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akma.bsky.social
New Year, Old AKMA
@akma.bsky.social
2.2K followers 430 following 5.5K posts
AKMA is a priest, lecturer (New Test., Greek, Early Church, Crit Theory), writer, gamer; Glasgow, Oxford, now parish ministry in Abingdon-on-Thames. Will not try [in vain?] to take away the pain of being a hopeless unbeliever.

http://akma.disseminary.org
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Reposted by New Year, Old AKMA
uomreligion.bsky.social
Lecturers in Biblical Studies have been awarded a Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies Grant for the project "Encountering Biblical Bodies". Holly Morse & @siobhanjolley.bsky.social are working with colleagues across @uomsalc.bsky.social to host an exhibition & and symposium. Watch this space!
January 29, 2026 at 2:12 PM
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aarontheh.bsky.social
To recap: Don Lemon has been arrested, Renee Good and Alex Pretti’s killers have not.
January 30, 2026 at 4:10 PM
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dropkick.bsky.social
legislators should be staging sit-ins, they should not leave the fucking chambers until there are votes on impeachment. make your colleagues defend this piece of shit on the record. show history what you fucking did in this moment you god damned cowards
January 30, 2026 at 2:14 PM
akma.bsky.social
Happy feast day of Charles, King and Martyr, for those who celebrate —
January 30, 2026 at 5:37 PM
Reposted by New Year, Old AKMA
ianbassin.bsky.social
The arrest of @donlemonofficial.bsky.social and Georgia Fort is an outrageous assault on the 1st Amendment and all our freedoms.

They and the protesters they were covering are being persecuted by a dangerous and lawless Trump Admin for defending all of our rights.

Demand their freedom. Enough.
January 30, 2026 at 3:38 PM
Reposted by New Year, Old AKMA
joeberkowitz.bsky.social
It sure looks like no one in Trumpworld knows what 'doxxing' actually means, so I wrote about why it benefits them to pretend not to know.
January 30, 2026 at 4:40 PM
Reposted by New Year, Old AKMA
planetdr.bsky.social
Today I stood in front of the same high bay, prepped to start assembling Dragonfly.

I started crying.

There is so, so much bad right now. But some of my dreams are also coming true.
January 30, 2026 at 12:56 AM
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wolvendamien.bsky.social
Please read this extremely thoughtful & careful post on Tim Walz, Anne Frank, & the US Holocaust Memorial Museum from Martin Shuster, philosopher, Isaac Swift Distinguished Professor of Jewish Studies, former Holocaust Memorial Museum Fellow, & scholar of genocide, the Holocaust, & authoritarianism:
Martin Shuster sdSreptoon1hm9t97235g2u5796glgh0435l6iaf05it1l232lc20cllf4g0 · So apparently on Sunday Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota, said in a press conference that "we have got children hiding in their houses, afraid to go outside ... many of us grew up reading that story of Anne Frank. Somebody’s gonna write that children’s story about Minnesota.” Then on Monday--one day before International Holocaust Remembrance Day--the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum tweeted in response that: "Anne Frank was targeted and murdered solely because she was Jewish. Leaders making false equivalencies to her experience for political purposes is never acceptable. Despite tensions in Minneapolis, exploiting the Holocaust is deeply offensive, especially as antisemitism surges." As someone who spent a year at the Museum as a fellow doing research, I feel embarrassed for the institution. First, it is very clear that Walz wasn't drawing an equivalence, he was drawing an analogy. So this kind of response reminds me of the atrocious positions that the ADL has started to carve out, and why it has become mostly a sycophantic joke, now seemingly mostly geared towards currying favor with MAGA. Not unrelatedly, I am noticing that a lot of--oftentimes even well-intentioned--people are spending time trying to delineate exactly which historical referent best captures what's going on now, as if we have to pick only one. There is the now well-circulated meme that says: no, ICE isn't the Gestapo, it's actually American--it's slave catchers. But this is a kind of odd distinction: the Nazis were themselves influenced by the Americans (if you're curious read the excellent book by James Whitman, _Hitler's American Model_). Nazis came here and studied American legal systems and statutes ... and remarkably a group of "liberal" Nazis decided that they couldn't make German laws as *extreme* as American ones (and this "liberal" group in fact won the day; German laws weren't as extreme as many of ours). Equally, Nazi jurists and theorists like Carl Schmitt were deeply influenced by American notions of manifest destiny. So the Nazi and American contexts were already fused. The idea of foreign/domestic is already quite complex in this context. (And this is before we even speak of the many actual Nazis that existed here and the many people who materially supported Hitler and the regime). We can complicate this picture more by noting that Nazism itself, even apart from these American influences, wasn't something that sprouted up out of thin air: it, too, had a(n experimental) history. Many of its barbaric practices and aims were developed and tested on colonial and imperial victims (as I have written elsewhere: there is a direct line from Shark Island concentration camp [called frequently simply "Death Island" where the Germans committed genocide against the Herero and Nama people] to the entire Nazi camp system). Thinkers like Hannah Arendt and Aimé Césaire drew our attention to this already in the middle of the last century. In noting this, let me be clear that this does not erase or make less relevant the centuries of European antisemitism that fed into the Nazi project. That's the whole point: these are all related phenomena. European antisemitism influenced the way in which European colonialism and imperialism operated against indigenous populations in the Americas. Strikingly, as innovations mounted in "administering" the Americas, antisemitic policies also evolved in Europe. Administrators (oppressors) would sometimes even move from one sphere to the other and back. They were all synergistic (a brilliant examination of some of this is María Elena Martínez's _Genealogical Fictions_). (And one could, btw, also tell an important story about the development of Islamophobia in this very same orbit, since policies stumbled on in the Americas came back to oppress both Jews and Muslims in Europe). This is all to say: Walz's analogy is not at all far fetched. The history of oppression doesn't move in any kind of neat or purely linear fashion. It is oftentimes recursive, shifting, necessarily granular. Neither is it a competitive history. It is, in the words of Michael Rothberg, a *multidirectional* history. Drawing these analogies in fact *helps* us understand all the involved phenomena better. At least this is what "Never Again" has meant and means to me: it does not mean only never again for me or other Jews. And it does not mean never again only something that looks exactly like the Nazi genocide. I think also, btw, that this is what it meant for Otto Frank, who spent time *editing* his daughter's diary so that it could be available to anyone, not only to Jews. For ultimately the Nazi genocide--any genocide--is a highly mediated phenomenon: it consists of many diffuse events, marshals an immense amount of people and institutions, relies on sometimes conflicting or contradictory cross-sections of society, and, indeed, emerges out of a process that does not neatly, especially as its happening, have a clear beginning, middle, and end, but rather arranges for itself a kind of constellation that harnesses a range of actors, perspectives, and also histories (this is one way to understand how German colonial projects or anti-communism or ableism were no less crucial to Nazism than European antisemitism). The genocidal outcomes emerge from the structural forms society adopts. And all of this without in any way eliding the special role that Jews played in the apocalyptic Nazi worldview.
January 30, 2026 at 1:24 AM
akma.bsky.social
I am 'You are running into danger!'
Illustration of naval flag, red squares in the upper left and lower right, white squares in the upper right and lower left, that signifies ‘You are running into danger’
January 30, 2026 at 9:43 AM
akma.bsky.social
catandgirl.com/looking-for-...
Cat and Girl
catandgirl.com
January 29, 2026 at 10:51 PM
Reposted by New Year, Old AKMA
snopes.com
An online rumor claims authorities with ICE, the FBI and the DEA arrested more than 5,000 cartel members as part of a Minneapolis campaign named Operation Iron North. That never happened. ❌
www.snopes.com/fact-check/o...
Don't believe rumor about 'Operation Iron North' cartel member arrests in Minneapolis
According to online posts, ICE, the FBI and the DEA collaborated on the mission, arresting more than 5,000 cartel members.
www.snopes.com
January 29, 2026 at 6:01 PM
Reposted by New Year, Old AKMA
akma.bsky.social
I gave a Paul tutorial yesterday and made reference to Paul Foster’s informal survey of BNTC attendees on questions of authorship of the epistles; and remembered that Bruce Longenecker supervised a more recent, slightly more detailed such survey. Here are Foster’s and Longenecker/Hess’s results:
A bar chart itemising Paul Foster’s informal survey of the ‘votes’ for actual Pauline authorship of the various epistles, showing near unanimity that Paul wrote Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, and Philemon, with mixed results on Ephesians, Colossians, 2 Thessalonians, and the Pastoral Epistles. A bar chart based on research from Bruce Longenecker and Zen Hess itemising the percentage of ‘votes’ for actual Pauline authorship, or Pauline participation in the composition of, or pseudonymity of the various epistles, showing near unanimity that Paul wrote Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, and Philemon, with mixed results on Ephesians, Colossians, 2 Thessalonians, and the Pastoral Epistles.
January 28, 2026 at 8:16 AM
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urc.org.uk
Yesterday, a social media post included a reference to Holocaust Memorial Day which was unsuitable for which we apologise. The URC has marked Holocaust Memorial Day for many years and is a member of many interfaith dialogues. We deeply regret any distress caused.
January 28, 2026 at 2:05 PM
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cferguson.bsky.social
More money for crumbling universities? No, suck it up out-of-touch ivory tower elites with your outdated fetish for independent critical thinking! We're funding water-guzzling, world-burning automated error engines instead. Who needs accuracy when you could have plausibility?
peterstefanovic.bsky.social Peter Stefanovic @peterstefanovic.bsky.social · 2d
BREAKING: Free AI training will be offered to every adult in the UK, with short courses to teach people how to use simple AI tools effectively in the workplace.

Technology Secretary Liz Kendall tells #BBCBreakfast about the scheme
January 28, 2026 at 11:29 AM
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karanslade.bsky.social
Catholic philosopher* Eleonore Stump has a few words about ICE.

*I realize this is like calling Prince “a guitarist”
Like everybody else, I am an inhabitant of this planet; and I am a member of many other smaller communities too. I am an American citizen, for example. I was made a citizen from birth retroactively by the US government after World War II when babies born to US servicemen and German women were declared citizens from birth. My German mother came with me to the US as an immigrant without English when I was four years old and had no English either. Now I am a philosopher and a Christian -- a Catholic, actually. I identify as a woman. And so on. I grieve the overwhelming evil that is impossible to ignore in every one of these communities. The sight of the suffering of desperate people trying to be immigrants to the US is unbearable. The inhumanity of separating their children from them, the viciousness of incarcerating small children alone, is unspeakable. And the cruelty we see on the daily news obscures but cannot hide the accelerating harm we are doing to the earth. The people who should take the lead in governing us are vile, and so many of those who vote relish the vileness. That group includes some prominent Christians. Christians are meant to be salt and light for the world; their lives are meant to help other people taste and see the goodness of God. These people make the God they worship seem so hateful. And so, like many other people, I mourn. But my mourning is without despondency, without the inward collapse of despair. The baseness of injustice highlights the majesty of justice, whose power to call to people cannot be defeated by evil. The cruelty of those who rule, their indifference to the cry of the poor, illuminates by contrast the splendor of goodness and love. The growing dread at the increasing destruction of the planet testifies to its beauty. There would be less distress over what has been done to the earth if its glories were not so moving. The evil that now dominates all the communities of which I am a member cannot eradicate justice, goodness, and love. Evil may rule for a while, but it remains a loser even as it rules. It will always be loathsome, hateful, ugly; and those who serve it are pathetic, contemptible. Maybe virtue is not its own reward, but there is an undeniable punishment in vice itself. Who would want to be a rapaciously greedy narcissist like some of our current politicians? Their revulsiveness makes the beauty of justice, goodness, and love shine. It is good to grieve the evil of our times, but this very grief bears witness to the impotence of evil to give worth to the lives of those who uphold it. In reality, there is justice, goodness, and love in the world. They are beautiful, and commitment to them has the power to make a life worthwhile. And so I mourn with defiance. While we mourn the evil, while we refuse to temporize with the powers that darken our world now, that evil does not rule us. In our words and in our actions, in all our lives, let us bear fierce witness without despair, without fear, to the beauty of justice, goodness, and love. Like others who have lived in dark times, let this be the watchword for each of us: etsi omnes, ego non - even if all others, yet not I!
January 28, 2026 at 12:45 PM
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jedgarnaut.bsky.social
January 28, 2026 at 5:02 AM
akma.bsky.social
I gave a Paul tutorial yesterday and made reference to Paul Foster’s informal survey of BNTC attendees on questions of authorship of the epistles; and remembered that Bruce Longenecker supervised a more recent, slightly more detailed such survey. Here are Foster’s and Longenecker/Hess’s results:
A bar chart itemising Paul Foster’s informal survey of the ‘votes’ for actual Pauline authorship of the various epistles, showing near unanimity that Paul wrote Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, and Philemon, with mixed results on Ephesians, Colossians, 2 Thessalonians, and the Pastoral Epistles. A bar chart based on research from Bruce Longenecker and Zen Hess itemising the percentage of ‘votes’ for actual Pauline authorship, or Pauline participation in the composition of, or pseudonymity of the various epistles, showing near unanimity that Paul wrote Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, and Philemon, with mixed results on Ephesians, Colossians, 2 Thessalonians, and the Pastoral Epistles.
January 28, 2026 at 8:16 AM
Reposted by New Year, Old AKMA
religionprof.bsky.social
Senior Research Fellow and Departmental Lecturer in Medieval and Scholastic Theology at University of Oxford

www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DQG876/s...
Senior Research Fellow and Departmental Lecturer in Medieval and Scholastic Theology at University of Oxford
An academic position as a Senior Research Fellow and Departmental Lecturer in Medieval and Scholastic Theology is being advertised on jobs.ac.uk. Click now to find more details and explore additional…
www.jobs.ac.uk
January 27, 2026 at 9:30 PM
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jimmytwohands.bsky.social
Happy large boulder the size of a small boulder day for all who celebrate
large boulder the size of a small boulder tweet from San Miguel sheriff, dated 1/27/20
January 27, 2024 at 2:56 PM
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navalairhistory.com
For those outside the UK who may not have seen, we had a reckoning on media regulation 15 years ago, and the media won a decisive victory against meaningful regulation. TL;DR, they were caught hacking the phone of a murdered child, there was an enquiry, but they avoided all the recommendations…
sexabolition.blog Mallory Moore @sexabolition.blog · 3d
The fundamental problem is that we have no effective regulation of the media here, our public service broadcaster is just very obviously regime media and our major privately run news publications are all owned by billionaires with editorial agendas that distort reality and degrade human rights.
erikfrechette.bsky.social Erik the Pleb @erikfrechette.bsky.social · 3d
Reading about the rise of Reform while living in the self-immolating US feels like an out of body experience. That anyone outside the US could look at a country collapsing in on itself and say, “Yes, some of that for us please!” is just surreal.
January 27, 2026 at 9:33 AM
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scottagunn.bsky.social
A blessed lesser feast of St. John Chrysostom to all, especially to preachers — who are called to proclaim mercy and righteousness to the world, even to the Empire itself at high personal cost. 🕯️
O God, who didst give thy servant John Chrysostom grace eloquently to proclaim thy righteousness in the great congregation, and fearlessly to bear reproach for the honor of thy Name: Mercifully grant to all who proclaim thy word such excellence in preaching that all thy people may be made partakers of the glory that shall be revealed; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, one God for ever and ever. Amen.
January 27, 2026 at 7:34 AM
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lollardfish.bsky.social
The 2029 Pretti Good Act will establish a commission to identify all agents, create a detailed accounting of all acts, and hold criminally liable as necessary. Agents who voluntarily and truthfully disclose will be granted some leniency, provided their crimes did not include murder or torture.
jljacobson.bsky.social Jodi Jacobson @jljacobson.bsky.social · 4d
When I say this agency [ICE and CBP] CAN’T be reformed this is why.
January 26, 2026 at 6:28 PM
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johnbrownbread.bsky.social
It should also create a public database with the names and photos of every ICE, BP HSI, and all of DHS agent/employee. It should include lists of what cities they were deployed to and the dates.
January 26, 2026 at 6:31 PM
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philosofemme.bsky.social
For those in or near Oxford on 14 February, there are just a few spaces left for the
#philosophyinthebookshop I’m guest hosting with @manongarcia.bsky.social, who will discuss her new book on the Pelicot trial, Living with Men @blackwelloxford.bsky.social

www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/philosophy...
PHILOSOPHY IN THE BOOKSHOP with Manon Garcia
Guest host Kate Kirkpatrick discusses 'Living with Men' with French Philosopher, Manon Garcia.
www.eventbrite.co.uk
January 26, 2026 at 7:32 PM
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annelouiseavery.bsky.social
This could have been written this morning. How exact and how applicable every word is. "Stealing the livery of the court of heaven to serve the devil in." No better description exists of the blasphemous, murderous, corrupt America of Trump and of ICE.
What I have said respecting and against religion, I mean strictly to apply to the slaveholding religion of this land, and with no possible reference to Christianity proper; for, between the Christianity of this land, and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest, possible difference—so wide, that to receive the one as good, pure, and holy, is of necessity to reject the other as bad, corrupt, and wicked. To be the friend of the one, is of necessity to be the enemy of the other. I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ: I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land. Indeed, I can see no reason, but the most deceitful one, for calling the religion of this land Christianity. I look upon it as the climax of all misnomers, the boldest of all frauds, and the grossest of all libels. Never was there a clearer case of “stealing the livery of the court of heaven to serve the devil in.” I am filled with unutterable loathing when I contemplate the religious pomp and show, together with the horrible inconsistencies, which every where surround me. We have men-stealers for ministers, women-whippers for missionaries, and cradle-plunderers for church members…Here we have religion and robbery the allies of each other—devils dressed in angels’ robes, and hell presenting the semblance of paradise. — Fredrick Douglas, Lynn, Mass. April 28, 1845
January 26, 2026 at 11:44 AM