Nish D @acaciathorns.bsky.social · 29/07/2026At what point will people start using cosmetic surgery to reshape themselves to match AI ideals? Of course these models are shaped on racist misogynistic ableist eugenicist data (and exploitative human labour). They are hyperreal, but they reify those biases, and normalise them. 000
Nish D @acaciathorns.bsky.social · 20/05/2026Where does this idea that Andy Burnham is left-wing come from? I find little to no evidence materially (from Manchester), even if his rhetoric is different. For example, he seems to agree with the expansion of policing, increased military spending, and supports corporations (esp US Big Tech). 010
Nish D @acaciathorns.bsky.social · 20/03/2026The Russia-Ukraine war already showed us how much fertiliser is essential for global agriculture, especially when "international development" and the Green Revolution made farmers across the world massively dependent on fertiliser use to feed ALL of us. carnegieendowment.org/emissary/202... 100
Nish D @acaciathorns.bsky.social · 20/03/2026This move will actually make China more powerful because new deals will need to be struck for countries previously dependent on Gulf exports as well those dependent on Chinese exports. Not the other way around. 100
Nish D @acaciathorns.bsky.social · 20/03/2026China has merely used the same avenues and infrastructure developed by the US (during the so-called Cold War) to build their goods-based economy. It's a continuation of colonial state-building which Europe began, US took over, and now China exploits. 000
Nish D @acaciathorns.bsky.social · 20/03/2026Because of how American-centric and Eurocentric our understanding of global politics is, many British folks simply do not understand China's role in the global economy. China has built a model of extraction for "aid". Making the world dependent on aid was a project created by US imperialism. 100
Nish D @acaciathorns.bsky.social · 20/03/2026What the FT comments section repeatedly fails to understand is that 33% of the world's fertiliser comes through the Hormuz Strait. That will mean that farmers will not be able to grow food in the Global South, people will starve, and food prices will rapidly globally. www.ft.com/content/3033...ft.comChina cracks down on fuel and fertiliser exportsBeijing is trying to preserve its own stockpiles by limiting sales 101
Nish D @acaciathorns.bsky.social · 06/03/2026This is exactly why we need to build our campaigns with IMAGINATION at the heart of it. Because when we know another world is possible, we are motivated to build it. The far right uses fear to make quick wins. But hope can really do the same. We are not powerless, we need something to believe in. 010
Nish D @acaciathorns.bsky.social · 06/03/2026At the end of it, I was convinced - China is building a future. While most folks focussing on tech injustice tend to focus on America, the real challenge is going to be China. And that's exactly what the narrative that the Spring Gala was spinning. It was showing the world a future. 000
Nish D @acaciathorns.bsky.social · 06/03/2026As someone who openly speaks out against Generative AI and extractivism, I couldn't help but be deeply moved by the way in which the AI sets were designed, the stunningly choreographed performances and of course - the robots. Well made propaganda makes you feel like you're seeing the future. 100
Nish D @acaciathorns.bsky.social · 06/03/2026Having now watched parts of the 2026 Spring Festival Gala, I now totally understand why people in Europe were raptured by colonialism by World Fairs like the 1851 Great Exhibition. It is incredibly emotionally impactful. It's not just awe & dazzle, but the magic of being part of something bigger. 100
Nish D @acaciathorns.bsky.social · 06/03/2026My latest song obsession is this version of the Mongolian Drinking Song (酒歌) www.youtube.com/watch?v=axjN...youtube.com酒歌YouTube video by Release - Topic 000
Nish D @acaciathorns.bsky.social · 10/02/2026Are you on Upscrolled? They just added a text feature, combining Instagram, Tiktok and Twitter into a great well-moderated and independent-owned platform. Find me there: share.upscrolled.com/en/user/31b1...share.upscrolled.comNish D (@acaciathorns) / UpScrolledFollow @acaciathorns on UpScrolled 010
Nish D @acaciathorns.bsky.social · 27/01/2026Why are all the books on anti-capitalism coming out of the UK still being framed by the limitations of the nation state? How does that even work in relation to globalisation and international institutions? Anti-capitalist futures need you dismantle the infrastructure that makes capitalism the norm. 000
Reposted by Nish Delia ayoub @ayoub.bsky.social · 27/01/2026Has anyone done the maths on this claim? Sure seems like a lot of it depends on the so-called "hidden costs" on the NHS, the same NHS that is currently experiencing a labour shortage 053
Nish D @acaciathorns.bsky.social · 26/01/2026We have to stop yearning for a past that never existed and putting into place new social infrastructures which allow us to start building the new world. Otherwise we will be caught in firefighting fascism until we are all completely broken and used up. Hope requires resources. Dreams need belief. 000
Nish D @acaciathorns.bsky.social · 26/01/2026We fear for our lives with Trump's dictatorship, as if any American leadership was any different. The only reason Trump is able to do what he does is because of American interference in global politics and the US corporate capture of almost every nation state's infrastructure through "development'. 100
Nish D @acaciathorns.bsky.social · 26/01/2026Now when I speak to colleagues and friends, we all seem stuck in the current Capitalist imaginary. In this time of Empire's collapse, we speak of trying to save 'democracy' & 'human rights' - as if those ever actually existed. We are nostalgic for a performance of global peace, not the real thing. 100
Nish D @acaciathorns.bsky.social · 26/01/2026To dream beyond nation-states seems so farcical today, but it wasn't in post-colonial nations. There was collective Dreaming beyond Capitalism and Communism - into indigenous governances. It wasn't perfect, but people BELIEVED another world was possible - beyond the European imaginary. 100
Nish D @acaciathorns.bsky.social · 26/01/2026Would Pan-Afrikan ideals have created new ways of being and thriving? Would Indigenous socialisms have paved ways for the end of settler-colonialism? Would global languages flourish instead of being killed? Would we have more sustainable and happier ways of living? Would we learn more and love more? 100
Nish D @acaciathorns.bsky.social · 26/01/2026What could the world look like if, after decolonisation, newly independent peoples had been able to choose their own paths? What if the "Third World" wasn't the battlegrounds of the Cold War? What if these newly independent nations were allowed to thrive under their own collective sovereignty? 100
Nish D @acaciathorns.bsky.social · 25/01/2026Clearly just another way of allowing for data sharing and mass surveillance infrastructure, supporting the Digital ID. Also a body to stop protest and political organising across counties. www.ft.com/content/0dee...ft.comEngland and Wales to hand counterterror policing to new national forceResponsibilities including combating organised crime will no longer be handled at a local level 001
Nish D @acaciathorns.bsky.social · 13/01/2026When we were young, we ate all the tastiest foods to bring us pleasure. As we age, we avoid the tastiest foods so that we can still experience pleasure. How grateful I am that I have memories of those small tasty pleasures, so much so that I only ever see them through the glaze of nostalgia. 000
Reposted by Nish DFergus Murray @oolong.co.uk · 01/01/2026Here's the recording of the @lighthousebks.bsky.social Radical Book Fair event on #WeirdPride, unruliness and 'outsider wisdom' with @acaciathorns.bsky.social and @cjdebarra.bsky.social who both had such excellent responses to my questions: www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTW_...youtube.comDivergent: Weird pride, unruliness & outsider wisdom [Radical Book Fair]YouTube video by Lighthouse Bookshop 262
Nish D @acaciathorns.bsky.social · 31/12/2025A New Year's invitation to the political Left and anyone else who is dreaming and building a world that is designed for all of us. 020
Nish D @acaciathorns.bsky.social · 31/12/2025Everyone is going to mess up sometime. How do we hold space with each other to allow people to make mistakes and learn from them? How do we hold each other when we make mistakes? How do we listen with our hearts and look beyond words to emotion, trauma and love? How do we better care for each other? 010
Nish D @acaciathorns.bsky.social · 31/12/2025Healing comes in many ways. It comes in sharing our food, our spaces, our resources. It comes in community care work. It comes in holding difficult conversations, and finding pathways through them. It comes being able to disagree but still work with each other. It comes in seeing each other as human 112
Nish D @acaciathorns.bsky.social · 31/12/2025I've never found those easy tasks. And in a world that is hyper-individualised, it's easy to fall apart than it is to hold each other up. But when someone has disagreed with me with compassion, I have become better. We need to heal each other if we are to survive what is coming. 120
Nish D @acaciathorns.bsky.social · 31/12/2025As the year closes, I invite to imagine how you might get along with people you disagree with better. How can you work with people who aren't perfect? How can you support learning and plurality? How can you communicate with empathy & compassion? How can you build bridges? How can WE do all of those? 110
Nish D @acaciathorns.bsky.social · 31/12/2025The far right can shred us because they stand together, and they are better resourced. They have the media and institutions on their side. We (the left) only have each other, and the only way we can actually build the world we want is through supporting each other & accepting imperfection. 131
Nish D @acaciathorns.bsky.social · 31/12/2025It's so much easier to pick at and tear apart individual people when they have integrity and believe in something better, and make a small mistake. It's much harder to do so when that person is integrated in community which allows people to learn from mistakes. I wish the Left better understood this 030
Nish D @acaciathorns.bsky.social · 26/12/2025I don't have a solution to this. I thought if I lived by those values - of giving and gifting and caring I would be able to show another world was possible. But instead it just resulted in a exploitation and alienation. I had to learn to be selfish, and I know this harms me. 000
Nish D @acaciathorns.bsky.social · 26/12/2025The problem also, I guess, is that people are told that the problem is them and not the system. So they spend all their time trying to prove themselves within that system. The question is, how do we show people pathways out when they refuse to see beyond that system? 000
Nish D @acaciathorns.bsky.social · 26/12/2025There is this idea of challenging norms of "not being pragmatic" but isn't being pragmatic really about getting back to the basics and understanding what we actually need? Isn't being pragmatic about getting rid of what isn't going to help us? Why then must we accept things which make no sense? 100
Nish D @acaciathorns.bsky.social · 26/12/2025Why do folks just accept things and not question them? It's like we're trapped by these systems and infrastructures because we simply refuse to see them. We don't have to live this way. We don't need nation states. We don't need AI. We don't need money. We do need food and shelter and care. 100
Nish D @acaciathorns.bsky.social · 26/12/2025I find the whole defense of Israel's "right to exist" really bizarre because why do any States need to exist at all? And who gave them rights? This all falls back on believing that somehow Laws are Just and not just imaginary inventions without any justification. 100
Reposted by Nish DKetan Joshi @ketanjoshi.co · 23/12/2025MERRY CHIPMAS: I have a new @crikey.com.au piece about how a HUGE solar farm planned in north Aus planned to send power via cable to Singapore - but is now PIvoting To Data Centre As hydrogen projects collapse all over the place, the green export dream is dying... www.crikey.com.au/2025/12/23/d... 48131
Nish D @acaciathorns.bsky.social · 12/12/2025Many Disabled people, Black people, brown folks, folks with differing live journeys, people without political and financial power face the same challenges. Our bodies are anomalies, and outside of the normal curve. Our stories aren't told and biomedicine fails us. 000
Nish D @acaciathorns.bsky.social · 12/12/2025In the AuDHD community, you hear a lot about how ADHD meds have a rough impact on people who are also autistic. But there isn't enough research done by those drug companies to investigate why. Because the narratives of difference have been washed away to sell the myth of universal solutions. 100
Nish D @acaciathorns.bsky.social · 12/12/2025What this means is (even aside from the bias of eugenics and Big Pharma) the model is designed to erase anomalies. Say a drug works for only 12% of people. The drug is then seen as failed for that condition. There isn't a qualitative narrative mapping to understand the 12%. 100
Nish D @acaciathorns.bsky.social · 12/12/2025One of the greatest flaws of allopathic healing systems is the myth of universality, or at least the reliance on statistical norms which look at what works for "most people" rather than patterns of how bodies work with healing. 100
Nish D @acaciathorns.bsky.social · 10/12/2025Wow. That's the only time I've seen Chris Murray say anything useful. So it must be the most blatant form of union busting ever. 010
Nish D @acaciathorns.bsky.social · 10/12/2025This isn't so much about showing compassion to those who build the machines which surveil and terrorise us, but about how we ALL need to HEAL from white supremacy. These cycles of harm will only keep perpetuating if we only focus on 'justice' and not on how we got here, and how we go otherwise. 010
Nish D @acaciathorns.bsky.social · 10/12/2025I think a lot about the Scottish clearances, and how the displaced and the dispossessed became the invaders of what we now call Canada. And how the people who committed the horrors of building residential 'schools' were also those whose entire villages were removed for grazing sheep. 110
Nish D @acaciathorns.bsky.social · 10/12/2025I would argue that this is actually at the heart of settler colonialism, where the hate & acts of genocide spill over from the trauma of displacement and the need to reshape the stolen 'Other' into something which can be controlled and familiar - and erase all memory of the theft in the first place. 100
Nish D @acaciathorns.bsky.social · 10/12/2025I know most folks don't look at the horrors of Musk, Altman, and Amodei, and see the loneliness, but I do. So much of the 'heartlessness' and the need for power comes from trauma. Their compelling need to feel important and feel valuable is visibly rooted in deep insecurity. 110
Nish D @acaciathorns.bsky.social · 10/12/2025Capitalism is designed around untethering connection and community interdependence, and replacing it with a product you can buy. As such Gen AI is designed to do the same, but the grief and isolation that builds the machine seems to be at the heart of those directing and shaping its design. 130
Nish D @acaciathorns.bsky.social · 10/12/2025The most strange thing about AGI is that it seems to be the dream project of people who are profoundly lonely and desperate to invent something that they can connect to. But the process of inventing it results in a product which actually makes people more lonely. 010
Nish D @acaciathorns.bsky.social · 09/12/2025GenAI used to stir up fear and hate through disinformation faces no social media bans, and instead results in increased engagement. Meanwhile reminding people that a genocide is on-going despite the myth of ceasefire is a sure way to be shadowbanned. Is this really the world you want? 000