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Kate Spowage

@katespowage.bsky.social

350 followers 440 following 34 posts

Critical interdisciplinary sociolinguist working on the politics of language, capitalism, and colonialism. Shamelessly plugging Language as Statecraft, which thinks about all those things. Lecturer at the University of Leeds. Own views, reposts ≠ agreement

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Kate Spowage @katespowage.bsky.social · Jun 10

So on Friday @languageinsociety.bsky.social‬ published my new article, Against the Game! It explores toponymic politics in one of the most successful videogame franchises of all time, asking how Civilization players engage with coloniality & placenames 🧵 #Sociolinguistics #PopCulture buff.ly/PiQVW50

Against the game: Sid Meier’s Civilization and vernacular theories of language | Language in Society | Cambridge Core

Against the game: Sid Meier’s Civilization and vernacular theories of language

buff.ly

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Zack Polanski @zackpolanski.bsky.social · 20h

The Spectator (owned by GBNews owner Paul Marshall - estimated wealth of £800 million) doesn’t like taxing wealth fairly.

I wonder how they got to this editorial decision?

Let’s tax wealth fairly, fund front line services & make hope normal again.

join.greenparty.org.uk

Polanski is talking nonsense about wealth taxes.

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George Monbiot @georgemonbiot.bsky.social · 1d

To be effective, protest must be noisy, obstructive, annoying. No longer is this allowed. Now the last attribute of effective dissent – persistence – is also to be banned. But the moment protest ceases to be effective is the moment democracy dies. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Here’s what you need to know about Starmer’s illiberal protest curbs: they would have killed the Labour party at birth | George Monbiot

The rights we enjoy in the UK, and the movement the PM purports to lead, were built on protest. Those rights are in dire peril, says Guardian columnist George Monbiot

www.theguardian.com

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George Gantsoudes @pedsortho.bsky.social · 1d

Please remember that the disgust people have over Christopher Columbus is not based on some modern, 21st century “woke” ideology, but rather on contemporaneous accounts of atrocities that make many modern genocides appear quaint in comparison.

Below, are the accounts of Bartlomé de las Casas.

But too many of the slaves died in captivity. And so Columbus, desperate to pay back dividends to those who had in-vested, had to make good his promise to fill the ships with gold. In the province of Cicao on Haiti, where he and his men imagined huge gold fields to exist, they ordered all persons fourteen years or older to collect a certain quantity of gold every three months. When they brought it, they were given copper tokens to hang around their necks. Indians found without a copper token had their hands cut off and bled to death.
The Indians had been given an impossible task. The only gold around was bits of dust garnered from the streams. So they fled, were hunted down with dogs, and were killed.

After each six or eight months' work in the mines, which was the time required of each crew to dig enough gold for melting, up to a third of the men died.
While the men were sent many miles away to the mines, the wives remained to work the soil, forced into the excruciating job of digging and making thousands of hills for cassava plants.
Thus husbands and wives were together only once every eight or ten months and when they met they were so exhausted and depressed on both sides... they ceased to pro-create. As for the newly born, they died early because their mothers, overworked and fam-ished, had no milk to nurse them, and for this reason, while I was in Cuba, 7000 children died in three months. Some mothers even drowned their babies from sheer desper-ation.... In this way, husbands died in the mines, wives died at work, and children died from lack of milk ... and in a short time this land which was so great, so powerful and fer-tile... was depopulated... My eyes have seen these acts so foreign to human nature, and now I tremble as I write....

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George Monbiot @georgemonbiot.bsky.social · 5d

Astonishing advance by the Greens, astonishing implosion of Labour. When will Starmer's government get the message that it is destroying its base with deeply unpopular, rightwing policies?

By chasing Reform, it legitimises the far right while delegitimising itself.

Zack Polanski @zackpolanski.bsky.social · 5d

Latest poll puts Greens just two points behind Labour. When I said we weren't here to be disappointed in Labour but to replace them, I meant it.

Join us and let's make hope normal again.

join.greenparty.org.uk

Poll from find out now showing greens on 15 and labour and Tories on 17. Reform on 32.

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Kate Spowage @katespowage.bsky.social · 4d

100%! And the hype can't be separated from the insane speculation on it (if I had zeroes riding on the success of AI I might tell people it was the future, regardless of its shortcomings).

Patrick Dunleavy @patrickdunleavy.bsky.social · 5d

Peter Atwater
“With each passing day, the AI space looks more and more like the USA’s home mortgage securitization at the peak of the 2007-8 housing bubble with its overlapping series of capital conveyor belts.”

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Mike Sowden @mikeachim.bsky.social · 8d

Damn. This is amazing. £325 per week, paid monthly, for 3 years - and the result was a profit for the Irish economy:
www.citizensinformation.ie/en/employmen...

Post from Threads user rodneyowl: "Ireland has declared the Basic Income for Artists scheme permanent. This will be officially announced in tomorrow’s budget. Details to follow. Congratulations to all who fought for it and the present and future artists of all sorts in Ireland. That includes me 👌We’re just comin to the end of a 3 year pilot scheme. It’s been a roaring success. For every €1 paid out to the 2000 participants, the government got €1.46 back. Can’t argue with that. Other countries are already taking note."

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Signal @signal.org · 11d

We are alarmed by reports that Germany is on the verge of a catastrophic about-face, reversing its longstanding and principled opposition to the EU’s Chat Control proposal which, if passed, could spell the end of the right to privacy in Europe. signal.org/blog/pdfs/ge...

signal.org

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Charlie Masquelier @charlesmasquelier.bsky.social · 9d

The Economist claims wealth taxes don't work mainly because the rich end up fleeing. I invite the magazine to read rigorous academic research like Cristobal Young's book or Sam Friedman et al.'s work on this issue instead of spilling out ideological nonsense share.google/pV3cOUrhnDMd...

Don’t tax wealth

Even the most sophisticated arguments in favour of doing so make no sense

share.google

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Kate Spowage @katespowage.bsky.social · 18d

The explosiveness of the attack, also, is noteworthy. There's no warning given here - it's drawn less from the repertoire of professional policing and more from the fear-inducing tactics of unstable, abusive people in interpersonal relationships. 'Snapping' is all about keeping people on edge.

Nicole Holliday @mixedlinguist.bsky.social · 19d

She’s crying and pleading and he violently assaults her and throws her to the ground in front of a crowd. Imagine what they guys are doing to people behind closed doors. This is the result of authoritarian overreach and pervasive dehumanization strategies.

Brad Lander @bradlander.bsky.social · 19d

I was back at 26 Federal Plaza today, where an ICE agent violently threw this bereft woman to the ground in front of her kids. She had not touched him. She did not pose any threat. She had to be taken to the hospital. (🎥: Elias Eliahu)

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George Monbiot @georgemonbiot.bsky.social · 18d

1. I've long contended that austerity doesn't save money. It merely transfers costs from one group (the very rich, who would otherwise pay more tax) to others. Last night was a powerful reminder of that. Before I go further, I should say I’m fine. Just a black eye, cuts & bruises, no serious harm. 🧵

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Julia Carrie Wong @joolia.bsky.social · 24d

this exists it is called thinking

Matthew McConaughey says he wants a private LLM, fed only with his books, notes, journals, and aspirations, so he can ask it questions and get answers based solely on that information, without any outside influence.

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Kate Spowage @katespowage.bsky.social · 25d

Naming it for Mitterrand serves a national story that is, at best, fuzzy on the details of colonial and postcolonial politics. But the library is full of decolonial and other counterhegemonic material. There's something about the limits of a toponymic critique there - important though it is.

Kate Spowage @katespowage.bsky.social · 25d

Also, amid some great leftist art on display, the library is named for Président Mitterrand, who allegedly intervened on the side of the Akazu in Rwanda in 1994, probably for geostrategic reasons but supposedly to protect Francophonie in East Africa (bit.ly/BFS76). Strange, multivalent space...

Beyond “Fashoda Syndrome”: The Rwandan Civil War and the Politics of La Francophonie in Africa

This article uses a case study to interrogate the politics of French in Africa. It examines French involvement in the Rwandan Civil War (1990–1994), and argues that by conceptualising institutions ...

bit.ly

Kate Spowage @katespowage.bsky.social · 25d

They also have this genuinely excellent rendering of intellectual labour and it's subsumption to capital (but maybe now I am overdetermining things) 🤙 #CognitiveCapitalism

Kate Spowage @katespowage.bsky.social · 25d

Working at the BNF in Paris, and came across this fabulous cartoon from L'Élongé (May 1968). Will show students on my new Language Policy & Politics module - De Gaulle, in a hospital bed, is schooled on French grammar by a nurse. A satire on conservativism and verbal hygiene perhaps? 🤔

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Zack Polanski @zackpolanski.bsky.social · Sep 8

People are exhausted.

Our high streets, public spaces, whole communities left unloved.

Blaming migrants won’t fix this.

Tackling inequality will. Tax the super-rich. Fund public services.

#DrawTheLine

www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

‘We have to tell an alternative story’: Green leader Polanski chats to Nigel Farage’s constituents

Visit to Clacton-on-Sea part of social media strategy that Zack Polanski feels can rebut Reform’s rhetoric

www.theguardian.com

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Leonardo Carella @leonardocarella.bsky.social · Aug 28

Bingo. Westminster majoritarianism makes democratic backsliding not only easier to carry out but also harder to warn against, as I argued here. bsky.app/profile/leon...

dag @davidallengreen.bsky.social · Aug 28

NEW

The UK constitution is even more vulnerable than the US constitution

In the face of an illiberal radical assault, what has happened politically in America could easily happen in the UK

By me, at @prospectmagazine.co.uk

www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/ideas/law/th...

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Kate Spowage @katespowage.bsky.social · Aug 29

If the fact that something is at the heart of government rhetoric means it should be a funding priority, future governments might well put anti-immigration, anti-lgbt, anti-green research on the agenda. Look at the history of racial science. Research priorities should be independent of government.

Kate Spowage @katespowage.bsky.social · Aug 29

Worrying in lots of ways, including the suggestion that the talking points of political bodies should set the agenda for funding bodies. Growth and prosperity are falsely equated - growth can also impoverish people. Prosperity is about redistribution - not a word British governments are keen on.

Kai Heron @kaiheron.bsky.social · Aug 28

The head of the UK's leading funder of social research has spoken against funding projects on post-growth and degrowth. Our research environment is wedded to an economic system that does harm daily to all human and non-human life. www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-r...

ESRC ‘bar against’ degrowth research branded ‘anti-scientific’ - Research Professional News

Research council leader signals shift against funding projects that question benefits of economic growth

www.researchprofessionalnews.com

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Kai Heron @kaiheron.bsky.social · Aug 28

"These fires are neither isolated nor "natural" phenomena. They are expressions of a system in combustion, accelerated by climate change induced by our socioeconomic order and aggravated by land-use policies subordinated to accumulation, profit and growth." www.aljazeera.com/opinions/202...

Mediterranean wildfires are no accident

This summer’s infernos expose how climate change, land neglect and disaster capitalism turn forests into fuel.

www.aljazeera.com

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Florian Foos @florianfoos.bsky.social · Aug 26

Looks like we are now live-broadcasting Reform events on mass deportation plans on major TV channels including the BBC. We've just published a study showing that this type of coverage moves public opinion in an extreme direction & normalises those ideas further: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

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Zack Polanski @zackpolanski.bsky.social · Aug 13

Labour won’t defend migration.

Too scared of Reform, too terrified to lead.

While they play dog whistle politics, inequality is the real problem.

Not small boats. But private jets.

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Kate Spowage @katespowage.bsky.social · Aug 15

Excellent ideology critique from Teen Vogue (yep), on a gender essentialist and fascist-adjacent trend that I am, mercifully, too offline to recognise. (Though I watched some videos after reading and yikes 😬)

Helen @helenm40.bsky.social · Aug 14

"Repackaging rigid gender roles as spiritual self-help."

TikTok's "Divine Femininity" Advice Won't Fix Your Life — But It Could Ruin It

It's gender essentialism and, at worst, a door to the alt-right pipeline.

www.teenvogue.com

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Patrick Ness @patricknessbooks.bsky.social · Aug 6

The employee asked the girl and her mother if they needed help shopping. That’s it. That’s all. The misinformation, the insinuations (because the facts are inconveniently benign) are EXACTLY what was done to lesbians in the 80s. This is the product of hate and fear, not reality.

JK Rowling tweeting got a boycott of M&S, stretching facts to the breaking point, and making the world a worse place for absolutely everyone.

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Pops @pops131.bsky.social · Aug 5

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