iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Thomas Cheney @thomascheney.bsky.social · 8h

says the Harvard and Princeton grad

Thomas Cheney @thomascheney.bsky.social · 9h

all up for Rejoining the EU but we need to change our views on immigration as a country - the 'legitimate concerns' bullshit got mainstreamed by opposition to Eastern European Freedom of Movement, and allowed Farage and co to present themselves as different from the BNP/NF becuase Poles are 'white'

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Robert Saunders @robertsaunders.bsky.social · 10h

It’s a mark of the corruption of our whole way of thinking about the world that trying to meet a planetary emergency is routinely described as “ideological”, while continuing to accelerate it is presented as “pragmatic” and “economic”.

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Sarah Kay @k-interarma.bsky.social · 9h

In addition, I think it is important to remember, especially in this day and age, that the 2000 parade included members of Neo-Nazi group Combat 18 joining the Orangemen. Combat 18 members are barred from joining police or prison forces in the UK / have frozen assets, but group isn’t proscribed

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Sarah Kay @k-interarma.bsky.social · 9h

I still have a lot of “but why don’t the residents let the Order march?” Well, because they remember. A community activist from Ardoyne I won’t name, but goes under Belfast.jpeg, has compiled some of the stories. There are 21 deaths total linked to the Drumcree “dispute”.

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Thomas Cheney @thomascheney.bsky.social · 22h

watching DS9, how well known is the Charge of the Light Brigade in the US?

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Thomas Cheney @thomascheney.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

I suppose the questions for burnham is how is thr 2029 manifesto pledge for a National Care Service going to meaningfully differ from the 2024 one and why does he think fewer Labour MPs will make it easier to do?

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Duncan Robinson @duncanrobinson.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Hunch that manifestoes have taken on a bigger role in discourse now that you can easily look up what was in them without a careful archive

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Duncan Robinson @duncanrobinson.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Weird you can whack a PM yet still be beholden to a random PDF. Committed to a document with a massive picture of Keir Starmer on the front of it

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In Medias Malone @professormusgrave.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

As a professor, most of what I do is log in to things

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Thomas Cheney @thomascheney.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

well, first baby of our antenatal class has been born, tad early but the first arrival certainly makes it feel very real - would appreciate baby girl cheney coming no earlier than Halloween!

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BISA - British International Studies Association @mybisa.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Last chance for Environment and Climate Politics Working Group event on the state & direction of global climate governance 10 years after the Paris Agreement 📣 'The show must go on? Revisiting the script of international climate cooperation 10 years after Paris' 🌍 👉 ow.ly/C03U50ZOEE9

Vintage globe displaying North America and surrounding regions, ideal for geography concepts.

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Thomas Cheney @thomascheney.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

lowest government support in the OECD

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Jake i 🇵🇸 ✡️ (alt Space Laser Command) @jakei.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

look I'm not saying every tech degree should require a humanities minor but can we at least get 20 min to play the simpsons monorail episode

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Thomas Cheney @thomascheney.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

had my first 'oh god, young people' moment of the semester today when I was asked by two students how to print off their phone - took me quite a bit not to say "you dont you use a proper computer"

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Thomas Cheney @thomascheney.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

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Thomas Cheney @thomascheney.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

And so it begins, lecture 1 for Regulating Innovation kicks of today! What is regulation? what is innovation?

Text on a powerpoint slide: LW5118 - Regulating Innovation: Law, Technology, and Governance, Dr Thomas Cheney (he/him), thomas.e.l.cheney@northumbria.ac.uk

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Melissa Johnson, PhD @ladyhistorian.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

I am tired of having to pretend that the value of studying my discipline solely rests on the "marketable skills" we teach. Sometimes things are just worth knowing and doing because they make your life bigger and richer.

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James Austin @jamesdaustin.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

In part I think because it was obsessed by the material and by class. It was a self concious attempt to reconnect with 'working class' people and missed how working class has changed - you can see that in the list of occupations. And that they have cultural views which may differ from sterotypes

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Ben Ansell @benansell.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Every piece I read from the ex-Starmer crew has the same flavour- a bleeding over of their distaste for other more socially liberal colleagues in the Labour Party, which has been retro-fitted into an entire explanation for how politics should work, even as it failed when actually tested.

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Doctor Jeff Hawn 🌻🇬🇧🇺🇸🇺🇦 @jhawn.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

It’s also clear that Russia has its own agency, and you cannot assign a single causality to the rise of Putin or his subsequent behavior. For those interested I will post links to some Mr. Merrys writings below.

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Doctor Jeff Hawn 🌻🇬🇧🇺🇸🇺🇦 @jhawn.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

What struck me about both his work and his perspective was it was thoughtful nuanced, and not afraid to offer criticism. It’s undeniable there were mistakes after the 1991 collapse and how the United States handled it.

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Doctor Jeff Hawn 🌻🇬🇧🇺🇸🇺🇦 @jhawn.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

I recently saw that retired US diplomat Wayne Merrys writings are being misrepresented as part of some sort of Russia is really the West fault narrative.

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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 26/09/2026

Does my Speak-n-Spell feel pain when I type O-U-C-H? The jury is out. Philosophers and neuroscientists say that's fucking stupid, but I called a guy from the Center for Pretending that Household Electronics Are Sentient and he said there's no way to know for sure.

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Thomas Cheney @thomascheney.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

nah mate we bent over backwards to help Russia and protect the Russian ego - Billions in aid and loans, inclusion in the G7, proping up their space programme, letting them keep their nukes, ignoring the genocide in Chechnya, the Soviet econ sucked thats why they collapsed thats why Russia struggled

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Thomas Cheney @thomascheney.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

god I remember all the flak I got for suggesting Isaacman might be a maga loving hack

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will pooley @willpooley.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

is it a fair read to say that both public and politicians are obsessed by the idea of more money for vocational training, while there is essentially no set of employers/industry that actually needs this now while no one cares about universities which employ huge numbers and employers need and want

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Rishika Pardikar @rishpardikar.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Started reading. About Burmese diplomat U Thant's tenure as UN Secretary General. How he navigated major geopolitical troubles at a time when countries in Asia and Africa had just gained independence from colonial rule and sought to shape global affairs. An essence of Third World internationalism

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The Empty City @davidallengreen.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Yes, there are technical, formal legal reasons why terrorism law is applied to protesters carrying placards, but not to political activists slashing boats. But stepping back, there is something wrong with a legal regime which criminalises one more than the other. A triumph of form over function.

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KosmicKris @kosmickris.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

This is something that is often forgotten. I have taught solicitor apprentices and it is a really tough road they take. They need a lot of support to get them through and help if they don't.

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Thomas Cheney @thomascheney.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

I mean sure Britain did 'fight to end slavery' (kinda... Lauren Bentons got some good correctives on how that was a tool of empire making...) but we also fought a lot of wars in defence of the slave trade such as the won that got us Gibraltar, the Rock and the right to sell slaves to New Spain

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John C @badsocialism.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

The idea that mongrel=bad is obviously downstream of dog breeding connotation but like, purebred dogs are also the ones with brain bleeds and tongues too big for their mouths and high cancer rates so

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Thomas Cheney @thomascheney.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

I mean it will be a real paper and maybe even a book but the 'ethics of terraforming or 'dead worlds' aren't failures'

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Anna Cusack @annacusack.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Just a PSA: the RNLI website has some great Christmas items up... cards, decorations, gifts, etc. 100% of the profits from these items go towards supporting RNLI lifeboat crews and their search and rescue services.

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Thomas Cheney @thomascheney.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

lifeboat crews are volunteers, they give up their time to save people, they are the best of us, I really do not understand why Labour are choosing to side with the vile thugs attacking them

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Nick Davies @njdavies.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Great to hear the PM say “We are going to be much prouder in standing up for our values and the rule of law” re foreign information warfare. I wonder if he or the Home Secretary might consider doing the same when it comes to masked vigilantes shutting down infrastructure and harassing the RNLI

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"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux @bretdevereaux.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

But I cannot stress enough: we have spent decades de-prioritizing and defunding the humanities broadly in secondary and post-secondary education and then we're all surprised-Pikachu-face when we are suffering from systematic leadership failures in exactly those skills and knowledge domains.

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Thomas Cheney @thomascheney.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

i mean when i started writing my book arguing the US is a rapacious resource empire I thought it might be going a bit too far, now im worried im being soft...

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ESA Space Science @science.esa.int · 21/09/2026

Juice is returning to Earth, again 🛰️ On 28 September the spacecraft will fly by Earth, coming within 8640 km of our planet. The closest approach will be over the Indian Ocean at 13:45 CEST (11:45 UTC) 👉 www.esa.int/Science_Expl... 🔭 🧪 #planetsci

Illustration showing Earth seen from space, the Juice spacecraft and its trajectory during the flyby.

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Patrick Osgood @patrickosgood.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Wife and I are about to cough up her second round of visa and NHS surcharges. £4,000. She works full time, paying into the system twice over. The application process is, once again, extraordinarily demanding and overtly hostile. This must be an extremely stressful burden on lower income households

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Anna Saunders @annasaunders.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Not to be missed for London colleagues: Professor Anne Orford (Melbourne Law School) is giving this year's London Review of International Law Lecture on 'Climate Change and the Future of the State'. Abstract below. 6.30pm, Thursday 1 October at LSE.

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Margot Finn @eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

'The records have been digitised and indexed by the genealogy company Ancestry, which has partnered with the Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery at University College London.' Leaps and bounds forward in our understanding of the histories of the British enslaved. #Skystorians

theguardian.com

Nearly 4m records of enslaved people in 20 former British colonies now searchable online

Exclusive: Collection’s 300,000 pages record lives of enslaved people in countries including the Bahamas, Barbados, Jamaica, Mauritius, South Africa and Trinidad

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Thomas Cheney @thomascheney.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Maybe rather than hoping government notices that UKHE is in crisis we should just be blaming government, blame them for domestic price caps (tuition fees), export restrictions (student visas), and government service contracts that only cover 85% of costs (FEC)...

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Rachel Coldicutt @rachelcoldicutt.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Also, seriously, the UK can't be an honest broker because we don't really have a strategy apart from "let's be nice to the hyperscalers so we get their cash, and let's pretend sovereign capability can be achieved with some start up investment" - we have vested interests all over the shop

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