Has anyone written anything good about the return of 'affordability' as a political concern from a cultural perspective? its affective contours, what residual narratives it's tapping into?

The man who accelerated his car into a crowd of people in Liverpool admits simply to having “lost his temper.” The most recent example of what the Zetkin Collective called the “great driving right show” - the political, social and environmental debasement of the car. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

actual bluesky challenge: post your favorite work of art from fifty years before you were born.

Amongst many others in the 'Future of Cultural Analysis' collection! Which is open access and available here: library.oapen.org/bitstream/ha...

Quote: 'Despite the meticulous and inspirational methodological premises that surround social relevance, the notion itself is often not comprehensively unpacked and it appears as a rather broad concept that implies some form of contemporaneity, connectivity, and functionality. In its varying connotations, it seems to suggest a preexisting social field to which analysis is pertinent and applicable, and in which what is relevant can be known in advance. To be “relevant to” implies a prior knowability of the tenets and needs of a context according to which the (ir)relevance of knowledge/analysis can be measured. Perhaps this is also what makes social relevance, beyond cultural analysis, a useful term for the administrative bodies to talk about how knowledge/research/departments contribute to the (cultural and economic) vibrancy and prestige of the institutions. In this sense, relevance comes rather closer to other beloved notions of the neoliberal university such as efficiency and impact.'

Preparing for the 'Cultural Analysis in the World' symposium in Amsterdam next week and have really enjoyed reading Aylin Kuryel's excellent essay on the field's vexed relationship with 'social relevance'.

This is terrible news

Say no to bullying of NHS staff Treatment of striking NHS staff This helps to explain the treatment of NHS workers on strike in Gloucestershire in recent months.  A small but mighty group of workers have been on strike since...

Ok I know a lot of yous were surprised you hadn’t heard of the longest strike in NHS history happening in Gloucester, now here’s your chance to make a difference - a local petition like this is really important, please sign

www.megaphone.org.uk/petitions/sa...

Also travelling to Aarhus for the @dkmarxsoc.bsky.social conference on Abolition and pleasantly surprised to report no delays from the deutsche bahn (!) so far?

Look forward to talking crisis, debt and social reproduction tomorrow morning provided I haven't just jinxed my travel 🛤️

In food history, we notice how super-refined foods--gelatin, vienna sausage, white bread--lose class and become horrifying once they become industrialized. Suddenly, fingermarks in bread dough demonstrate skill, not clumsiness.

Post-chatGPT, I'm feeling this about writing. Smoothness feels gross.

yes, my (French) mum had a copy of it. I feel like it did the rounds in countless magazine/paper headlines in the UK for years after - and i remember a debunking of it from a french author profiled in the Guardian that I found extremely refreshing

Forwards! To the Lime-bike critical mass singularity In defence of the most annoying cyclists in London

'In short, Accidental Lime-Bike Critical Mass (ALBCM) is making our streets safer in general. Bad cyclist behaviour is conditioning bad driver behaviour, for the better.'

danhancox.substack.com/p/onwards-to...

Love this!

Your Party democracy toolkit A living toolkit, resource bank, and directory to help you organise Your Party

there's a crowdsourced directory of branches on yourparty.tools

Are there any meetings like this or groups getting together across (N) London?

I'm not, but I signed up to the mailing list!

I can't make it but would love to come to the next one!

if you want something feel-good!

🚨COMRADES!🚨

It's finally time to register for the 10th Danish conference for marxist studies on oct.10th-11th through link below!
This year the theme is on "Abolition" and we are so 🎉HYPED🎉 for this year's line-up which includes our great keynotes @genderhorizon.com and @brosef-stalin.bsky.social 🔥

No, with respect, the buck stops with him. He's the leader. Not McSweeney, not the comms guy. He sets the strategy, tone and values. He is responsible. Either Starmer and his whole crew are ousted and are replaced by something very different or its Vichy Labour from here until doomsday.

NICA recommends | SCCS-ASCA Workshop - with a keynote by Ben Highmore: Cultural Analysis in the Wild - Netherlands Institute for Cultural Analysis (NICA) (It’s a truism that cultural studies is different wherever it's practiced. In this workshop, two institutions come together to compare notes on how the field

ASCA based PhD researchers! I would love to hear from you for the PhD panel part of this workshop between ASCA and the Sussex Centre for Cultural Studies 👇

Fascinating

The West is that place on earth where an army killing civilians on a massive scale creates less outrage than calling for the metaphorical death of that army. The actual is trumped by the imaginary.

Big Tech's data centres will take water from world's driest areas Amazon, Microsoft and Google's data centres use vast amounts of water in some of the world’s driest areas and they are building more.

New from me: I've spent the last 6 months compiling a map of data centres, whose locations are generally secret, operated by Amazon, Microsoft and Google.

Cross-referencing that map with areas of water scarcity shows many are in the world's driest areas.

www.source-material.org/amazon-micro...

😂

yeah I didn't get a lot out of this review and haven't read a lot of the other authors mentioned.. i'd say the book is more darkly absurd and less neat than the review suggests

have you read 'Venomous Lumpsucker'? it's a near future satire on precisely this topic and one of the funniest books I read this year

Bridget Phillipson arguing that universities must be not censor people, after fining a university for its anti discrimination policy for trans people

Phillipson also arguing that criticism of Israel should be shut down on campuses

Labour's idea of 'free speech' is freedom to make trans people feel unsafe on campus, but not the freedom to criticise Israel.

'It is not just that the only story we hear is the one told by gender critical academics. It is not just that those who claim to be silenced are given more opportunities to speak. Their speech is how other people are silenced.'

Sussex university fined £585,000 in transgender free speech row The university is fined by the higher education regulator for failing to uphold freedom of speech.

This is of very great concern. Labour has effectively declared war on trans academics and students. By defining transphobia as a “free speech” issue it is going to protect transphobes in higher education while preventing trans-inclusion. This is the opposite of “free speech”.

The OfS criticised the university's policy statement on Trans and Non-Binary equality, saying its requirement to "positively represent trans people" and an assertion that "transphobic propaganda [would] not be tolerated" could lead staff and students to "self-censor".

If you have to "self-censor" rather than spreading transphobic propaganda perhaps you should be self censoring.

Trans and non-binary individuals are not "fair game" for abuse, no matter how much some seem to think so right now. We all deserve to not face abuse.
#r4today
www.bbc.com/news/article...