Andrew Leyshon

Monday’s pod debate on what to call next year’s World Cup, given that it’s spread between the US, Canada and Mexico, missed the most geographically correct answer: North America ‘26. While most of the continent’s many countries are not hosting, the 3 that are include about 85% of total population.

Full disclosure: I ran an urban geography field class to New York from 2017-19, so guilty as charged. In mitigation, it wasn't even the most exotic of our offers & by the time it launched was considered quite a passé destination by many of the places with whom we competed for students. But still ...

I know that the @rgsibg.bsky.social was encouraging a critical engagement with the 'field class as recruitment device' arms-race pre-pandemic. But it would be interesting to see whether the field course competition simply started up again following the pandemic as restrictions eased.

This thread should be of interest to all those working in Departments of Geography at UK Universities who sometimes ponder why their UG student intake often skews to the privileged. This skew is then exacerbated through the use of exotic field classes as marketing and recruitment bait on Open Days.

It's alive!

Harvey at 90: A Verso Series Last year, we celebrated Fredric Jameson's ninetieth birthday with a month long series commemorating his impact on literary criticism, critical theory and philosophy.  This month, in honour of David H...

David Harvey at 90: A Verso Series www.versobooks.com/en-gb/blogs/... @versobooks.bsky.social First essay by Eric Sheppard now posted.

Again, not new: the Jamaican music economy was like this years ago as it was virtually impossible to protect IPR. Performance became prioritised as source of income. Big cheaper than a night at Wembley though, admittedly.

There’s a chapter on live performance in the book on The Platform Music Industries by me and @allanwatson1.bsky.social which came out earlier this year. As copyright has been devalorised (for most artists) as streaming platforms makes all music easily available, the event becomes more important.

Agreed, but the success of the tour is also the length of the band’s absence, and the accumulated desire of fans to see them together live again in an age when the financial returns from performance far outstrips those of recordings. This is not new. The Stones have long been their own tribute band.

States of Ignorance Cambridge Core - Twentieth Century European History - States of Ignorance

If you want to know what a new UK digital ID for immigration would mean, read "States of Ignorance" a book that came out of an ESRC project comparing the development of UK control with two countries with ID. From this research, I think it's a dangerous idea 1/ www.cambridge.org/core/books/s...

The parallels to housing subprime are clear, but with a twist. The value of many of the assets is based on repayments from a predominantly immigrant worker market, but ICE action has disrupted such communities, as an earlier FT report (15.9.25 below) pointed out, so undermining the payment base.

Kyle perhaps should be more interested in rigour than vigour: then he might not have conflated Stanford with the entire US university system. There are historical and geographical reasons why students who want to be founders might chose to go to Stanford.

today, Rachel Reeves meets BlackRock & Blackstone bosses to ask what British derisking state can do for them.

New Rip-off Britain project by @cmmonwealth.bsky.social shows what institutional ownership has done for us: 200bn from our pockets to Big Finance!

Farewell Evernote, it's been ... expensive
🧵

Releases · stefankueng/EvImSync Contribute to stefankueng/EvImSync development by creating an account on GitHub.

For any remaining Evernote users wishing to make a simpler jump, here's the transfer software I found on GitHub. 4/4 github.com/stefankueng/...

The subscription fee was virtually doubled year on year when Evernote was bought by Bending Spoons in 2023, . who seem to be the Mike Ashley of the app world: that is, find a distressed asset with a customer base and rinse asset hard before any the value the brand once had evaporates. 3/4

Inertia, but mainly an inability to find a way to easily port the files across to OneNote meant I perservered. I finally found a programme that works. Still need to move the files notebook by notebook, which is taking ages, and it's not entirely bug-free, but will be done before account reverts. 2/4

I've finally deleted my Evernote subscription, which I started using in 2012, intially for taking notes in the meetings I was having as HoS, but stuck with it for ease of online clipping. I've ended up with a large collection of notes & notebooks. But it's got ridiculously expensive over time . 1/4

Music platforms pushing back against AI music with the use of detection software. Deezer calculate 33% of tracks uploaded are AI (!), but account for only 0.5% of streams. But if one gets through, & makes a playlist, it can generate a lot of income.
www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/nearly-a-thi...

Music platforms pushing back against AI music with the use of detection software. Deezer calculate 33% of tracks uploaded are AI (!), but account for only 0.5% of streams. But if one gets through, & makes a playlist, it can generate a lot of income.
www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/nearly-a-thi...

Interesting that @pjtheeconomist.bsky.social argues that financial market concerns that a populist party might win the next UK election helps explain the interest rate premium attached to UK debt. Might this see PR being mobilised as a necessary step to remove a punishing burden on growth?

I’m sympathetic but impossible to enforce globally, and even if it was might just pull the ladder away for a younger generation of academics. It’s always been impossible to read everything: in the pre-digital age a lot of time was wasted just tracking stuff down!

Big Tech’s A.I. Data Centers Are Driving Up Electricity Bills for Everyone

More reporting on how electricity rates for individuals & small businesses could rise as tech companies build data centers: “Despite tech companies’ professed desire not to burden others, they often push regulators to impose some of the upgrade costs on everybody.” www.nytimes.com/2025/08/14/b...

From the piece, a pair of paragraphs about money and banking as close to perfection as you’ll ever see. Shot:

Google Scholar Is Doomed Academia built entire careers on a free Google service with zero guarantees. What could go wrong?

Since search is dead, how soon do you think Google Scholar is headed for the Google Graveyard? I'm betting it's soon, and academia is NOT prepared

Parasitic mercantilism?

I don't disagree, being a geographer, with parts of geography long being effectively post-disciplinary. But I'm mainly replying to say that the sight of all those ink annotations of your book makes me feel slightly quesy! I feel like staging an intervention and gifting you some HB pencils.

We are greatly saddened by the passing of Michel Callon, a key contributor to debates in our journal about economization, marketization, and ecologization. RIP
www.csi.minesparis.psl.eu/articles-ved...

“By doing maybe one Doors show a month we can fill a hole in our dire finances”: Mercury-nominated UK band Field Music are working as a tribute act “Any embarrassment I might have felt about doing this has dissolved," the band explain, while thoroughly detailing their predicament

Late to this: a good example of the difficulties most artists have in making a living in the contemporary music economy. Long-standing indie band @fieldmusicmusic.bsky.social moonlight as a Doors cover band to make ends meet. I'd happily pay to watch them in either form! tinyurl.com/49b37t54