Philippa Cowderoy
@flippac.bsky.social
Executively dysfunctional, yet occasionally effectful programmer. Crazy trans dyke. Electronic music nerd. Autistic af. Plays lots of games in all the spare time that's no use for anything else.
(she/her)
(she/her)
Reposted by Philippa Cowderoy
don't need a free course to tell me LLMs are plagiarised slop and create *more* not less work to correct the flaws they make because they're glorified text-predictors.
how about the government put money into paid apprenticeships for older adults (not just young folk and new graduates).
how about the government put money into paid apprenticeships for older adults (not just young folk and new graduates).
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
Technology Secretary Liz Kendall tells #BBCBreakfast about the scheme
January 28, 2026 at 1:39 PM
don't need a free course to tell me LLMs are plagiarised slop and create *more* not less work to correct the flaws they make because they're glorified text-predictors.
how about the government put money into paid apprenticeships for older adults (not just young folk and new graduates).
how about the government put money into paid apprenticeships for older adults (not just young folk and new graduates).
Reposted by Philippa Cowderoy
"gender is a social construct" is so true that even the right wingers have adopted this line, but only to move towards naturalizing sex & naturalizing misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia to sex. thus, it has little political slogan value today. "sex is socially constructed" is what is provocative
January 27, 2026 at 12:48 PM
"gender is a social construct" is so true that even the right wingers have adopted this line, but only to move towards naturalizing sex & naturalizing misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia to sex. thus, it has little political slogan value today. "sex is socially constructed" is what is provocative
Reposted by Philippa Cowderoy
PICT (UK Parliamentary ICT) requires the use of VPNs, I just checked. And, bless them, they’re incapable of rolling out any changes with less than a year’s head start. I think legislation-hungry MPs should be the guinea pigs here, by being blocked access from all PICT systems.
January 27, 2026 at 12:57 PM
PICT (UK Parliamentary ICT) requires the use of VPNs, I just checked. And, bless them, they’re incapable of rolling out any changes with less than a year’s head start. I think legislation-hungry MPs should be the guinea pigs here, by being blocked access from all PICT systems.
Reposted by Philippa Cowderoy
I just want to remind people that when we talk about creating a "British ICE" and a concentration camp as somehow copying America, we already had the previous Tory government set up a concentration camp run by British military personnel for asylum seekers rapidly shut down after legal battles.
The UK version of “Project 2025” by the Reform party includes a British ICE, a concentration camp for 24,000 people, mass surveillance and withdrawing from refugee, anti-torture and anti-trafficking conventions.
It’s on their website. That’s how comfortable fascists are in the UK today.
It’s on their website. That’s how comfortable fascists are in the UK today.
January 27, 2026 at 8:05 AM
I just want to remind people that when we talk about creating a "British ICE" and a concentration camp as somehow copying America, we already had the previous Tory government set up a concentration camp run by British military personnel for asylum seekers rapidly shut down after legal battles.
Reposted by Philippa Cowderoy
Reminder that British journalists have a weird fetish for Harry Potter because it's a fantasy world where nobody mentions how fucking weird it is that everybody was privately educated in just five schools
January 27, 2026 at 9:36 AM
Reminder that British journalists have a weird fetish for Harry Potter because it's a fantasy world where nobody mentions how fucking weird it is that everybody was privately educated in just five schools
Reposted by Philippa Cowderoy
Reminding you that Britain was trying to deport people to Rwanda throughout the last year's of the previous administration and set up a floating prison for refugees that lasted 2 years.
This American Exceptionalism is weird and when people buy into it our history of our racism is erased.
This American Exceptionalism is weird and when people buy into it our history of our racism is erased.
The dumbest, most evil people in Britain see what's going on in America and think "why can't that be us?"
These people should be driven from polite society and abused ever time they step out in public.
These people should be driven from polite society and abused ever time they step out in public.
Suella Braverman, "There is a very strong case to increase the powers of any immigration enforcement officers that we deploy"
"At the moment they're hamstrung by human rights laws, by health and safety laws, by all sorts of needless and obstructive bureaucracy"
"At the moment they're hamstrung by human rights laws, by health and safety laws, by all sorts of needless and obstructive bureaucracy"
January 27, 2026 at 11:21 AM
Reminding you that Britain was trying to deport people to Rwanda throughout the last year's of the previous administration and set up a floating prison for refugees that lasted 2 years.
This American Exceptionalism is weird and when people buy into it our history of our racism is erased.
This American Exceptionalism is weird and when people buy into it our history of our racism is erased.
Reposted by Philippa Cowderoy
Actually I'd argue given Britain's history as an increasingly secular country which nevertheless was readily infected with complementarían philosophy as a result of TERFs filing the serial numbers off of evangelical & Catholic moral panic, it's good to care about the specific philosophical moves.
Not saying that people have to become familiar with theological shit going on within church stuff, but at least recognise that there's a risk of lumping in victims with abusers when people scapegoat faith in the abstract rather than conservatism, integralism, complementarianism, clericalism, etc.
January 27, 2026 at 11:27 AM
Actually I'd argue given Britain's history as an increasingly secular country which nevertheless was readily infected with complementarían philosophy as a result of TERFs filing the serial numbers off of evangelical & Catholic moral panic, it's good to care about the specific philosophical moves.
Reposted by Philippa Cowderoy
UK PEOPLE: this is REALLY IMPORTANT. If the government bans under-16s from using VPNs, then logically they must intend to REQUIRE AGE VERIFICATION FOR ALL VPN USE. Which will affect adults too!
*Your* right to anonymous web browsing is at risk!
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/754408
*Your* right to anonymous web browsing is at risk!
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/754408
January 27, 2026 at 12:20 PM
UK PEOPLE: this is REALLY IMPORTANT. If the government bans under-16s from using VPNs, then logically they must intend to REQUIRE AGE VERIFICATION FOR ALL VPN USE. Which will affect adults too!
*Your* right to anonymous web browsing is at risk!
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/754408
*Your* right to anonymous web browsing is at risk!
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/754408
Reposted by Philippa Cowderoy
I am 100% serious when I say the journalists who helped start the MMR scare should experience consequences commensurate with the fact that they have a body count.
Well done, Ian Hislop. Another successful campaign for the Eye!
January 27, 2026 at 12:22 PM
I am 100% serious when I say the journalists who helped start the MMR scare should experience consequences commensurate with the fact that they have a body count.
Reposted by Philippa Cowderoy
Fuck ICE, fuck Reform, and fuck anyone who actually wants this.
The UK version of “Project 2025” by the Reform party includes a British ICE, a concentration camp for 24,000 people, mass surveillance and withdrawing from refugee, anti-torture and anti-trafficking conventions.
It’s on their website. That’s how comfortable fascists are in the UK today.
It’s on their website. That’s how comfortable fascists are in the UK today.
January 26, 2026 at 2:25 PM
Fuck ICE, fuck Reform, and fuck anyone who actually wants this.
Communication via Singal is insecure. Because, well, Singal.
Signal's fine though.
Signal's fine though.
January 26, 2026 at 3:12 PM
Communication via Singal is insecure. Because, well, Singal.
Signal's fine though.
Signal's fine though.
Reposted by Philippa Cowderoy
If you were a rude, dismissive asshole to a bunch of marginalised people they do get to be smug about it when you eventually have to admit they were right tbh.
Bluesky idea: if people who didn't agree with you change their opinions so that they do agree with you, why not be happy that you are making progress - rather than complaining that they are "only just catching up"?
January 26, 2026 at 12:06 PM
If you were a rude, dismissive asshole to a bunch of marginalised people they do get to be smug about it when you eventually have to admit they were right tbh.
Reposted by Philippa Cowderoy
Something @pkrugman.bsky.social said years ago about the 2nd Iraq war has stuck with me: to be considered a serious thinker by the mainstream, even in retrospect, you had to have been completely wrong about Iraq for a few years, then have changed your mind. I suspect we’ll see a lot of this.
January 25, 2026 at 8:27 PM
Something @pkrugman.bsky.social said years ago about the 2nd Iraq war has stuck with me: to be considered a serious thinker by the mainstream, even in retrospect, you had to have been completely wrong about Iraq for a few years, then have changed your mind. I suspect we’ll see a lot of this.
Reposted by Philippa Cowderoy
This is pretty consistent with the response to the BPP carrying weapons openly tbh
The Trump admin’s position is, not only that it’s illegal to protest with a holstered firearm (it’s not), but also that you deserve to get shot for it (you don’t).
January 25, 2026 at 5:26 PM
This is pretty consistent with the response to the BPP carrying weapons openly tbh
Reposted by Philippa Cowderoy
Remember when MET police violently shoved Ian Tomlinson in the back as he walked from work and he died?
Remember when Jean Charles de Menezes was shot by cops who then lied and said photos of police running and jumping turnstiles were actually of him.
Remember Northern Ireland?
Remember when Jean Charles de Menezes was shot by cops who then lied and said photos of police running and jumping turnstiles were actually of him.
Remember Northern Ireland?
And if that video came from pretty much any other country the government line would be treated for what it is: a lie.
January 25, 2026 at 1:15 PM
Remember when MET police violently shoved Ian Tomlinson in the back as he walked from work and he died?
Remember when Jean Charles de Menezes was shot by cops who then lied and said photos of police running and jumping turnstiles were actually of him.
Remember Northern Ireland?
Remember when Jean Charles de Menezes was shot by cops who then lied and said photos of police running and jumping turnstiles were actually of him.
Remember Northern Ireland?
Reposted by Philippa Cowderoy
The BBC claims to have “research” that supports its decision to use abusive transphobic terms for trans women.
But it will not share that “research”.
At the most basic level research is not research if it is not published.
It is just a lie. The BBC is lying.
But it will not share that “research”.
At the most basic level research is not research if it is not published.
It is just a lie. The BBC is lying.
January 25, 2026 at 8:52 AM
The BBC claims to have “research” that supports its decision to use abusive transphobic terms for trans women.
But it will not share that “research”.
At the most basic level research is not research if it is not published.
It is just a lie. The BBC is lying.
But it will not share that “research”.
At the most basic level research is not research if it is not published.
It is just a lie. The BBC is lying.
Reposted by Philippa Cowderoy
This is what epistemic vandalism looks like. Not just erasure, but insisting on a standard of communication that is by default dehumanizing, degrading and degendering, laundered as neutral language on pseudoscientific grounds.
Encoding bias into how we are even referred to.
Encoding bias into how we are even referred to.
The BBC claims to have “research” that supports its decision to use abusive transphobic terms for trans women.
But it will not share that “research”.
At the most basic level research is not research if it is not published.
It is just a lie. The BBC is lying.
But it will not share that “research”.
At the most basic level research is not research if it is not published.
It is just a lie. The BBC is lying.
January 25, 2026 at 11:40 AM
This is what epistemic vandalism looks like. Not just erasure, but insisting on a standard of communication that is by default dehumanizing, degrading and degendering, laundered as neutral language on pseudoscientific grounds.
Encoding bias into how we are even referred to.
Encoding bias into how we are even referred to.
Reposted by Philippa Cowderoy
This is how the establishment "left" (scare quotes intended) have been functioning for at least a decade. Intense obsessive factionalism and career orientation over policy everywhere.
It's why minority groups are so fucked by it. If everything is about who your friends are principles don't matter.
It's why minority groups are so fucked by it. If everything is about who your friends are principles don't matter.
Labour's ruling committee, which is stuffed full of allies of Keir Starmer and Morgan McSweeney, has just blocked Andy Burnham from standing to be an MP in Gorton and Denton.
The odds of Labour losing this previously safe seat to Reform now look much higher
The odds of Labour losing this previously safe seat to Reform now look much higher
January 25, 2026 at 12:27 PM
This is how the establishment "left" (scare quotes intended) have been functioning for at least a decade. Intense obsessive factionalism and career orientation over policy everywhere.
It's why minority groups are so fucked by it. If everything is about who your friends are principles don't matter.
It's why minority groups are so fucked by it. If everything is about who your friends are principles don't matter.
Reposted by Philippa Cowderoy
What I think ice have noticed is that your can't legally slander or defame a dead person so the best way to get away with it is character assassination after murder.
January 24, 2026 at 8:41 PM
What I think ice have noticed is that your can't legally slander or defame a dead person so the best way to get away with it is character assassination after murder.
Reposted by Philippa Cowderoy
The people who'll tell you today's murder victim in Minnesota shouldn't have turned up to a protest carrying a gun are the same people who said Kyle Rittenhouse was perfectly entitled to do the same thing.
January 24, 2026 at 5:58 PM
The people who'll tell you today's murder victim in Minnesota shouldn't have turned up to a protest carrying a gun are the same people who said Kyle Rittenhouse was perfectly entitled to do the same thing.
Reposted by Philippa Cowderoy
Everyone is reasonably concerned and cautious of fedposters but please also remember that getting into the mentality of labelling everyone who is angry about an atrocity an agent provocateur is itself an excessive reaction to an excessive reaction.
January 24, 2026 at 6:13 PM
Everyone is reasonably concerned and cautious of fedposters but please also remember that getting into the mentality of labelling everyone who is angry about an atrocity an agent provocateur is itself an excessive reaction to an excessive reaction.
Reposted by Philippa Cowderoy
Another fact that people outside of MN might find hard to believe:
I cannot participate in any kind of observation of ice activities because they will put me in a database, and follow me when I make deliveries of supplies to vulnerable people, so they can abduct them.
I cannot participate in any kind of observation of ice activities because they will put me in a database, and follow me when I make deliveries of supplies to vulnerable people, so they can abduct them.
A fact that's hard to believe for many people outside of MN:
I have to be vetted to join my local signal group that patrols our local elementary to keep federal agents from kidnapping students bc those same feds are infiltrating those chats to better target vulnerable people for abduction.
I have to be vetted to join my local signal group that patrols our local elementary to keep federal agents from kidnapping students bc those same feds are infiltrating those chats to better target vulnerable people for abduction.
January 24, 2026 at 4:38 AM
Another fact that people outside of MN might find hard to believe:
I cannot participate in any kind of observation of ice activities because they will put me in a database, and follow me when I make deliveries of supplies to vulnerable people, so they can abduct them.
I cannot participate in any kind of observation of ice activities because they will put me in a database, and follow me when I make deliveries of supplies to vulnerable people, so they can abduct them.
You can join the Board of Piss for just a tenner. The chair is whoever can hit the ceiling for longest at once.
January 23, 2026 at 1:37 PM
You can join the Board of Piss for just a tenner. The chair is whoever can hit the ceiling for longest at once.
Oh look, it's "fuck doomers" o'clock again
January 21, 2026 at 2:52 PM
Oh look, it's "fuck doomers" o'clock again
Reposted by Philippa Cowderoy
I think one of the most damning indictments of the financialization of mutual aid is that we've collectively put ourselves in a position where rather than building up a social infrastructure and access to resources, we're converting all that to cash which gets paid to landlords and debt collectors.
As a side point to this, our models of internet era "mutual aid" in the form of internet fundraising have singularly failed to produce these kinds of relational and sustainable support for collective survival and we have to expand beyond the charity model (even while it's necessary on occasion).
January 21, 2026 at 1:21 PM
I think one of the most damning indictments of the financialization of mutual aid is that we've collectively put ourselves in a position where rather than building up a social infrastructure and access to resources, we're converting all that to cash which gets paid to landlords and debt collectors.