Bijan Parsia
@bparsia.bsky.social
800 followers 2.6K following 3.4K posts
I am a Prof of Comp Sci at Uni of Manchester, UK. UCU NEC disabled member rep (2023-24). UCUCommons. All posts are my own behalf alone. He/him/they.
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bparsia.bsky.social
I got someplace decent before running out of free messages.

Some parts seem clearly wrong still. But it's tricky for me too :)
bparsia.bsky.social
I mean...come on, man.
atrupar.com
Emmer: "Clearly, the Democrat Party of today is not your grandfather's Democrat Party. They care about one thing and one thing only -- appeasing the radical pro-terrorist wing of their party."
bparsia.bsky.social
Ok, trying Claude for some of my scientific coding. And...oy. I'm not saying my spec was fully correct but it does some weird stuff and defo didn't work. We'll see how much dorking I have to do.
bparsia.bsky.social
As a Labour Party member, I just voted against Bridget Phillipson for deputy leader not least on the fact she's been horrible for post-16 education. Not even trying a little bit. #UCU
Reposted by Bijan Parsia
katz.theracket.news
“Yeah but there was no final status negotiated under those”

There’s no final status agreement now either

“Yeah but those were temporary”

This one hasn’t even been in force for a week

“But this time Bibi promises it’s for real!”

[stares]
Reposted by Bijan Parsia
katz.theracket.news
There were at least two ceasefires under Biden! In which more than five times as many living Israeli hostages were released in exchange for 240 Palestinians! Has everyone forgotten this?
coffeeindiana.bsky.social
Also, ceasefires have happened under prior Presidents! The day he gets Palestine their own country he can be told he's the most special boy deserving of a shiny prize.
Reposted by Bijan Parsia
tryangregory.bsky.social
The new normal.
sheencr.bsky.social
Japan is reporting a flu epidemic much earlier than is usual. This early season could have implications for other countries via international travel so do get your flu vaccines (if you can) soon! 🧪 #HealthPolicy
Japan declares a flu epidemic — what this means for other nations
Researchers say that the number of infections for this time of year is unusual.
www.nature.com
Reposted by Bijan Parsia
sylviademars.me
Update: turns out basically nobody in England needs A level English after all, whether foreign or not.
ottoenglish.bsky.social
My thanks to @danielrooney.bsky.social who explains that B2 is equivalent to a good A level grade in a modern "foreign language" hence the A level reference.

But most people won't require that score it's just for people like doctors and church ministers
bparsia.bsky.social
I mean it might also be better than tossing them in the air.

My dudes, REF sucks. You aren’t going to automate your way into it not sucking.
Reposted by Bijan Parsia
garius.bsky.social
FINALLY a path to financial viability for OpenAI.
hampus.bsky.social
The real money is in blackmailing all the creeps who provided a photo ID to generate illegal porn
Reposted by Bijan Parsia
beijingpalmer.bsky.social
dead internet theory ever grows
culturecrave.co
Over half of all articles on the Internet are now written by AI

(via Axios)
Reposted by Bijan Parsia
johnpfaff.bsky.social
"Where is the NRA now" posts are, I think, useful frames for noting the key insight of Cowie's Freedom's Dominion:

There are two types of freedom:

1. FROM oppression.
2. TO oppress.

And (2) has always been what the NRA types embraced.

So Trump IS LIBERATORY for them.
wapplehouse.bsky.social
Imagine spending your whole life cos-playing and fantasizing about fighting the federal government sending troops in against its own citizens only to root for the government when the moment finally arrives
bparsia.bsky.social
I mean even in various non soft landings, it’s unlikely we could de-trump-fascitize the GOP in any systemic way. These people will have major roles in public life for our lifetimes.
bparsia.bsky.social
If Trump dies and everyone looks at Vance and says “Hell no” and looks at Miller and says “that guy? What?” That would be a miracle. And we’d have to pretend that those people weren’t as awful as they are.
bparsia.bsky.social
So too with a massive swathe of the Republican elite. Any soft landing will require treating some chunk of these folks as not the constitution haters they are.

That’s the best case scenario! I mean if two justices wake up and decide they don’t want to be the baddies…that’s good.
bparsia.bsky.social
I mean the rebel 6 SCOTUS justices are culpable for their behavior. I know we have complex psycho-epistemic mechanisms which can let us do bonkers things but these are highly trained lawyers with support teams. They can safely be attributed full knowledge of what they are doing.
bparsia.bsky.social
Assuming we can claw our way back from this administration (a dubious but not impossible proposition), it will be super annoying to have to pretend that some of these folks had good faith readings and didn’t just hate the US style of government.
grimely.bsky.social
"The executive has usurped the power of the purse to pay for a standing army" is something that the Founders very explicitly wanted to prevent from ever happening but, ah, well, nevertheless
Reposted by Bijan Parsia
michaelhobbes.bsky.social
Thinking fondly of all the pre-election fact-checks that said we couldn’t possibly know whether Republicans wanted to get rid of pre-existing condition protections.
• New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham said that Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance, "want to ... repeal the Affordable Care Act and elim nate protections for preexisting conditions." It's unclear what Trump would do, since he hasn't released a plan to replace the ACA. He said he would do so, if "we can come up With something that's better." Schumer, meanwhile, was wrong to
say, as he did on the Senate floor April 28, that the bill goes "back to the day when insurance companies could deny coverage to those with pre-existing conditions." perorats and Republicans have made
competing claims on whether the latest version of the GOP health care bill maintains protections for people with preexisting medical conditions. President Trump has said, "Pre-existing conditions are in the bill. And I mandate it." Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer has said that
"insurance companies could deny coverage to those with pre-existing conditions."
Neither of those comments quite gets it right. The latest version offers lesser protections than the Affordable Care Act, but it doesn't allow insurers to deny coverage to someone with a health Who's right? Like everything else in health care, it's complicated.
Reposted by Bijan Parsia
grimely.bsky.social
"The executive has usurped the power of the purse to pay for a standing army" is something that the Founders very explicitly wanted to prevent from ever happening but, ah, well, nevertheless
Reposted by Bijan Parsia
tiredgenerally.bsky.social
i cannot get over how quickly this is happening. the decline of the other two branches/ascent of the lawless executive is outpacing actual democratic decline, which is usually what precipitates executive consolidation. but in our case, the other two branches are collaborators
goldwagnathan.bsky.social
We are living through the most consequential shift in the constitutional government of the United States in over a hundred and fifty years and nobody seems to have even noticed yet.
mikeblack114.bsky.social
Congress no longer holds the power of the purse, the executive can just do whatever they want with federal monies
Reposted by Bijan Parsia
normative.bsky.social
There is no conceivable argument that these ships, even if we assume they were carrying narcotics, could not be dealt with in some other way. I think we can just drop the caveats and say: This is mass murder.
chrislhayes.bsky.social
Unless and until some kind of compelling legal and moral argument is presented as to why this is a legitimate use of deadly force, this is just…mass murder.
amaramarasingam.bsky.social
The military has now killed 27 people as if they were enemy soldiers in a war zone and not criminal suspects. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/14/u...
Reposted by Bijan Parsia
jimdickinson.bsky.social
Currently if you need to repeat modules, as long as you're attending all year you can get full time maintenance (and retain FT student status say for Council Tax). Under the LLE you'll only get maintenance proportional to the credits you're repeating. More flexibility my arse.