Mark McCormack

YouTube video by Bruce Springsteen Bruce Springsteen - Streets Of Minneapolis (Official Audio)

I wrote this song on Saturday, recorded it yesterday and released it to you today in response to the state terror being visited on the city of Minneapolis. It’s dedicated to the people of Minneapolis, our innocent immigrant neighbors and in memory of Alex Pretti and Renee Good.

Stay free

Reflecting on the value of books for academics; planning an interdisciplinary PhD proposal with a colleague, and I knew the book on my shelf to go to. Not sure I've ever read it fully, and haven't gone to it in 10 years, but already I'm sure its provided a clear underlying framework for the project.

Honestly, it really is galling how frequently the ownership and leadership of the NYT does shit like this to the benefit of Trump, the GOP, and the far right

No Kings is projected on to a mountainside above the town’s lights

Davos, Switzerland, the World Economic Forum.

The Carney doctrine Open comment thread on the PM's Davos speech

Mark Carney's speech really is terrific: full text is here and very much worth your time.

UK drops target for international student recruitment Government to encourage education providers to open campuses overseas as it focuses on reducing migration

In any other context, requiring a high-productivity sector to offshore the production of its highest value-added exports would be seen as the economic illiteracy it so obviously is...

www.ft.com/content/a23c...

Reads: What is trans-exclusionary data activism? And the logo for the Gender + Sexuality Data Lab.

New research maps the campaign to erase trans people from UK data 🔢

This peer-reviewed article offers the first detailed account of how UK campaign groups have sought to define sex as strictly biological across the census, policing, healthcare and digital ID.

doi.org/10.1080/0958...

Writing is thinking

Outsourcing the entire task of writing to LLMs will deprive us of the essential creative task of interpreting our findings and generating a deeper theoretical understanding of the world.

Yes good point.
I think the 100 point grade system gives a false sense of detail.
But I was making the point more in the context of grade inflation framed as an individual university/academic issue, rather than the systemic flaw of market, rankings, etc.

I also leant into it and started giving people much lower grades when they did badly. TBF to Durham, I didn't get pushback on that.

I think it's one of the reasons why it has happened. Yes, there has been grade inflation; some reasons are bad, some reasons are valid. I agree there are perverse incentives re grades and its one of the problems of HE as a market.

Also; when I was at Durham, it was understood that it was *impossible* to score more than 78 on an assignment and 72 was *really good*. Work was done to use the fuller range of grades during my time. This was both a good thing and will see an increase in 1sts.

This is also the classic catch-22 for post-92s: if your students perform poorly, you are failing them; if your students perform well, you are gaming the system because that can't possibly happen.

Beyond Monogamy: What Sociology Reveals About How We Really Relate by @ryanscoatsphd.bsky.social.

www.bcu.ac.uk/research/blo...

International Fellowships 2026 The International Fellowships Programme enables researchers to work for two years at a UK institution with the aim of building a globally connected, mobile research and innovation workforce. Funding status Open for applications Career stage Early-career

Please help spread the word on this, especially to those who may be feeling cold winds towards their research.

We’ve opened the call for our International Fellowships, enabling early career researchers to work for two years at a UK research institution
www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/funding/sche...

It is really important to understand that the asylum hotel chaos of 2022-24 is a *failed experiment in closed borders* (in contrast to the liberal visa policy)

The hotel chaos comes from passing multiple laws that all claims will be refused & to stop processing claims

bsky.app/profile/pete...

Sociology - Volume 59, Number 6 Table of contents for Sociology, 59, 6

The new special issue of @bsaecf.bsky.social's Sociology is a good one: Sociology Under Attack. Including studies on India, Hungary and Brazil, as well as cross-cutting themes on neoliberalism, and its impact on environmental research and anti-racism.

journals.sagepub.com/toc/soca/59/6

This is a key point. I suspect it's because when it comes to sexuality / pornography / similar, the state is very happy to regulate individual behaviour but very wary of regulating businesses. I think this approach is wrong, but its historically been the case.

Good grief

Art Cure by Daisy Fancourt, professor of psychobiology and epidemiology at University College London, brings together numerous research projects confirming what we have always suspected - art is good for us. It helps us enjoy happier, healthier and longer lives. One study found that people who engaged regularly with the arts had a 31% lower risk of dying at any point during the follow-up period, even when confounding socioeconomic, demographic and health factors were taken into account. Studies also show that visiting museums and attending live music events can make people physiologically younger, and a monthly cultural activity almost halves our chances of depression. As Fancourt argues, if a drug boasted such benefits governments would be pouring billions into it. Instead, funding has been slashed across the culture sector and arts education has been devalued and eroded in the UK.

‘If a drug boasted such benefits [as the arts] governments would be pouring billions into it. Instead, funding has been slashed across the culture sector.’
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Hello Tim Cook I worked at Tumblr when you gave us 48 hours to get rid of all the consenting, adult boobs. Up all night at your whim, out of the blue. But you're still cool with Twitter and its CSAM and revenge porn and whatever the fuck this is? Why do you even HAVE guidelines?

Significant national self harm

Farage: "I believe in vaccinations when they're vaccinations. I don't think what happened with Covid were vaccinations. You have to keep having them every 6 months."

Conspiratorial nonsense.

Some vaccinations like Covid shots require multiple/seasonal doses because immunity fades & viruses change.

ICE agent allegedly shot & killed a woman driving through an immigration raid in Minneapolis this morning.

According to video of aftermath it appears the woman's wife & dog were in the car when she was shot in the head.
www.mprnews.org/story/2026/0...

The whistleblower, for his part, worked to amp up the pressure. He told me he had shared the document with other reporters, putting me into a competitive crunch. He asked when I thought I would publish. I asked him if he could point me to any current or former coworkers of his who could help me understand the document better. “Not really,” he said. By this point, alarm bells were starting to ring. I wondered if the employee badge the whistleblower had shared with me might have been AI-generated. While AI systems are notoriously unreliable at identifying their own outputs, Google Gemini can detect SynthID watermarks embedded in images that it produces. I uploaded the badge to Gemini and asked if Gemini had made it. “Most or all of this image was edited or generated with Google AI,” it said.

The author of a viral Reddit thread alleging fraud at a food delivery company tried to back up his claim by sending me AI-generated documents. Today I'm publishing those documents in the hopes that it helps other reporter see what we're up against in the age of AI www.platformer.news/fake-uber-ea...

I made a mistake with one bit, so it's less bad than I thought, but its less intuitive and yeah - you're not allowed to speak to an adviser....

Also; last year all the core stuff was completed for me, and this year I have to enter it all again myself?

Not being allowed to speak to a human adviser from HMRC really doesn't help with tax returns...

"When faced with such complaints [of porn addiction], clinicians are encouraged to address behaviors without conjuring addiction labels."

"Individuals reporting ‘addictive’ use of VSS could be better conceptualized by considering issues such as gender, sexual orientation, libido, desire for sensation, with internal and external conflicts influenced by religiosity and desire discrepancy." 3/3