What does a good digital society look like? is a two-day conference taking place in Sheffield, UK, on 10th and 11th June 2027. We invite proposals for papers, panels and workshops from researchers from any discipline and stakeholders from any sector. digitalgood.net/call-for-pap...

"Local plumbers two steps ahead of every university administrator in america 👏" per @nathankhensley.bsky.social... 💯 h/t @kevincmurphy.com

Metin Seven (Moon Child's dad 🌝)@seven.eurosky.social · 3w ago

Yes quite. Which led to cash-strapped local authorities attempting (and usually failing) to turn a profit through various projects which should not have had a profit motive (e.g. carbon reduction, local energy)

Adam Standring@adamstandring.bsky.social · 2w ago

This fundamentally conflates ownership with implementation. What has crippled those public services still nominally under public ownership is that they have been subjected to the same forces that the rest have been - marketisation and outsourcing. The creation of pseudo markets has been a failure.

The thing that takes this to Onion-level farce is that he is *Ed in Chief* of *Science* & the article he is referring to is *“AI in Scientific Publishing: Slower, Worse, and More Expensive.”*

I am losing my mind. Chat isn’t a search engine. this isn’t normal. framing it as normative is slimy. Tone, vibes all bad.

Holden Thorp@holdenthorp.bsky.social · 3w ago

Hi, this is Holden emerging from my Bluesky hiatus to tell everyone that when checking the links in the piece, I used ChatGPT as my search engine (does anyone use Google anymore?). The piece was written by me and edited by humans. So all the links were checked by me and again by our copyeditors.

<catching up with today's discourse on how it is bad to maintain territorial claims over nearby islands>

hi @countbinface.bsky.social please accept this unconditional gift

Some thoughts on the planned closure of @resprofnews.bsky.social . And what the lack of media coverage on the planned closure of Research Professional News tells us about what life might look like without a functioning trade media.

Research Professional News@resprofnews.bsky.social · last mo.

A message from our publisher. www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-o...

The thing about social media age restrictions is that it treats today’s internet as an inevitability we all just have to deal with. The internet (and the WORLD) wasn’t like this until like four dudes were allowed to own & monetize as much tech real estate as they wanted. Fix THAT problem.

[It's obviously understandable, but still super important not to respond to announcements of redundancies with shock that this is happening now at some place we imagine to be somehow prestigious, good etc, which ofc just reproduces the logic of the redundancy process while quibbling about details].

the bar is in hell

All solidarity to my brilliant former colleagues at Exeter. The careful, deliberate dismantling of british higher education by its nominal 'leaders' - focused especially on the arts & humanities - is going to be rememberd as one of the major scandals of this generally awful/scandalous age.

Ben Phillips@benphillips1989.bsky.social · last mo.

A statement from Exeter UCU branch @ucu.org.uk - please share far and wide.

📢 Academics & journal editors: I'm working on a story about donors using financial intermediaries to fund studies "anonymously". - Is this common in your field? - Does your uni have rules to prevent this? - Would your journal accept a declaration of an "anonymous donation"? 📱sehill.11 on Signal

🐕‍🦺🐴🐦‍⬛🐄 Our new Multispecies Mutualisms project website is now live. The amazing design work is by Sheffield artist Lisa O’Hara. Some exciting announcements to come about our new post docs - keep a 👀 out 👇 multispeciesmutualisms.org

As the chair of the oversight committee for this public dialogue exercise, I can state that the participants certainly did not say this @thetimes.com @rhysblakely.bsky.social

With hundreds of jobs on the line and dozens of courses at risk, Nottingham staff living through one of the biggest university restructuring projects of recent years fear they are shouldering the blame for wider failures. Juliette Rowsell reports https://ow.ly/OrVG50Z6KJ1

Dr Antonis Vradis, Reader in Geography at the University of St Andrews and Hasnain Jaffer, VP for health at King’s College London Student Union were abducted and subjected to detention by Israel

BRISMES@brismes.bsky.social · 2mo ago

BRISMES expresses grave concern following reports about the detention of the Global Sumud Flotilla civilian activists, among whom are UK scholars Dr Antonis Vardis and Hasnain Jaffer. Read our statement: bit.ly/brismes-290526

Do you know of a ~5-10 minute video around 'trust in science' from a #STS perspective? Is for a *non-specialist* audience. I'm coming up empty so far. Any suggestions gratefully received!

I’m on the incredible Swingdash Radio today 5-7pm, broadcasting from the heart of Nottingham with Sounds Critical. Playing disco, house and techno. 🪩 Listen here www.swingdash.live/schedule/not...

[NEW DATE] 🍃 The next speaker in the #Code&Culture lecture series (this semester with a focus on #DigitalEnvironmentalHumanities) is @warrenpearce.bsky.social, delivering a talk on "Network, Infrastructure and Vernacular in the Making of Environmental Visuals". Register here: plu.sh/codeculture

They’ve brought to visibility a 6th unrecognised COVID death for every 5 that were by training an algorithm to recognise hospital COVID deaths & then finding similar deaths in other settings—at home; amidst poorer ppl; racialised ppl. I’m wondering if this study cd be described as a work of mourning

Scientific American@sciam.bsky.social · 5mo ago

We have severely undercounted the number of COVID deaths, scientists say

Ethics, Evidence and Policy Network, Wednesday 25 March, 2-3pm. Martyn Pickersgill talking "Novelty, Normativity, and the Neuro" and EthUcate on responsible science and ethics communication #STS #scicomm This promises to be very good. Sign up here: events.teams.microsoft.com/event/db0530...

Beyond The Frame: Network, Infrastructure and Vernacular in the Making of Environmental Visuals. Very excited to give @unipotsdam.bsky.social Code & Culture lecture next Mon 16/3 Arguing that online visuals cannot be understood in isolation from platform effects www.uni-potsdam.de/de/digital-h...

Warren Pearce@warrenpearce.bsky.social · 5mo ago

How Google Images, powered by computer vision AI, has transformed the way Google ranks its results, from ranking-by-authority to ranking-by-similarity. New @bigdatasoc.bsky.social by me, @maudbo.bsky.social @lauvra26.bsky.social + amazing team 😍 doi.org/10.1177/20539517261426452 #STS

New in Big Data & Society 🗞️ Warren Pearce et al., examine how Google transformed knowledge infrastructure through computer vision, tracing a shift from ranking by authority to ranking by similarity in Google Images. 🔗 doi.org/10.1177/2053...

A rare thing: *four* three-year hums/soc-sci posts in animal studies, on the Multispecies Mutualisms project at UoSheffield - with @rosaleenduffy.bsky.social, me, Robert McKay and Alasdair Cochrane; see here for a video explainer: digitalmedia.sheffield.ac.uk/media/Multis...

Multispecies Mutualisms - Join Our Research Team!

We’re hiring 4 Postdoctoral Research Associates (PDRAs) In this video, members of the team share insights into four exciting PDRA opportunities currently available. If you are ready to take the next s...

digitalmedia.sheffield.ac.uk

Happening today - my talk on government, power and AI policy at 5pm Cambridge Judge Business School, Lecture Theatre 3. All welllcome!

Inga Ulnicane@ingaulnicane.bsky.social · 5mo ago

📢 This Friday, 6 March at 5pm I will give a talk 'Government, Power and Artificial Intelligence Policy' at the Judge Business School Lecture Theatre 3 Cambridge All invited! www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/government... #ArtificialIntelligence #AI

"Spain’s defense minister, Margarita Robles, said on Monday that while there was an agreement with the United States on the use of the bases, Spain believed it only extended to use within the framework of international law." Spain views US war on Iran as illegal. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/02/w...

Spain Denies U.S. Military Use of Its Bases for Iran Attack

nytimes.com

Under a new policy released Thursday, the Trump Administration will test conversion therapy on trans people in prisons. It explicitly states that it aims to help trans people “recover,” all the while forcibly detransitioning them both medically and socially. transitics.substack.com/p/the-trump-...

The Trump Administration is Testing Conversion Therapy By Medically Experimenting on Trans People in Prisons

The Bureau of Prisons is subjecting trans people to conversion therapy and denying them care with the goal of helping them "recover." It's trying to prove dangerous conversion practices can work.

transitics.substack.com

Yaye! We got our paper in @bigdatasoc.bsky.social from uvahumanities.bsky.social #DigitalMethods Initiative Summer School 2022. Gratitude owed to sheffielduni.bsky.social and the @wellcometrust.bsky.social for kindly co-funding my attendance! journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/... #InternetStudies

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journals.sagepub.com

How Google Images, powered by computer vision AI, has transformed the way Google ranks its results, from ranking-by-authority to ranking-by-similarity. New @bigdatasoc.bsky.social by me, @maudbo.bsky.social @lauvra26.bsky.social + amazing team 😍 doi.org/10.1177/20539517261426452 #STS