Could be broad bean crop? In Lincolnshire still see vast fields of beans & their white flowers look like this…

Sybil is overjoyed that I had surgery & am not at work for 6 weeks…

Sybil, 14 weeks old… anyone would think there is a pattern in whippet behaviour… (the lovely Ed)

Current view…

There are those whose words we remember always and across time. For me, Judith Butler is one - their lectures resonating beyond a specific place and time. But then returning at other moments when politics shows just how horribly correct their analysis was.

So much to be said but it’s also necessary to find ways, and to dig out old media and practices. Time to dust these off… & if anyone got too relaxed and uses Cloud backup & biometrics to lock devices, don’t do that. Old school passcodes, encryption, Signal not WhatsApp. You know the drill.

Did the use of 59 of my books/articles to train Meta’s algorithm mean that it could learn how it uses attributes, features & inferences? Ha! Er no.. Particularly enjoying thinking about its partial account 😭

And also brightening my day is the @disconetwork.bsky.social collection #Technoskepticism by @lnakamura.bsky.social & colleagues. Congratulations.

And the special thing about this book is that it is written with our students in mind. I shared my draft chapter with my Politics and Space students & asked them to comment. They shaped it & our lecture course is distilled here 2/

I’m completely out of action with a “slipped” (ha, who are they kidding) disc in my spine. Feel so out of the world. So it is lovely to get books in the post. How could I refuse @jennyedkins.bsky.social @tom-gregory.bsky.social & Maja Zehfuss when asked me to address “what does AI do to politics?” 1

The wonderful whippet Ed died in my arms last night. He loved sunshine, sleeping, and he loved us. The kids grew up with him - he walked them to their nursery & primary school & now they are at university & sixth form. I can’t imagine life without him. Thanks best boy, you saved us every day 🧡

Cold night, cozy whippet

How a whippet gets to be nearly 14 years old (*hibernation)…

Anti-firework protection…

In opening pages of Cloud Ethics I describe my observations of UK event where a start-up pitched “protest monitoring dashboard”, drawing on data from social media, internet, & gov data to detect “dissent”. 2016, before LLMs. And the scholars writing about it now subject to it.

Met Police’s Mark Rowley has described how his officers will be “absolutely ruthless” in response to protests #CeasefireNow There are moments when the truth is spoken inadvertently. Absolute ruthlessness captures the Met’s approach to democratic protest & civil liberties