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Kavita Ramakrishnan

@kavitaurbanist.bsky.social
1.2K followers 753 following 18 posts

Unruly geographer at the University of East Anglia. Eviction, resettlement, informality and migration. Currently thinking about embodied experiences of extreme heat.

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Reposted by Kavita Ramakrishnan
Dr Vanessa @hpsvanessa.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Cannot tell you how much I hate this & how ashamed & angry I am that @ukri.org have taken this step. We KNOW this sort of gAI is socially biased, we KNOW it favours slopAI output over human-written. Our research landscape is falling apart due to underfunding, & they do this? it's *appalling*
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Musa Okwonga @okwonga.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
This AI discourse is amazing. "We've created this very dangerous thing, based largely on the mass theft of labour, that we should stop developing" - okay, so that means that you should be treated like social and economic vandals, not revered as sages on podcasts.
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Professionally Nosy @professionallynosy.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
My Rage Against the Machine/Les Mis mashup is complete. This is my interpretation of the quilt guild’s summer challenge “quilt with your interpretation and/or feelings towards our current ‘democracy’” all hand stitched.
Quilt hanging on a card catalog. Neutral background with navy cursive appliqué “Do you hear thr people sing?” The background is embroidered in red starting light and getting bolder the lyrics to “killing in the name” the quilting effect is a focused sunburst from the center.
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Lex McMenamin (they/them) @lexmcmenamin.com · 24/09/2026
AI panic ignores “the climate and ecological crisis, the rising fascism that is borne out of climate politics, the making of climate refugees, and the growing inability of people just to get by from day to day. It’s such a disconnect from what seems to be actually happening.” @alexhanna.bsky.social
theguardian.com
Climate protesters say tech companies, not AI, are the real ‘danger to humankind’ – and the planet
Activists gathered outside the OpenAI offices on Monday during climate week in New York City
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Paris Marx @parismarx.com · 24/09/2026
“It is Macklemore, not Sheeran, who has been barred from performing. Yet somehow the story is about Sheeran’s freedom to be apolitical.”
lrb.co.uk
Lorna Finlayson | Public Positions
Given much of the coverage of the Ed Sheeran-Macklemore debacle, you could be forgiven for thinking that Sheeran had...
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AFP News Agency @en.afp.com · 24/09/2026
🇪🇸 Protests in Madrid after 87-year-old pensioner evicted Demonstrators have taken to the streets of Spain's capital to protest against the eviction of an 87-year-old pensioner from her lifelong home, in one of the harshest expressions of the country's chronic housing crisis
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University of Nottingham UCU branch @uonucu.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Our massive strike action for the fall begins on Wednesday, but we will be facing some intense financial hardship to do so. Please consider supporting our members by donating to our solidarity fund. www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding...
justgiving.com
Help raise £10000 to support the Nottingham UCU hardship fund – JustGiving Crowdfunding
Iʼm raising money to support the Nottingham UCU hardship fund. Support this JustGiving Crowdfunding Page.
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theonlyjunedoe @theonlyjunedoe.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
ICE took my friend and neighbor, Alma. Didn't tell anyone. Left her car in a random parking lot. She was about a mile from our homes. She had her uniform on, going to work. We were single mothers after divorces at the same time.We watched out fo each other in this what we could afford neighborhood.
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Prisonculture @prisonculture.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
If you're wondering why you are seeing a lot more AI flyers and art from nonprofits over the past few years, it's because nonprofits are barely hanging on financially. Folks are having to lay off staff and can barely keep the lights on.
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Hugh Ryan @hughryan.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Welcome to the Purge (queer history edition) dentonrc.com/education/hi...
dentonrc.com
UNT removes LGBTQ+ archive page after social media post by Texas representative
The University of North Texas took down the homepage of its LGBTQ+ archive, a collaborative project documenting queer culture and history, following a post on X by state Rep. Brian
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leon @leyawn.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
new idea "one email a day" you should only be able to send or read one email a day
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Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
"Stanford University...is facing criticism for using generative AI to change the photo of a Hispanic male student into a non-existent Black woman for a campus banner." feels like a South Park episode. what are we doing here yall www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/arti...
sfchronicle.com
Stanford violated its AI policy by turning a Hispanic student into a fake Black woman in ad
Stanford University is facing criticism for using generative AI to change the photo of a Hispanic male student into a non-existent Black woman for a dining hall advertisement.
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hammancheez but spooky @hammancheez.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Andrew Cuomo, through tears : this is marxism
huffpost.com
Mamdani Delivers $131 Million Settlement For DoorDash Drivers
The Mamdani administration said the settlement is the largest labor enforcement action in the city’s history.
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MeidasTouch @meidastouch.com · 22/09/2026
NEWS: Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration has secured a record $131.5 million settlement from DoorDash after a NYC investigation found the company underpaid or failed to properly pay 264,000 delivery workers. 1/
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Alan Beattie @alanbeattie.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Will keep boringly saying this (no disrespect to OP): it's not a health surcharge. It's not hypothecated to the NHS; you can't choose not to pay it and thereby eschew healthcare. You could equally call it an education or roads surcharge. It's using the NHS's sanctified status to rip off immigrants.
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Dr. Divya (🔔 logged out) @divyampersaud.com · 20/09/2026
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unraveled @unraveledpress.com · 20/09/2026
Today at the Broadview ICE facility outside Chicago: Dozens of ICE agents violently confronted protesters, deploying chemical irritants on the crowd. Multiple people were injured. No arrests were observed.
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Bob Elliott @bobeunlimited.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Jet fuel prices back near Iran War highs.
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Sonja Drimmer @sonjadrimmer.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
I always bring in advertisements on the first day of my Intro to Art History class to convey how powerful images are and how empowering it is to be able to articulate verbally what they’re doing. The visual violence of the Converse ad is such that I wouldn’t even dare to show it in that class.
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Joe Bak-Coleman @jbakcoleman.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
I got a *remarkably quick* rejection email from a tenure track job that I applied to. Rejections are part of the process! However, if you’re going to screen candidates with ai, please don’t ask for more than a cv and let us know! It’s a lot of time learning about your dept, writing and tailoring.
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Shannon Mattern @shannonmattern.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
Sinnapah Mary is "thinking through what an inheritance becomes once displaced + reshaped in new geographies... She confronts two concepts conceived from the margins of empire: the négritude of Aimé Césaire + the coolitude that Mauritian poet Khal Torabully forged in dialogue w/ him in the 1980s..."
thefunambulist.net
Grenn Anba Fey: A Hybrid Art Practice on Gwadeloupean Soil
ARTWORKS BY KELLY SINNAPAH MARY TEXT BY CAROLINE HONORIEN As a child, Kelly Sinnapah Mary would watch her grandmother from the terrace of the family home. The girl would watch the old woman turn the…
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UN Environment Programme @unep.org · 13/09/2026
El Niño is strengthening rapidly, and it has yet to peak. According to World Meteorological Organization, it is now almost certain to persist through February 2027, raising the risk of extreme heat, floods and drought around the world. What could the months ahead bring? ow.ly/XSlx50ZMw66
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Aaron Reichlin-Melnick @reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Equatorial Guinea is a dictatorship run by the same man since 1978, with his children running large portions of the state now. We paid this dictatorship millions of dollars to let us deport random people there. Our money was used for this inhumanity.
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AV; Muslims, Dalits, Adivasis have a right to Joy @apveng.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
"The Muslim body is flogged first in the street, then again on the news. The oppressed caste body is dually brutalised too, in an opposite way—physical and structural violence against Dalit bodies is normalised, and then invisibilised in the nation’s theatre." herenowstudies.com/issue-92
herenowstudies.com
#92: Nervous System Politics
Dr. Shireen Azam writes on Muslim anxiety and the politics of shock.
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Margot Finn @eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
'In some respects, what we are seeing resembles a form of collective grief. Not only grief for colleagues who have left, but grief for ways of working, professional identities and communities that once gave meaning to academic life. This creates an important challenge for university leaders.'
wonkhe.com
The loss of staff belonging in higher education
Nick Hulbert-Williams argues that what looks like low morale and change fatigue in HE may really be a crisis of belonging
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Plashing Vole @plashingvole.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
Woke up and realised that even before the final sacking next week that my university now employs more people with English Literature PhDs in administration than in the English department. Tells you something about the state of HE.
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Sandeep Bakshi @sandeepbak.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
Rise in Power, Professor Jason Arday. May you find peace. Humanity is not a characteristic trait of academia. White supremacists hounded Arday to his death. And Brown and POC supporters from Cambridge & fancy unis published op-eds to discuss 'standards'. Hope your academic standards are intact. 1/4
The Telegraph
Jason Arday found dead
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Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
"hmm maybe this whole Arday affair shows that we need to have a Serious Conversation about whether Woke 1.0 overreached in manner X, Y, of Z" motherfucker you are generally in Fascism 487.0, as is this particular affair you're talking about. worry about *that*. /Final
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Lupita Nihongo @otsumamiboy.blacksky.app · 15/08/2026
The only conversation worth having is how Black people are overpoliced & over-punished & held to different standards in all aspects of life. That there is an outrage when Black people transgress that isn’t there when their non-Black counterparts do.
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Urban Studies Journal @urbanstudiesjournal.com · 01/07/2026
✍️ @kavitaurbanist.bsky.social and Ebbensgaard show how individual and communal efforts to reduce exposure (in the case of #heat) or increase exposure (in the case of #sunlight) center the #elemental as a point of struggle for just #urban living and citizenship. 📖 buff.ly/kMvShgR
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Kavita Ramakrishnan @kavitaurbanist.bsky.social · 03/07/2026
Check out this piece and all the wonderful articles in the SI. @mathildaros.bsky.social and Lucilla Barchetta have done a fantastic job curating and editing this collection!
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Derek Beaulieu @derekbeaulieu.bsky.social · 22/06/2026
The Bread and Puppet Theatre's WHY CHEAP ART MANIFESTO was a huge inspiration for my new book DO IT WRONG: HOW TO BE A POET IN THE 21ST CENTURY. Rethink why you create : assemblypress.ca/shop/do-it-w... Assembly Press (More on the manifesto here: breadandpuppetpress.org/products/why...)
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Anil Dash @anildash.com · 18/06/2026
It’s important to remember that every single one of the Black women whom this administration has targeted has endured this kind of burden — often with far higher costs, in dollars, in violent threats, in social costs. And the world averts its eyes from the weight they carry from these attacks.
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Met Office - weather and climate @metoffice.gov.uk · 25/05/2026
Today has been the hottest day in May on record with Kew Gardens provisionally reaching 34.8°C - exceeding the previous highest May temperature in the UK by a full 2 degrees Celsius🌡️ This heat would be exceptional in the UK even in mid summer, let alone in May📈
A map of the UK showing a temperature of 34.8 degrees Celsius, recorded in Kew Gardens, London on Monday 25 May 2026
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Vindhya Buthpitiya @vindi-b.bsky.social · 19/05/2026
St Andrews University academic on Gaza aid flotilla intercepted by Israeli forces: Geography lecturer Dr Antonis Vradis joined a boat believed to have been intercepted off the coast of Cyprus. www.thecourier.co.uk/fp/politics/...
thecourier.co.uk
St Andrews University academic on Gaza aid flotilla intercepted by Israeli forces
Geography lecturer Dr Antonis Vradis joined a boat believed to have been intercepted off the coast of Cyprus.
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Vindhya Buthpitiya @vindi-b.bsky.social · 19/05/2026
our St Andrews colleague Antonis Vradis who bravely joined the Global Sumud Flotilla has also been captured by the IOF in international waters - please share / write to your MP/MSP www.writetothem.com
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University of Hertfordshire UCU @uhertfordshireucu.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
Today staff in the School of Creative Arts, including the Humanities department, were called to a redundancy consultation meeting. We were informed that 23 posts were to go by August this year, with further redundancies as the Humanities programmes are taught out over 2 years.
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Alex Hanna @alexhanna.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
Today @dairinstitute.bsky.social is releasing the Luddite Lab Resource Hub. The hub hosts case studies, resources, and political education for unions, labor organizations, and workers who want to fight “AI” and automation at work. labor.dair-institute.org
Screenshot of the Luddite Lab website. The word Luddite Lab is in the top left corner. The tables in the top read: Case Studies, Primers, Resource Library, Contact Us, and About. The text below reads: “The Luddite Lab Resource Hub provides resources for unions, labor organizations, and worker-organizers fighting AI and automation at work. The lab provides strategies for worker-led governance and oversight of new technology through case studies, primers, and a resource library.” Below, there are five cards: Case Studies (Stories from worker organizers resisting AI), Primers (Applied research insights into AI, automation, and the future of work), Resource Library (Additional resources from partners), Contact Us (Ways to connect with the Luddite Lab team), and About (About the Luddite Lab project and team)
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Dr Vanessa @hpsvanessa.bsky.social · 19/05/2026
This is why I keep asking that “so what do older women who lose their academic jobs do” question - and why the answers are nearly always “rely on partner income/family wealth/networking to survive” :/
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Mark Pendleton @markpendleton.bsky.social · 19/05/2026
East Asian Studies is being gutted at Sheffield - all staff at risk with 8.6 FTE proposed to go (a third of us). Biggest cuts in Chinese and Japanese Studies. We’ll be taking a few days to process. Solidarity to Materials and Chemistry colleagues who are also dealing with similarly bad news.
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Amy Ryall @amyryall.bsky.social · 19/05/2026
Why is the UK so bad at trains? I’ve been on long distance trains every week in May. Every single one of them has been cancelled or late or both. And we can’t even get the project that might help right. Functional, usable trains should be the bare minimum of a country’s infrastructure. 😬
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Nate Schenkkan @nateschenkkan.bsky.social · 18/05/2026
Worth reading as well the lengthy Science investigation into the FBI's shift to targeting Chinese postdocs instead of more senior researchers www.science.org/content/arti...
science.org
Chinese postdocs in U.S. hit with a wave of prosecutions and deportations
The U.S. government has recently convicted multiple postdocs for improper shipments of biological materials. Some see a replay of the 2018 China Initiative
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Dan Saltzstein @dansaltzstein.bsky.social · 18/05/2026
“Roughly three-quarters of those children… are likely U.S. citizens”
nytimes.com
Over 100,000 Family Separations in Deportation Push, Report Estimates
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Tony Santos @tony.webeasties.com · 18/05/2026
How the fuck did this get IRB approval?!? as a UW grad student I had to jump through so many hoops to record adult’s smartphones with their actual informed consent, these people were gonna do covert recordings of fucking children to train an LLM and it got approved?!?! what?!?!
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Maris Kreizman @maris.bsky.social · 18/05/2026
I promise you none of the people who manage your local bookstores would say the same. www.nbcnews.com/business/ceo...
nbcnews.com
Why the CEO of Barnes & Noble would support selling AI-written books in stores
James Daunt has led a resurgence of the bookseller chain, which opened 67 new locations last year.
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Jacquelyn Gill @jacquelyngill.bsky.social · 14/05/2026
“The U.S. National Science Foundation X-Labs (NSF X-Labs) initiative is designed to launch and scale a new generation of organizations focused on independent research, development and innovation.” We have those, thanks, they’re called universities and national laboratories.
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Jacquelyn Gill @jacquelyngill.bsky.social · 14/05/2026
Cool, so NSF is now going to be used to essentially launder money to tech bros because universities are just too cumbersome and disciplinary oversight and regulations and accountability are all just too stifling for innovation. $1.5B for “X-Labs.”
nsf.gov
NSF X-Labs
NSF's mission is to advance the progress of science, a mission accomplished by funding proposals for research and education made by scientists, engineers, and educators from across the country.
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derek guy @dieworkwear.bsky.social · 14/05/2026
In 2017, Criselda Vasquez painted this portrait of her parents and titled it "The New American Gothic." Last month, her father, the man in this portrait, was abducted by ICE after being in the US for 30+ years. The family is now struggling with bills. A GoFundMe has been started: gofund.me/456d8a193
A painting of a man and a woman standing in front of a red Chevrolet truck. The man is holding a hoe; the woman is holding a bucket with house cleaning supplies. The artist's two parents stand proudly in front of the painting.
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Stentor Danielson @chefstentor.bsky.social · 15/05/2026
Congratulations to our new union comrades at Penn State! Especially glad to hear the union covers temporary and part time faculty as well, to head off attempts to pit adjunct and TT against each other. www.centredaily.com/news/local/e...
centredaily.com
Penn State faculty vote to unionize in one of PA’s largest public sector union elections
“This is an historic union election and the largest union election in Pennsylvania’s public sector in nearly five decades.”
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Kavita Ramakrishnan @kavitaurbanist.bsky.social · 14/05/2026
The losses to HE continue to mount. This time please donate to colleagues at Nottingham trying to save jobs and departments.
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