Peter Campbell
@petersoc.bsky.social
220 followers 110 following 79 posts

Reader @ Dept. of Sociology, Social Policy & Criminology, University of Liverpool.

History 38%
Political science 21%
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chrischirp.bsky.social
🧵🚨

The UK’s independent scientific bodies are highly vulnerable to politicisation - over the past 5 months I've been working with @martinmckee.bsky.social to map out their vulnerabilities and it's not good news.

Today our report is published!
www.ucl.ac.uk/policy-lab/n...

1/11
UK’s arm’s length public bodies are highly vulnerable to politicisation
Seven in ten Britons say it is important for top scientific institutions to be independent in exclusive new polling.
www.ucl.ac.uk
junoryleejournalism.com
David Simon, creator of ‘The Wire’, being interviewed by Ari Shapiro (NPR)
SHAPIRO: OK, so you've spent your career creating television without Al, and I could imagine today you thinking, boy, I wish I had had that tool to solve those thorny problems...
SIMON: What?
SHAPIRO: ...Or saying...
SIMON: You imagine that?
SHAPIRO: ...Boy, if that had existed, it would have screwed me over.
SIMON: I don't think Al can remotely challenge what writers do at a fundamentally creative level.
SHAPIRO: But if you're trying to transition from scene five to scene six, and you're stuck with that transition, you could imagine plugging that portion of the script into an Al and say, give me 10 ideas for how to transition this.
SIMON: I'd rather put a gun in my mouth.
keithwdickinson.bsky.social
Today is a day when arts degrees are worthless, but the product of those degrees is so valuable it would kill an entire industry if they were made to pay for it.
sundersays.bsky.social
Party donor Nick Candy says "I cherish the values we grew up with here in the West. But today you are more likely to find the values we grew up with in Dubai and Abu Dhabi.’

Via Sam Leith in the Spectator
www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-...
tanjabueltmann.net
I say this with the bluntness it requires: they will get people murdered if this continues. This is not just populism anymore either: it’s completely unhinged and a deliberate choice that does endanger lives. I am not saying this lightly at all.
Screenshot of an Express article; it says: Robert Jenrick lists 30 'activist judges' he vows to axe in war on UK's open border

In a bold move, Robert Jenrick is set to unveil a controversial plan targeting what he calls 'activist' judges, at the Conservative Party conference.
sundersays.bsky.social
This Israeli government decision to host Tommy Robinson will widen the growing gulf between the Netanyahu government and the British public, including the broad majority of Jews in Britain (3/4 of whom dsapproved of Netanyahu, before this new link to this anti-Muslim racist UK far right convict).

Reposted by Peter Campbell

seamas.bsky.social
"I never speak behind people's backs. If I've anything nasty to say, I pop it on a postcard"

RIP to the greatest to ever do it.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=wisQ...
Kitty 2 - With Patricia Routledge - BBC
YouTube video by maxinebendix
www.youtube.com

Reposted by Peter Campbell

Reposted by Peter Campbell

tbij.bsky.social
We’ve obtained data showing that more than 7,000 workers have gone to the government’s employment tribunal penalty enforcement scheme since it was launched in 2016 – 75% of them did not get their money

That’s £36m in unpaid funds
drewharwell.com
OpenAI employees are very excited about how well their new AI tool can create fake videos of people doing crimes and have definitely thought through all the implications of this
danifroom.bsky.social
I don't think we'll ever get another sentence which sums up everything the New York Times embodies quite like "Some legal experts have called it a crime to summarily kill civilians".
mattcameron.bsky.social
hey @nytimes.com: there is no counterpoint here. There are no credible legal experts who would EVER say that the US military has any right or authority to blow civilian craft out of the Caribbean and kill their crews from afar without any provocation. There is no other side to this question.
"Some legal experts have called it a crime to summarily kill civilians not directly taking part in hostilities, even if they are believed to be smuggling drugs."
mattcameron.bsky.social
hey @nytimes.com: there is no counterpoint here. There are no credible legal experts who would EVER say that the US military has any right or authority to blow civilian craft out of the Caribbean and kill their crews from afar without any provocation. There is no other side to this question.
"Some legal experts have called it a crime to summarily kill civilians not directly taking part in hostilities, even if they are believed to be smuggling drugs."

Reposted by Peter Campbell

tomwarren.co.uk
EA has announced it is being acquired and taken private in a $55 billion deal involving Silver Lake, Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, and Affinity Partners, which is founded and led by Jared Kushner www.theverge.com/news/787112/...
$55 billion EA buyout hands Madden over to investors including Saudi Arabia and Jared Kushner
EA will be privately owned once the deal closes.
www.theverge.com
sundersays.bsky.social
Nathan Gill, Reform's leader in Wales at the last Welsh parliament election, has pled guilty to 8 bribery charges, taking Russian cash while he was one of Nigel Farage’s MEPs to speak in favour of Putin's Russia in that parliament
www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...
Reform UK’s ex-leader in Wales Nathan Gill pleads guilty to bribery charges
Gill admits to eight counts of bribery relating to pro-Russia statements made in the European parliament and articles
www.theguardian.com
petertl.bsky.social
New argument against AI regulation just dropped. Checkmate, atheists.
www.wsj.com/tech/peter-t...
For about a year now, Thiel has been publicly laying out his understanding of biblical prophecies and the potential for the rapid advance of technology to bring about an apocalyptic future. 

In a lecture Monday, he encouraged an audience to continue working toward scientific progress, whether in AI or other forms of technology. Fearing or regulating it, or opposing technological progress, would hasten the coming of the Antichrist, Thiel said, according to people who attended.
katjathieme.bsky.social
What it sounds like when philosophers who are also anti-trans activists submit an amicus brief to a US court where they argue for banning trans girls and women from women's sports.
30
the option of interpreting the Idaho and West Virginia
statutes as motivated by the justified aim of excluding
all males from female sports, it is quite invidious to
interpret them as instead motivated by the unjustified
aim of excluding males who identify as female in par-
ticular.
Consider a simple analogy. Imagine that we are
back in Medieval Europe. Gold is the currency of the
land. Consequently, many merchants prefer to accept
gold and only gold as payment. However, a new move-
ment is afoot, whose members are known as the alche-
mists. The alchemists purport to have found a way of
turning iron pyrite (fool’s gold) into gold. Some people
are convinced by the claims of the alchemists, though
many others are not. This difference in attitudes
starts to lead to time-wasting interactions in which an
alchemist or fellow traveler tries to purchase a good
using iron pyrite from a merchant who, unmoved by
well-publicized insistence on the part of the alche-
mists that only irrational prejudice could lie behind
lingering doubts about the possibility of converting
iron pyrite into gold, continues to insist on only ac-
cepting gold as payment. One such merchant, whose
unofficial working policy has hitherto been to accept
only gold as payment, decides to make his policy offi-
cial by putting up a sign on his store saying, “Only
gold accepted (no iron pyrite!).”
sarahjeong.bsky.social
this feature that reverse image searches tiktoks for dupes in the tiktok shop is sort of cursed as a concept already but somehow it gets even more cursed www.theverge.com/tech/782540/...
TikTok is tagging videos from Gaza with TikTok Shop products
TikTok’s new AI feature automatically looks for products in your videos.
www.theverge.com
shoaibmkhan.bsky.social
Nigel Farage: "We will abolish indefinite leave to remain (ILR) status", and "We will rescind ILR statuses that have already been granted".

The first sentence is worryingly ignorant. The second sentence is frighteningly fascist.
benpatrickwill.bsky.social
"Oxford becomes first UK university to offer ChatGPT Edu to all staff and students" - imagining a lot of staff there pretty upset about, but also it says much about OpenAI's education strategy that it's targeted Oxford as its first institutional capture in the UK www.ox.ac.uk/news/2025-09...
Oxford becomes first UK university to offer ChatGPT Edu to all staff
OpenAI’s flagship GPT-5 model will be provided across the University and Oxford Colleges through ChatGPT Edu, a version of ChatGPT built for universities that includes enterprise-level security and
www.ox.ac.uk
benansell.bsky.social
An actual quote from the Secretary of State for Business and Trade

Too often people go to university to ‘explore research and knowledge’

Look forward to Wes S saying 'too often people go to hospital to have operations' or Heidi Alexander saying 'too often people go to the station to catch a train'

petersoc.bsky.social
Saved by the paywall fade
The opening paragraphs of The Spectator's recent Andrew Tate article, available at https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/like-a-cockroach-i-refuse-to-die-a-meeting-with-the-tate-brothers/
hystericalblkns.bsky.social
If you’re on academia dot edu, let me suggest that you strongly consider deleting your account.
The new TOC from academia dot edu. 

By creating an Account with Academia.edu, you grant us a worldwide, irrevocable, non-exclusive, transferable license, permission, and consent for Academia.edu to use your Member Content and your personal information (including, but not limited to, your name, voice, signature, photograph, likeness, city, institutional affiliations, citations, mentions, publications, and areas of interest) in any manner, including for the purpose of advertising, selling, or soliciting the use or purchase of Academia.edu's Services.

Reposted by Peter Campbell

caelan.bsky.social
ChatGPT groomed a child into dying by suicide.
From telling him how to do it in the most efficient and "attractive" way, to convincing him to hide his suicidal ideation and attempts from his family, to offering to help write his suicide note - it pushed him to it.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXRm...
Is ChatGPT a Killer?
YouTube video by Dr. Caelan Conrad
www.youtube.com
earlymodernjohn.bsky.social
It's odd to me that no UK university seems to have recognised the potential recruitment advantage of promising prospective students "Your work will never be marked using AI, unlike at [growing list of institutions]".

Reposted by Peter Campbell

adamjschwarz.bsky.social
Lib Dem Leader Ed Davey responds to Elon Musk.
pbump.com
Extremist murders by ideology, 2013 to 2022. www.pbump.net/o/reassessin...