Jen Nelles

Open letter from Ian Chapman to research and innovation community UKRI Chief Executive outlines changes to UKRI investment approach, addressing concerns about research funding and the financial position of STFC.

Hot off the press - a letter from the Exec Chair of @ukri.org explaining his plans and in particular the financial position of STFC. It notes curiosity driven research is protected and will make up around half of UKRI spend over the coming period
www.ukri.org/news/open-le...

This post is for all of you in every time zone all around the world.

I keep hearing that Bluesky is still mostly North American. But I think there’s lots of you around the world that love cities, and want them to be better.

We want @urbantruth.bsky.social to be global.

I hope you’ll check us out.

I demand to know why I’m being force-fed AI that will allegedly save me time and aggravation BUT I *still* can’t attach a document to an email without closing it first. Can we please deal with some basic stuff that actually matters??!

(PS if AI can actually solve that I may be more on board)

Local Journalism Directory | Media and Democracy Project We created a directory to help you find local journalism and local news sources in your area worth reading and supporting.

Hi @jeffsharlet.bsky.social

We’ve created a searchable 50-state directory of 2,200+ *local* news outlets.

Subscribing to local supports newsrooms and is a pro-community and pro-democracy action.

www.mediaanddemocracyproject.org/journalism-d...

If you missed the news about Elsevier and Wiley (and doubtless the rest to follow) remaking themselves as AI companies with plans to profit from selling AI summaries of academic work back to the institutions that produced the original work:
bsky.app/profile/benp...

Coauthor update: we're now on Firefox! 🦊

Help make the academic publishing world a little more transparent by using our research lab's plugin. It's automatic: once you sign in, the software takes care of the rest. The app will even calculate your publishing stats for you!

coauthor.fly.dev

My theory of the moment: The extraordinary courage of ordinary people in places like Minneapolis is reawakening us to our social and economic ties to immigrants. It's making "love thy neighbor" cool again. That's the ultimate antidote to MAGA hate.

Thoughts on this:

newrepublic.com/article/2059...

New paper by me and Shera Abdul-Rahmen about the role of higher education and knowledge exchange/impact metrics in clusters and economic development. That's a mouthful, but it's a fun paper.

www.ifm.eng.cam.ac.uk/uploads/UCI/...

Are America’s Mayors Leading a Soft Secession? The fight against fascism in the US has had legitimate victories.

Kudos to the mayors who are leading soft secessions. Soft secession means “…states, cities, and municipalities quietly building the capacity to govern without federal cooperation, so that when the federal government turns hostile, they already have the infrastructure to say no.”

Sharing this again, friends in NYC! It's time to poke around and find your organizing home! We've all got work to do - the great news is that thousands of our neighbors are already doing awesome stuff, and all we have to do is check 'em out and pitch in!

Haha except most of those forms of sliding are fast as hell and could easily get you killed. So a bit more badass than most summer Olympics sports 😂

🙄😭

How AI assistance impacts the formation of coding skills Anthropic is an AI safety and research company that's working to build reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems.

‘We found that using AI assistance led to a statistically significant decrease in mastery. On a quiz that covered concepts they’d used just a few minutes before, participants in the AI group scored 17% lower than those who coded by hand’

Blog on Anthropic’s site
www.anthropic.com/research/AI-...

Democrats urge Trump to release funds for Gateway tunnel project linking New York and New Jersey Trump has bottled up the money since the fall in retaliation for the 43-day government shutdown.

www.politico.com/news/2026/01...

Work Will Stop on Critical Tunnel Project Unless Trump Restores Funding

This tunnel cannot catch a break! www.nytimes.com/2026/01/27/n...

What a Public Transit ‘Moonshot’ Would Cost the U.S. A new report outlines what it would cost to bring world-class transit to America’s urbanized areas.

www.governing.com/transportati...

A reminder to the news media: “conflicting accounts” is what you say BEFORE the incontrovertible video evidence appears. After that, your job is to ask why one side is lying, not to repeat the lie and pretend no one knows the truth.

It’s not quite as cold as MN right now, but NYC just turned out a massive protest in solidarity in plunging temps, heading up 6th ave.

Great!!! I’ll get registered and spread the word :)

If this was recorded I’d love to catch it. But a bit early from EST.

The question on NYC's congestion pricing has quickly moved from "is it working?" to "why isn't my city doing this?"

Speeches are only speeches unless and until cogent actions follow, but they can point a way for such actions, and inspire others.

This was a remarkable address. There is no joy here — an unstable President, with acolytes and handlers, is a real danger, but clarity about this is a necessity.

"Middle powers must act together, because if we're not at the table, we're on the menu."

This is a remarkable speech and I really do encourage people to listen to this.

Controversial innovation and spatial pockets of peripheral opportunity Abstract. Innovation is often paradoxical: it is both demanded and resisted. This article theorizes the process of controversial innovation (CI) as coevolv

#Innovation doesn’t just thrive in #urban centres. It also emerges on the margins. In Industrial & Corporate Change, @glueckler.bsky.social & @yaneck.bsky.social show how "institutional slack" and distance from the core create pockets where controversial #ideas can take root.
doi.org/10.1093/icc/...

While there is so much that is disturbing about this case study in the destruction of academic freedom, one high point is the refusal of the targeted professor to submit

Trick question. That is obviously the best. Second is Gimme Some Money though.

I cannot stress this enough: going and doing something like this is a far better use of your time than arguing online about a primary campaign in a state/district where you don't even live. I'll be doing it again myself soon!

I second this! Am in the middle of it now and loving it.

On the merits it's really hard to argue that there's a better city policy than congestion pricing