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Tommy Lynch

@tommylynch.bsky.social
233 followers 301 following 367 posts

Reader in Political Theology Vague yet rigorous Currently trying to watch every Hollywood end of the world film letterboxd.com/ApocaLynch

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Tommy Lynch @tommylynch.bsky.social · 12/10/2026
'Governments abandoned all efforts to make life better and devoted themselves to war.'
theguardian.com
Ministers preparing to slash heat pump subsidies to fund defence spending
Exclusive: Some of £2bn savings needed from energy budget expected to come from boiler upgrade scheme, sources say
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Tommy Lynch @tommylynch.bsky.social · 11/10/2026
This looks incredible.
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Tommy Lynch @tommylynch.bsky.social · 11/10/2026
It's a missed opportunity to reflect on the contradictory ways people are Christian, not all of which are nice. 'We're the real Christians and they are not' is not going to be an adequate response to what's happening in the UK.
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Tommy Lynch @tommylynch.bsky.social · 11/10/2026
'The church is and has been since its inception a multi-ethnic, multinational group, and may not rightly be equated with any nationality or ethnicity.' I guess lots of historical Christianity wasn't really Christian. It is basically just an ideal theory of Christianity.
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Tommy Lynch @tommylynch.bsky.social · 11/10/2026
This subhead only makes sense of being Christian means going to church which is basically annoying 21st work in the study of religion.
theguardian.com
Christian nationalism in Britain driven by people who seldom go to church, says report
Research challenges the notion that the growing visibility of crosses and other symbols reflects a revival of Christianity
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Tommy Lynch @tommylynch.bsky.social · 10/10/2026
Kevin Costner has made two post-apocalyptic movies: one wet (Waterworld) and one dusty (The Postman). In both movies, a husband or local community beg him to impregnate a woman. That's a very specific plot point to repeat.
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Tommy Lynch @tommylynch.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
'They brought back public executions.'
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Tommy Lynch @tommylynch.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
'A plague ravaged the earth.'
bbc.co.uk
US 'watching closely' after plague researcher dies in Russia
Donald Trump says the US was looking "very strongly" at the case of a lab technician who died at a research centre in Siberia.
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Tommy Lynch @tommylynch.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
I'll be comparing Cold War films about nuclear annihilation with an emerging genre of polycrisis cinema. We'll be looking at Five, Panic in Year Zero!, Crack in the World, The War Game, The End We Start From and, the pinnacle of polycrisis cinema, @asifkapadia.bsky.social's 2073.
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Tommy Lynch @tommylynch.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Next week I'm going to be giving a talk at Lund University on 'Cruel Hope at the End of the World: The Dilemmas of Polycrisis Cinema'. It's the first time I'll be laying out some of the key dimensions of my apocalyptic cinema book project.
ctr.lu.se
Event
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Tommy Lynch @tommylynch.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
I wonder how many post-apocalyptic films have a character named Jebediah.
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By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 01/10/2026
The reduction of politics to voting is part of the 50 year neoliberal project whose foremost goal is to make you think of yourself as an atomized individual and not as a member of a polity.
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Tommy Lynch @tommylynch.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
And the telling 'Christian & Catholic'
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Tommy Lynch @tommylynch.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
The British Security Project's website is fun. 'People standing together. As a family. As a community.' As AI?
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Tommy Lynch @tommylynch.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
It seemed like a normal, friendly dispute apart from the man dressed like he is prepared to do violence.
An extract from a Guardian piece about migrant protests in the English city of Crowborough: 'The two groups look at each other. There is no overt hostility. One protester is dressed in black paramilitary gear, a mask covering most of his face, the initials on his uniform identifying him as a member of a “community safety” group called the British Security Project. That aside, a casual passerby might interpret the scene as neighbours having a polite disagreement. Because the numbers are small, the music is blaring and the weather is mild, the atmosphere is relatively laid-back.'
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Tommy Lynch @tommylynch.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Whatever you make of Moonfall's artistic merits, it deserves to be celebrated on the basis of annoying Neil deGrasse Tyson alone.
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Tommy Lynch @tommylynch.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
'The ice caps began to melt, but no one listened. Wars began at the whim of madmen. People around the world began to turn on each other. Masked men roamed the streets doing violence, while the richest men in the world tried to build god.'
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Tommy Lynch @tommylynch.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
I've spent the last couple of years systematically working my way through a list of every mainstream post-apocalyptic film and it's pretty disconcerting how much the news today sounds like the voice overs that start those movies.
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Laura Shields @mediawhizz.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
lol
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Tommy Lynch @tommylynch.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Congratulations! Congratulations? Congratulations...
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Tommy Lynch @tommylynch.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
And it's worth remembering that there is no agreed definition of religion. Applying the label is always laden with assumptions and 'describing something as religion in order to disqualify it' isn't particularly helpful.
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Tommy Lynch @tommylynch.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
The whole 'rationalism is a religion' thing is missing the point. The problem isn't that some rationalist communities (and other communities in the world of tech) share traits with things we often classify as religion. It's the ethical and political ends towards which they work.
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Tommy Lynch @tommylynch.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
One of the things that really weighs on you as a visa holder is your vulnerability to deportation. You spend spend thousands of £s and years of effort getting citizenship to alleviate that pressure, only for that to change. And I have it VERY easy on this front compared to other people.
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Tommy Lynch @tommylynch.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Combined with the criminalisation of protest, this significantly limits the ability of dual nationals to participate in British politics.
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Tommy Lynch @tommylynch.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Is the Matrix Resurrections really about courtly love?
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Tommy Lynch @tommylynch.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Telling my kids that this is Ted,
A movie still from the 2001 film A.I. Artificial Intelligence showing David (Haley Joel Osment) carrying his animated stuffed bear Teddy and holding hands with Gigolo Joe (Jude Law).
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Jamie McKelvie @mckelvie.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Feel like it should be a bigger priority for the government that higher education is collapsing.
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Tommy Lynch @tommylynch.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
In the opening scene we hear the following monologue: 'The Penis is evil! The Penis shoots Seeds, and makes new Life to poison the Earth with a plague of men, as once it was. But the Gun shoots Death and purifies the Earth of the filth of Brutals. Go forth, and kill! Zardoz has spoken.'
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Tommy Lynch @tommylynch.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
This is the main character in Zardoz
A still from the film Zardoz in which a very hairy Sean Connery is wearing bandolier suspenders connected to a diaper like garment that cannot be fully described with reference to existing clothing. He has a braided pony tail, is holding a revolver and is wearing back leather thigh high boots.
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Tommy Lynch @tommylynch.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
I'm looking at Nick Roddick's in many ways useful essay on disaster films and he describes Zardoz as one in which 'the basic social, political and moral structures of the world depicted closely resemble those of the period in which the film was made.'
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Defector @defector.com · 11/09/2026
How do I avoid becoming a doomsday prepper? defector.com/how-do-i-avo...
defector.com
How Do I Avoid Becoming A Doomsday Prepper? | Defector
I knew I had gone too far when the question of whether we should buy a gun crossed my mind. This came at the apex of a weeklong anxiety spiral triggered by a feature the New York Times published…
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Tommy Lynch @tommylynch.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
I also love the line about him having to wait to eat lunch until after Melania and her friends have finished eating and he's - sincerely - told them to come again. I wonder if they cut a bit about him taking out the trash without being asked.
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Tommy Lynch @tommylynch.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
'He has the greatest work ethic of any human being but also really likes having three-day weekends.' I just don't understand what's being said.
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Tommy Lynch @tommylynch.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Maybe it's saying that he does a full week's worth of work by 1200 on Tuesday. If that's the case, a Trump hour is the equivalent of 1.1 hours of a mere mortal's time. He can do 72 hours of work in 65 hours, so he's wrapping up work Friday morning.
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Tommy Lynch @tommylynch.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
This is unhinged on so many levels, but the line I find most confusing is '[he'll] finish his 40-hour work week by Tuesday noon and then put in another 72 hours.' At 1200 on Tuesday, there's only been 36 hours in the week.
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Peter Whitewood @pwhitewood.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Why is the answer to employers wanting more work ready graduates always that universities should provide more workplace training, rather than employers providing more training in the workplace?
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Tommy Lynch @tommylynch.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Looking forward to giving the opening keynote at the @asleuki.bsky.social postgrad conference this morning. We're going to be discussing Mathias Thaler's eco-miserabilism, the possibility of hope and the challenges of apocalyptic questions.
cambridge.org
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Anna Kornbluh @annakornbluh.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
predictably excellent from hollingshead, every word "Against the forces of antiintellectual fascists+AI tech lords, self-flagellating academics+immediacy fetishists alike, we need to champion the difficulties+pleasures of humanities scholarship with our whole chests." defector.com/humanists-ha...
defector.com
Humanists Have Done Nothing Wrong | Defector
For many years, I’ve held a pet theory that cultural consumers can be grouped into two broad categories: Primary Source People and Secondary Source People. The former are the book lovers, cinephiles, ...
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Tommy Lynch @tommylynch.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
The latest issue of Apocalyptica is out: heiup.uni-heidelberg.de/journals/apo... Some really interesting challenges to those of us who find something useful in apocalypticism.
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Dominic Kelly @dominickelly.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
Got a new review up at @insidestory.bsky.social. insidestory.org.au/one-theory-t...
insidestory.org.au
One theory to explain it all • Dominic Kelly
How did Cultural Marxism become the right’s all-purpose pejorative?
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Tommy Lynch @tommylynch.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
It's wild that Schwarzenegger became governor the same year that Terminator 3 came out.
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Tommy Lynch @tommylynch.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
Watching the BBC's adaptation of Jensen's The Rapture. It's a little unnerving how they show this near future climate emergency with periodic wide shots of arid land and it just looks like outside.
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Tommy Lynch @tommylynch.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
Speaking of reading piles, this is very high on mine!
tandfonline.com
Unrealizing the Haitian Revolution: On Popular Insurgency and Destituent Power
This essay argues that a rigorous account of popular insurgency across the Haitian Revolution unsettles dominant scholarly presuppositions and coordinates, including the basic narrative elements th...
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Tommy Lynch @tommylynch.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
Hi!
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Tommy Lynch @tommylynch.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
Apparently he's also 'co-written' a book with James Patterson.
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Tommy Lynch @tommylynch.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
A discarded package of Mr Beast beef jerky (teriyaki flavour) on the arid earth of a mid-heat wave UK.
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Tommy Lynch @tommylynch.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
Thanks to @rajbirsinghjudge.bsky.social for insisting that I should read it at the last AAR.
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Tommy Lynch @tommylynch.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
Alan Klima's Ethnography #9 is a life-changingly good book. Fitting that a book about ghosts* haunts me now. *This is both generally true and wildly insufficient.
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Tommy Lynch @tommylynch.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
I guess the screaming guy hooked up to the giant machine at Duke UP has moved over to McSweeney's.
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Tommy Lynch @tommylynch.bsky.social · 20/07/2026
Also, they make poor Samuel L Jackson do a Pulp Fiction-esque reading of Psalm 40. I hope he was paid well for this truly bizarre movie.
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