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heatherburnstech.bsky.social
Heather Burns
@heatherburnstech.bsky.social
1.2K followers 150 following 1.2K posts
freelance tech policy x digital rights / human rights / good trouble / midlife MPhil student @ Strathclyde / IANAL / https://heatherburns.tech / 💬 on Signal / open to work / 🇺🇦 / "bad ass Glaswegian" apparently
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heatherburnstech.bsky.social
Don't ask how I'm going to top this
November 11, 2025 at 12:06 PM
heatherburnstech.bsky.social
20,000 views, which is 19,998 more than anyone has seen of the actual TCNs heatherburns.tech/2025/11/10/t...
November 11, 2025 at 6:34 AM
heatherburnstech.bsky.social
This is how fast Christian Nationalism is infecting tech policy: X's director of global government affairs told a Parliamentary committee this week that a violent video which inspired the Southport killer was actually a glorious miracle. (source: www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home... nb adwall)
On Tuesday, X’s head of global government affairs, Deanna Romina Khananisho, told the Southport Inquiry she was “passionate” about a “free speech mission”. Rudakubana, then aged 17, searched a social media site for a video of the stabbing of Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel six minutes before he left home on 29 July last year Nicholas Moss KC, counsel to the inquiry, asked whether by showing the video of the suspected terrorist attack, which happened as the bishop’s sermon was being livestreamed at a church in Sydney, X risked promoting it. Sharing evidence over a video link, Ms Khananisho agreed the footage showed a “horrific incident”. Yet Ms Khananisho said she had been watching the sermon live as the attack happened and “saw a miracle unfold”. She said: “People saw a monster. I saw an angel protecting Mar Mari.” She added: “I actually see hope. I actually see faith. I actually see forgiveness.
November 8, 2025 at 9:28 AM
heatherburnstech.bsky.social
ai slop
November 1, 2025 at 6:53 AM
heatherburnstech.bsky.social
All hail Betteridge's Law.
Screen cap from the BBC News site asking "Is this finally rock bottom for Mr Andrew Mountbatten Windsor?"
October 31, 2025 at 11:40 AM
heatherburnstech.bsky.social
On #NationalCatDay, please enjoy my lovely assistant demonstrating The Writing Process.
October 29, 2025 at 8:38 AM
heatherburnstech.bsky.social
Could someone please buy a beer on my behalf for the Guardian sub-ed who did this, thanks.
There must be an Engels (playing with my chart)
October 25, 2025 at 9:02 AM
heatherburnstech.bsky.social
Her “movement” is a professional lobbying campaign for corporate surveillance vendors, riding on her dead child’s body with her full consent.
Brianna Ghey’s mother: my five-point social media plan to protect children The murdered 16-year-old and her killers had all accessed harmful content before the tragedy. Esther Ghey, who has herself experienced online hate, has set out where change is needed 1. Monitoring apps already installed when you buy a phone Oblige mobile phone companies to sell devices on which monitoring apps with tamper- proof control are already installed Ghey’s description of raising a teenager in an age where social media “likes” translate into real-world social currency — where more likes give the impression of popularity — will sound all too familiar to parents of any children of a similar age. Having come out as trans at the age of 14, Brianna was “forced into an online world” during the Covid-19 pandemic and became “addicted” to her phone and social media, Ghey said. She had amassed tens of thousands of followers on TikTok, the Chinese- owned video-sharing app, and, like many teenagers, longed to become “famous” on the platform. Videos showed her applying make-up, dancing or lip-syncing to songs. Her mother was unaware at the time that Brianna was also accessing websites that showed videos of self-harm and content related to eating disorders. Brianna found “pro- anorexia” sites through Twitter/X, which is owned by the tech tycoon Elon Musk. “The algorithms mean that once you are looking at certain things, social media sites will keep showing you these things,” her mother said. “But I didn’t know she was accessing this kind of content, and other parents probably don’t either.” 2. Monitoring harmful search terms Roll out technology to monitor concerning and harmful words being searched online by young people and include it on mobile devices Object 2 It became increa
October 22, 2025 at 6:06 AM
heatherburnstech.bsky.social
Democracy and the open internet die in daylight.
A screen cap from the Washington Post offering free access if you download PerplexityAI's proprietary browser
October 21, 2025 at 12:09 PM
heatherburnstech.bsky.social
Tag yourself #RemainInLight
The staircase to the Strath Union printed with the names of iconic bands who have performed here
October 20, 2025 at 9:13 AM
heatherburnstech.bsky.social
The politician in South Carolina who has introduced a bill redefining contraception as abortion also wants people who share websites to be charged with aiding and abetting homicide.
When asked why his bill redefines contraception, Cash admitted he believes certain forms of birth control are “an early abortion.” When pressed about allowing homicide charges against abortion patients—which could mean the death penalty in South Carolina—he shrugged it off: “It’s wrong to kill an innocent person.” And when asked about whether someone could be criminally charged for calling an abortion clinic, or sharing a clinic website with a friend, Cash compared it to “sharing a website to find a killer to rub your wife out.” “If you’re aiding and abetting the killing of an innocent person,” he said, “you’re going to be held accountable.”
October 16, 2025 at 5:37 AM
heatherburnstech.bsky.social
I know the world is tough right now but this week a) Tim Curry re-entered the world and b) informed us that Frank-N-Furter was born at The Barras. I take my joy where I can get it.
Let's talk about "Rocky Horror." Can you describe how you created the look for Frank-N-Furter? I didn't really create it myself. I was grimly unaware when I read the role and started to rehearse it that the national costume of Transylvania was a corset and whatever else you put with it. But the costume designer, Sue Blane, had worked with me before in a remarkable repertory theatre in Glasgow, Scotland, called the Citizens Theatre, where we had done a production of "The Maids," by Jean Genet. I played one of the rather grubby sisters, Solange. And Sue designed that outfit. For "Rocky Horror," she went to a market in Glasgow called the Barras, where all kinds of crap was sold, and she found a Victorian corset for three pounds. I wore it back to front.
October 15, 2025 at 7:41 PM
heatherburnstech.bsky.social
When I was an undergrad in the 90s and I told my university that my sole parent was dying of a brutal illness, their response to me was “get the notes you missed from someone else. That was it. It hurts to this day. Nearly 30 years on, I can’t get used to universities actually supporting people.
A display of mental health support resources in the Strathclyde University library
October 15, 2025 at 12:17 PM
heatherburnstech.bsky.social
Just discovered that my book has been Trumped. Americans really will do anything to avoid dealing with privacy. 😉
A note on my book's sale page saying "We are currently unable to ship printed books to the US due to customs clearance issues."
October 14, 2025 at 5:04 PM
heatherburnstech.bsky.social
This daily newsletter has asked its recipients to shout a little louder about the fact that the Trump administration is redefining contraception as abortion, with a view to censoring it online, so here’s said newsletter on the author of one of the state test bills which is laying the groundwork.
But here’s the thing: Abortion, Every Day has learned that Cash once wrote an entire pamphlet calling oral contraceptives “chemical abortion.” In it, he claimed that “all forms of the birth control pill” kill a “human being”. Unless by some miracle there’s another Richard Cash in South Carolina who worked with Pastors for Life, the Republican legislator wrote that birth control pills “induce changes in the uterine lining so that if conception does occur, implantation is prevented, thus inducing an abortion.” This banger was my favorite, though: “Over time, a woman using birth control pills runs the definite and intentional risk of killing one or more of her children as a result. Therefore, it is morally unacceptable to be on the pill while engaging in sexual intercourse.”
October 9, 2025 at 5:25 AM
heatherburnstech.bsky.social
Fig.7 US Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem speaks at the so-called "Terrorism Confinement Center" in Tecoluca, El Salvador on March 26, 2025. In her speech, she threatens migrants without valid papers with detention: "If you come to our country illegally, this is one of the consequences you could face." 16 More recently in 2024, the images have become creepier and more cruel, as was the case in-speaking of remigration-the sexy racism mash-up video and AfD party song, "Remigration Hit" (Fig. 6). The music video is deliberately audacious in creating an AI-generated visual echo of the infamous May 2024 dance party on the island of Sylt at which elite young Germans were captured on film singing, , "Deutschland den Deutschen, Ausländer raus.' "s "Aryan" pilots and gyrating flight attendants cram scores of abjected and depressed black and brown men onto hundreds of airplanes and send them away into the blue sky. This is a different kind of arousal or rush, a flagrant display of a felt sense of virile superiority to brown and black men. I think we can read here a shift over the five years between 2019 and 2024: from sexualized danger-mongering (though that hasn't gone away either—in fact the other parties, from the Christian Democrats to the Greens, are now jumping on that band-wagon)* to a mode of full-on braggadocio, where Schadenfreude reigns and-as Adam Serwer put it about Trumpism-"the cruelty is the point." There is, apparently, delicious pleasure in being able to cause hurt. The secret memo of fascism to its followers is not repression. On the contrary, it's a message of permission, of license and impunity. Or as political theorist Robyn Marasco notes, it's all about participation in power.® Indeed, similar forms of sexy racism are embodied by Trump's Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem (Fig. 7).' 17
October 8, 2025 at 2:23 PM
heatherburnstech.bsky.social
I love it when you bump into an old friend.
A 90s high school paperback edition of “Elmer Gantry” by Sinclair Lewis
October 4, 2025 at 11:49 AM
heatherburnstech.bsky.social
Over the years, Michelle Visage on RuPaul’s Drag Race has dropped some iconic looks, but 1980s Long Island @meredithmeredith.bsky.social is going in the pantheon.
Michelle on Drag Race UK looking fierce and 1980s and hopefully sending Viola safely through to the next week
September 27, 2025 at 6:27 AM
heatherburnstech.bsky.social
I loved, loved how she spent her final years being not subtle and more than a bit spiteful in the most highbrow manner possible. A model for us all.
The late Queen glaring whilst wearing a hat made up to look like the EU flag
September 26, 2025 at 5:23 AM
heatherburnstech.bsky.social
"Limit children's doomscrolling to two hours," say Lib Dems, while their grandparents spend six hours a day on social media spreading racist bile and AI slop. But they're untouchable, because they're ~pensioners~.
"Limit children's doomscrolling to two hours, say Lib Dems"
September 22, 2025 at 6:19 AM
heatherburnstech.bsky.social
Draft law in the US state of South Carolina would make it illegal for any web site anywhere which discusses abortion to be viewed within the state. I wonder where they got that idea from
South Carolina draft bill : (2) The prohibition against aiding and abetting a violation of this section includes, but is not limited to, knowingly and intentionally: (a) providing information to a pregnant woman, or someone seeking information on behalf of a pregnant woman, by telephone, internet, or any other mode of communication regarding self-administered abortions or the means to obtain an abortion, knowing that the information will be used, or is reasonably likely to be used, for an abortion; (b) hosting or maintaining an internet website, providing access to an internet website, or providing an internet service purposefully directed to a pregnant woman who is a resident of this State that provides information on how to obtain an abortion, knowing that the information will be used, or is reasonably likely to be used for an abortion;
September 20, 2025 at 11:33 AM
heatherburnstech.bsky.social
opsec under authoritarianism
"Settings" page in Zotero
September 20, 2025 at 5:50 AM
heatherburnstech.bsky.social
RIP Robert Redford, seen here in "All The President's Men" gazing at what later became my bedroom in Washington DC. As anyone who has ever lived in DC knows, that's the most DC apartment picture ever. All good memories.
A still frame from "All The President's Men" of Robert Redford looking around for his secret contact, whom he has just signalled by putting a red flag in a pot in his apartment's balcony.
September 16, 2025 at 5:44 PM
heatherburnstech.bsky.social
An experiment.
September 15, 2025 at 6:37 AM
heatherburnstech.bsky.social
@rossmc11.bsky.social I thought you might appreciate this footnote I just had to write
September 14, 2025 at 11:29 AM