Sergio Graziosi

You wouldn't do what you do if you weren't more optimistic than me! 😔

Not on prime time, at least. And I think that's worse, and I don't think we disagree on it being worse.
I think you believe that such views would have been aired more, somehow, or equally - and I 100% don't see it happening.
5/5(end)

Example: BBC's coverage of Gaza has been terrible overall. But it did contain "genocide is bad, actually" views, and they got expressed in "prime time". Yeah, with caveats and expressed from the sidelines. But present.
Take the BBC out of the game, and I fear we'd have had no such views at all.
4/5

Which is probably what we disagree on. Having a dominant player that NEEDS to convince about it being impartial is, in my view a BIG/powerful restaint. It sure dull-ifies everything, but ensures that even if marginalised, "unwelcome" truths still get some air time.
3/5

My view is that there currently exists no detectable force able to counteract the power of money. So we'd get a media landscape with 2 types of outlets. "Pretend impartial", which never hurts the hand that feeds it, and "Mail-like". With 5-1% "others".
And that is worse than now.
2/5

Ah, no. I agree on that too. The outlets that successfully pretend (and the BBC does, in one relevant sense, but not all) are THE danger.
What I disagree with is probably: what happens when the BBC disappears. I reckon we get a landscape 99% driven by deep pockets and nothing else.
1/5

[Surely we agree the BBC doesn't produce *only* harm!]

I did, and yeah, dominance + inevitable institutional bias IS real, valid and 100% relevant. I agree with that.
But my mind still can't produce a landscape that looks better without the BBC, even if I agree with your point on the harm the BBC does produce. Hence the question: I'm "blocked".

Possibly a fair point, but: if I roleplay scenarios where the BBC is dead, and try to find one which isn't wishful thinking AND leaves the UK better off, I fail. Regularly.
It can be my own failure of imagination - so I want to ask if you can articulate one and thus help my imagination. Tx!

That is why care has transformative power beyond health. To be truly listened to – to be recognized not as a case but as a person – can change not just how one experiences illness, but how one experiences oneself and the world. It can foster the capacity to care for others across differences, to resist hatred and violence, to build the fragile social ties upon which democracy depends. By contrast, when medicine is reduced to data and transactions, it not only fails patients and demoralizes doctors. It also degrades democracy itself. A system that alienates people in their moments of deepest vulnerability – bankrupting them, gaslighting them, leaving them unheard – breeds despair and rage. It creates the conditions in which authoritarians gain traction.

This connection isn’t articulated often enough.

Slide is titled: You don't need to use LLMs. Science is a process of collaborative meaning making, by which we try to understand the world Even if AI were perfect, we rely on it at our peril — it is not science if we (i.e., humanity as a whole) do not understand and cannot recapitulate all parts of it I very, very rarely use LLMs myself. You can give yourself permission not to. Don’t FOMO yourself into it

Conclusion: Don't rely on something you don't understand and can't control If you must use LLMS: 1. Treat them like you would an intern: only use them for things you can easily and thoroughly check 2. Make your process as robust as possible 3. Be aware of your own (human) cognitive biases

Getting nervous for the talk I'm about to give at a workshop about "using AI to drive impact" which features slides such as these.

anyway racism, nostalgia & absurd tech is what we already have now & it's just fascism

Could pain medication be causing your headaches? Medication-overuse headache is a well-documented phenomenon – but the good news is it’s often reversible.

Medication-overuse headache is a well-documented phenomenon – but the good news is it’s often reversible.

We’re in dark times already, but the stakes are growing exponentially day by day.

So it’s a good time for a reminder for all of us: performative vs. effective solidarity approaches.

Everyone needs this reminder, especially when we already “know” - the heat of the moment can make us forget.

1

WE SHOULD LISTEN.

Until it breaks and gets A LOT more TLC than what was required initially, I would imagine.

#EPPI-Reviewer new (major) release:
Version 6.17.0.0 adds a new system to create prioritised lists of items to screen, as well as other improvements to screening systems.
Also extends the list of supported LLMs, adding Llama and Mistral.

All details: eppi.ioe.ac.uk/cms/Default....

Stop blaming migrants and tackle UK’s real problems, 100 charities tell home secretary A letter warns Shabana Mahmood that ‘targeting refugees will do nothing to tackle’ problems with housing and the NHS

📣 Scapegoating people seeking safety in the UK won’t fix inequality, housing shortages, or the NHS.

The Government must acknowledge this.

We’re proud to join over 100 orgs calling on the Govt. to unite communities.

We need compassion, not division.

www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Shabana Mahmood accuses asylum seekers of making ‘vexatious, last-minute claims’ Home Office says it will review modern slavery laws to save PM’s ‘one in, one out’ returns deal with France

The comments made by our Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, are deeply harmful, concerning and misleading.

There are many reasons why claims are 'last minute' - we know this from our work over the years supporting hundreds of refugee women.

1/🧵

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

As a society, the one thing we were totally unprepared for was annoying leftists being right.

*"on the condition of NOT changing the trend"

For anyone legitimately questioning this:
Replacing Dodds with Reeves signalled this intention as clearly as possible before the election. After the election? Look at how Trump was handled, including Mandelson's appointment. The evidence is very clear.

So, their problem is 3-fold, with the 3rd problem being self inflicted.
They can't get many people to like them, unless (1) they change the trend (decidedly) AND (2) also change the narrative.
Self-inflicted (3): current leadership has no intention to try doing either.

THAT'S the big picture.😢
3/3

Ppl with loads of money to use, use it to defend their position (those who don't, lose their extra money). So the information landscape gets more rigged by the day.

The current Labour government knows it, and has been allowed one turn in government on the condition of NOT changing the trend*.
🧵2/3

from https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-7484/CBP-7484.pdf figure showing the "share of net household income going to the top 1%". From 1961 to 2019 - goes a tiny bit down until 1979 (3%), very much up (to about 8.6%) until 2009, falls to 7% around 2010-2012, then goes uneavingly up to end at about 8.5% in 2019.

I wish I could believe you're being disingenuous, but no, I think you really do believe what you're saying. Except that "the big picture problem for Labour" is quite different.

Summarised in one picture (source in alt-txt). Too much money keeps going to too few people. The rest follows.

🧵1/3

It's not just that there are lots of racist extremists on X (there are) or attempts to 'interact' with them are doomed to failure (they are), it's that your participation on the platform further enriches the racist extremist Elon Musk and amplifies his agenda. Why cannot people understand that?

I need you to understand what this country feels like right now for those of us who look different. I'm sitting here, trying to plan for Saturday, make sure I don't even need to go to the corner shop for milk, like it's Christmas Day or lockdown. Why? Because I live near where Yaxley-Lennon will 1/

#philsky #EpistemicInjustice #YouthMentalHealth #edusky #projectEPIC

Warning! The rightwing junktanks behind the Tories’ worst disasters still have the keys to No 10 | George Monbiot Who is running the government’s ‘growth school’ for civil servants? The answer surpassed my worst fears, says Guardian columnist George Monbiot

2. The craven appeasement of powerful lobby groups, which, in the absence of a moral compass, have been able to steer this government any way they want. 2/2 www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

The core belief of junktanks, and therefore of Starmer (and many others), is that any invented reality can be made to stick, with enough support from the media.

Which is a justified belief, on the basis of quantity/frequency (works most often). Until it inevitably breaks, always catastrophically.

Image credit: Solen Feyissa via Unsplash, a close up of a mother with darker skin holding a newborn close to her chest, with her finger ove the baby's hair, covered by a blanket.

Research Spotlight: Exploring what life is like for families when their baby is in hospital. This co-production study in Mexico by @rosamendizabal.bsky.social will help inform future infant and family development programmes. #coproduction
www.ucl.ac.uk/ioe/departme...