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Philip Conway

@prconway.bsky.social

1.9K followers 6.1K following 98 posts

Researching critique, conspiracism, climate, and the geoeconomics of big tech. In a word,🔥polycrisis🔥!! He/him https://philiprconway.net/

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Philip Conway @prconway.bsky.social · Aug 13

Another summer, another procession of record-smashing heatwaves.

After the heatwave of July 2022, I wrote this piece on dread, anger, and the duty to critique.

Re-reading it for the page proofs, I was struck by some things I wrote that already seem out of date, but also some that seem timely.

🧵

The Necessity of Being Negative

Critique and Care in the Anthropocene

Philip Conway

The new normal

It’s July 2022 and the all-time temperature record for the town where I live has just been smashed by a full 5 degrees Celsius. Records tumble like dominoes all across Europe as air from the Sahara surges northwards—a climate event decades ahead of schedule.

I’m at the train station, waiting to travel the one stop home. The platform is packed with pale men in Hawaiian shirts, headed south. The announcer tells us that all trains have been cancelled and that travel should be avoided. At first, no one pays any attention. After the third attempt, the crowd slowly slopes off.

I take an Uber home—with a little guilt, given recent revelations about the company (Davies et al. 2022). The driver is blasting Capitol FM. It’s giving me a headache, but I figurethey’re entitled to enjoy their workspace. Between banging summertunes, the sunnily upbeat DJ opines that they don’t really find it that hot, and that ‘you’ll always get a positive outlook here at Capitol FM’, especially on a ‘proper summer’s day’ such as this one.

In the chill of an air-conditioned car, we speed past road workers wearing full-length protective clothing, toiling in 36 degrees Celsius heat. Near London, grass fires are lapping at the M25—a mere microcosm of blazes raging elsewhere.

Conservative contrarians gleefully mock all these ‘snowflakes’ (such as meteorologists at the Met Office) who, they say, are pushing heatwave hysteria (Horton 2022). People won’t shut up about 1976 (the go-to year for hot-weather nostalgia). BBC News runs a story on ice cream sales.

Part of me wants to scream. To rant and rave. To damn, denounce, critique. But, instead, I sit there, in the air-conditioned car, until I say ‘Yeah, just on the corner there. Perfect’.

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Philip Conway @prconway.bsky.social · 1d

On Robert Jenrick's "white faces" comment as a symptom of the times

polycritical.substack.com/p/when-harle...

When Harlem came to Handsworth

Why comparing the present to the 1970s might be unfair on the 1970s

polycritical.substack.com

Philip Conway @prconway.bsky.social · 25d

Contemporary liberalism conflates democracy with Discourse. If people are talking then there must be democracy happening.

Professional talkers, in particular, are loathed to consider that there might be anything more sacred than talking. God forbid they might actually have to think.

Annie Kelly @annieknk.bsky.social · 26d

Also even putting the content of his speech aside that's not at all what he was doing! He was following the Shapiro model of provoking a reaction of frustration or outrage so he could clip it for a "COLLEGE LIBS OWNED BY FACTS AND LOGIC" compilation, not earnestly trying to persuade people

Michael Hobbes @michaelhobbes.bsky.social · 26d

These people have smarted themselves into the dumbest fucking arguments.

Determining whether someone is "doing politics the right way" depends almost entirely on the content of their speech! If someone lies constantly and endorses authoritarians that's not practicing good politics.

Reposted by Philip Conway

Boyd van Dijk @boydvandijk.bsky.social · 27d

appearing later this month

global.oup.com/academic/pro...

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Philip Conway @prconway.bsky.social · 29d

The Forrest Gump of intellectuals.

Philip Conway @prconway.bsky.social · Sep 6

Starmer team kicking themselves that they didn’t think of it first.

Adam Schwarz @adamjschwarz.bsky.social · Sep 6

A political party, that's topping the polls, lauding someone who called for human beings to be burned to death should be a moment for national self-reflection.

This is not who we are nor who we should become.

Reform UK are a plague on our national humanity. We must never permit them to govern.

Reposted by Philip Conway

Albert Pinto @70sbachchan.bsky.social · Aug 29

US has made an all-in bet on AI and Fossil Fuels. China on green tech. @katemac.bsky.social & I @parismarx.com podcast on how China's bet made Solar+batteries+EVs turn into business models of Coke cans-everywhere, cheap, accessible, satisfy the thirst for freedom.
techwontsave.us/episode/291_...

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Reposted by Philip Conway

Carlota Perez @carlotaperez.bsky.social · Jul 11

Challenging podcast by @ceps.eu with @dacemoglumit.bsky.social going from whether AI is a revolution or part of AI to how the necessary institutional innovations are best made

CEPS @ceps.eu · Jul 11

🎧 New episode alert! 🎧

@dacemoglumit.bsky.social & @carlotaperez.bsky.social join us to rethink AI, innovation & inequality.

💡 The big question: Should organisational design be treated as a public policy concern?

Listen on:
🎧 𝐒𝐩𝐨𝐭𝐢𝐟𝐲: bit.ly/44HL3sK
🎧 𝐀𝐩𝐩𝐥𝐞 𝐏𝐨𝐝𝐜𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐬: bit.ly/3GGklJ5

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Philip Conway @prconway.bsky.social · Aug 22

There is, however, something more to be said about the power of capital to manifest dreams. Regardless of when the coming crash arrives, and how deep it goes, the thaumaturgic powers of capital will push this dream to its limits, whatever the cost.

Philip Conway @prconway.bsky.social · Aug 22

So, why does capitalism always need a Next Big Thing? Ask your friendly neighbourhood Marxist about the tendency of the rate of profit to decline.

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Philip Conway @prconway.bsky.social · Aug 22

It really was the exact same people, in many cases, who went from hawking crypto and/or NFTs to promising undeliverable AI products. They just rebranded their websites once OpenAI made chatbots the new hotness.

www.wheresyoured.at/rabbit-holed/

Rabbit Holed

Thank you to Emily Shepherd for her hard work reporting parts of this story, as well as her assistance clarifying details related to GAMA and finding company documents related to Rabbit and Cyber Manu...

www.wheresyoured.at

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Philip Conway @prconway.bsky.social · Aug 22

Crypto is an interesting technology without any sufficient use case. Gen AI is a useful technology without any sufficient business model.

The major technical and economic underpinnings of both are the same: mindbogglingly wasteful computation.

Philip Conway @prconway.bsky.social · Aug 22

Capitalism always needs a Next Big Thing. This need is demand-driven, not supply-driven. It’s structural.

Seekers of the NBT don’t particularly care what that thing is. However, they will dive into each iteration of the same old story with equally evangelical zeal.

your #3 source for absurdist true crime 🔨 @davidgerard.co.uk · Aug 19

just here to point out i've been right about the AI bubble since 2023 and only not before that cos i hadn't yet bothered

my quick crib was realising they were the crypto guys, like actually the same individual guys

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Philip Conway @prconway.bsky.social · Aug 21

I studied International Relations as an undergrad because:

1. I’d been politicised by being a moody teenager.

2. I’d taken Politics at A Level.

3. During that time, 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq had happened.

4. A guy in my class mentioned his dad had studied IR. (I’d never heard of it before.)

John Bull @garius.bsky.social · Aug 21

Note to course leads: this is WHY calling your course some cool academic specificity the kids won't know until they get to uni is bad.

Yeah. Sure. It's super-accurate now. Great.

They ain't finding it bro. All they searched for was "history" or "science"

Philip Conway @prconway.bsky.social · Aug 21

Sure, DM me.

Philip Conway @prconway.bsky.social · Aug 21

We sure are.

Philip Conway @prconway.bsky.social · Aug 21

It’s like a magic eye poster that becomes more cursed the longer you look at it.

Reposted by Philip Conway

Campaign against Climate Change @campaigncc.bsky.social · Aug 14

Inappropriate media photos illustrating heatwaves - this one wins a special prize for having a caption about increased drowning accidents.
Via @ketanjoshi.co

Headline:
Researchers: The risk of summer heatwave in Norway doubled in seven years
This summer's heatwave in Norway, Sweden and Finland was made ten times more likely due to man-made climate change.
Photo:
People joyously leaping off a boat into the sea
Caption:
The researchers write that this year’s heatwave led to an increase in the number of drowning accidents in Finland, Norway and Sweden

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Philip Conway @prconway.bsky.social · Aug 13

Academic publishing timelines being what they are, this chapter is not out yet. When it is, it'll be in an edited volume available for the low, low price of £143.00 (RRP).

www.tgjonesonline.co.uk/Product/Beri...

So, if you want to read an unofficial version, let me know.

Knowledge and Expertise in International Politics : A Handbook

This timely handbook offers a comprehensive, critical overview of current research on knowledge and expertise in international politics that helps readers navigate the growing literature in ...

www.tgjonesonline.co.uk

Philip Conway @prconway.bsky.social · Aug 13

However, I can readily believe that it will henceforth need to be a rather more underground and circumspect intellectual culture, much less at home within a professional volume on "Knowledge and Expertise."

Philip Conway @prconway.bsky.social · Aug 13

Does critique, of the kind I defend in this chapter, have a future within whatever will be left of the university sector in years to come?

In some form, probably. The empire in which we live is decentred and contradictory.

Philip Conway @prconway.bsky.social · Aug 13

Today, I am much more inclined to draw out the commonalities between the everyday positivity of the Capitol FM radio DJ and the professionalised post-critique of Latour, Felski, and the rest.

Philip Conway @prconway.bsky.social · Aug 13

Oh for the days when PhD programmes could quietly plug away at convincing "good American kids [...] that facts are made up, that there is no such thing as natural, unmediated, unbiased access to truth," as Latour wrote more than two decades ago...

Philip Conway @prconway.bsky.social · Aug 13

And what happens in the imperial capital so often foretells what is coming for the rest of us…

Oh for the days when inconvenient truths could simply be ignored!

This in turn, however, makes me rethink how much I conceded to the "post-critics."

Philip Conway @prconway.bsky.social · Aug 13

For decades, ever more rigorously assembled climate science was published — and then roundly ignored by those for whom it is inconvenient.

Today, however, an openly fascistic political formation in the US is seemingly hellbent on crushing such institutions.

www.technologyreview.com/2025/06/02/1...

The Trump administration has shut down more than 100 climate studies

Tens of millions of dollars in NSF grants have been slashed, and scientists fear the US is about to lose a generation of climate researchers.

www.technologyreview.com

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Philip Conway @prconway.bsky.social · Aug 13

In particular, I was struck by a passage in which I commented:

"Rigorously substantiated truth claims concerning environmental and climatic matters, constructed by communities and institutions dedicated to both their production and their scrutiny, are easily obtained."

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