• Generative AI and the creative confusion of academic writers

• ✍️ How to enjoy writing in spite of the lure of generative AI

• The lure of machine writing and the value of getting stuck

• The Eeriness of Writing With Claude: When AI Mirrors Your Voice

• Current mood in (not) AI generated images #174

• The Ebb and Flow of Writing: From Struggle to Unconscious Fluency

• Machine writing and the challenge of a joyful reflexivity

• The Ethical Grey Areas of Machine Writing in Higher Education

• So, what is utopia good for? For walking

• Current mood in (not) AI generated images #173

• Thriving in Creative Darkness: Free Association and LLM Collaboration

• Will Claude tell you if your writing is crap? The danger of LLMs for wounded academic writers

• After 16 years and 7 months I’ve finished Platform and Agency

• Current mood in (not) AI generated images #172

• Current mood in (not) AI generated images #171

• Hope, perseverance, a vision (some doubt)

• Current mood in (not) AI generated images #170

• Plants and animals don’t fight the winter

• Current mood in (not) AI generated images #169

• Current mood in (not) AI generated images #168

• Current mood in (not) AI generated images #167

• The ‘vibes shift’ as a preemptive declaration of hegemony

• Current mood in (not) AI generated images #166

• For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.

• RIP Michael Burawoy

• Current mood in (not) AI generated images #165

• Current mood in (not) AI generated images #164

• Current mood in (not) AI generated images #163

• The wreck and not the story of the wreck, the thing itself and not the myth

• Current mood in (not) AI generated images #162

• Call for Short Papers – One-Day Symposium (The Process and Implications of Doing Social Theory)

• The fire and the rose are one

• Current mood in (not) AI generated images #161

• Current mood in (not) AI generated images #160

• The growing popularity of cults in a transient, fragmented state of contemporary society

• The rebranding of University of Bolton

• Manchester/Salford Critical Ed Tech Network Event, February 19th 12pm-2pm

• Current mood in (not) AI generated images #159

• Digital elites and reactionary modernism

• Eep! Eep! Eep!

• Current mood in (not) AI generated images #158

• Mainstream betting sides offering 1/3 odds on Trump either disregarding or changing constitutional term limits

• René Girard as reductive Lacanianism

• Things Hidden: The Life and Legacy of René Girard | Full Length Documentary

• I just discovered there is a Capoeira fighter in the UFC and it’s stunning

• Foucault’s approach to writing

• What would it look like if Generative AI firms embrace MAGA?

• Current mood in (not) AI generated images #157

• Current mood in (not) AI generated images #156

• Hope is a verb with its sleeves rolled up

• You were not on the receiving end of it all

• Why I find Manchester in 2025 architecturally depressing, but in an interesting way, in one photo

• Current mood in (not) AI generated images #155

• I asked a librarian if he had a book about Pavlov’s dogs and Schrödinger’s cat

• There will be 13 billionaires in the Trump administration

• Rebecca Solnit on the politics of hope

• “If H5 is ever going to be a pandemic, it’s going to be now”

• Current mood in (not) AI generated images #154

• How much time does Elon Musk spend tweeting each day?

• Current mood in (not) AI generated images #153

• Goodbye 2024 👋

• A condition of complete simplicity, costing not less than everything

• 2024: a (work) year in review

• My 25 favourite films of 2024

• My 20 favourite books of 2024

• ⚡️ The God War: my first attempt at Marvel fan fiction

• Current mood in (not) AI generated images #152

• Current mood in AI generated images #151

• Companions in the infinite rather than comfort animals

• The social imaginary of middle class 90s kids

• You’ll need somebody when you come to die

• Current mood in (not) AI generated images #150

• So you were born and that was a good day, some day you’ll die and that is a shame

• Music can grip us with the energy of a religious conversion. Once it is heard, one never experiences the world in quite the same way

• “It was the first time in my life where I felt an escape from my head”

• We sell our dreams and our potential to escape through that buzz

• New couples employ basically the same tactics that cults do

• Current mood in (not) AI generated images #149

• Current mood in (not) AI generated images #148

• Current mood in AI generated images #147

• New opportunity for independent critical realist researchers

• Current mood in (not) AI generated images #146

• Trump’s granddaughter has 500k YouTube followers and is producing videos from SpaceX launches 😬

• You see a mousetrap, I see free cheese and a fucking challenge

• We who are your closet friends feel the time has come to tell you that every Thursday we have been meeting as a group

• What is the objet petit a for aspiring writers?

• Writing has so much to give, so much to teach, so many surprises: a dialogue with Claude 3.5 about an incomplete book project

• The unexpected words and power that a speaker can find in the right audience

• Current mood in AI generated images #145

• Current mood in AI generated images #144

• Blogging as letting people into your messy studio

• Elon Musk: First Buddy of the United States

• Current mood in (not) AI generated images #143

• The Lacanian understanding of love

• Some thoughts about Richard Seymour’s Disaster Nationalism

• bell hooks on the difference between cathexis and love

• I think I like it here, so I’m gonna let them forget us

• Epidemiological self-consciousness and the suddenly countercultural status of the sovereign individual

• Current mood in (not) AI generated images #142

• I talked to somebody again who knows how to help me get better