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Bridget Phillipson, reflecting on her years spent standing idly by while UK higher education crumbled into the abyss and tens of thousands of university workers implored her to do something, literally anything, to save their jobs: BUT WHAT ABOUT ME THO www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

‘It hurts to lose a job you love’: Starmer loyalist Bridget Phillipson fights on despite cabinet demotionExclusive: The former education secretary on her new role as Labour chair and continuing as the minister for women and equalitieswww.theguardian.com

‘Growth in every postcode’ = every postcode gets a data centre Dealing with the cost of living crisis = you can’t afford heating, but you can huddle beside the heat-emitting data centres Sorting water quality = there’s no shit in the rivers because there are no rivers because data centres

Guess when you’ve spent a large part of your filmmaking career making derivative work reliant on cultural appropriation, and leveraged your enormous power to force technological change on exhibitors with no thought for workers, using genAI must be like breathing www.theguardian.com/film/2026/ju...

George Lucas likens AI sceptics to luddites clinging to horses and cartsStar Wars director calls AI technology ‘the future’ of film-making and says ‘there’s nothing you can do about it’www.theguardian.com

On the off-chance anyone is travelling between Cornwall and Leeds on Sun 12 July I have a train ticket that’s not being used anymore owing to a change of plans. It’s non-refundable, so at this point would be glad for someone else to get the use of it

Tech firms should release environmental data on AI and universities should measure use. But there's tonnes of research on the ecological impacts of gen AI and data centres already - PRODUCED BY ACADEMICS IN UNIVERSITIES. The evidence is not hidden, it's just that sector 'leaders' don't care

Listening to a BBC news report about racist riots in Belfast. Describing men as ‘dressed in black and wearing masks’ is a really roundabout way of saying ‘white’

How anyone, let alone the CEO of Universities UK, can discuss young people’s disillusionment without addressing her peers culling 1000s upon 1000s of university staff is beyond me. They may not have oversight of loans but they are responsible for devaluing degrees www.theguardian.com/education/20...

Shrinking graduate premium sours views on value of a university education, UK poll showsWorries over AI and loan debt mean 34% of people think degrees are usually not worth the time and moneywww.theguardian.com

With poor turnout expected for The Mandalorian and Grogu, I spoket to Hanna Flint alongside @clarisseloughrey.bsky.social for Hanna's deep dive on where Star Wars has gone wrong. (It may feel like homework because I'm mid-book, but the overproduction is very real) www.bbc.co.uk/culture/arti...

'It's felt like homework': Why Star Wars went so wrongThe Mandalorian & Grogu is released this week and is set for the lowest opening weekend of any Star Wars film ever. With the TV shows also struggling, here's why interest is waning.www.bbc.co.uk

Having watched MAFS in the past, when a family teen started on the most recent series I tuned in so we could talk about what healthy, toxic, and abusive relationships look like because the show couldn’t be trusted to. I’m only surprised this hasn’t come out till now www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Married at First Sight UK brides say they were raped by onscreen husbandsChannel 4 was aware of one of the rape claims before broadcast, but the woman involved still featured in the show.www.bbc.co.uk

Probably my favourite thing about writing a book is taking hours of National Archives research on, say, the 1970s scrap metal industry in Britain, and turning it into one (1) sentence before realising there’s a related but distinct topic you need to discuss that you have no source material for

Wait til he finds out that loads of university managers have already stripped degrees of critical and creative material and turned them into debt-inducing technical proficiency pipelines to industry

Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Grogu

Just saw a Linkedin post in which someone's calculated the cost *to universities* of UK academics doing peer review work, as if any academic in the year 2026 is peer reviewing research during paid hours, or even at this point being paid at all

Saw these newt tadpoles feeding on a pond flower on my evening walk. Looking at the photo makes me feel we passed into a strange and murky netherworld. Like haunted Victorian spirit photography, but newts

Travelling down to Brighton for a research day at Sussex tomorrow on film and the environment, where I'll be talking about the practical and digital erasure of wild animals, plants, and fungi on Star Wars location shoots, and how animals are corporately re-branded as creatures to be exploited as IP

Browsing Met Gala photos and sooo many are like eliminated-in-week-5 Drag Race looks. If you're getting wrapped in celluloid at least go for an interesting silhouette?! Or say something about the (fossil, animal) material? Or the medium's political potential? That one really sums up the banality

Dead excited to share that my forthcoming book 'A Star Wars World' will be out next May with @bloomsburyacademic.bsky.social. It's an accessible/trade deep-dive into the labour, materials, designs, locations, and animals and plant lives that the franchise has depended on over the past 50 years

The Last Jedi is actually a pretty close remake of The Empire Strikes Back and nowhere near as radical or breakaway a Star Wars film as people like to think it is

For #Maythe4th 2026... All the Star Wars films, Ranked! The Global Heating and Jet-Fuel Shortage Edition i.e., I calculated the films' aviation emissions based on one crew member flying to all locations. Solo comes out least worst (breathe easy, you still don't have to like the prequels)