Stephen Hughes
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stephenhues.bsky.social
Stephen Hughes
@stephenhues.bsky.social
I study people's emotional investments in science and technology | STS, Science Communication & Psychoanalysis at University College London | 🇮🇪
No way! Keanu Reeves liked my post on Twitter from 2 years ago!!!! Never knew he was into sociotechnical imaginaries!
November 11, 2025 at 5:01 PM
Apt: "One effect of writing is that one learns what one thinks" (C Fred Alford).
November 10, 2025 at 11:24 AM
Judge said "he was going to deal with the accused as a young man with an unusual fascination with heavy goods vehicles who behaved in an extraordinary manner".

www.rte.ie/news/courts/...
Man drove stolen bus to Dublin because other one was full
A young man stole a Bus Éireann vehicle in Co Donegal and drove it to Dublin after being told another bus was full.
www.rte.ie
November 10, 2025 at 10:00 AM
Palantir's chief executive is sad because people are "trying to call the AI revolution into question".

www.theguardian.com/business/202...
Global stock markets fall sharply over AI bubble fears
Drop in US, Asia and Europe follows warning from bank bosses that market correction could lie ahead
www.theguardian.com
November 5, 2025 at 12:10 PM
This Guardian article genuinely starts with "Like 2001: A Space Odyssey’s HAL 9000..." before introducing the idea that AIs have "drives". Maybe I should get ahead of things and announce that they also have a death drive so we're double fricked.

www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
AI models may be developing their own ‘survival drive’, researchers say
Like 2001: A Space Odyssey’s HAL 9000, some AIs seem to resist being turned off and will even sabotage shutdown
www.theguardian.com
October 25, 2025 at 12:25 PM
What if the UK would take its one pro-social trait (generously giving up seats on the tube) and think hard about how it could use that as a starting point for rebuilding its crumbling society.
October 25, 2025 at 11:48 AM
The immediate Western injunctions on Gaza to "heal"
October 15, 2025 at 7:29 AM
Obsessed with this painting of a vision of Joan of Arc by Louis Maurice Boutet de Monvel, a children's book illustrator. Nice high res version available at www.nga.gov/artworks/195...
October 14, 2025 at 5:23 PM
At the amazing Haptic Trouble conference at Sorbonne Nouvelle. Presenting a paper today - Lonely Dreams of Touch Without a Body - where I discuss fantasies about touchless tech via Derrida and Klein. But the main news is that Paris knows how to cater for academics. See pic for hard evidence.
October 10, 2025 at 1:56 PM
Drafts of all chapters for Affect, Emotion and Feeling in Science Communication are now complete. They still need quite a bit of work but here’s an overview of where things currently stand (a thread):
September 23, 2025 at 8:05 AM
Same girl lol
September 22, 2025 at 12:04 PM
Everything about this headline is so potently cringey. Like a frickin Brass Eye sketch.
August 26, 2025 at 3:00 PM
Great paper by @felicitycallard.bsky.social ‬& Stan Papoulias which reasserts that the value of psychoanalysis is its confrontation of our capacity for creativity AND destruction and the inescapable role that fantasy plays in navigating that conflict - mh-bmj-com.libproxy.ucl.ac.uk/content/45/2...
August 13, 2025 at 12:50 PM
Reposted by Stephen Hughes
I just donated, and encourage you to do so too.
July 27, 2025 at 1:05 PM
Reposted by Stephen Hughes
July 27, 2025 at 1:34 PM
The number of air and water monitoring bots relentlessly screaming their data out into the Twitter void tells us a lot about contemporary visions of science communication
July 16, 2025 at 9:54 AM
Reposted by Stephen Hughes
My NYT op-ed this morning
I’m a Genocide Scholar. I Know It When I See It. www.nytimes.com/2025/07/15/o...
Opinion | I’m a Genocide Scholar. I Know It When I See It.
www.nytimes.com
July 15, 2025 at 11:54 AM
Reposted by Stephen Hughes
Our department newsletter now has two editions, thanks to the brilliant @stephenhues.bsky.social. Which makes it A Going Concern. Have a look at what we've been up to www.ucl.ac.uk/sts/sts-news...
STS Newsletter
Our Newsletter is meant to keep our friends, colleagues, and all in the STS community abreast of everything exciting happening in the Department
www.ucl.ac.uk
July 14, 2025 at 3:20 PM
Without access to playful creativity in our reflection, discourses of responsibility / ethics can easily descend into organised nonsense and chaos [quote here from Winnicott].
July 12, 2025 at 4:08 PM
It's weird that the Giddens-Beck-Wynne axis of STS's sociology (e.g., reflexivity, minimal role of the subject) has recieved such little direct theoretical critique within the discipline.
July 8, 2025 at 11:42 AM
"The sky is the limit" - reassuring guardrails in place 👍🏻

www.bbc.com/news/article...
Synthetic Human Genome Project gets go ahead
Scientists start a controversial project to create the building blocks of human life, in what is thought to be a world first.
www.bbc.com
June 26, 2025 at 8:19 PM
Promoted to Associate Professor! Pleased x 1000 🥳🥳🥳
June 26, 2025 at 2:54 PM
Better to have all the fire alarms for the building in the one place
June 14, 2025 at 12:03 PM
Can't get over how bad NCAD's homepage is. Looks like a local classified ads website.
May 14, 2025 at 12:42 PM
Nobody:
Not a single person on planet E:
The Central line:
May 8, 2025 at 11:33 AM