iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Carantes

Dr Matt Mahmoudi @docmattmoudi.bsky.social · 28/05/2026

So we’ve been cooking up some thoughts on Gen AI at @amnesty.org and I’m ecstatic to finally see it out in the world! Our 🗝️ conclusion: standalone gen AI systems, built on unlawful web scraping, constitute mass invasions of privacy by design & should be prohibited www.amnesty.org/en/latest/ne...

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Carantes @carantes.bsky.social · 11/05/2026

Did you 🫵 forget to read our April newsletter? 🤨 If so, fret not! 😮 Here it is, hand delivered to your feed to break up the ceaseless scrolling! Read on for details of our latest recommended reading and upcoming public meeting this Fri 15 May, including how to attend! carantes.org/2026/04/21/a...

carantes.org

April 2026

Dear friends, With the arrival of green spring in the northern hemisphere, we hope you all have found time to enjoy nature’s awakening or, if you’re in the southern hemisphere, the dist…

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Carantes @carantes.bsky.social · 03/02/2026

no MOM i didn't *forget* to post about our jan newsletter, it was a *strategic* choice to remind people of it 6 days later so those on the mailing list and bluesky would get 2 reminders! gosh! Read our latest newsletter here with info on our next public meeting 6 Feb! carantes.org/2026/01/28/j...

carantes.org

January 2026

Dear friends, Happy new year! We hope you all have been able to spend time with loved ones over the holiday, resting in the fallow days that closed out 2025, and are returning energized to your var…

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Carantes @carantes.bsky.social · 24/11/2025

🌬️ Brrr! The chill of a November wind brings our final newsletter of the year! Click below (1) to learn about an event this Friday (28 Nov) in person and online where two of our members will present about the group and (2) to read the minutes from our Samain talk. carantes.org/2025/11/20/n...

carantes.org

November 2025 Newsletter

Dear friends, We hope this newsletter finds you well wherever you may be, as academic terms begin to wrap up and the weather changes. As usual, following a public meeting, the newsletter consists m…

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Carantes @carantes.bsky.social · 19/11/2025

A million thanks to @menysnoweballes.bsky.social, @siobhanhyland.bsky.social, and all of our wonderful attendees last night for our annual Sam(h)ain lecture! If you missed it (or attended and want a reminder for posterity), the meeting minutes will be in our next newsletter (out hopefully soon!).

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Carantes @carantes.bsky.social · 12/11/2025

🚗BEEP BEEP🚗 Reminder that next Tuesday (18 Nov) Dr Rachel Moss @menysnoweballes.bsky.social will be giving the annual Carantes Samain talk online, this time on the extreme right and medievalism! See the link below about how to RSVP. All are welcome! Fáilte roimh chách! carantes.org/2025/10/15/o...

carantes.org

October 2025 Newsletter

Dear friends, We hope this 25th newsletter finds you well as Fall settles over the northern hemisphere, and Spring greets the southern. We continue to watch with heartbreak and anger as viole…

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Carantes @carantes.bsky.social · 16/10/2025

Need a late-night read? Or maybe late-afternoon… or mid-morning… Ya know what, time zones are annoying! The latest Carantes newsletter is out on our website! We look forward to Dr Rachel Moss's (@menysnoweballes.bsky.social) talk next month, details in the newsletter! carantes.org/2025/10/15/o...

carantes.org

October 2025 Newsletter

Dear friends, We hope this 25th newsletter finds you well as Fall settles over the northern hemisphere, and Spring greets the southern. We continue to watch with heartbreak and anger as viole…

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Carantes @carantes.bsky.social · 14/10/2025

In solidarity with the Irish Healthcare Union and Teachers' Union, there is a call for a National Walk Out this Thursday, 16 October, across Ireland in support of Gaza. Your school or work may have something organised! Please participate if you are able! #freepalestine #StandOutforGaza1610 #freegaza

Poster. Stand out for Gaza at Work. End the Apartheid. End the Genocide. End the Complicity. We will stand out for Gaza. #StandoutforGaza1610. Organise a lunchtime solidarity demonstration outside your workplace. Thursday 16 October.

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Carantes @carantes.bsky.social · 30/09/2025

Comrades from across unions and orgs came together this past Saturday for the Feck Fascism Carnival in Dublin. It was great to see so many marching and gathering together to visibly and vocally oppose racism, fascism, transphobia, misogyny, ableism, and all systems of oppression!

A crowd is gathered in front of a stage with performers waiting on the sides while a speaker in the centre talks into a microphone. People in the crowd hold flags and banners, such as the Irish tricolour, the Ukrainian flag, a banner that reads 'United Against Racism', and a sign that reads 'Blame the Government, not Migrants'. Clouds dominate the background behind the Dublin skyline.

A crowd is gathered holding signs and flags, including the Palestinian flag, Ukrainian flag, the SIPTU flag, and a sign that reads 'Equality for All, Naturalization for Ukrainians'. A bridge is above the crowd with large rainclouds in the background.

The Palestinian and Progress Pride flags are billowing in the air in front of a grey stone building. All that can be seen of the name of the building is 'R theatre'. A red umbrella is seen below the Progress Pride flag, and a redbrick building in the background.

A small dog, perhaps a terrier-corgi mix, black body with reddish-brown legs and face, throws his head back. He is standing on road asphalt, humans standing in a crowd behind him, their backs to him. His mouth is open, eyes partially closed, clearly mid-bark. One may describe his appearance as angry.

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Carantes @carantes.bsky.social · 23/09/2025

🔔☎️ RING RING ☎️🔔 Hello? … Slow down, what's that? … Oh, a new Carantes newsletter has been posted and sent out? … And you can access it on our website linked below? Well now that's a reason to be excited! … Bye, love you too! carantes.org/2025/09/22/s...

carantes.org

September 2025 newsletter

Dear friends, We hope this finds you well. September is always an exciting month for us, not only because it marks the beginning of a new academic term, but because Carantes was founded in Septembe…

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Carantes @carantes.bsky.social · 18/09/2025

It's the 3 year anniversary of Carantes! 'But Cassandra', you say, 'you're so smart and so pretty and so funny, but what IS Carantes??' Well, dear reader, firstly, thank you I really needed that, and secondly, allow me to explain: #celtic #antiracist #antifascist #medieval #academia

This anniversary post was meant to be a celebration (which it still is), but it is also a plea, a warning, a cry into the ether. Over the last three years the world has grown increasingly fascistic and hostile toward most of us. Organisations like Turning Point USA (ew) create blacklists of lecturers who they suspect of being left-leaning, harassing institutions and encouraging them to fire staff who oppose fascism. The FCC is strong-arming networks to cancel shows that critique the regime. The UK’s Supreme Court bowed to the pressure of TERFs and further institutionalised transphobia, not to mention the censorship of those protesting human-rights violations. And now, the US President is saying he will designate anti-fascism as a terrorist organisation (ignoring the fact that it is an ideology, not an organisation, but what are facts really worth these days?).

In leading up to this post, we made a thread discussing Umberto Eco’s piece Ur-Fascism (admittedly, the thread is unwieldy, that’s on me). The points he makes in it, about how to spot fascists, couldn’t be more timely. Read that piece again. Reread it. Call out fascism where you see it. It’s hard, trust me I know, but don’t become complacent. This state of affairs is unacceptable. Support people of colour, trans people, immigrants, women, queer people, persons with disabilities, refugees. Reject billionaires’ generative AI, flex your own creativity: make and think critically for yourself. We are in this together. And if you aren’t anti-fascist, then what are you?

Lots of love, your friends at Carantes

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Reposted by Carantes

Rhys Kaminski-Jones @rhyskamjones.bsky.social · 12/09/2025

With @carantes.bsky.social I've organised a panel at the @yganolfangeltaidd.bsky.social 40th Anniversary conference, on Celtic Studies and the Contemporary Far-Right. Papers on discourse analysis of far-right Celticism, reading transphobia in medieval Welsh poetry, and Celtic-American fascism.

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Carantes @carantes.bsky.social · 11/09/2025

Our current obsession: Umberto Eco's 'Ur-Fascism'. In 1995, 50 years after the liberation of his native Italy, Eco—medievalist, philosopher, and a fascinating man—published this tract which presents 14 ways to spot a fascist. Now, 30 years later, we will discuss his points in the coming days: (1/)

nybooks.com

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Carantes @carantes.bsky.social · 27/08/2025

Also! The next Reading Group Meeting will be this next Tuesday 2nd September from 4–6pm Welsh time. Under discussion is @nahir.bsky.social's The Other Faces of Arthur: Chivalric Whiteness in the Global North Atlantic. More details here: carantes.org/2025/08/27/s...

carantes.org

September 2025 reading group

The next session of the Carantes reading group is meeting on Tuesday September 2nd (i.e. next week) at 4 – 6 pm Welsh time (GMT +1). Please RSVP to receive the Zoom link on the day. In recent sess…

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Carantes @carantes.bsky.social · 30/07/2025

UPCOMING: Lughnasadh public meeting on Sunday, August 3rd from 4:00pm to 6:00pm UTC+1 (British summer time). We will be discussing two articles relative to celticity and constructions of whiteness used for fascist purposes. Email us: caranteswg@proton.me if you'd like to attend.

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Carantes @carantes.bsky.social · 18/06/2025

Upcoming: Carantes reading group, Friday June 27th, 6pm GMT+1. We will be discussing: Matthew H. Hammond, "Ethnicity and the Writing of Medieval Scottish History" (2006) eprints.gla.ac.uk/2916/ and Coral Lumbley, "Geoffrey of Monmouth and Race" (2020) www.jstor.org/stable/10.11... Email us to RSVP

eprints.gla.ac.uk

Ethnicity and the Writing of Medieval Scottish history

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Carantes @carantes.bsky.social · 09/05/2025

UPCOMING: Public Beltane Meeting, May 9th 2025 at 6pm UTC+1. We will be discussing Walter Benjamin's seminal essay "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," but you are welcome even if you've only done part or none of the reading. Email us to RSVP

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Carantes @carantes.bsky.social · 22/04/2025

UPCOMING: Reading group meeting, April 25th at 4pm UK time (GMT+1). Readings are Patrick R. O’Malley’s The Irish and the Imagination of Race: White Supremacy Across the Atlantic in the Nineteenth Century (2023) and the article ‘Irish Whiteness and the 19th Century Construction of Race’. Email toRSVP

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Reposted by Carantes

Rhys Kaminski-Jones @rhyskamjones.bsky.social · 04/03/2025

I'm organising a panel at this September 2025 conference in Aberystwyth under the @carantes.bsky.social banner - papers to address egalitarian anti-fascist approaches to Celtic Studies (broadly defined), non-traditional ideas welcome, happy to chat details over DM

Rhys Kaminski-Jones, who organizes the reading group, is planning to propose a Carantes panel at the Gorwelion International Conference at CAWCS, Aberystwyth in September (17th-19th). Rhys will introduce the panel with the image of the PanCelt flag at the 2023 Llanelli anti-migrant protests, and in the context of Reform's strong polling in the 2026 Senedd elections. This is not the only possible angle for
this panel (medievalism and work not on Wales welcome!), but anything in line with
that context or others like it might work particularly well. So if anyone would like to propose a title and short abstract (no more than 150 words), feel free to email Rhys at rhys.kaminski-jones@wales.ac.uk by 21st March.

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Carantes @carantes.bsky.social · 23/01/2025

UPCOMING: Reading Group meeting, Feb 27th, 7-9pm UTC. We will be discussing Hazel Carby's "What is this 'black' in Irish popular culture" (2001) and Charlotte Williams' "Can we live together? Wales and the multicultural question" (2004). Email (@in bio) for links and to RSVP.

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Carantes @carantes.bsky.social · 23/01/2025

UPCOMING: Imbolc public meeting, Feb 7th 7pm UTC. We'll be discussing Kathleen Belew's "Crunchy to Alt-Right Pipeline" (2022) and Cynthia Eller's "Matriarchy and the Volk" (2012). Email (@in bio) for article links and to RSVP

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