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punkacademic

@punkacademic.bsky.social

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punkacademic @punkacademic.bsky.social · Jul 31

Have brought my blog back with an entry that covers my MS, anarchism, Richard Pryor, E. H. H. Green, and Nine Inch Nails. Very 'on brand'.

I'm going to be using it for longer-form stuff. Thanks to all who read it, I'd been meaning to do this for ages.

punkacademic.wordpress.com/2025/07/31/a...

As alive as you need me to be

Hyperintense. That would probably make a good description of me tout court, if I’m honest, but seeing it on a letter from a hospital a couple of years back had a different meaning. Taken in c…

punkacademic.wordpress.com

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punkacademic @punkacademic.bsky.social · 9h

Was on the Freedom Anarchist News Review talking about Starmer's war on protest...

Freedom Press @freedompress.bsky.social · 11h

Livestreaming now: The Anarchist News Review! With Starmer threatening to police both how many protests we have and what we can say while doing them, what other Faragist measures might there be on the Labour Party docket for 2025?

www.youtube.com/watch?v=NztA...

Anarchist News Review: Labour hammers protest and the Tories hammer each other

YouTube video by Freedom

www.youtube.com

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Reposted by punkacademic

Keith W. Dickinson @keithwdickinson.bsky.social · 19h

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.

The Verge @theverge.com · May 26

Nick Clegg says asking artists for use permission would ‘kill’ the AI industry

Paul McCartne, Elton John and others signed an open letter.

buff.ly

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punkacademic @punkacademic.bsky.social · 3d

This. It goes to the whole range of issues of course.

Reminiscent of the oft-repeated Brecht quote - Labour would 'dissolve the people and elect another'.

Phil McDuff @mcduff.bsky.social · 3d

To a certain extent, though, this is how it is always going to be. The situation is getting more obvious, more desperate, the government less connected from the problems and any mechanisms that might fix them. It's more insulting, more gross. But it's just laying it out the same it's always been.

Carla Denyer @carladenyer.bsky.social · 3d

Wish I could say I was shocked, but here's the Labour government constraining the right to peaceful protest again...

'You can protest but only according to our rules. The rules are: you're not allowed to use any of the tactics that make protest effective.'

Reposted by punkacademic

MAREcus 👻/ 🏳️‍🌈🇧🇧 @marcusjdl.bsky.social · 3d

Unfortunately the billionaire funded online radicalisation of white people in the UK is growing and instead of getting to the root cause that endangers us all we’re being told they have legitimate concerns and government trying to give them what they want with every policy announcement

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MAREcus 👻/ 🏳️‍🌈🇧🇧 @marcusjdl.bsky.social · 3d

When it comes to intimidating racist protests including outside our homes or place of worship, Black and Asian people are supposed to just accept it and the government saying “we hear you” and “it is right to protest this” and “I love flags me”. No thought of “cumulative impact” for us!

Peter Walker @peterwalker99.bsky.social · 3d

NEW: Home Office announces planned new anti-protest powers, mainly aimed at pro-Gaza protests like those for Palestine Action. Police will be able to consider the "cumulative impact" of repeated protests and potentially order that they be relocated.

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Jonathan Hopkin @jonathanhopkin.bsky.social · 6d

Remember when the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy was treated as ridiculous hyperbole

Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 6d

Finally, a major media outlet will be headed by a true free speech warrior who got her start trying to get her professors fired

Phil Lewis @phillewis.bsky.social · 6d

Bari Weiss is set to be named the editor in chief of CBS News, the New York Post reports

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punkacademic @punkacademic.bsky.social · 9d

Syed once wrote a whole book where it was clear he didn't understand correlation v causation, was clear he didn't care to, got called out for it, got very upset and...

Pete Fraser @petefrasermusic.bsky.social · 9d

These people seem to think they’re too clever to even need to do the very basic research - in this case to even *cast their mind back a couple of years* - to support their point. The daftest, smuggest, people on earth. Imagine having the brass neck to send an invoice for this shit.

JWexTheSpa @jwsidders.bsky.social · 10d

No-one is surprised, Matthew. Absolutely no-one.

punkacademic @punkacademic.bsky.social · 10d

Big backer of Tony Blair, who in turn is a big backer of digital ID in the UK.

None of this is 'in secret', they are all quite public about what they want.

Scott Horton @robertscotthorton.bsky.social · 11d

Larry Ellison envisions a surveillance state in which techbros rule. '“Citizens will be on their best behavior, because we’re constantly recording and reporting everything that is going on,” Ellison said in an hour-long Q&A during Oracle’s Financial Analyst Meeting last week.'

Larry Ellison predicts rise of the modern surveillance state where ‘citizens will be on their best behavior’ | Fortune

Oracle's Larry Ellison believes citizens and police alike will be under constant surveillance of each other.

fortune.com

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punkacademic @punkacademic.bsky.social · 10d

A trite thought, but on all the AI magic bullshit flying round...

...it's Sunday. I sat down and read a few pages of Marc Bloch, just because. I reckon it was a more worthwhile use of my time.

Basically just read books. You will know things and critique things. Don't outsource your mind.

punkacademic @punkacademic.bsky.social · 11d

What an incredible finish from St Helens.

Reposted by punkacademic

Erin Reed @erininthemorning.com · 11d

ICE is doing forced labor and sexual assault of transgender people in their detention centers, reads a new complaint.

ICE Warden Put Transgender Detainees into Forced Labor Program: Complaint

A federal complaint accuses the warden of creating an ad hoc work program used to demean trans detainees.

www.newsweek.com

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punkacademic @punkacademic.bsky.social · 12d

Anyway TL;DR the whole point rhetorical or real is to give the government another tool to mark people out as 'different' and if you're cool with that then I'd suggest you think again.

punkacademic @punkacademic.bsky.social · 12d

Anyone who has ever said 'but they can't do that! to a victim of oppression in the UK has almost certainly never tried asserting or defending their supposed 'rights' under the law.

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punkacademic @punkacademic.bsky.social · 12d

Saying 'but Europeans have them!' ignores the contexts in which they operate. I wouldn't want them in any circumstances, but it's worth bearing in mind that in many European countries they exist within the context of constitutional settlements that are, ahem, less 'malleable' than the UK

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punkacademic @punkacademic.bsky.social · 12d

Giving Starmer's government more power and being blasé about it because it doesn't affect you and contrarian because This Sounds Clever ('you have a phone in your pocket!') isn't the act of a 'liberal', and I'm no liberal, or centrist.

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punkacademic @punkacademic.bsky.social · 12d

In one sense, Trump and Starmer are very alike and perhaps this is their much-vaunted connection. It's trite and prosaic really. They are charlatans who will say and do whatever they think they need to to gain power and status.

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punkacademic @punkacademic.bsky.social · 12d

So essentially in power they are more of a centrist party than a liberal one.

Starmer for his part doesn't seem to have any principles beyond a vacuous centrism which in practice amounts to a technocratic authoritarianism powered by venture capital and private equity.

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punkacademic @punkacademic.bsky.social · 12d

The LD digression is just to illustrate there isn't a solidly liberal party political formation in the UK. They'd probably vote against ID cards out of office but if they were the price of coalition swallow them, going on prior behaviour.

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punkacademic @punkacademic.bsky.social · 12d

Even in opposition, lest we forget, when the rubber met the road recently on the criminalisation of non-violent direct action, LS spoke against it & then voted for it, justifying themselves on the specious grounds that they 'had' to vote for it because the government put other groups on the list /7

punkacademic @punkacademic.bsky.social · 12d

Davey for instance has consistently voted against ID cards. But that was in opposition.

In office he and the vast majority of his fellow LD MPs voted for secret courts which saw senior LD figures resign on the floor of conference.

votes.theyworkforyou.com/person/10155...

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Security Sensitive Evidence in Courts votes for Edward Davey

Analysis and data on voting in the UK’s Parliaments

votes.theyworkforyou.com

punkacademic @punkacademic.bsky.social · 12d

The thing is, even that should give you pause though, since a Bad Person (as you see it) could be in charge at any point.

The LDs will, presumably, oppose ID cards on principle. However, their commitment to civil liberties tends to be better in opposition than government (see secret courts)

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punkacademic @punkacademic.bsky.social · 12d

Liberals are suspicious, or again should be, of the state and what it can do given more power.

Centrists often see themselves as technocrats and thus have an uncritical view of much of the state, preferring to think that when it does bad things it's because a Bad Person is in charge.

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punkacademic @punkacademic.bsky.social · 12d

This is one of the divides, or should be, between liberalism and centrism. Centrism often masquerades as liberalism to lend itself intellectual respectability, but it's a hard ideology now that masquerades as a pragmatic approach.

Liberals absolutely SHOULD oppose ID cards.

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punkacademic @punkacademic.bsky.social · 12d

The ID card complacency is basically just another way of saying you have some sort of privilege - you're not global majority, you're not disabled, you're not gender diverse.

Basically you're not someone the government is currently hunting, or, in the case of some, you don't *think* you are.

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punkacademic @punkacademic.bsky.social · 12d

People saying 'ID cards won't change anything'

They absolutely will.

They will be something you will be asked to produce to access services, tied to a database, at a time when the UK government is selling the country out to US techbros who are obsessed with eugenics and who hate trans folk.

/1

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