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Kate Spowage

@katespowage.bsky.social

350 followers 440 following 33 posts

Critical interdisciplinary sociolinguist working on the politics of language, capitalism, and colonialism. Shamelessly plugging Language as Statecraft, which thinks about all those things. Lecturer at the University of Leeds. Own views, reposts ≠ agreement

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Kate Spowage @katespowage.bsky.social · Jun 10

So on Friday @languageinsociety.bsky.social‬ published my new article, Against the Game! It explores toponymic politics in one of the most successful videogame franchises of all time, asking how Civilization players engage with coloniality & placenames 🧵 #Sociolinguistics #PopCulture buff.ly/PiQVW50

Against the game: Sid Meier’s Civilization and vernacular theories of language | Language in Society | Cambridge Core

Against the game: Sid Meier’s Civilization and vernacular theories of language

buff.ly

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Mike Sowden @mikeachim.bsky.social · 2d

Damn. This is amazing. £325 per week, paid monthly, for 3 years - and the result was a profit for the Irish economy:
www.citizensinformation.ie/en/employmen...

Post from Threads user rodneyowl: "Ireland has declared the Basic Income for Artists scheme permanent. This will be officially announced in tomorrow’s budget. Details to follow. Congratulations to all who fought for it and the present and future artists of all sorts in Ireland. That includes me 👌We’re just comin to the end of a 3 year pilot scheme. It’s been a roaring success. For every €1 paid out to the 2000 participants, the government got €1.46 back. Can’t argue with that. Other countries are already taking note."

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Signal @signal.org · 5d

We are alarmed by reports that Germany is on the verge of a catastrophic about-face, reversing its longstanding and principled opposition to the EU’s Chat Control proposal which, if passed, could spell the end of the right to privacy in Europe. signal.org/blog/pdfs/ge...

signal.org

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Charlie Masquelier @charlesmasquelier.bsky.social · 4d

The Economist claims wealth taxes don't work mainly because the rich end up fleeing. I invite the magazine to read rigorous academic research like Cristobal Young's book or Sam Friedman et al.'s work on this issue instead of spilling out ideological nonsense share.google/pV3cOUrhnDMd...

Don’t tax wealth

Even the most sophisticated arguments in favour of doing so make no sense

share.google

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Kate Spowage @katespowage.bsky.social · 12d

The explosiveness of the attack, also, is noteworthy. There's no warning given here - it's drawn less from the repertoire of professional policing and more from the fear-inducing tactics of unstable, abusive people in interpersonal relationships. 'Snapping' is all about keeping people on edge.

Nicole Holliday @mixedlinguist.bsky.social · 13d

She’s crying and pleading and he violently assaults her and throws her to the ground in front of a crowd. Imagine what they guys are doing to people behind closed doors. This is the result of authoritarian overreach and pervasive dehumanization strategies.

Brad Lander @bradlander.bsky.social · 13d

I was back at 26 Federal Plaza today, where an ICE agent violently threw this bereft woman to the ground in front of her kids. She had not touched him. She did not pose any threat. She had to be taken to the hospital. (🎥: Elias Eliahu)

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George Monbiot @georgemonbiot.bsky.social · 13d

1. I've long contended that austerity doesn't save money. It merely transfers costs from one group (the very rich, who would otherwise pay more tax) to others. Last night was a powerful reminder of that. Before I go further, I should say I’m fine. Just a black eye, cuts & bruises, no serious harm. 🧵

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Julia Carrie Wong @joolia.bsky.social · 19d

this exists it is called thinking

Matthew McConaughey says he wants a private LLM, fed only with his books, notes, journals, and aspirations, so he can ask it questions and get answers based solely on that information, without any outside influence.

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Kate Spowage @katespowage.bsky.social · 20d

Naming it for Mitterrand serves a national story that is, at best, fuzzy on the details of colonial and postcolonial politics. But the library is full of decolonial and other counterhegemonic material. There's something about the limits of a toponymic critique there - important though it is.

Kate Spowage @katespowage.bsky.social · 20d

Also, amid some great leftist art on display, the library is named for Président Mitterrand, who allegedly intervened on the side of the Akazu in Rwanda in 1994, probably for geostrategic reasons but supposedly to protect Francophonie in East Africa (bit.ly/BFS76). Strange, multivalent space...

Beyond “Fashoda Syndrome”: The Rwandan Civil War and the Politics of La Francophonie in Africa

This article uses a case study to interrogate the politics of French in Africa. It examines French involvement in the Rwandan Civil War (1990–1994), and argues that by conceptualising institutions ...

bit.ly

Kate Spowage @katespowage.bsky.social · 20d

They also have this genuinely excellent rendering of intellectual labour and it's subsumption to capital (but maybe now I am overdetermining things) 🤙 #CognitiveCapitalism

Kate Spowage @katespowage.bsky.social · 20d

Working at the BNF in Paris, and came across this fabulous cartoon from L'Élongé (May 1968). Will show students on my new Language Policy & Politics module - De Gaulle, in a hospital bed, is schooled on French grammar by a nurse. A satire on conservativism and verbal hygiene perhaps? 🤔

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Zack Polanski @zackpolanski.bsky.social · Sep 8

People are exhausted.

Our high streets, public spaces, whole communities left unloved.

Blaming migrants won’t fix this.

Tackling inequality will. Tax the super-rich. Fund public services.

#DrawTheLine

www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

‘We have to tell an alternative story’: Green leader Polanski chats to Nigel Farage’s constituents

Visit to Clacton-on-Sea part of social media strategy that Zack Polanski feels can rebut Reform’s rhetoric

www.theguardian.com

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Leonardo Carella @leonardocarella.bsky.social · Aug 28

Bingo. Westminster majoritarianism makes democratic backsliding not only easier to carry out but also harder to warn against, as I argued here. bsky.app/profile/leon...

dag @davidallengreen.bsky.social · Aug 28

NEW

The UK constitution is even more vulnerable than the US constitution

In the face of an illiberal radical assault, what has happened politically in America could easily happen in the UK

By me, at @prospectmagazine.co.uk

www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/ideas/law/th...

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Kate Spowage @katespowage.bsky.social · Aug 29

If the fact that something is at the heart of government rhetoric means it should be a funding priority, future governments might well put anti-immigration, anti-lgbt, anti-green research on the agenda. Look at the history of racial science. Research priorities should be independent of government.

Kate Spowage @katespowage.bsky.social · Aug 29

Worrying in lots of ways, including the suggestion that the talking points of political bodies should set the agenda for funding bodies. Growth and prosperity are falsely equated - growth can also impoverish people. Prosperity is about redistribution - not a word British governments are keen on.

Kai Heron @kaiheron.bsky.social · Aug 28

The head of the UK's leading funder of social research has spoken against funding projects on post-growth and degrowth. Our research environment is wedded to an economic system that does harm daily to all human and non-human life. www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-r...

ESRC ‘bar against’ degrowth research branded ‘anti-scientific’ - Research Professional News

Research council leader signals shift against funding projects that question benefits of economic growth

www.researchprofessionalnews.com

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Kai Heron @kaiheron.bsky.social · Aug 28

"These fires are neither isolated nor "natural" phenomena. They are expressions of a system in combustion, accelerated by climate change induced by our socioeconomic order and aggravated by land-use policies subordinated to accumulation, profit and growth." www.aljazeera.com/opinions/202...

Mediterranean wildfires are no accident

This summer’s infernos expose how climate change, land neglect and disaster capitalism turn forests into fuel.

www.aljazeera.com

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Florian Foos @florianfoos.bsky.social · Aug 26

Looks like we are now live-broadcasting Reform events on mass deportation plans on major TV channels including the BBC. We've just published a study showing that this type of coverage moves public opinion in an extreme direction & normalises those ideas further: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

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Zack Polanski @zackpolanski.bsky.social · Aug 13

Labour won’t defend migration.

Too scared of Reform, too terrified to lead.

While they play dog whistle politics, inequality is the real problem.

Not small boats. But private jets.

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Kate Spowage @katespowage.bsky.social · Aug 15

Excellent ideology critique from Teen Vogue (yep), on a gender essentialist and fascist-adjacent trend that I am, mercifully, too offline to recognise. (Though I watched some videos after reading and yikes 😬)

Helen @helenm40.bsky.social · Aug 14

"Repackaging rigid gender roles as spiritual self-help."

TikTok's "Divine Femininity" Advice Won't Fix Your Life — But It Could Ruin It

It's gender essentialism and, at worst, a door to the alt-right pipeline.

www.teenvogue.com

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Patrick Ness @patricknessbooks.bsky.social · Aug 6

The employee asked the girl and her mother if they needed help shopping. That’s it. That’s all. The misinformation, the insinuations (because the facts are inconveniently benign) are EXACTLY what was done to lesbians in the 80s. This is the product of hate and fear, not reality.

JK Rowling tweeting got a boycott of M&S, stretching facts to the breaking point, and making the world a worse place for absolutely everyone.

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Pops @pops131.bsky.social · Aug 5

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Radical Graffiti @radicalgraffiti.bsky.social · Aug 4

Radical stickers seen in Seattle, Washington

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Frances Ryan @francesryan.bsky.social · Jul 26

The far right terrorising asylum seekers in hotels love to spread the lie they’re worried about the risk of sexual assault. But here’s the truth: Two in five men arrested for last summer’s riots had been reported for domestic abuse. www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

2 in 5 arrested over last summer’s riots had been reported for domestic abuse

Police data indicates overlaps between public violent disorder and domestic violence and abuse

www.theguardian.com

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Ian Dunt @iandunt.bsky.social · Jul 25

The trans rights stitch-up: How the government plans to silence parliamentary debate on the most far-reaching restriction of minority rights in our lifetime open.substack.com/pub/iandunt/...

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Alt National Park Service @altnps.bsky.social · Jul 21

A new report by Human Rights Watch and partner nonprofits released today confirms that migrants at the downtown Miami ICE facility were indeed shackled with hands tied behind their backs, forced to kneel, and made to eat from styrofoam plates “like dogs.”

“You Feel Like Your Life is Over”

The 92-page report, “‘You Feel Like Your Life is Over’: Abusive Practices at Three Florida Immigration Detention Centers Since January 2025,” documents that people detained at Krome North Service Proc...

www.hrw.org

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Julia Snell @snelljulia.bsky.social · Jul 2

New research published in @languageeducation.bsky.social, available open access here (tinyurl.com/bdf262jp) and a short thread on the work below. Many thanks to the reviewers & editors for their feedback and to @leverhulme.ac.uk for funding support.

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