of these models."
Reify This
The authors contend that contemporary efforts to render AI systems interpretable rest on a mistake: reification, the process of treating abstractions and statistical artifacts as if they were concrete...
theideasletter.org
We are closing @goldperc.bsky.social after 12 years. Here I reflect on the times and what we made of them www.goldperc.uk/project_post...
Looking back on PERC - Political Economy Research Centre
The Political Economy Research Centre is to close formally this summer. Here, founding Director, Will Davies, reflects on its twelve years of activity. It took two or three years before the causes, ef...
goldperc.uk
I have to say, listening to the Today programme dedicate an entire (context free) section about whether migrants are more likely to be convicted criminals *the morning after* hundreds of non-migrants of my own ethnicity committed a pogrom is blood boiling.
The Policy Exchange report has grabbed attention via the attack on the size of HE sector and the low 'returns' on degrees, but also includes several small 'c' conservative recommendations for de-marketization (which will no doubt be ignored)
