iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Becca Harrison @beccaeharrison.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

I would add to concerns about databases, algorithms, search terms, etc. with massive cuts to library resourcing (both book-buying and staff with specialist knowledge of particular fields). Basically, the loss of humans and in-person research to digital everything

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Becca Harrison @beccaeharrison.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

But that’d throw arts and hums people under the bus, so I’d still rather hope it was poor phrasing instead of a planned approach!

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Becca Harrison @beccaeharrison.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

For me the ‘govt should step in because managers are not just cutting arts BUT ALSO NURSING’ line doesn’t land well. I do get that speaking somewhat off the cuff in an interview is tricky. It’s just frustrating that the the phrasing perpetuates a particular arts/stem narrative

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Becca Harrison @beccaeharrison.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Some recent musings on the gorgeous and very intimate natural history doc Super Nature, and the tensions that arise between romanticising super 8 and overlooking the animal materiality of film stock www.beccaeharrison.com/aftergloam-s...

beccaeharrison.com

Super Nature

A long-form review of the 2026 film Super Nature that covers the film's ethically conscious production, and the history of animal exploitation in the making of film stocks.

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Becca Harrison @beccaeharrison.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Tbh I didn't think Jedi was that radical (it plots onto the beats of The Empire Strikes Back, Rey saves the day by literally making it all about lifting rocks). It's smart where Rise was silly, but not wildly divergent to me? Aside from Snoke it definitely looked better than the others, though

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Becca Harrison @beccaeharrison.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

I feel like the spin-off shows have improved (different to 'gotten right') representation for marginalised performers and told more nuanced stories about, eg, colonialism. But even The Acolyte expanded on themes and issues from the main trilogies. It's all so tired. I'm tired. We're all tired.

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Becca Harrison @beccaeharrison.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Having attended a few Star Wars fan events, my sense is that for the most part they're loyal--and also critical, in a good way. Politically objectionable fans are louder and complain a lot, but news coverage maybe over-emphasises their overall status within the fanbase?

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Becca Harrison @beccaeharrison.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Also the director choice? Literally nothing excites me about this announcement. Think we’ve crossed the invisible threshold between Star Wars fatigue and absolute burn out.

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Becca Harrison @beccaeharrison.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

I think some more recent Star Wars stuff (Andor. That’s it, it was Andor) has been worthwhile. But when you look behind the curtain to the impacts on people, animals, plants it seems to me impossible to justify the endless overproduction and consumption. And for more Skywalker?! Enough already!

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Becca Harrison @beccaeharrison.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

So I’ve just written a whole 90k-word book about why Lucasfilm definitely 100% should not do this. It has nothing to do with story arcs or Star Wars fan service and everything to do with ‘maybe we’d like a not-dying planet of our own instead of more samey-samey resource-intensive fantasy ones.’

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Becca Harrison @beccaeharrison.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

I hope it lives up to expectations! So many people contributed to different bits of the project in so many ways over such a long time that it's quite nerve-wracking thinking about them reading it

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Becca Harrison @beccaeharrison.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

(Apropos of genAI-based decision-making in academia, and generally appalling working conditions, ironically it feels like the book exists partly *because* I'm not working in the sector any more rather, than despite it.)

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Becca Harrison @beccaeharrison.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

I may not have a job and everything is terrible BUT my book (which I nearly gave up on, see above) just went into production. Following a decade of work 'Uncovering the Star Wars World: The Land, Labour and Nature of a Media Empire' will be out in May 2027. Excitement! Relief! And... copy editing.

A screenshot of a contents page laid out over two columns. The headings read:

Introduction
Worldbuilding
The matter in hand
How Star Wars works
Reading the Star Wars world

Chapter One. Crew and Craft
Imperial exceptionalisms
Arts and crafts
Taxing issues
Extended family
Family affairs
The house always wins
Close Up: Original Trilogy Tea
Making the tea
Drinking the tea
Iced tea
Spilling the tea
Reading the leaves

Chapter Two. Material and Parts
Oily substances
Organic matters
Down the mine shaft
Scavenging parts
Trash, de-compacted
Close Up: Looking for Artoo
Designed for life
Metal heads
Over and over
Paranoid androids
Dirty computers
Short circuit

Chapter Three. Imperial Designs
Closing ranks
Cultural appropriation
Royal remixing
Defensive initiatives
Imperial legacies
Close Up: The Throne Room Gown as Orientalist Couture
Patchwork Padmé
Unpicking orientalism
Patterns of appropriation
Fitting for a queen
Imperial influencer

Chapter Four. Alien Lands
Real-world matters
Location, location, location
A whole new world
Just deserts
Re-worlding Star Wars
Close Up: Expanding and Enclosing Lands
The nature of things
Alienated landscapes
Facilitating shoots
Enclosing lands
Big trouble in Little Marlow
It’s just… people

Chapter Five. Creature Discomforts
Service animals
Creatures of habit
Animal matters
Meet the flockers
What is it like to be an orbak?
Wild irregularities
Close Up: No Birds Sing in Star Wars
And they said it was pretty here
Red in tooth, claw, and tape
Into the wild
Digging deeper
Animal instincts

Conclusion. New Beginnings at the World’s End
Bigger or better?
Common goals
Worldmaking

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Becca Harrison @beccaeharrison.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

My experience of working in the sector was that at management level, ‘legal’ seemed to refer to the team that management called on to defend institutions from staff…

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Becca Harrison @beccaeharrison.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

This hadn’t occurred to me. OF COURSE this is what they’ll do.

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Becca Harrison @beccaeharrison.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Exactly this! It’s why I said ‘staff’ not ‘academics’ — when I submitted to UKRI it would’ve been impossible without enormous input and expertise from colleagues on the research team. No way the proposal would’ve existed without their largely hidden labour

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Becca Harrison @beccaeharrison.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

I’d be surprised if the committee who used the LLMs in the first place have any real idea. It’s such lazy, irresponsible, anti-intellectual bs.

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Becca Harrison @beccaeharrison.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Yeah I know. Hence I’m saying what they should do, not what they almost certainly will do.

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Becca Harrison @beccaeharrison.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

I *used* to work in universities, hence my comments

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Becca Harrison @beccaeharrison.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

And if I were running a university, I’d be pressing hard for both of those things (plus an apology to everyone affected, which is the bare minimum)

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Becca Harrison @beccaeharrison.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

To clarify, as per the OP’s clarification, the LLM use was by a funding committee *delegated to by UKRI*. Still think the organisation has to be accountable, though. If it goes against their policies they should be reassessing proposals, and investigating the failure of process

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Becca Harrison @beccaeharrison.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

If I were running a university where staff spent weeks and weeks of time putting grant proposals together only for UKRI to feed them into LLMs without informed consent—effectively theft of the time and work—I’d be taking serious action to defend those staff. But I’m not running a university, so

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Becca Harrison @beccaeharrison.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Category is Books in Glasgow is in need of shutters to protect the shop - and presumably anyone who might be inside - from the people who keep smashing the windows. It’s a gem of a queer bookshop so if you can support them, please do!

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Becca Harrison @beccaeharrison.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

This thread has provided much mirth in the Brussels Eurostar departure lounge (circle 4, aka ‘node’).

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Becca Harrison @beccaeharrison.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

My partner and me on the last full day of the holiday we put off for ages so I could write a book about Star Wars

The Anakin and Padme meme (an image of each character side by side and then repeated below to form a checker board). In the first box over Anakin the text reads ‘staying in Cono will be convenient for the night train’. In the second, the text reads ‘you’re not going to make us visit a Star Wars location, right?’. The characters’ appearances in the third and fourth boxes convey that Anakin is going to do exactly what Padme hopes he won’t.

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Becca Harrison @beccaeharrison.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Yeah it’s almost like the collective failure to advocate for people in the early stages of their careers was always going to come back and bite everyone later on, who could have known, etc.

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Becca Harrison @beccaeharrison.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

A short piece I wrote about the Andrew Scott meteorology film Pressure, and the traps that an otherwise great movie falls into when it gets misty-eyed about fantasies of expertise www.beccaeharrison.com/aftergloam-p...

beccaeharrison.com

Pressure

A long-form review of 2026 film Pressure on the nature of expertise and power.

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Becca Harrison @beccaeharrison.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

100%. The question was one set by HR which makes it even worse

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Becca Harrison @beccaeharrison.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Yep, it was like this before I even started out 15 or so years ago. But then conditions have worsened considerably since. It’s a big institutional race to the bottom, and then a bit further down for good measure

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Becca Harrison @beccaeharrison.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

I would’ve accepted a job like this in my 20s because I thought that’s what you had to do to be an academic. Now I know better. We all deserve better than being treated like machine parts in a factory you effectively pay to work in, and which also comes with huge personal costs for everyone in it

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Becca Harrison @beccaeharrison.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

And it’s such a shame, because the course COULD be great, the role COULD be rewarding, potential colleagues seemed lovely and invested in students. But a bunch of money-grabbing managers ruin it for everyone, and put all universities at risk by devaluing workers, students, and education

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Becca Harrison @beccaeharrison.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

I got asked at interview how I would enact EDI principles in my teaching which is wild given the existing curriculum and lack of time to even consider changing it. Staff and students are being cheated—and as usual, senior managers create conditions that make the sector almost impossible to defend

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Becca Harrison @beccaeharrison.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

It was a p-t lecturer role with just 30 mins of prep time for every hour of teaching. Some courses to be taught from scratch, some based on pre-existing (very outdated, ie white male canon) materials. 30 mins isn’t long enough to read someone else’s lesson plan, let alone write new lectures, etc

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Becca Harrison @beccaeharrison.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Just found myself in the weird position of turning down an academic job offer. I’ve decided not to apply for them before (recently enquiring about a research role I was told the ‘research budget’ came out of your salary) but never encountered t&cs so awful and exploitative that I’ve declined one

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Becca Harrison @beccaeharrison.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Hate to be right but I called the BBC dropping Drag Race before the ‘I kissed a…’ news was announced. There was only so long they were going to bother maintaining a veneer of ‘tolerance’ Drag Race co-creator warns of TV representation 'crisis' after BBC drops show www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

bbc.co.uk

Drag Race co-creator Fenton Bailey speaks out after BBC axe

The BBC is cutting the show because of financial pressures, sparking discussion about LGBTQ+ representation on TV.

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Becca Harrison @beccaeharrison.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

We booked a double but think you can have up to four people in a compartment (so it’d work for small families)

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Becca Harrison @beccaeharrison.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

I’ve already got my eye on possible new routes (Berlin, Malmo, Barcelona). Don’t want to fly again—definitely not in Europe—for environmental reasons so the more sleepers the better!

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Becca Harrison @beccaeharrison.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Maybe it’s the fate of all travellers to be stuck at Brussels Midi for three hours. It’s when you really start to appreciate free WiFi and loos

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Becca Harrison @beccaeharrison.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Despite running pretty late and having our compartment downgraded it is very, very cool. At some point in the morning we pass through the alps, just hope I’m awake for it!

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Becca Harrison @beccaeharrison.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Sadly no dining car on this service yet, just a snack bar. I’m assuming that having started from Belgium the possibility of a revered detective being on board will keep murders to a minimum

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Becca Harrison @beccaeharrison.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

We’re on the inaugral @europeansleeper.eu from Brussels to Milan and it’s like travelling in a 90s adaptation of an Agatha Christie story or Hitchcock film and I’m very here for it (see also: greener and much much cooler than flying)

A red train pulls into a station platform

A bird’s eye view of a sleeping compartment with a bunk bed positioned over a blue bench on each side, and a table under a window in the middle

A compartment interior window with curtains hanging over it, a bunk bed visible on the left and wood panelling of the compartment in the background

A selfie of a white woman with long dark hair (me) in a long horizontal mirror under a bunk bed covered in blue train fabric. Behind me there is a train window and another bunk bed

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Becca Harrison @beccaeharrison.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

This review is making The Uprising’s treatment of the Peasants’ Revolt sound like Maidstone’s tribute to Wat Tyler — naming a grotty stretch of the one-way system between the big Sainsbury’s and a pay-and-display car park ‘Wat Tyler Way’

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Becca Harrison @beccaeharrison.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

And if you want to more ethically film mice running around on newspaper desks then surely you just visit the Torygraph office which is overrun with them

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Becca Harrison @beccaeharrison.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

‘But PETA said I couldn’t use live chimpanzees’ is not the justification for using fashy tech you think it is

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Becca Harrison @beccaeharrison.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

GenAI is ‘very good for animals,’ says Danny Boyle, as yet another data centre destroys the meagre land we’ve left for animals to live on and the light, noise and thermal pollution it creates puts all the animals in the surrounding area at risk

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Becca Harrison @beccaeharrison.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

But wait they have very short cropped hair and you can always tell right

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Becca Harrison @beccaeharrison.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

It’s like the weird thing they do with degrees - don’t they automatically upgrade grads to MA for continuing to live for a year after their BA? Such a weird - if revealing - system

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Reposted by Becca Harrison

M a r c u s 🏳️‍🌈🇧🇧 @marcusjdl.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

You’d think Cambridge would have more vigorous recruitment policies than hiring such dodgy white men! DEI has gone too far!

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Becca Harrison @beccaeharrison.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

One of the joys of finishing my book is that I can write about things that aren't Star Wars again. Here, I talk about the inescapable sadness of the very funny Coyote vs Acme - by way of corporate media, Roger Rabbit, and coyote-shaped craters in the ground. www.beccaeharrison.com/aftergloam-c...

beccaeharrison.com

Strange Beast: The Tragedy of the Toons and Toontown in Coyote vs Acme

In the wake of a long succession of origin stories based on studio intellectual properties that flip-reverse the hero-villain dynamic to eke out every last bit of audience cash at the box office...

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Becca Harrison @beccaeharrison.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

This rocks, I am 100% getting involved

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