I begged Woman’s Hour to cover Gamergate in 2014, when it was the NYT front page & UK women in games were living in terror. Gamergate became the model for MAGA. They said they didn’t think it was an important story. That week they covered women mountaineers of the 19th C & new ways with aubergine

Joel Morris@gralefrit.bsky.social · yesterday

I pitched a show two years ago about this to Radio 4, to tie in with the release. They said they had already made a programme about computers fairly recently.

This is the most fucked up and immediately harmful policy decision I think I've ever seen in adult trans healthcare in the UK, and that's saying something. The Welsh Gender Service is one of the best in the country. It is widely praised by the patients it helps. That is why it is being targeted.

QueerAF@wearequeeraf.com · 2d ago

🚨🆕 @wearequeeraf.com and @whatthetrans.com can reveal that the NHS has cancelled all gender-affirming surgeries for adult patients of the Welsh Gender Service Some trans patients received the news just days or even hours before they were due to take place 👇 www.wearequeeraf.com/nhs-cancels-...

Come and learn with us at The Open University! Learn why in this inspiring video featuring my colleague @shaftowheed.bsky.social www.facebook.com/share/v/1JoY...

One of the best things about being Comms Officer for BARS is working alongside a wonderful Communications Fellow!! If you're interested in helping me run the BARS Blog and social media feeds for the next academic year (and receive a stipend for doing so!!!), please check out the link below ⤵️

British Association for Romantic Studies@bars.bsky.social · 7d ago

🌟Call for Applications: BARS Communications Fellow 2026-27 to assist with the BARS Blog and social media 🌟 Deadline - Monday 14th September Details - www.bars.ac.uk/blog/?p=6572

NHS cancelling surgeries for adults even after they’ve already paid for travel + accommodation and waited years to get there. Some were about to be wheeled into theatre! Every manager responsible for this decision must be sacked and every patient paid compensation.

QueerAF@wearequeeraf.com · 2d ago

🚨🆕 @wearequeeraf.com and @whatthetrans.com can reveal that the NHS has cancelled all gender-affirming surgeries for adult patients of the Welsh Gender Service Some trans patients received the news just days or even hours before they were due to take place 👇 www.wearequeeraf.com/nhs-cancels-...

Dolly’s impact has so many facets, but here’s one important to me: My parents devote their time to hands-on work for family charities. Dad has been deeply involved in bringing Dolly’s Imagination Library to as much of Houston as possible. So many kids now have books at home, just for them.

See also bsky.app/profile/scur...

Stephen Curry@scurry.bsky.social · 3d ago

Excellent, informative thread. Well worth your time.

The fallout from the collapse of this glacier - a torrent of mud surging down the valley - killed hundreds of people. Gone, in a flash. Those people were wiped out by anthropogenic climate change. Our governments are simply not responding quickly enough to this disaster which is already upon us.

Nahel Belgherze@wxnb.bsky.social · 3d ago

An incredibly well-timed Landsat 9 pass captured the effects of yesterday’s catastrophic glacier collapse near the Nepal–Tibet border. The event was so massive that it was detected by seismometers around the world.

Thank you to Naoya Iwata (Humanitext) for this #DH2026 report: presenting in Japanese, fielding English questions in Japanese via the AI live interpretation — and a closing reflection on building infrastructure scholars actually use. humanitext.ai/blog/dh2026-...

DH2026: AI Translation and the Work of Building Research Infrastructure

Notes from DH2026 in Daejeon: presenting and fielding questions in Japanese with the aid of real-time AI translation, and reflecting on the distance between novelty in research and the less visible wo...

humanitext.ai

🚨 University of Nottingham staff will strike over plans that put jobs, courses, teaching and research at risk. UCU members will walk out on 30 September and 1 October, followed by sustained strike action from 5 October to 11 December. Staff have put forward alternatives. Management must listen.

BREAKING📢 Crack team of climate scientists show "it is no longer defensible for companies proposing new or extended fossil fuel projects to claim the climate harms will be negligible. Our research shows the harms are, in fact, tangible and quantifiable – and no project is too small to matter"

For the first time, we linked a new fossil fuel project to hundreds of deaths. Here’s the impact of Woodside’s Scarborough gas project

The results challenge claims that the climate risks posed by an individual fossil fuel project are negligible or cannot be quantified.

theconversation.com

📢 Call for Applications: 2026-2027 ADHO Communications Fellowship 🔗 Read more: adho.org/2026/08/26/c... ⏰️ Application deadline: 18 September 2026.

CFP for the Brontes and the Supernatural symposium for next September in Haworth - deadline New Year’s Eve

Haunt me, then! - The Brontës and the Supernatural Symposium | The Brontë Parsonage Museum

CALL FOR PAPERSThe Brontë Parsonage Museum’s 2027 special exhibition will focus on the Brontës’ fascination with the supernatural, and we invite proposals

bronte.org.uk

Last week on Instant Classics we discussed the history behind Augustus' right-hand man, Marcus Agrippa. This week we talk to Robert Harris about his version of Agrippa in his new Roman novel www.youtube.com/watch?v=L01w...

Classic Chats: Robert Harris on ‘Agrippa’

YouTube video by Instant Classics

youtube.com

As trans girls, neither I or my girlfriend were allowed to play with cute stationery. So I'm crafting a brand called Lovely Bunny, and a series of stationery. (copyleft, free to print) I'm taking it as serious as if I was hired as brand director and illustrator.

We have written a statement in support of Ghent Uni's decision to suspend Nathan Cofnas. We resist attempts to frame this as a punishment for "whistleblowing" or censorship of "controversial research". We invite all academics who share our views to sign our letter. forms.gle/qwN8xzEM5C7Q...

Open letter on the suspension of Nathan Cofnas at Ghent University

We, colleagues of Nathan Cofnas - supported by many colleagues internationally - want to respond to the negative and incorrect framing of Ghent University’s decision to suspend Nathan Cofnas. With th...

forms.gle

'Empowering Black Leadership: A Study of Power and Agency in Developing Community Leadership in Toxteth, Liverpool' by Dr. Sonia Bassey explores how Black community leaders are navigating institutional barriers and creating positive change. Read on ORO 🔗 https://ow.ly/UXkG50ZF2H4 #ThesisThursday

Are you comics? Are you Scottish/in Scotland? WELL GUESS WHAT. We have a last roundtable, all for you! 📅 Weds 9th Sept, 7pm 📍 Online 🔗 www.eventbrite.com/e/scottish-c... 🤝 A collaboration between the Comics Cultural Impact Collective, @smallpress.scot and @chipcollective.bsky.social Join us! 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

Dolly Parton: a lover of pink, a lifelong champion of education and literacy, and a proud union member for more than five decades. An icon in every sense. #dollyparton #dolly Solidarity, always.

Dolly Parton's family asked that, in lieu of flowers, fans make a donation to the singer's Imagination Library. Here's what the charity does ⬇️ www.rollingstone.com/music/music-...

Turning Pages: Inside Dolly Parton's Imagination Library

Core team of 15 staff and thousands of volunteers and partners help the country-music philanthropist deliver books to kids around the world.

rollingstone.com

NB: The first lesson is about the data center in Virginia that is hosting our cloud compute, and the last one is about the actual people who do RLHF for OpenAI and Meta (our class will be doing its own). Along the way, the core NLP techniques that it turns out LLMs depend upon.

Lauren Klein@laurenfklein.bsky.social · 5d ago

After far too many AI-generated final projects, and my own uncertainty about what students really need to know about NLP these days, I decided to overhaul my Text as Data class so that it's structured around a single project: training up a C19 LLM from scratch. Here we go! github.com/laurenfklein...

After far too many AI-generated final projects, and my own uncertainty about what students really need to know about NLP these days, I decided to overhaul my Text as Data class so that it's structured around a single project: training up a C19 LLM from scratch. Here we go! github.com/laurenfklein...

Each term, the DHRH offers a range of training events in the Senate House MakerSpace. Our 'taster' sessions are free and open to all, and we warmly invite you to join us 😊 Next event: Introduction to Reflectance Transformation Imaging, 16/9 View all events and register: www.sas.ac.uk/about-us/ins...

My colleague Jessica Witte just shared a preprint where she uses sentiment analysis on AI-generated and human-authored stories and finds a pretty clear difference: AI stories have these long, slow rises in sentiment while human stories wait until the very end to conclude jilltxt.net/ai-generated...

AI-generated stories have longer endings than human stories

My colleague Jessica Witte has just shared a preprint where she compared the emotional arcs of the stories we generated using gpt-4o-mini to those of human-authored (pre-2022) stories from the subr…

jilltxt.net

Do you want to become a better reader and a better writer? Study English and Creative Writing with us at The Open University youtu.be/lziJh3Z3CaE?...

Studying English Literature and Creative Writing at The Open University: What to Expect

YouTube video by The Open University

youtu.be

I hope everyone caught this Lancet study confirming that Elon Musk & DOGE are responsible for genocidal levels of suffering & death.

Evaluating the impact of two decades of USAID interventions and projecting the effects of defunding on mortality up to 2030: a retrospective impact evaluation and forecasting analysis

USAID funding has significantly contributed to the reduction in adult and child mortality across low-income and middle-income countries over the past two decades. Our estimates show that, unless the a...

thelancet.com

Well, since my fellow book historians started this game, I'll play: "Periodicals and Periodicity" in A Companion to the History of the Book, ed. Simon Eliot and Jonathan Rose (2nd ed., 2019) onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Haven Hawley@ehhawley.bsky.social · last wk.

#academicsky #celebratebookchapter Let's celebrate the edited book chapter. What is an edited book chapter that you're particularly proud of or you think deserves more readers? "Women’s Work in the 19th-Century Economy of Pornography" in Making Impressions: Women in Printing and Publishing (2020)

There isn’t a hell hot enough.

NOTUS@notus.com · last wk.

A 1-year-old baby appeared in immigration court without legal representation this week in Arizona and received an instruction: File an asylum application before the next hearing or face deportation. https://www.notus.org/immigration/baby-asylum-hearing

Exhaustive thread on Nathan Cofnas and the conditions of his employment.

Sunder Katwala (sundersays)@sundersays.bsky.social · last wk.

Ghent University suspends Cofnas, a supporter of eugenics and biological racism. Prior to his role in the Arday controversy, the department in Ghent had issued an account doubting the opaque recruitment process was on merit, or that he was qualified for the role www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...