Matthew Cole
@mattcole.bsky.social
Assistant Professor of Technology, Work and Employment at the University of Sussex. Heterodox Marxist - Les dés sont pipés! mattcole.work
Today we launch a special collaborative briefing with Forces of Production, introducing an approach to policy — The Productive State — governing the supply side. 🧵 🖊️ @atwilliams.bsky.social @brusselermel.bsky.social www.common-wealth.org/publications...
The Productive State: On Governing the Supply Side
To produce a better life for all, policymakers will need to take a Productive State approach to governing the supply side.
common-wealth.org
Hey foodie people, I need London restaurant recommendations, particularly places that do Buckwheat Blinis with Salmon Roe and Crème Fraîche. Mediterranean or Ukrainian foods a plus as well. Please help!
The good people at Political Theology are promoting the special issue on “Marx and Revolution” that @s-msorentino.bsky.social and I edited with graphics on some other sites. Resharing here. Go check it out.
Mikkel Flohr@mflohr.bsky.social · 2mo agoExcited to report that "Turning the World Upside Down: On Marx, Religion, and Revolution" has been published online. It introduces the forthcoming special (double) issue of Political Theology on "Marx and Revolution" that I co-edited with @s-msorentino.bsky.social. doi.org/10.1080/1462...
Behind every clean space is a story, but too often these stories go untold. Cleaners underpin our workplaces, hospitals, schools and public spaces—and yet their labour is often made invisible.
🚨 How the British public would vote in Clacton (excluding undecided voters): 🗑️ Count Binface ~ 61% ➡️ Nigel Farage ~ 39% Support for Binface is highest with Green voters (92%). Via @Ipsos, 8-9 July 2026 x.com/LeftieStats/...
Literally hilarious chart from Bank of America. 10/10 zero notes.
Incredible that I have been sent a Marxist paper to review that has so clearly been written by AI. The editor seemingly ignored or didn’t clock this. This is very very bad.
They “work” because they get votes for the spineless careerist political class.
Jonathan Portes@jdportes.bsky.social · last mo.Summary of the Home Office Impact Assessment for Asylum Bill is hilarious (if it weren't so depressing). HO analysts say "basically no evidence to suggest *any* of these policies will work *even on their own terms*" (but will probably cost money). assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6a43e1...
Ford has rehired more than 300 veteran quality inspectors after realizing that AI was failing to perform quality checks at the same level. www.bbc.com/news/article...
Ford rehires human engineers after AI fails to match quality checks
The car-maker found AI quality checks failed to match the skill of veteran technicians.
bbc.com
Scientific American is 180 years old. The most eminent science magazine for the general public. And today, sold off as scrap to stop the staff from unionizing. Many top editors I've worked with for a decade on several articles have been fired. What a disgrace @sciam.bsky.social
They're saying the quiet part out loud now. Jenny Maxwell, head of education for Grammarly/Superhuman: “We’re doing a huge pedagogical upheaval in education,” she said, calling it a “burn it down moment. We’re just in the early stages.” Burn down higher ed without any plan to rebuilt. Gift link.
Student Cheating Is Becoming Impossible to Detect in an A.I. Era
nytimes.com
Emergency hospital admissions fell after introduction of London’s T-charge and Ulez, study suggests
Emergency hospital admissions fell after introduction of London’s T-charge and Ulez, study suggests
Imperial College scientists analysed health records before and after introduction of air pollution reduction zones Low emission and clean air zones attract controversy whenever they are proposed, but there is growing evidence that they work in improving air quality. The Bradford zone was followed by a reduction of about 25% in GP visits for heart and breathing problems and survey data shows that the central London zone was followed by a reduction in the likelihood of a person taking sick leave. Now analysis of health records has found emergency admissions to hospital reduced after the introduction of the T-charge and ultra-low emissions zone (Ulez) in central London. Continue reading...
theguardian.com
The report made numerous false claims about the use of AI by organisations including UBS, claiming the Swiss bank 'integrates AI agents across investment advisory, risk management and compliance monitoring'. ft.trib.al/clkVSb6
I’m in Birmingnhham today, enjoying the incredible public library before my event at Voce books later this evening. Come along!
Join me, @nsrnicek.bsky.social and @sarahljaffe.bsky.social tomorrow at Kings! www.tickettailor.com/events/kings...
Today at @conwayhall.bsky.social, I introduced @mattcole.bsky.social who talked about wage theft. Go to www.conwayhall.org.uk/whats-on/ for a full list of upcoming events.
Excited to have @mattcole.bsky.social and @sarahljaffe.bsky.social coming to KCL next week (3 June) to talk about Matt's new book, Unpaid: The Past, Present, and Future of Wage Theft. Register to attend here - and please share widely! www.tickettailor.com/events/kings...
Select tickets – Unpaid: The Past, Present, and Future of Wage Theft - A Conversation with Matthew Cole and Sarah Jaffe – Bush House (SE) 2.12, Strand Campus, King’s College London
Unpaid: The Past, Present, and Future of Wage Theft - A Conversation with Matthew Cole and Sarah Jaffe – Bush House (SE) 2.12, Strand Campus, King’s College London, Wed 3 Jun 2026 - About the EventUnp...
tickettailor.com
Today is the launch party for my book Unpaid: The Past, Present and Future of Wage Theft with @versobooks.bsky.social It’s been a collective effort and I am so grateful to everyone involved. There are five events in different places from London to Birmingham to Dundalk. See: mattcole.work
Publication day! AND my birthday, so best opportunity to gift myself an order of my comrade's + excellent thinker's @mattcole.bsky.social's new @versobooks.bsky.social title "Unpaid" covering the many ways bosses steal our wages. Congrats with the release, Matt!! 🍾 www.versobooks.com/products/320...
Unpaid
Unpaid upends conventional wisdom about how we value work, exposing wage theft as one of capitalism’s enduring open secrets. From unpaid overtime and under-the-table jobs to algorithmic exploitation, ...
versobooks.com
it’s nice to have things to look forward to
Matthijs@mccaine.bsky.social · 3mo agoAt this rate both Starmer and Streeting will lose their seats next election anyway
Adversus hostem aeterna auctertas esto. Against the enemy, revendication is eternal. Epigraph from Proudhon’s ‘What is Property?’
Today is the 100th anniversary of the beginning of the 1926 General Strike in Britain. In 2022, Gavin Bowd wrote this article for Twentieth Century Communism on French-British communist solidarity during the strike, compared with strikes in 1948 and 1984-85. journals.lwbooks.co.uk/tcc/vol-2022...
Franco-British communist solidarity in the miners’ strikes of 1926, 1948 and 1984-85 - Lawrence Wishart
The British and French communist movements have rarely been an object of comparison, partly because of the huge difference in fo
journals.lwbooks.co.uk
well done to the workers: you are building this technology and you deserve a say in how it is deployed. i see these fights as reflecting larger dynamics in AI risk. have you or your bosses ceded control to market forces? how might that pattern repeat with the advent of AGI? bsky.app/profile/just...
Justin Hendrix@justinhendrix.bsky.social · 3mo ago"Workers developing Google’s artificial intelligence products in the UK have voted to unionize, in part out of concerns about a deal between the company and the US military that was announced last week."
This really made me think “we’re cooked”
Louise Amoore@amoorelouise.bsky.social · 3mo agoIf you are the editor of a journal and you have received a submission from me that looks a bit weird (weirder than usual) please assume it is a LLM-generated paper from a ghost author. This has happened four times in recent weeks. In each case it is possible to see how a genuine published paper 1/2
“All you had to do was pay us enough to live. All you had to do was pay us enough to f—— live … There goes your inventory.” www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...
Worker who allegedly set fire to California warehouse compares self to Luigi Mangione
Chamel Abdulkarim was charged with felony and state arson counts after allegedly destroying property worth nearly $600m
theguardian.com
Build more data centres so that more AI assistants can build more slop websites so that AI and harvest more data so that we need build more data centres and so on until the planet’s ecosystems collapse and humanity is finished. Great!
Jason Koebler@jasonkoebler.bsky.social · 3mo agointernet for bots by bots www.404media.co/study-finds-...
As the crowdfunder for the first radical bookshop icon Newcastle for 40 years gets closer to the end I’m making the bold move of calling on all the academics I sort of vaguely know and also those I don’t to share the link for our crowdfunder: www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/booksfromb...
A U.S. lawsuit takes aim at “addictive design.” Regulators from Brazil to Southeast Asia are following with their own rules. The push to rein in Big Tech is going global https://restofworld.org/collection/the-global-push-to-rein-in-big-tech/?utm_campaign=row-social
The global push to rein in Big Tech
Meta and YouTube lost a landmark lawsuit that accused the social media giants of deliberately engineering their platforms to make them hard to resist.
restofworld.org
