Author | Lightnews

Reposted by Dom Weinberg

Iris van Rooij 💭 @irisvanrooij.bsky.social · 1d

‘Study after study shows that students want to develop these critical thinking skills, are not lazy, and large numbers of them would be in favor of banning ChatGPT and similar tools in universities’, says @olivia.science www.ru.nl/en/research/...

‘Opposing the inevitability of AI at universities is possible and necessary’ | Radboud University

Since the widespread release of ChatGPT in December of 2022, AI has taken over much of the world by storm – including academia. Most of this happened with very little pushback, despite a myriad of iss...

www.ru.nl

24 710 1.7K

Dom Weinberg @domweinberg.bsky.social · 3d

Some learning for youth services too here...
Although, it's also more interesting than that, as this paper excerpt (and the conclusion) reveals. By highlighting the limitations of current evaluation practices, there is hope for some de-medicalisation of public mental health discourse

Screenshot from the mentioned article

"Creative Bibliotherapy has potential as a truly ‘public health’ intervention, contributing to the conditions for a mentally healthy public life. That this is difficult to capture using evaluative methods which aggregate the effects on individual participants is an indicator more of the paucity of the causal models of public health evaluation than of the intervention itself."

Found at https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/10.1080/14461242.2025.2509941

Dom Weinberg @domweinberg.bsky.social · 4d

This bit also struck me:
"racism is not a natural condition of poverty but a political weapon that rich men use to constrain poor people’s political power."

Rebecca Solnit @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social · 4d

@tressiemcphd.bsky.social writes: " They know that “working class” has become a powerful political totem of its own — a discursive sleight of hand used to separate out white voters’ concerns as more legitimate, more materially grounded, more important than other voters’ concerns."

Opinion | A Nazi Tattoo Exposes Democrats’ Greatest Weakness

www.nytimes.com

1

Reposted by Dom Weinberg

Eric Reinhart @eric-reinhart.com · 6d

I've a new essay out at The Nation on Trump's mass firings at the CDC earlier this month and what they mean––not just for public health, but for the entirety of US politics.
www.thenation.com/article/poli...

1 27 78

Reposted by Dom Weinberg

Parents For Future UK @parentsforfutureuk.bsky.social · 20d

Parents for Future are Finalist in the 2025 Big Syn International Film Festival– the world’s biggest sustainability film festival.

The short film combines humour and creative storytelling to reach people on a human level, and vitally broaden and built support for bold climate action.

2 4 6

Reposted by Dom Weinberg

BladeoftheSun @bladeofthes.bsky.social · 28d

Dr. Jane Goodall discusses who she'd send away from Earth on Elon Musk's spaceship.

*Spoiler* Elon Musk, Netanyahu and Donald Trump were her top 3 picks.

15 94 290

Reposted by Dom Weinberg

Matthias Eberl @eberlmat.bsky.social · Oct 2

And why call it 'golden ticket'?

Disgraceful language. These people have lost everything. Should they also lose their spouses and children?

A reminder that last year 4,671 family reunion visas were granted.

4,671.

Does anyone think this number is a major problem for the UK economy and society?

Zoe Gardner @zoejardiniere.bsky.social · Oct 2

People recognised as refugees fleeing persecution & granted the right to live in the UK to be denied the right to be joined safely by their spouse & children.

This Labour govt is a moral void, a stinking darkness, an empty hollow of cowardice & contempt. #r4today www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

Starmer to end asylum ‘golden ticket’ of resettlement and family reunion rights

People granted asylum will have to earn right to invite family in plan charities call ‘straight from populist playbook’

www.theguardian.com

10 86 210

Dom Weinberg @domweinberg.bsky.social · Sep 29

"If the public is losing, who’s winning?
We were told that selling off essential services would create a shareholder democracy where ordinary people would have a stake. Instead, we got oligarchy and the concentration of power."

Common Wealth @cmmonwealth.bsky.social · Sep 16

Welcome to Rip-Off Britain.

A country remade by privatisation.

Our latest project — Who Owns Britain? — explores how a radical experiment transformed our society and shapes your life.

🧵

2

Reposted by Dom Weinberg

Prof Christina Pagel @chrischirp.bsky.social · Sep 29

Just fuck off with this. How about start the conversation by highlighting how much immigrants contribute to the UK - not least by propping up the NHS and social care system!

Also - forced volunteering is not volunteering, it's unpaid labour.

250 1.4K 4.9K

Dom Weinberg @domweinberg.bsky.social · Sep 22

Can confirm that this weekend provided further evidence for blithe elite complacency. Perhaps I was expecting too much from an alumni dinner, but speeches were completely out of touch with what the times need. The Establishment is unable to understand (or care about) the seriousness of this moment.

Marie Le Conte @youngvulgarian.marieleconte.com · Sep 22

think that realistically I would have always been deeply, deeply worried about the rise of far-right ideas in public discourse but I truly never expected this level of blithe elite complacency, turns out I do feel worried but mostly I feel like I'm going insane, watching them do.......nothing at all

ᴅʀ. ʟɪɴᴇꜱ @lines.snail.skin · Sep 22

Myself I feel powerless to stop this fascist rise precisely because it feels like all our institutions are just rolling over to it.

2 26

Dom Weinberg @domweinberg.bsky.social · Sep 18

Such tedious bothsidesism here www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
The threat to American democracy (and likely elsewhere, given ripple effects on the rest of the world) comes from its fascist authoritarian right.
Shame the UK Govt/Labour Party/Establishment/BBC remain unable/unwilling to grasp this.

The US is at a dangerous crossroads after Charlie Kirk shooting

This moment has parallels with other periods of discord in US history, but it is more complicated than simply repeating them.

www.bbc.co.uk

1

Reposted by Dom Weinberg

Stop Trump Coalition @ukstoptrump.bsky.social · Sep 14

Yesterday, the largest far-right protest in UK history marched through London, led by racist Tommy Robinson.

Today, we say: They don’t speak for us — and they won’t have the last word.

This Wednesday we come together against Trump and for a better future. Do everything to be there.

87 1K 2K

Reposted by Dom Weinberg

Prof Christina Pagel @chrischirp.bsky.social · Sep 13

Esp given assassination of Kirk in US i find Musk's intervention here, calling for dissolution of parliament and a new govt, really scary .

Also UK govt bodies should get the fuck off X.

100 530 1.6K

Reposted by Dom Weinberg

Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · Sep 6

Finally! 🤩 Our position piece: Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia:
doi.org/10.5281/zeno...

We unpick the tech industry’s marketing, hype, & harm; and we argue for safeguarding higher education, critical
thinking, expertise, academic freedom, & scientific integrity.
1/n

Abstract: Under the banner of progress, products have been uncritically adopted or
even imposed on users — in past centuries with tobacco and combustion engines, and in
the 21st with social media. For these collective blunders, we now regret our involvement or
apathy as scientists, and society struggles to put the genie back in the bottle. Currently, we
are similarly entangled with artificial intelligence (AI) technology. For example, software updates are rolled out seamlessly and non-consensually, Microsoft Office is bundled with chatbots, and we, our students, and our employers have had no say, as it is not
considered a valid position to reject AI technologies in our teaching and research. This
is why in June 2025, we co-authored an Open Letter calling on our employers to reverse
and rethink their stance on uncritically adopting AI technologies. In this position piece,
we expound on why universities must take their role seriously toa) counter the technology
industry’s marketing, hype, and harm; and to b) safeguard higher education, critical
thinking, expertise, academic freedom, and scientific integrity. We include pointers to
relevant work to further inform our colleagues.

Figure 1. A cartoon set theoretic view on various terms (see Table 1) used when discussing the superset AI
(black outline, hatched background): LLMs are in orange; ANNs are in magenta; generative models are
in blue; and finally, chatbots are in green. Where these intersect, the colours reflect that, e.g. generative adversarial network (GAN) and Boltzmann machine (BM) models are in the purple subset because they are
both generative and ANNs. In the case of proprietary closed source models, e.g. OpenAI’s ChatGPT and
Apple’s Siri, we cannot verify their implementation and so academics can only make educated guesses (cf.
Dingemanse 2025). Undefined terms used above: BERT (Devlin et al. 2019); AlexNet (Krizhevsky et al.
2017); A.L.I.C.E. (Wallace 2009); ELIZA (Weizenbaum 1966); Jabberwacky (Twist 2003); linear discriminant analysis (LDA); quadratic discriminant analysis (QDA).

Table 1. Below some of the typical terminological disarray is untangled. Importantly, none of these terms
are orthogonal nor do they exclusively pick out the types of products we may wish to critique or proscribe.

Protecting the Ecosystem of Human Knowledge: Five Principles

100 1.7K 3.3K

Reposted by Dom Weinberg

Zoe Gardner @zoejardiniere.bsky.social · Sep 1

Another day, another utterly shameful cruelty against refugees announced.

Recognised refugees -

so people granted the long term right to stay in the UK because they have escaped real danger -

will face new barriers to reuniting with spouses & children safely in the UK #r4todat

53 430 1.3K

Reposted by Dom Weinberg

Rebecca Sear @rebeccasear.bsky.social · Aug 31

Race Isn’t Biological — So Why Do So Many Still Think It Is?

@kevinlala.bsky.social and @kztwyman.bsky.social blog about their recent paper in the journal Evolutionary Human Sciences

www.cambridge.org/core/blog/20...

Image from the blog showing 5 solutions to countering scientific racism

1. Introduce students to the complexities of developmental processes
2. Introduce students to the complexities of inheritance processes
3. Explain that variation between racialised groups in behavioural and cultural traits is not caused by genetic differences
4. Debunk scientific racism in school and university level science curricula
5. Acknowledge and contextualised the racist histories of academic fields

8 52 120

Reposted by Dom Weinberg

Kieran Connell @kieranconnell.bsky.social · Aug 20

Britain can’t go on like this. The normalisation of extreme racism via social media & the UK gov cosplaying the far right has brought us to a very dangerous place - perhaps the most dangerous since the 1950s

Musa Okwonga @okwonga.bsky.social · Aug 20

Family in fear after Tommy Robinson shares video of black man with white granddaughters.

Exclusive: Olajuwon Ayeni racially abused and falsely labelled a paedophile as far right weaponises clip of family in park

www.theguardian.com/world/2025/a...

Family in fear after Tommy Robinson shares video of black man with white granddaughters

Exclusive: Olajuwon Ayeni racially abused and falsely labelled a paedophile as far right weaponises clip of family in park

www.theguardian.com

7 54 160

Reposted by Dom Weinberg

Nick Covington @covingtonedu.bsky.social · Aug 19

Students really don't have any say or play any part in what, how, or why data is collected at school and what is done with it.

1 1 4

Dom Weinberg @domweinberg.bsky.social · Aug 14

Would like to think that one day we'll look back and wonder why so many people had so many opinions about such soulless places. ('Soulless places' is generous: soulless doesn't quite capture how actively harmful frequent flying is; and 'non-places' feels more appropriate.)

Stephen Bush @stephenkb.bsky.social · Aug 14

The UK mostly has really good airports by the standards of their peers. I have never been to a British airport that was by any reasonable international standard 'bad'.

Jack Tindale @jacktindale.bsky.social · Aug 14

Honestly, I'm full Alan Partridge on this, Gatwick. Door to door from Crystal Palace in less than an hour. Direct access from the train station. Speedy security and if you're lucky you can use the monorail!

Dom Weinberg @domweinberg.bsky.social · Aug 13

Amused by how academic papers always combine rigour with imprecision. (e.g. paragraphs of detail on the systematic literature search strategy seems rather diluted by, "we also asked some experts", with no concern for explaining how the experts were selected or how they identified relevant studies.

Reposted by Dom Weinberg

Zoe Gardner @zoejardiniere.bsky.social · Aug 9

I regret to inform you that Starmer’s been tweeting dehumanising videos of migrants again.

These videos have been shown to increase support for Reform, by increasing salience of migration.

He has to go.

140 780 2K

Dom Weinberg @domweinberg.bsky.social · Jul 29

My 4yo - who hears news on radio daily - keeps asking about war in UK (and other countries he's visited/knows people in). How/when to explain that our peaceful lives are partly contingent on the West's killing at home and abroad.

(NB. JH amended figures, but this post is more relevant to my point)

Jason Hickel @jasonhickel.bsky.social · Jul 23

New research published by The Lancet finds that economic sanctions imposed by the USA and EU are associated with more than 500,000 deaths per year since 1970, five times more than deaths by war.

www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

The health toll of economic sanctions

Financing for global health is the main topic of discussion in 2025, especially since the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development in Seville earlier this month. This issue contain...

www.thelancet.com

1

Reposted by Dom Weinberg

The Secret Barrister @barristersecret.bsky.social · Jul 21

That this is presented by the media as “policy” is why we are in this mess.

These are not serious people. These are monkey tennis ideas, as divorced from the reality of criminal justice as you might expect from a company fronted by multi-millionaire simpletons.

The Times & Sunday Times @thetimes.com · Jul 21

🔺Nigel Farage speech: persistent offenders would face life sentences

The Reform UK leader pledged more prison spaces, deportation of criminals and zero-tolerance policing as part of a six-week Lawless Britain campaign drive

Nigel Farage speech: persistent offenders face life sentences

Nigel Farage speech: persistent offenders would face life sentences

www.thetimes.com

65 410 1K

Reposted by Dom Weinberg

Jolyon Maugham KC @goodlawproject.org · Jul 20

What, you thought it would stop with the proscribing of Palestine Action? No, all visible opposition to Israel's genocide must end. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/j...

Two UK pro-Palestine organisations have bank accounts frozen

Groups say having access to funds cut off raises fears of wider attempt to silence voices speaking out about Gaza

www.theguardian.com

14 190 390

Dom Weinberg @domweinberg.bsky.social · Jul 21

Thinking about this article on US decline (re: science/health) over weekend, then woke to @jonnelledge.bsky.social comment on general UK decline (bsky.app/profile/jonn... ). Is the UK also FUBAR, past the point of no return ? Are we fighting losing battles for the next few years/decades?!

Elizabeth Jacobs, PhD @elizabethjacobs.bsky.social · Jul 11

Dr. Gonsalves has written a piece that is equal parts brilliant and tragic. Read it and use it as motivation to keep fighting the destruction of US science infrastructure. @gregggonsalves.bsky.social

America Is Sliding Into the Abyss

Our science and health infrastructure lies in tatters. Once-dead viruses are roaring back to life. Many people will die. In other words, we’ve reached the point of no return.

www.thenation.com

3