Half thinking of starting an #AcademicVenting hashtag here, about the dire, dire state of UK (global?) higher education. Sharing nuggets of senior management decisions, neoliberal language, and overall slow collapse.
Won’t work of course because most of us can’t risk honesty, but honestly: the everyday reality of what is happening deserves recording in all its depressing and damning detail. #Universities#AcademicChatter#neoliberalism
May you find the strength to protect those tender, compassionate, altruistic parts of yourself from which authentic curiosity and research arise. I found that bitterness was my worst enemy.
Ooooh, good article. Thank you. I second the observation that you have used #autoethnography well, both as a method in itself and as a way to resolve the research ethics question.
What surprises me is the implied norm of a social communication network that is coherent with perfect history, and is thus because it has a single technological/ownership platform. That's newish. Do we need a different term for the monolithic communication space?
I do wonder if there are comparable studies from that last great decentralised network, Usenet, which had many of the same issues ( @hrheingold ?) There were certainly similar episodes where the growing, reweaving tree structure of Usenet feeds meant that incomplete context/history led to social events (outrage, trolls, shaming, collective calming, failed or successful moderation, etiquette rules ("Emily Postnews") and so on). Other early networks (Fido) had the same property. Certainly administering a Usenet feeder site entailed talking to other sysadmins and shutting down flame wars sometimes.
Given how important Palestine and Palestinian academics have been to the development and flourishing of universities across Asia, this is a particularly nasty aspect of the genocide.
If we keep "calling on government to...", nothing will change. We know government has become a mechanism for distraction and delay by corporations and oligarchs. If we organise ourselves, using socio-political tools and strategies that are hard to capture/commodify, we can build a future starting now. This approach doesn't offer a direct solution to the worst systemic threats (e.g., successful regulation at the state or international level) , but it does offer an actually possible path forward which may well lead to systemic change more quickly than struggling against petrostates on the battlefield they choose and control (e.g. COP28). It is possible to do both - advocacy and activism seeking systemic change, and locally-led creation of eco-social adaptive communities.
#ClimateDiary There is no question that #COP28 will be the most important yet. The #GlobalStocktake will be the “biggest accountability moment in history”, and on its basis leaders will need to make crucial key decisions about fiscal and policy commitments. With less than two months to go, we need to all be as well informed as possible and put pressure on leaders as much as we can. I thought I would start a 🧵that I will keep going in the run up 1/n
I do hope there is the political will to do better than this. A walkout without agreement would be more valuable at this point than agreeing a petrostate-approved text.
Next Tues Dec 5, 18:30 GMT London time we have #ChrisKnight and #JeromeLewis speaking on their forthcoming book
'When Eve Laughed'
on the evolutionary emergence of #language.
Everybody is welcome to come LIVE to #UCLAnthropology (please get there on time to avoid the doors closing!)
Or join us on ZOOM
Burghart, Gordon The Genesis of Animal Play MIT 2006 might be relevant - not laughter as such, but cross-species play, including rule-setting and mutual enjoyment.
While we're in this rather tricky field - and I will admit up front that I find claims of human exceptionalism both scientifically and morally dubious - what do you make of research on symbolic thought in parrots and corvids (Pepperberg for parrots, and Fitch for corvids)?
@cydonian
It's the second day. The first is क्व पूजा , the offering to crows. But that doesn't suit the "aren't Nepalese customs cute/horrific" news cycle in the Englush press. Oh, and Diwali isn't Hindu. Many communities celebrate it, including ours, and I was nearly thrown out of a car on a motorway in Bangalore by a Brahim for pointing out that Buddhists composed key Sanskrit texts and Newar Buddhist pandits still exist.
end of rant. May Lakṣmī grant us all improbable good luck this year!
Hey, it's a cover story in @thenation by that Madeline Ostrander person. This story began months ago--really years ago when I started following conversations about the future of Richmond's oil refinery. It has implications for the oil economy everywhere. #climatehttps://www.thenation.com/article/archive/refinery-richmond-climate-change/
#Aberdeen and indeed #Grangemouth and other Scottish communities shackled to oil could learn a lot from this example. Everyone in Aberdeen knows oil is dead, but how do we agree on a just transition to #actualZero ?
serious question: does anyone out there have recommendations for a favourite, independent, open-access publisher in the art-research-critique-design-practitioner space, who might be interested in an experimental anthology of short transdisciplinary texts on broadly environmental themes?
It would seem that Glasgow has some way to go before placing pedestrians at the top of the hierarchy of road users.
Basically what this sign says is cyclists should ping their bells or shout and pedestrians should get out their way “politely”. 
It even says make yourself visible!
Are pedestrians expected to wear dayglo yellow?
Since I am planning to delete my Twitter account soon, I am slowly deleting every post I made manually, so I can see what I posted (I also do not trust that they will delete the posts if I delete the account). A large portion of my replies are congratulating people on things like their newly published paper, graduating, getting a grant, etc. These kind of posts are what I miss about Twitter, and I hope more people come and post their successes on Mastodon. #AcademicChatter
Phanpy: good.
Corporate adverts: never. As others have pointed out, the fact that admins have to consider the costs of their users is a driver for good moderation. Smaller servers, local funding. No analytics, no adverts.