• 🌳 Last year is dead, they seem to say. Begin afresh, afresh, afresh 🌳

• When I was young I was invincible

• “What was a slow grind towards broad poverty is going to become a fucking rapid march towards poverty”

• Current mood in AI generated images #61

• The old elephant loves Moonlight Sonata

• ChatGPT can analyse and compare images

• Behavioural scientists were the lay preachers of late neoliberalism

• Current mood in (not) AI generated images #60

• It is not too late to seek a newer world

• Current mood in AI generated images #59

• Intuition as social theory

• The reparative activity of cow-watching 🐮

• Videos of American police searching a library for obscene material

• What’s the opposite of flourishing? Languishing

• Each venture is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate

• Makers, we, of perfectly contemplated machines

• Are you a map-maker or a bungee jumper with your writing?

• The institutional hole at the heart of Manchester

• Current mood in (not) AI generated images #58

• A trans reading of Poor Things

• Visualising the University of Manchester Campus

• Current mood in AI generated images #57

• Tell us where you’re from, what you want to become

• The cultural capital involved in applying for a PhD

• Inspiration is the indolent indulgence of the dabbler

• An introduction to asexuality

• I never trusted my love and her wallpaper feelings

• Daily Mail (2000): the internet may just be a passing fad, as millions give up on it

• How often do you interrupt yourself?

• Current mood in AI generated images #56

• On stopping when you’ve still got something to say

• 📍Exciting opportunity to join our team: 2 x permanent T&R lectureships at University of Manchester

• Capybaras: water loving hippo hamsters who can’t be bothered enough to care

• Building local journalism around quality rather than quantity

• Adorno and the Busenattentat (breast action)

• Current mood in AI generated images #55

• A worrying scam backed up by an AI-generated website

• How common is counter-plagiarism within social theory?

• Current mood in (not) AI generated images #54

• I sometimes find you childish, I sometimes find you mesmerising

• On seeing ourselves through others: L. S. Lowry’s Head of a Man (With Red Eyes)

• It just occurred to me the last five films I saw were all utterly outstanding

• Current mood in AI generated images #53

• The anti-elitist cosplaying of far-right elites

• How a deliberately inflated housing market is strangling the UK economy

• Riot police are stuck in the mud. Enter a wizard… 🧙‍♂️

• How do global leaders perceive global risk?

• Newcastle’s Dead and Abandoned Shopping Centres

• Well, given that we’re screwed in all of these conceivable ways, what would you want to do?

• Current mood in (not) AI generated images #52

• The challenge of feral sociology

• 🦆❤️ Ciallan’s memorial duck

• The manifest and latent function of online reviews

• You’re young until you’re not, you love until you don’t, you try until you can’t

• 📍Margaret Archer’s final book: Morphogenesis Answers Its Critics

• Current mood in AI generated images #51

• Why aren’t libertarian conspiracy theorists interested in Project 2025?

• I don’t like walking around this old and empty house. So hold my hand, I’ll walk with you my dear

• Why does South Manchester monopolise the economic gains of the city’s growth?

• Current mood in AI generated images #50

• These kids don’t play my shit I never had a top ten, maybe it’s because I sing about violence and depression  

• The first use of the phrase ‘publish or perish’ was in a 1928 journal article

• The value of a long-term personal blog in the next phase of GAI

• The alternative to avant-garde theorising

• We cannot do all things, become proficient in all areas, or master all fields

• Maybe there is some fucking magic in giving language to hidden things

• Understanding concepts by tracing their journey through the theory/practice nexus

• Current mood in AI generated images #49

• “My plans have always exceeded my capacities and energies”

• Why are we so bad at online meetings?

• Current mood in (not) AI generated images #48

• What’s the point of online conferences where people don’t actually meet?

• Chekhov’s gun in academic writing

• Two feet standing on a principle

• Current mood in AI generated images #47

• The Borromean Knot of Jacques Lacan; Or, How to Beat Your Death Drive

• The days are reeling past in such squealing blasts

• What happens when we can’t stay on the stage any longer?

• Derek Hook on diagnosis in Lacan

• The starting point for my second attempt to write a novel: Trinity College Cambridge, after the crash 🌊☀️☠️

• Capybaras and chess: together at last

• He pretends that he’s understanding and you know in the grand scheme of everything he’s probably called a nice man

• Nick Cave on the world, in its complexity, rearranging itself toward meaning

• Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they? Think not of them, thou hast thy music too

• What are your strengths?

• 📍Digital Sociology Wikipedia Editathon/Meetup – Feb 1st in Edinburgh

• What you’re doing to me now, ouch

• Why did Giddens largely ignore Bourdieu?

• We need jungle, I’m afraid (I can’t accept drum and bass)

• Epistemic relativism and the escape from the real

• How much are academics paid in different national systems?

• Current mood in (not) AI generated images #46

• 📖 Books I’ve read in 2024

• The myth of the ‘perfectly analysed’ person

• “I feel like I’m gaining some kind of power by expelling all of my inner thoughts and secrets to people in rooms”

• The Lacan gang

• The Gish Gallop as an academic technique

• Procrastination

• The existentialist Lacan

• Current mood in AI generated images #45