iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Alex Hanna @alexhanna.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

@tante.cc: 'Those “proofs” are about narrative building. Which is why especially people with no b/g in math keep using them as definite proof of LLMs being “more than just stochastic language models” which is just factually untrue and the mark of deeply unserious people.' tante.cc/2026/09/07/t...

tante.cc

The function of LLM-based math "proofs"

There has been quite the uptick in “AI” labs’ claims of their LLMs “solving complex math problems”. I wondered why that is, especially given that LLMs are not exactly built for the kind of rigor that ...

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Ben Recht @beenwrekt.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

The METR people, who have gone around in public, spouting beyond-insane AGI religious beliefs, found exactly what you'd think they'd find. They anthropomorphised software that is built to emit English. 6/x

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Ben Recht @beenwrekt.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

The overreaction to this Hugging Face thing is driving me nuts. Come flay me for being wrong but... 1/x

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ESRC Digital Good Network @digitalgoodnet.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

What does a good digital society look like? is a two-day conference taking place in Sheffield, UK, on 10th and 11th June 2027. We invite proposals for papers, panels and workshops from researchers from any discipline and stakeholders from any sector. digitalgood.net/call-for-pap...

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Edward Goldstick @ejgoldstick.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

"Local plumbers two steps ahead of every university administrator in america 👏" per @nathankhensley.bsky.social... 💯 h/t @kevincmurphy.com

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Warren Pearce @warrenpearce.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

Yes quite. Which led to cash-strapped local authorities attempting (and usually failing) to turn a profit through various projects which should not have had a profit motive (e.g. carbon reduction, local energy)

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Margarita Nafpaktitis @nafpaktitism.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

The thing that takes this to Onion-level farce is that he is *Ed in Chief* of *Science* & the article he is referring to is *“AI in Scientific Publishing: Slower, Worse, and More Expensive.”*

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Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

I am losing my mind. Chat isn’t a search engine. this isn’t normal. framing it as normative is slimy. Tone, vibes all bad.

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Des Fitzgerald @desfitzgerald.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

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Sophie E. Hill @sophieehill.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

hi @countbinface.bsky.social please accept this unconditional gift

Poster with image of Count Binface on yellow background (arms folded, swagged out in his signature style: futuristic armour, shiny cape, giant bin head) with text:

CLACTON
Make your vote
COUNT

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Adam Golberg @cash4questions.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

Some thoughts on the planned closure of @resprofnews.bsky.social . And what the lack of media coverage on the planned closure of Research Professional News tells us about what life might look like without a functioning trade media.

socialscienceresearchfunding.co.uk

Research Professional News has become the story…. | Cash for Questions: Research funding, policy and development

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Rob Sheridan @rob-sheridan.com · 30/06/2026

The thing about social media age restrictions is that it treats today’s internet as an inevitability we all just have to deal with. The internet (and the WORLD) wasn’t like this until like four dudes were allowed to own & monetize as much tech real estate as they wanted. Fix THAT problem.

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Des Fitzgerald @desfitzgerald.bsky.social · 24/06/2026

[It's obviously understandable, but still super important not to respond to announcements of redundancies with shock that this is happening now at some place we imagine to be somehow prestigious, good etc, which ofc just reproduces the logic of the redundancy process while quibbling about details].

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Sophie E. Hill @sophieehill.bsky.social · 24/06/2026

the bar is in hell

Djed Spence blanking Thomas Partey during pre-match handshakes

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Des Fitzgerald @desfitzgerald.bsky.social · 23/06/2026

All solidarity to my brilliant former colleagues at Exeter. The careful, deliberate dismantling of british higher education by its nominal 'leaders' - focused especially on the arts & humanities - is going to be rememberd as one of the major scandals of this generally awful/scandalous age.

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Sophie E. Hill @sophieehill.bsky.social · 16/06/2026

📢 Academics & journal editors: I'm working on a story about donors using financial intermediaries to fund studies "anonymously". - Is this common in your field? - Does your uni have rules to prevent this? - Would your journal accept a declaration of an "anonymous donation"? 📱sehill.11 on Signal

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Rosaleen Duffy @rosaleenduffy.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

🐕‍🦺🐴🐦‍⬛🐄 Our new Multispecies Mutualisms project website is now live. The amazing design work is by Sheffield artist Lisa O’Hara. Some exciting announcements to come about our new post docs - keep a 👀 out 👇 multispeciesmutualisms.org

Pink background, black silhouettes of animals and the letters MM . Text says ‘a transformative reimagining of Multispecies mutualisms’

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Jack Stilgoe @jackstilgoe.bsky.social · 02/06/2026

As the chair of the oversight committee for this public dialogue exercise, I can state that the participants certainly did not say this @thetimes.com @rhysblakely.bsky.social

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Times Higher Education (THE) @timeshighered.bsky.social · 03/06/2026

With hundreds of jobs on the line and dozens of courses at risk, Nottingham staff living through one of the biggest university restructuring projects of recent years fear they are shouldering the blame for wider failures. Juliette Rowsell reports ow.ly/OrVG50Z6KJ1

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Felicity Callard @felicitycallard.bsky.social · 29/05/2026

Dr Antonis Vradis, Reader in Geography at the University of St Andrews and Hasnain Jaffer, VP for health at King’s College London Student Union were abducted and subjected to detention by Israel

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Warren Pearce @warrenpearce.bsky.social · 01/05/2026

Do you know of a ~5-10 minute video around 'trust in science' from a #STS perspective? Is for a *non-specialist* audience. I'm coming up empty so far. Any suggestions gratefully received!

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Warren Pearce @warrenpearce.bsky.social · 18/04/2026

I’m on the incredible Swingdash Radio today 5-7pm, broadcasting from the heart of Nottingham with Sounds Critical. Playing disco, house and techno. 🪩 Listen here www.swingdash.live/schedule/not...

A pile of coloured record sleeves on a brown carpet

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Digital Humanities Potsdam @dhpotsdam.bsky.social · 23/03/2026

[NEW DATE] 🍃 The next speaker in the #Code&Culture lecture series (this semester with a focus on #DigitalEnvironmentalHumanities) is @warrenpearce.bsky.social, delivering a talk on "Network, Infrastructure and Vernacular in the Making of Environmental Visuals". Register here: plu.sh/codeculture

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Felicity Callard @felicitycallard.bsky.social · 19/03/2026

They’ve brought to visibility a 6th unrecognised COVID death for every 5 that were by training an algorithm to recognise hospital COVID deaths & then finding similar deaths in other settings—at home; amidst poorer ppl; racialised ppl. I’m wondering if this study cd be described as a work of mourning

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Warren Pearce @warrenpearce.bsky.social · 12/03/2026

Ethics, Evidence and Policy Network, Wednesday 25 March, 2-3pm. Martyn Pickersgill talking "Novelty, Normativity, and the Neuro" and EthUcate on responsible science and ethics communication #STS #scicomm This promises to be very good. Sign up here: events.teams.microsoft.com/event/db0530...

Ethics, Evidence, and Policy Network meeting

Dear all,

Welcome to the quarterly meeting of the Ethics, Evidence, and Policy Network!

We are pleased to welcome sociologist Martyn Pickersgill who will discuss Novelty, Normativity, and the Neuro. In this talk, sociologist Martyn Pickersgill will discuss some of his work over the last two decades on the social circulation of neuroscience and neurotechnology. He will argue that expertise far beyond neuro-research is often necessary for its societal impacts, and reflect on some of the ethical implications of claims to novelty and significance in relation to brain technology.

We will also welcome colleagues from EthUcate. EthUcateis a growing initiative aimed at educating diverse stakeholders about responsible science and ethics communication. By contributing to responsible research and innovation, enhancing public trust and fostering informed policy decisions, EthUcate seeks to empower individuals and organizations to engage thoughtfully with scientific information. Katherine Bassil will introduce the work they do and key challenges in ethics communication.

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Warren Pearce @warrenpearce.bsky.social · 10/03/2026

Beyond The Frame: Network, Infrastructure and Vernacular in the Making of Environmental Visuals. Very excited to give @unipotsdam.bsky.social Code & Culture lecture next Mon 16/3 Arguing that online visuals cannot be understood in isolation from platform effects www.uni-potsdam.de/de/digital-h...

Beyond The Frame: Network, Infrastructure and Vernacular in the Making of Environmental Visuals

Wer: Warren Pearce (Universität Sheffield)

Wann: 16. März 2026, 17:00 CET
Abstract

Digital platforms such as social media and search engines have grown to become the world’s most important gatekeepers of visual culture over the last two decades. These platforms are what Noortje Marres describes as socio-technical formations, in which social processes and media technologies come together to visually configure issues. Here, I argue that these formations need to be the focus of methodologies for research into environmental visuals, analysing both visual content within the frame and the platform effects which shape the production and circulation of images. This approach is needed to better understand how certain images gain currency and improve public understanding of the impacts of digital platforms on public debates. Drawing on STS and digital media studies, I introduce knowledge infrastructures and visual vernaculars as conceptual resources for researching digital images, and visual network analysis as a flexible method for exploring these concepts. I then present our team’s recent empirical studies into environmental images on Instagram and Google Images, demonstrating diverse visual configurations across different platforms. The results highlight the importance of accounting for the role of media technologies in environmental images. In conclusion, I reflect on the theoretical and methodological implications of this research for the idea of Environments in and as Networks.

Network visualisation showing relationship between different visual genres of Instagram environmental visuals. A key finding is that almost all the most engaged-with visuals include both image and text, an example of what we call modal convergence. Source: Yao, Y., & Pearce, W. (2025). The Visual Vernacular of Climate Change on Instagram: How Modal Convergence Between Image and Text Is Changing the Representation of Climate Solutions. International Journal of Communication, 19(0).

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Big Data & Society @bigdatasoc.bsky.social · 07/03/2026

New in Big Data & Society 🗞️ Warren Pearce et al., examine how Google transformed knowledge infrastructure through computer vision, tracing a shift from ranking by authority to ranking by similarity in Google Images. 🔗 doi.org/10.1177/2053...

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Eva Haifa Giraud @evahaifa.bsky.social · 06/03/2026

A rare thing: *four* three-year hums/soc-sci posts in animal studies, on the Multispecies Mutualisms project at UoSheffield - with @rosaleenduffy.bsky.social, me, Robert McKay and Alasdair Cochrane; see here for a video explainer: digitalmedia.sheffield.ac.uk/media/Multis...

digitalmedia.sheffield.ac.uk

Multispecies Mutualisms - Join Our Research Team!

We’re hiring 4 Postdoctoral Research Associates (PDRAs) In this video, members of the team share insights into four exciting PDRA opportunities currently available. If you are ready to take the next s...

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Inga Ulnicane @ingaulnicane.bsky.social · 06/03/2026

Happening today - my talk on government, power and AI policy at 5pm Cambridge Judge Business School, Lecture Theatre 3. All welllcome!

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Brian Finucane @bcfinucane.bsky.social · 02/03/2026

"Spain’s defense minister, Margarita Robles, said on Monday that while there was an agreement with the United States on the use of the bases, Spain believed it only extended to use within the framework of international law." Spain views US war on Iran as illegal. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/02/w...

nytimes.com

Spain Denies U.S. Military Use of Its Bases for Iran Attack

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Aleksandra Vaca @transiticsnews.com · 23/02/2026

Under a new policy released Thursday, the Trump Administration will test conversion therapy on trans people in prisons. It explicitly states that it aims to help trans people “recover,” all the while forcibly detransitioning them both medically and socially. transitics.substack.com/p/the-trump-...

transitics.substack.com

The Trump Administration is Testing Conversion Therapy By Medically Experimenting on Trans People in Prisons

The Bureau of Prisons is subjecting trans people to conversion therapy and denying them care with the goal of helping them "recover." It's trying to prove dangerous conversion practices can work.

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MatthewHanchard @matthewhanchard.bsky.social · 27/02/2026

Yaye! We got our paper in @bigdatasoc.bsky.social from uvahumanities.bsky.social #DigitalMethods Initiative Summer School 2022. Gratitude owed to sheffielduni.bsky.social and the @wellcometrust.bsky.social for kindly co-funding my attendance! journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/... #InternetStudies

journals.sagepub.com

Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.

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Warren Pearce @warrenpearce.bsky.social · 27/02/2026

How Google Images, powered by computer vision AI, has transformed the way Google ranks its results, from ranking-by-authority to ranking-by-similarity. New @bigdatasoc.bsky.social by me, @maudbo.bsky.social @lauvra26.bsky.social + amazing team 😍 doi.org/10.1177/20539517261426452 #STS

Comparison of top 10 Google Images results for climate change in Australia, Brazil, China, Mexico, Netherlands and Nigeria. The images all look very similar to each other, with images of the Earth in stylised, Photoshopped environments

Comparison of top climate change results on Google Images for six countries, colour coded to show dominant image types: earth in hand, landscape, tree, triptych and cartoon Earth

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Warren Pearce @warrenpearce.bsky.social · 21/02/2026

Join me trying to make sense of this lot on the 1st Sounds Critical radio show on Swingdash, 5-7pm today. Meeting the moment by selecting bangers www.swingdash.live/schedule/not...

Many coloured record sleeves strewn in a wooden table

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Ken Wissoker @kwissoker.bsky.social · 13/02/2026

Joan Scott on why the attack on gender studies by powerful patriarchal men is not a coincidence, but an attempt to silence critique and analysis of their abusive behavior. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

theguardian.com

Gender studies courses are shutting down across the US. The Epstein files reveal why | Joan Wallach Scott

Texas A&M University is the latest school to end women’s and gender studies programs and teaching race. We know why

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Felicity Callard @felicitycallard.bsky.social · 03/02/2026

U Glasgow has covered Jay Todd's @jaytoddgla.bsky.social & my critical paper on the 'Sullivan Review' rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... Many social scientists whom Jay & I talk to are (still) unaware of the Sullivan Review and its potential implications. Our paper aims to change this

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Sean Wallis @seanawallis.bsky.social · 15/01/2026

News coming through that @sheffielducu.bsky.social members have rejected their employer's blackmail threats. We need to urgently rush support to the branch! Invite speakers Raise (big) donations Sign petitions Send solidarity messages 👇

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Warren Pearce @warrenpearce.bsky.social · 14/01/2026

Excellent letter which highlights one of the many problems with Nurse and RS's stance that science exists in an asocial bubble.

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Prof Rachel Oliver @profrachelgan.bsky.social · 12/01/2026

Following coverage over the weekend of Sir Paul Nurse's comments that suggested that the only reason that a Fellow should be expelled from @royalsociety.org is scientific misconduct, I have written to him to explain the risks such an attitude poses of increasing sexual harassment in STEM.

Dear Sir Paul,

Re: Royal Society Code of Conduct

I am sure that many scientists have written to you about the specific question of Elon Musk’s Fellowship and whether, under the Royal Society’s Code of Conduct, his retaining that Fellowship is appropriate. I will not rehash these issues. Instead, as a female scientist with extensive experience of activities aiming to increase equality, diversity and inclusion in the engineering and physical sciences sector, I am writing to you (in a personal capacity) to ask you to reconsider the statements you have recently made in this context to the UK press about the Royal Society’s Code of Conduct and how it is applied.

A 2018 report from the joint National Academies of the United States of America, concluded that “sexual harassment is common in academic science, engineering, and medicine” and that “greater than 50 percent of women faculty and staff and 20–50 percent of women students encounter or experience sexually harassing conduct in academia”. This report described codes of conduct that make clear that sexual harassment is unethical and will not be tolerated as a “powerful incentive for change”. The authors also noted that sexual harassment can have significant and damaging effects on the integrity of research. In my own praxis, I have found that clear and consistently-implemented codes of conduct that address these issues make female scientists and engineers safer, and allow them to focus more effectively on their research. For codes of conduct to have such a positive effect, it is vital that sanctions for actions which transgress the code are meaningful and substantial.

I was hence aghast to realise that in an interview with the Financial Times published on 9/1/26, you appear to have suggested that the Royal Society “should only expel fellows if their science proved “faulty or fraudulent or highly defective””. Moreover, in a further interview with the Guardian on 11/1/26 you suggested that the code “may need to be looked at again”, with the implication that your aim would be to remove the option of sanctions on Fellows for reasons not strictly related to faults or defects in their research.

I suggest that changing the Royal Society’s code of conduct so that the likelihood of serious sanctions for sexual harassment is reduced, would directly endanger women who interact with the Royal Society at events or otherwise, and would provide a licence to harass to the already powerful people on whom the Society bestows fellowship. The implications of your words - that under your leadership the only infringements of the code which are likely to receive the sanction of the Fellowship being removed are those related to research misconduct - already risk empowering harassers. You stated, in the Financial Times interview, that “there’s many bad people around, but they have made scientific advances”. Given this awareness of the possibility of bad actors in our scientific community, it is wholly irresponsible to suggest that the Royal Society would not act to sanction these people if they harass more vulnerable scientists.

I am hence writing to request that you retract any suggestion that the Society’s Code of Conduct should be changed so that the only reason a Fellow might be sanctioned by the removal of their Fellowship is “faulty or fraudulent or highly defective” research. This action is necessary to safeguard female scientists, a requirement placed on the Society by safeguarding legislation and UK statutory guidance.

Yours sincerely,

Professor Rachel A. Oliver.

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Adam Standring @adamstandring.bsky.social · 13/01/2026

Good work from @thierryaaron.bsky.social responding to this piece. One thing that is implicit in this though is the way in which natural scientific expertise is given broad scope to pontificate in areas (such as social science) where they lack the knowledge, theories and methods to explain.

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Thomas M. Meyer @thomasmmeyer.bsky.social · 07/01/2026

And more job opportunities: @univie.ac.at aims to fill 40 (!) doctoral positions in the social sciences, humanities and cultural studies careers.univie.ac.at/en/praedoc/p...

careers.univie.ac.at

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Anthony Moser @anthonymoser.com · 24/09/2025

i made a helpful reference

$top right: a fractured black rectangle where one half is labeled "autism is bad" and the other side is labeled "FACT CHECK: autistic people are productive members of society". top left: WRONG -negating their frame reinforces it -starts with what it isn't instead of what it is - your argument is shaped like their argument bottom right: large image of Kirby, a pink blob inhaling and the "autism is bad" fragment, labeled THEY'RE DOING EUGENICS bottom left: RIGHT - you eat their frame -starts with what's actually happening -contains and explains what they're doing -your argument is shaped like kirby$

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Melina Much @melinamuch.bsky.social · 17/12/2025

Is Joe Rogan really just a voice of the right? Our new @csmapnyu.org piece for @goodauth.bsky.social shows he’s just as much a space for the left and the center, too. A look inside today’s surprisingly complicated podcast information ecosystem. 🎙️ goodauthority.org/news/podcast...

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Mark Pendleton @markpendleton.bsky.social · 17/12/2025

As things wind down for the holidays, @sheffielducu.bsky.social members are facing a threat of 100% pay deductions from January, thanks to our Scrooge-like management. We’ve now set up a fundraiser to bolster our local solidarity fund. If you can spare some change, please do! gofund.me/ac2b3adcb

gofund.me

Donate to Support University of Sheffield striking staff!, organized by Mark Pendleton

I'm the branch treasurer for the University of Sheffield University and… Mark Pendleton needs your support for Support University of Sheffield striking staff!

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Mathieu Jacomy @jacomyma.bsky.social · 16/12/2025

Our case is the ambiguity of categories obtained by community detection algorithms in networks. We offer an implementation of our ambiguity visualization method in Gephi Lite, which you can try online right now! lite.gephi.org

Explanation of the ambiguity visualization principle: white nodes and edges are the most ambiguous ones. Colored edges are non-ambiguously within a cluster, while black edges are non-ambiguously across clusters.

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Hannah Lewis @hannahjlewis.bsky.social · 11/12/2025

Day 15 of strike action at the Uni of Sheffield. 495 jobs already cut. Now they tell us another £50m will be cut from staff budget in coming year despite bar charts of coffers which look like this and a VC on a salary of nearly £400k. #SheffieldUCU

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Southampton UCU @southamptonucu.bsky.social · 09/12/2025

✊ It was an honour to join friends at Southampton Solent #UCU Branch (not on BSky) this pm to lobby their university's Board of Governors. The Governors were meeting to decide if to 'fire and rehire' staff using a subsidiary company, to deny staff a decent pension. #SouthamptonSolent @ucu.org.uk

UCU members, at dusk, outside Southampton Solent University, holding banners reading 'UCU' and 'SAVE SOLENT'.

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Ian Sudbery @iansudbery.bsky.social · 01/12/2025

Check out this post about our current situation from a colleague at another university. @sheffielducu.bsky.social

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Ruha Benjamin @ruha9.bsky.social · 22/11/2025

I need everyone, esp anyone working in education or tech (but really everyone) to WATCH THIS CLIP of @drtanksley.bsky.social discussing the technologies infiltrating our schools & psyches and how she is addressing it with our young people. youtu.be/5mtcSL4S3HQ

youtu.be

Howard University AI Panel

YouTube video by Tiera Tanksley

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