Hypocrisy has many faces. Am I wearing one of them?

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The last few weeks have been, er, interesting. Perhaps the most significant event was President Trump’s executive order temporarily banning nationals of seven countries from entering the US, and temporarily halting its refugee programme. The fallout from that has been massive, including Angela Merkel reminding Mr Trump of international duties to accept refugees, and a very popular petition against a possible state visit to the UK by Mr Trump. And then there was the Westminster Speaker’s magisterial speech against Mr Trump’s perceived sexism and racism. (I have to admit I nearly cried when I first saw that – I almost felt proud to be British.) Continue reading →

Topsy-turvey

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In this post-truth world, full of trumpty-dumpty dangers, we have to take our amusements and pleasures where we can. So I am rather tickled that of the four Macs in Servants’ Quarters

Couldn’t have said it better

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The words of ‘Milton’, a Register commentard:

What can possibly go wrong?

When the world’s most militarily powerful bankrupt nation, armed with thousands of nukes, is taken over by an ignorant, lying, bellicose, childish, homophobic, lying, simplistically-minded, arrogant, egotistical, lying, thin-skinned, insecure, racist, self-confessed sex assaulting, lying, sexist, lying, misogynist, serially bankrupt, lying liar?

Trumpty Dumpty sat on a wall … you can guess what happens next.

Anus Horribilis – my Winterval message

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Well, it’s been basically a rubbish year.

We’ve said goodbye to too many people: David Bowie, Alan Rickman, Prince, Muhammad Ali, Anton Yeltsin, Elie Wiesel, Gene Wilder, Leonard Cohen, Robert Vaughn, Fidel Castro, Eric (my cousin’s partner) and John Glenn spring to mind. But the death that has affected me the most is the loss of my father in October. Here’s how it went, according to Facebook: Continue reading →

Stranger in a strange(ly digital) land

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Understanding Digital Policy was the title of an unconference I was at this week. (It was at an outpost of the University of Liverpool in central London – hence the title and illustration for this post.)

Although it was billed as covering

  • How is policy shaping the uptake and use of Digital Media and Technologies?
  • How are Digital Media and Technologies shaping policy making and policy implementation?

it went much further than that, into how will and how should policy be shaped, and what research should be done. This was at least in part due to the organiser, Simeon Yates, leading the the ESRC Ways of Being in a Digital Age team, and so being highly influential on research directions.

You can jump straight to my personal reactions if you want, but here’s how the day progressed. Firstly, we found interesting and/or kindred spirits by writing our own ‘about-me’s, looking at each others’ and deciding who we wanted to work with. Continue reading →

Splitting the difference

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Until now, I’ve had one Twitter handle for both my research and my personal tweets, namely @myceliumme_CC. This handle was also used to auto-tweet both from this personal blog and my research blog. It’s now time to split these streams:

  • If you’re interested in my research, please note that @myceliumme_CC is about to become @Bruce_research.
  • If you’re interested in what I do away from work, please follow the brand-new @BruceRyan_rants.

There’s nothing to stop you following both!