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Stephen H. Jones

@stphnhwrdjns.bsky.social
316 followers 268 following 489 posts

Social scientist. Writes about religion and prejudice, society and politics. Teaches sociology and criminology. Rides bikes.

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Reposted by Stephen H. Jones
Michele Grant @michelegrant.bsky.social · 1h
That phrase 'gutter contrarianism bred by the social media attention economy' is a masterclass in meaning with brevity. www.thetimes.com/article/02eb...
thetimes.com
Why there’s a new battle raging over the Second World War
The allied victory of 1945 is the founding myth of the liberal western order, something despised by the new radical right
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Rima I Anabtawi @rimaanabtawi.bsky.social · 17h
You can read the full interview, here. share.google/NgMm5RbsFq2X...
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Sunder Katwala (sundersays) @sundersays.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Jacob Rees-Mogg has often expressed pride in his father's 1968 Times editorial on Rivers of Blood, titled "An Evil Speech". His recent oppositon to ethnonationalism & hia decision to be vocal about a civic British citizenship + English identity reflect this.
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Matt Darling @besttrousers.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
I disagree, the best cure for ideological bias is asking people to walk through the mechanics of their argument. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23620547/
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Jessica Elgot @jessicaelgot.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
I’m afraid if this kind of motion falls, intention is pretty clear
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Jonathan Hopkin @jonathanhopkin.eurosky.social · 04/10/2026
Seems like if you’re on the left in Britain you’re condemned to sit between the most cynical, reactionary wing of the Labour Party and a bunch of idiots who think student union politics is a great model for running the country
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Stephen H. Jones @stphnhwrdjns.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
I tend towards the view that most left antisemitism is about being stupid rather than evil but this is... dark.
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Stephen H. Jones @stphnhwrdjns.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
I'd not noticed this and it gives you a sense of the self-defeating silliness of the Greens' motion. It's like it is intentionally alienating all potential allies.
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Stephen H. Jones @stphnhwrdjns.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
GB News and Man City in the last 10 years have a lot in common.
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Stephen H. Jones @stphnhwrdjns.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
This is so frustrating. Aside from the incoherence of the position, it will mark the end of a serious left challenge to Labour (which our politics needs, *especially* on the issue of Israel/Palestine).
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Alf Dubs @alfdubs.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
I'm so very sad to hear of the death of Esther Ranzen who played an important role in reuniting me with Nicky Winton - the man who saved my life. It's so desperately sad that she couldn't choose assisted dying as was her wish.
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Stephen H. Jones @stphnhwrdjns.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Israel's government does appear completely rogue and I really worry that will end very badly, for Israelis and everyone else.
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The Empty City @davidallengreen.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Commentators reading the Premier League ruling on Manchester City.
The wincing stones meme.
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Nicole Bedera @nbedera.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Kat is right about all of this. One of the reasons that college sexual violence is uniquely devastating is because it changes the victim’s entire future.
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Jonathan Calder @lordbonkers.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
One for every Labour MP to read. #ldconf
lincolnshirelive.co.uk
30 years ago, Lincoln was 'on its knees' - then the university arrived
The construction of the University of Lincoln marked a turning point in the city's fortunes
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lastpositivist.bsky.social @lastpositivist.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Basically every social scientist who sneeringly attacks "positivism" has zero understanding of it as a philosophical or methodological or even cultural movement. Please give me a gajillion pounds now thank you.
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Stephen H. Jones @stphnhwrdjns.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Most academics I know were fundamentally anti-Wikipedia for a very long time. Salutary reminder that we get it quite wrong quite often.
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Alastair Harper @alastairharper.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Thomas Edison in 1910. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves on this net zero business, lads
Someday some fellow will invent a way of concentrating and storing sunshine to use instead of this old, absurd Prometheus scheme of fire.
I'll do the trick myself if someone doesn't get at it....
This scheme of combustion in order to get power makes me sick to think of—it is so wasteful.... We should utilize natural forces and thus get all of our power. Sunshine is a form of energy, and the winds and the tides are manifestations of energy. Do we use them? Oh no; we burn up wood and coal, as renters burn up the front fence for fuel.
We live like squatters, not as if we owned the property. There must surely come a time when heat and power will be stored in unlimited quantities in every community, all gathered by natural forces. Electricity ought to be as cheap as oxygen, for it cannot be destroyed.
Now, I am not sure but that my new storage battery is the thing. 167
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Natasha Walter @natashawalter.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
It’s much much harder now to be an anti racist than it is to be a racist. That’s one of the things I learned from talking to Rachel Marsh, who has been doxxed and abused for standing up to the far right. www.thenerve.news/p/rachel-mar...
thenerve.news
‘I see what’s happening to Rachel; it scares me’: the woman who dared to face down Piddington’s anti-migrant storm
Natasha Walter talks to Rachel Marsh, the resident of the newly ‘independent’ Oxfordshire village whose anti-racist BBC interview led to abuse, doxxing and death threats
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Ian Dunt @iandunt.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Something very strange and disturbing is happening in this country, of which Braverman is just the most pitiful example. iandunt.substack.com/p/the-return...
iandunt.substack.com
The return of race politics
Ethnic minority politicians on the right are engaged in depraved acts of self-hatred, in order to capture a movement which will never accept them
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James Murray @james-bg.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
This is a low key tragedy. A broad consensus torched by a handful of ideologues and opportunists who do not even understand what net zero target is and why it was adopted. The reality is temperatures will continue to spiral until we reach net zero or civilisation collapses, whichever comes first.
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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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Stephen H. Jones @stphnhwrdjns.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
I was today years old when I learned that Nigel Tufnel of Spinal Tap used to sit in the House of Lords as a hereditary peer. This means I have finally found, 27 years after the fact, a good reason to oppose Tony Blair's reforms to the upper house.
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Dan Davies @dsquareddigest.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
after consideration, I have produced this necessary reference guide, perhaps @sundersays.bsky.social may be interested. If someone wants to provide funding after the fact, I can promise it won't constitute a donation in kind to Reform.
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Indiscreet Function @homotopic.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
One of the basic things some on the left don't understand about the far right is that the only way to return it to the political margins is a cordon sanitaire that (among other things) has consensus buy in from conservative elites. The Left Wins Forever is not on offer
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Sam Freedman @samfr.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
The difference between the performance of immigrants in England and Western Europe is staggering. (20 pts equals a year of learning.) I looked at this in detail in the post - it can't be explained away by language or relative advantage of different immigrant communities. There is a policy factor.
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Stephen H. Jones @stphnhwrdjns.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
The replies to this. Good god, what Bluesky weirdos. If someone has made the wrong choice and repents, welcome them, you idiots! Do you want to win or not? Go read St Paul or something FFS.
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Daniel Sugarman @danielsugarman.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
I think Isaac Chotiner's dismantling of Benjamin Moser's book depicting Zionism as the ultimate evil is all the more scathing because Chotiner is very obviously not a Zionist himself. (And you're not dreaming. Moser, a Pulitzer prize winning author, cites TONY GREENSTEIN as an authoritative source)
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Dave Walker @davewalker.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
New cartoon: The RNLI
Cartoon titled “The RNLI: Some of the people they help,” showing six scenarios involving people rescued by the RNLI. Including a man caught by the tide, a YouTuber swimming without preparation, a middle-lane driver, a neighbour with different political opinions, a superyacht owner who forgot to refuel, and people crossing the Channel in a small boat. The final caption reads, “All human beings – all deserve saving.”
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Stephen H. Jones @stphnhwrdjns.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
We have plenty of laws that criminalise this behaviour beyond criminal damage. We need to see them applied in their full force.
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Jake Puddle @jakepuddle.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
If he’s not arrested after this then honestly what even is our justice system anymore
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Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
one thing worth saying about the disorder Mandani discourse is that it matters what you're using "disorder" as evidence of. here's some public health research using "broken windows" as an indication of "need for public investment" i.e. fixing the windows penntoday.upenn.edu/news/Penn-Co...
penntoday.upenn.edu
Abandoned house repairs reduced nearby gun violence | Penn Today
Installing working windows and doors, cleaning trash, and weeding at abandoned houses led to safety improvements and should be considered in efforts to create healthy communities, according to researc...
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Daniel Sugarman @danielsugarman.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
We now know that on 48 hours ago counter terror police arrested two men who were allegedly planning an imminent terror attack on Manchester's Jewish community, set to take place on Yom Kippur. Just like the one last year. www.jewishnews.co.uk/police-foil-...
jewishnews.co.uk
Police foil Manchester Yom Kippur terror plot - Jewish News
Two men arrested over suspected plan to target Manchester’s Jewish community during holiest day of the year
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Steve Gale @stevewg.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Colley Hill, Surrey: coffee break from birding the steep scrub. Love the plaque on the bench I’m sitting on
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Samantha Asumadu @samanthaasumadu.substack.com · 22/09/2026
Fifteen journalists led the Arday coverage. Between them they wrote 93 articles about a Black Cambridge professor accused of copying other people's work. Not one of them wrote a sentence about a Cambridge academic under police investigation for how a political party was funded.
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Nathan Cardon @ncardon.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
The first rule I learned when walking and cycling in the UK is that Audis and BMWs always have the right of way.
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Colin Carlson @colincarlson.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Why do white men become white nationalists? Interesting new empirical results in Nature: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
ere we show with three national surveys of non-Hispanic white adults (conducted from 2021 to 2025) that support for white nationalism is (1) higher among white people encountering personal hardship and local social distress, consistent with strain theories3,16; (2) unrelated to local racial composition or recent demographic change, complicating status threat accounts4,17,18; and (3) elevated among white people with close friendships primarily online, consistent with theories of extremism driven by online mobilization7,10,19.
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Tim Bale @timbale.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
We're so lucky that British politicians foresaw this risk in 2010 so didn't take that path. Oh wait....
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Adam Rutherford @adamrutherford.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
It's close run between bottlenose dolphins (gang coercive sex, infanticide, kidnapping) and Sea Otters (drowning females and using their carcasses for sex; sex so violent that the females die, followed by using their carcasses for sex; also with Harbour seals).
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Sam Freedman @samfr.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
If this is confirmed it will be the first time ever that the CDU have failed to meet the threshold in a German election (regional or national). Catastrophe is the word.
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Ariel Edwards-Levy @aedwardslevy.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
literally just told a roomful of college students writing a poll that if the one thing I could teach them was not to use this question format, I would feel successful
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Huw C. Davies @huwcdavies.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Shouldn’t be news to anyone that these companies are operating in bad faith.
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Jim Pickard @pickardje.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
my brilliant colleague @robertshrimsley.bsky.social on the threat from Elon Musk’s X platform www.ft.com/content/f270...
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Stephen H. Jones @stphnhwrdjns.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Please, there are so many good politics and economics writers on here, I'm asking just one of them to write the book Why Everything That Is Wrong Is George Osborne's Fault. You'd be doing a public service.
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Roland Smith @rolandmcs.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Calvin Robinson is a case study in right-wing radicalisation: From working in tech, to Conservative Party politics, governor at the Michaela School [with 'Britain's strictest headteacher'], Policy Exchange, then Faragism, GB News, Laurence Fox, Turning Point, Restore and now this.
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Robert Saunders @robertsaunders.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Fixed that story about Sir Jim Ratcliffe on the BBC.
Picture of man smiling with tea-mug. Headline reads: "Non-Billionaire who actually lives in the UK and pays its taxes says he has lost confidence in the super-rich", with sub-header: 'One of Britain's taxpayers says he has lost confidence in billionaires, describing them as "on the take"".
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Jonn Elledge @jonnelledge.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Thread.
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Chris Bertram @crookedfootball.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
"RNLI crew members had been forced to take their permits off their cars after their tyres have been repeatedly slashed. Most of them have been pilloried at the school gates or turned away from local pubs. One man who worked in search and rescue had been beaten unconscious and hospitalised"
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Stephen H. Jones @stphnhwrdjns.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Got oddly mad about this throughout the world cup, watching a team with the potential to win the damn thing fail because they were playing with an H&M mannequin up top.
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Chris Bertram @crookedfootball.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
I had no idea of this extraordinary episode. I reminds us of how easily people can be declared "illegal" or "immigrant" rather than native. These are not natural kinds, but administrative categories. Striking parallels with the Windrush scandal. Of interest to all, but tagging @spe07.bsky.social
theguardian.com
The spectre of ‘remigration’ is haunting Europe. Slovenia in 1992 gives us a blueprint for this state terror | Miha Mazzini
In February that year, the Slovenian government officially deleted 25,000 citizens, turning them overnight into illegal immigrants, says writer and film-maker Miha Mazzini
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