abbi

@abbis.bsky.social

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Caffeinated, weightlifter, EdTech Lead for Arts & Humanities at UCL. Extremely talkative. Enthusiastic gig-goer, long-term internet dweller. Any/any. Chaotic dropspinner.

Vintage bookshop owner: prudenceandthecrow.com.

Posts Replies Media

Watching model boats powered by underwater teenagers enact various military engagements in the Victorian pleasure garden

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abbi

We should probably consider how owning physical copies of movies was really a thing just for like, 20 years or so. My mom as a teen didn't have VHS tapes or DVDs, and my son will (presumably) have every movie available in some form. But owning HEATHERS in 1990 meant I watched it A LOT.

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abbi

Imagine if the England Team really was just three lions?

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abbi

I think if Axios is going to write fan fiction about Donald John Trump, they should read a few AO3 pieces first, to understand the conventions

I have never read anything more credulous than Axios’s thing about Trump this morning. Like…

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abbi

omg

New academia reality tv show in which hundreds of highly trained candidates get winnowed down to one champion, who is awarded the opportunity to teach intro classes outside their speciality with no research support!

Well, I picked a good week to be on annual leave, I think. Going to do some walking, some seaside, some aquarium and some castle.

ENGLAND YES. #euro2024 I don't even know how to process doing this well, I'm 42, it's been exhausting being English all this time.

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abbi

Reply to

The Author, Séamas O'Reilly

A cynic might say that the right wing press - in both countries - has simply made the decision that going hard on woke is worth it because hatred and fearmongering makes them a shitload of money, despite all polling repeatedly showing it actively hurts 'their' party.

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abbi

It’s the sort of speech that wouldn’t have had any pushback before Brianna Ghey’s mum visited parliament. Progress is done in small increments followed by pushback, if the pushback is smaller than the progress the next bit of progress will be further.

Good that Tories are condemning Suella Braverman but I'd watch them closely. Her speech was about 4% more venomous than the standard level of transphobia allowed by British media, and I'd be pleasantly surprised if that horizon didn't move to meet her very soon.

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abbi

easy to chalk the stuff in france up to some vague platitude about ~voting~ but it feels to me like more proof that you have to give people something to vote FOR, and that socialism remains better equipped to beat fascism than liberalism does! just one gal’s opinion

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abbi

the way people talk about "genAI misuse" as if the technology has well defined uses to begin with guess, what gets under my skin is how this “misuse” narrative puts the onus of accountability on users/others and away from the creators/developers

One thing that is quite funny about the fall of the last UK government in this hopeless discourse age is that there's literally no way you could call it an "elite conspiracy", because, y'know, they were the elites. (Unless you mean they did it to themselves, because obvs they did.)

I love it SO MUCH

here is a painting I did the other day. It is called "we will make it better ourselves" #art shop.frankduffy.co.uk

I think in a way our circles have merged too far: things that break through the attention barrier become too big, too fast, and inevitably crash through excess scrutiny and demand. Most things can't reach at all.

Watch the recent series of Dragon's Den and listen to the start-ups' horrific tales of how much they've been goaded into spending on social media marketing. People do not have money to take chances, people do not trust paid reviews. Influencers have a very little influence but it's not sustainable.

I don't want to minimise the book thing because ABSOLUTELY. But, yes and...please understand that this is also true of anything, everything. Any product you like, small business you shop with, artist you love. The internet cannot help you, the person-to-person word of a friend is all that works.

We’ve returned to the olden days, when word-of-mouth was the only real way to advertise. As an author, if you enjoy a book, please: tell your friends. Your group chat, your sewing circle, your family WhatsApp, your work Slack, the voice channel of your MMORPG guild, anything.

Lewis Hamilton my absolute HEART.

How many seats do you have to lose to the Lib Dems before you start saying, hey, maybe we should be more liberal?

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abbi

It’s quite long (20+ pages)but you can pause it and come back. The format is approve/disapprove on a lot of proposed changes with a text box for each to give comments and a final text box at the end for general comments. A lot of it is gating topics to specific age groups but comments can be broader

People of England, your attention please. Reminder about the consultation closing 11 July about changes to the relationships, sex & health education statutory guidance. If you're LGBTQIA, or an ally, please check it out & complete with a view to protecting LGBTQIA people. www.gov.uk/government/c...

Review of the RSHE statutory guidancewww.gov.uk We’re seeking your views on changes to the relationships, sex and health education statutory guidance.

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abbi

Might be useful for people playing along at home tonight. The various views will offer at a glance data on results.

Election 2024 Results and Predictions: Introductionjonskeet.uk

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abbi

www.attitude.co.uk/news/keir-st... Good editorial from Attitude ahead of Starmer's mealy-mouthed nonsense

Why Sir Keir Starmer’s op-ed for Attitude cannot run without context or correctionwww.attitude.co.uk Events have overtaken us, and it’s not good, writes Attitude publisher Darren Styles

This is true - plus extrapolate to navigating the world, and it's genuinely complex how different experiencing the world is for people whose primary concept of it is algorithmic. It's a different dimension of communication entirely and we struggle even to verbalise that it's happening.

time and time again people are confused that the content they see is directly related to the people they follow and that they’re absolutely lost navigating the internet without an algorithm force feeding them lowest common denominator dreck

Anyway, as someone who will never stop talking about the fact that they got to do their work experience in the Houses of Parliament during the first year of the Blair government, one thing that has become increasingly evident to me is that it's important to elect people who WANT TO DO THE WORK.

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abbi

This is where I have a small, boring bit of advice, from my time managing a customer contact centre for a central government department: write letters to your MP asking them to raise issues with secretaries of state; make the letters unique, not copy-and-paste campaigns; be direct, not cranky.

So how do we stand up and make a government take notice? Writing to your MP? I mean… It’s nice when they reply but it feels ineffectual. Mass mobilisation? Cool story bro, but unlikely. No revolts please, we’re British. How do we become the prick it’s hard to kick against? I’ve no idea. -11

Imagine if we'd managed to concoct a decent opposition everyone could unreservedly get behind in 14 years of this nonsense. Imagine if they'd Just Not. Like the bar is so low, and yet.

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abbi

You need a special kind of hubris to run a country down, then warn of the evils of a supermajority of the opposition.

Please, a moment for me to rec my favourite Norwegian wren, the magnificent AURORA - full #Glastonbury set on iPlayer. Stick with it, she is such a force and we adore her. www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/epis...

Glastonbury - AURORAwww.bbc.co.uk A Norwegian singer-songwriters ethereal vocals, electro textures and vivid storytelling

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abbi

Reply to

Alex de Campi

Anyway, now when you’re using AI to get crap results to mock AI, you can keep track of how much power you’re consuming ✌🏼

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abbi

If you’re writing something and all your characters want to do is have some coffee/eat something/go to sleep, then it’s time for you, the author, to do that thing before you keep writing.

if u see this, quote-post with your tips for writers that no one gives anymore because they seem obvious (even though they're not)

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abbi

Sharing a piece I was quoted in in Mother Jones. I have been interviewed a LOT about FemTech lately, esp as it relates to menstrual blood. 1/n www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

The race to understand—and profit from—period bloodwww.motherjones.com The race to understand—and profit from—period blood.