Sameer Padania
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sdp.bsky.social
Sameer Padania
@sdp.bsky.social
1.3K followers 480 following 12K posts
I work on public interest journalism and information ecosystems worldwide - and how they are funded and financed.

https://macrosco.pe / linkedin.com/in/sameerpadania

#THFC #COYS #FRSA
Posts Replies Media Videos
sdp.bsky.social
Hype Studies feels like a field we all need training on right now.
en.sitnik.ru Andrey Sitnik @en.sitnik.ru · 17h
There was a talk by @imaginaries.bsky.social a Catalan researcher on hype: the mechanisms behind it and how to deconstruct it, to see technology and the social process as separate things.

They even have a whole Hype Studies Lab dedicated to this.

hypestudies.org
November 11, 2025 at 9:47 AM
Reposted by Sameer Padania
ajiunit.com
"Myanmar: War with the Junta" is the first documentary from #MyanmarExposed, an @ajiunit.com reporting project investigating abuses and battlefield dynamics in the Myanmar civil war. Al Jazeera's Ali Fowle discusses the film's significance in understanding the conflict.

Watch now: aje.io/junta
November 10, 2025 at 8:54 AM
sdp.bsky.social
Insights from @demos-uk.bsky.social’s new report ”inside the mind of a 16-year-old”, and I should probably give a trigger warning to sensitive older newspaper readers (Telegraph)

#youth #GenZ #media #medialiteracy

demos.co.uk/wp-content/u...
November 10, 2025 at 8:59 PM
sdp.bsky.social
“When I was [at the BBC], at the height of Boris Johnson’s strength, that fear was ubiquitous. Scripts were sometimes written with a view not solely to their impartiality or truth, but the management of perception of impartiality from one side of the spectrum.“ @lewisgoodall.com
The truth about impartiality at the BBC
And the hysteria of the current "crisis"
goodallandgoodluck.substack.com
November 10, 2025 at 8:21 PM
sdp.bsky.social
The right-wing has been waiting to weaponise something, anything, ahead of the Green Paper on the BBC Charter, to confect an environment where, irrespective of facts, they can land a few cheap blows.
November 10, 2025 at 8:47 AM
Reposted by Sameer Padania
rikefranke.bsky.social
Now the UK wonders about its busses

www.ft.com/content/07ec...
UK investigates whether buses made in China can be turned off from afar
Investigation comes after Norway found Yutong vehicles could be ‘stopped or rendered inoperable’ by Chinese company
www.ft.com
November 10, 2025 at 7:42 AM
Reposted by Sameer Padania
janinegibson.ft.com
Rage against group think, writes Matthew Syed in the Sunday Times, by reading out a paragraph of what *I* think at the beginning of every BBC editorial meeting.
November 9, 2025 at 9:00 AM
sdp.bsky.social
Today and all days.

#THFC #COYS
November 8, 2025 at 11:45 AM
Reposted by Sameer Padania
demos-uk.bsky.social
🚨 CLOSING ON MONDAY | Waves Programme Manager

Join Demos and lead the ground-breaking Waves programme - starting with our first 3-month digital democracy trial with Camden Council, and then guiding the project through to its completion in December 2026.

Apply here ⬇️
demos.co.uk/programme-ma...
Programme Manager - Waves
Demos is Britain’s leading cross-party think-tank. We produce original research, publish innovative thinkers and host thought-provoking events.
demos.co.uk
November 7, 2025 at 2:44 PM
Reposted by Sameer Padania
aeporreca.org
I just tried to share this paper as an answer to a colleague sharing the open letter (openletter.earth/an-open-lett...) as well as other critical opinions on the mailing list of teachers of the faculty of sciences… and the dean of the faculty (who moderates the list) rejected my email. 🙃
olivia.science Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · Sep 6
Finally! 🤩 Our position piece: Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia:
doi.org/10.5281/zeno...

We unpick the tech industry’s marketing, hype, & harm; and we argue for safeguarding higher education, critical
thinking, expertise, academic freedom, & scientific integrity.
1/n
Abstract: Under the banner of progress, products have been uncritically adopted or even imposed on users — in past centuries with tobacco and combustion engines, and in the 21st with social media. For these collective blunders, we now regret our involvement or apathy as scientists, and society struggles to put the genie back in the bottle. Currently, we are similarly entangled with artificial intelligence (AI) technology. For example, software updates are rolled out seamlessly and non-consensually, Microsoft Office is bundled with chatbots, and we, our students, and our employers have had no say, as it is not considered a valid position to reject AI technologies in our teaching and research. This is why in June 2025, we co-authored an Open Letter calling on our employers to reverse and rethink their stance on uncritically adopting AI technologies. In this position piece, we expound on why universities must take their role seriously toa) counter the technology industry’s marketing, hype, and harm; and to b) safeguard higher education, critical thinking, expertise, academic freedom, and scientific integrity. We include pointers to relevant work to further inform our colleagues. Figure 1. A cartoon set theoretic view on various terms (see Table 1) used when discussing the superset AI (black outline, hatched background): LLMs are in orange; ANNs are in magenta; generative models are in blue; and finally, chatbots are in green. Where these intersect, the colours reflect that, e.g. generative adversarial network (GAN) and Boltzmann machine (BM) models are in the purple subset because they are both generative and ANNs. In the case of proprietary closed source models, e.g. OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Apple’s Siri, we cannot verify their implementation and so academics can only make educated guesses (cf. Dingemanse 2025). Undefined terms used above: BERT (Devlin et al. 2019); AlexNet (Krizhevsky et al. 2017); A.L.I.C.E. (Wallace 2009); ELIZA (Weizenbaum 1966); Jabberwacky (Twist 2003); linear discriminant analysis (LDA); quadratic discriminant analysis (QDA). Table 1. Below some of the typical terminological disarray is untangled. Importantly, none of these terms are orthogonal nor do they exclusively pick out the types of products we may wish to critique or proscribe. Protecting the Ecosystem of Human Knowledge: Five Principles
November 7, 2025 at 2:50 PM
Reposted by Sameer Padania
rikefranke.bsky.social
British military planners have travelled to Bodø in the Arctic Circle, to rehearse what it would look like if Russia decided to unleash hostile activity on its doorstep.

www.politico.eu/article/brit...
Deep inside a mountain, Britain prepares for Russian onslaught
British military planners travelled to Bodø, nestled between the sea and snow-capped peaks of the Arctic Circle, to war-game out the response to Russian threats.
www.politico.eu
November 7, 2025 at 9:43 AM
sdp.bsky.social
Just heard the terribly sad news about Jessica Clark:

mediaimpactfunders.org/remembering-...
Remembering Jessica Clark, Founder of Dot Connector Studio | Media Impact Funders
We are so heartbroken by the sudden passing of Jessica Clark, a longtime consultant, collaborator and friend to Media Impact Funders, and the founder and director of Dot Connector Studio. Jessica pass...
mediaimpactfunders.org
November 7, 2025 at 9:59 AM
sdp.bsky.social
Uncanny…

www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...
Yes Minister - Series 1 - Big Brother - BBC Sounds
Jim Hacker crosses swords with Sir Humphrey over civil liberties.
www.bbc.co.uk
November 7, 2025 at 8:48 AM
Reposted by Sameer Padania
alisonkilling.bsky.social
NEW: The End of the Line: the centrepiece of Saudi Arabia’s Neom gigaproject - a 500m tall, 170km long wall-like building intended ultimately to house 9 million people - can’t get out of the ground, say more than 20 former Neom architects, engineers and senior executives.
ig.ft.com/saudi-neom-l...
End of The Line: how Saudi Arabia’s Neom dream unravelled
Mohammed bin Salman’s utopian city was undone by the laws of physics and finance
ig.ft.com
November 6, 2025 at 6:56 AM
sdp.bsky.social
✊🏾I’m in Bologna, couldn’t sleep till I knew the result. Good work, NYC.
November 5, 2025 at 3:18 AM
sdp.bsky.social
I was not expecting to hear Marlene Engelhorn talking about the nature of inherited wealth on a BBC radio comedy:

www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

#wealthtaxes
Sunil Patel: An Idiot's Guide To - Bagging an Heiress - 5: How to Become a Lord - BBC Sounds
Sunil Patel heads to the Highlands and finally meets a real-life heiress.
www.bbc.co.uk
November 3, 2025 at 7:23 PM
sdp.bsky.social
Nella sedia di George Orwell, per Enrico Malatesta (@ Angelica, Centro Di Ricerco Musicale, Bologna):

aaa-angelica.com/aaa/ricercae...
November 2, 2025 at 6:25 PM
sdp.bsky.social
In case you need the master #ZakirHussain to help you escape it all for a couple of hours:

www.nts.live/shows/in-foc...
In Focus: Zakir Hussain 25th April 2025
Playing Indian Classical. Two hours of exploratory Indian classical sounds from legendary tabla player and percussionist Zakir Hussain, selected by Arushi Jain.
www.nts.live
November 2, 2025 at 7:51 AM
sdp.bsky.social
“If you or anyone you know is a millionaire who is leaving the [UK] or thinking of / threatening [to do so] because you are worried about wealth taxes, get in touch” regarding the documentary at garyfilm@mindhouse.co.uk

youtu.be/yenA0WSICG0
Special announcement
YouTube video by Garys Economics
youtu.be
November 1, 2025 at 11:54 PM
Reposted by Sameer Padania
eliothiggins.bsky.social
Russia's disinformation campaign is now using deepfaked audio of Holocaust survivors to attack Armenia, in videos published on the 2nd anniversary of the Hamas October 7th attack on Israel.
October 8, 2025 at 8:45 AM
sdp.bsky.social
I forget which #THFC pod talked about the seeming drop in attendances, but for the Chelsea game? i never thought that it would be hard to sell my ticket for the Chelsea game, yet here we are. #COYS
November 1, 2025 at 10:11 AM
sdp.bsky.social
now that I have actually left the meeting I came here for, and am out foraging for myself, i get why I haven’t been back to Naples since the late 90s/early 2000s - because it took me 20 years to lose the weight I gained in a weekend.
October 31, 2025 at 3:24 PM
sdp.bsky.social
“The British newspaper @thetimes.com has apologized and deleted an article after discovering its reporter had been duped by someone pretending to be Bill de Blasio, the former mayor of New York City.”

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...
UK newspaper apologizes for fake De Blasio interview criticizing Mamdani
The Times deletes article after its reporter was duped by impostor pretending to be former New York mayor
www.theguardian.com
October 29, 2025 at 10:12 PM
Reposted by Sameer Padania
cdt.org
ICE treating facial recognition matches as definitive IDs to detain individuals is shockingly irresponsible and dangerous. Facial recognition is a highly temperamental technology, with accuracy varying significantly based on an array of factors. www.404media.co/ice-and-cbp-...
October 29, 2025 at 9:04 PM
Reposted by Sameer Padania
apublica.org
💥Apoie o jornalismo que incomoda. Faça um pix para contato@apublica.org e nos ajude a seguir fiscalizando o poder e fazendo a diferença.
October 29, 2025 at 9:11 PM