iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Standing room only at @josephinequinn.bsky.social’s inaugural lecture.

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I have spent the evening at @josephinequinn.bsky.social’s inaugural lecture on “Anarchical antiquity”, so ungovernable beavers are #relevant.

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Kieran Healy @kjhealy.co · 08/10/2026

The one I'm most struck by is their connections to the very worst people in British journalism: Jerry Hall was married to Rupert Murdoch, Ross Kemp was married to Rebekah Brooks, and Amol Rajan's patron was Evgeny Lebedev.

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Reposted by Chris Brooke

A special case of my general pet theory. kieranhealy.org/blog/archive...

My pet Theory of Professional Academic Associations is that the discipline's organizational life inverts its core intellectual commitments. Thus, Political Science is the discipline of government and especially of democracy. Yet, the last time I checked, all of the high-level positions in APSA are decided by committee deals rather than free and fair elections by the membership. Or, Economics is the discipline of decentralized coordination through the efficient operation of the market. Yet its job "market" is in fact an administered queue, with departments explicitly ranking their candidates, departments effectively ranking themselves, and a direct matching process operating between the two as top-ranking candidates slot into open positions in top-ranked schools. (This mechanism also includes an effective method of rent-extraction from Deans in the form of a salary ratchet.) And, to get to the present case, Sociology is the discipline that analyzes the many forms of collective social action, on the one hand, and is the social science most oriented towards the exposure of the workings of power, on the other. So naturally it follows that the ASA is not very good at organizing anything, and that its financial arrangements are as secretive as legally possible.

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John Bull @garius.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Yes, this absolutely holds at Cambridge, where the Sociologists, who study organisation, are very disorganised.

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Reposted by Chris Brooke

an internal investigation by cats into whether they have been fed, concludes that they have not.

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I flipped on the underfloor heating in the bathroom for the first time this morning... (Might close the living room window quite soon, too.)

Dr Dion Georgiou 🇨🇾❤️🇬🇾 @drdiongeorgiou.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Reposted by Chris Brooke

We lived in a basement flat on Caledonian Road in the very early 00s, which was close enough to pre-regeneration Kings Cross that once some poor bloke mistook it for a brothel and was swiftly sent packing with a flea in his ear by my mum.

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Solidarity and Hierarchy in Academic Job Markets — Crooked Timber

This triggers a happy memory of this excellent blogpost, from @kjhealy.co many years ago, on how the "job market" in academic Economics exhibits the fewest market-like characteristics of all the social sciences.

crookedtimber.org

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Department of Politics & International Studies, Uni of Cambridge @campolis.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Is it something as prosaic as that public investment in infrastructure and health comes from the national government, whereas the business of not letting schools fall to pieces is largely devolved business, on the level of local mayors and communes, who always have alternative priorities?

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Reposted by Chris Brooke

Huge Congratulations to Nanna Lilletvedt Sæten who has been awarded this year’s Lisa Smirl PhD Prize for her outstanding doctoral thesis, 'The Promise of Technology: Politics and Advocacy in the Digital Age'.🎓✨ 📖Find out more: www.polis.cam.ac.uk/news/nanna-l... 👏

polis.cam.ac.uk

Nanna Lilletvedt Sæten Awarded the 2026 Lisa Smirl PhD Prize | Department of Politics and International Studies (POLIS)

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When I phoned my dad after getting a job at Bristol he asked if it was all slave money?, and I said, with reference to the Wills Memorial Building, that, no, it was tobacco.

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My goodness. That's my brother-in-law, that is.

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This would be another key text for the project you describe. doi.org/10.1017/S147...

doi.org

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Peter Walker @peterwalker99.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Béla Kapossy could do that very well, if he wanted to. (His first book covered Rousseau’s dealings with the Bernese republicans.)

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Long tribute from Kemi Badenoch in her conference speech to Jeffrey Archer, complete with round of applause. The world is a "less colourful" place without him, she says, which is one way to describe a serial fraudster, fantasist and liar who wrecked several lives in the process.

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sampallis.bsky.social @sampallis.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

My prediction for the Holborn and St Pancras by-election. It’s looking like a close Labour win. leftwingofthepossible.substack.com/p/holborn-an...

leftwingofthepossible.substack.com

Holborn and St Pancras by-election prediction

It’s looking like a close win for Labour

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Chris Brooke @chrisbrooke.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

My problem is that if I think I'm starting with Malthus, I'm then professionally obligated to go back to Rousseau.

jstor.org

Client Challenge

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👻 Jack Djinn Wail 🧞 @jacktindale.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Always find it astonishing how noticeable the Great Leap Forward is.

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Grumpy Philosopher @stevecooke.org · 06/10/2026

Political philosophers doing 'Equality of What?' for the Bluesky era!

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flyingrodent @flyingrodent.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

That is a belter TBF but we’re never beating the all-timer

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Chris Brooke @chrisbrooke.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

YouGov hasn't recorded more than a two-point lead for Labour in recent polling, or a share higher than 24%, so this (in polling terms at least) is not trivial.

The Pub-Liking Universal Friend @johnb78.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Reposted by Chris Brooke

Entertaining way to find out

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Otto English @ottoenglish.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Archer came and spoke to my school in the 1980s. Charm personified. Bragged at length about his many achievements and then... something bizarre happened. 1/3 www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

bbc.co.uk

Jeffrey Archer obituary

Politician and best-selling author whose career was mired in scandal and disgrace.

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Wayne Myers @conniptions.org · 05/10/2026

If the main thing you want to do right now is to read a long, rambling, angry response by a non-Zionist Jewish now ex-Green Party Of England And Wales member to the not-so-hilarious antics of yesterday, then have I got the post for you: wayne.conniptions.org/2026/10/05/w... (It may not be, tbf)

wayne.conniptions.org

Why I Am No Longer A Green

I joined the Green Party of England and Wales in 2014.

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First Among Equals is only the second worst book that I have read. (Not @tmbejan.bsky.social’s, obvs.)

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European Greens @europeangreens.eu · 05/10/2026

In England we had the disgraced former Defence Secretary Liam Fox, who resigned in disgrace.

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Our statement on the recent Green Party of England and Wales motion 'Zionism is Racism'. europeangreens.eu/news/egp-pos...

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Stuart White @stuartgwhite.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

With great sadness, I have decided to resign my membership of the Green Party of England and Wales.

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Chris Bertram @crookedfootball.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Just resigned from the @greenparty.org.uk . A pity, they could have been a force to make a serious challenge on Labour’s left. As it is, they’ve actually made it harder to defeat Israeli ethnonationalism. ime, of course. Don’t @ me

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Not so long ago I made some remark about the Civil Rights movement, and a student replied that that was about politics "from the last century"--which was accurate, but which threw me.

Declan Gaffney @greyskiesthinking.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Reposted by Chris Brooke

I was listening recently to an old interview with Seán Potts, the tin whistle player with the Chieftains, who died in 2014. He learned pieces from his grandfather, the piper John Potts, who was taught the pipes in the late 1890s by Martin O'Reilly, born in 1829. A direct link with pre-Famine music.

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I had a chat with an aunt the other day, who was recalling a conversation she had with her grandmother (in the 1950s) who was telling her about dealings she had had with her father (so my great-great-grandfather), around 1880. Sometimes the past doesn't seem so remote at all.

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In 2021 he had an even more radical policy proposal--that if Brian Cox was nice to him, he would turn the Circle Line into a particle collider.

x.com