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davidhiggins.bsky.social
Professor of Environmental Humanities at the University of Leeds, UK. Working on culture and environmental crisis. Writing a book about birds, loss, and restoration. Worried parent. Opinions my own. Reposts ≠ endorsement.
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Great views of the firecrest along the River Aire at Methley this morning. Then spent 45 minutes staring through a wire fence at a sewage works, failing to find a water pipit. 10/10 would recommend. #UKbirding

submitted 7 hours ago • 1 comment

In what might be considered a tiny act of hope, I’m installing a pond in our garden. Phase one (today): clear the area. Phase two (next weekend?): dig a big hole.

submitted 13 hours ago • 14 comments

Sheffield tried to prioritise housing in sustainable, city centre locations in the Local Plan. But the Planning Inspectorate has now ruled the council has to build on greenbelt. They have also increased housing targets, which means there's no chance for the city to escape the tilted balance.

submitted 3 days ago • 2 comments

Yet another unsustainable rise in rents - time for the government to put a stop to rip off rents and stop landlords treating tenants as cash cows. Rent controls are long overdue and are badly needed to give all renters a home they can afford.

submitted 2 days ago • 12 comments

Data from US Southern Great Plains highlights how pollinator conservation and sustainable land management depend on understanding habitat needs of diverse pollinators at the landscape scale @dremlichtenberg.bsky.social @respublications.bsky.social resjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

submitted 2 days ago • 1 comment

It has been a long and not very productive day. The most worthwhile thing I did was cheer up my daughter over the phone by pretending to be an alien from the planet Zargle Wargle.

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

The hill I will die on is that generative AI is evil and wrong and a massive waste of resources and that academics — of all people — should know better than to use it in their writing.

submitted 3 days ago • 5 comments

Newsletter: Generative AI is a marketing con perpetuated by Sam Altman and Dario Amodei through a mixture of lies and half-truths carried by a tech media that fails to ask the right questions. Outside of ChatGPT, generative AI companies barely get any traffic at all. www.wheresyoured.at/longcon/

submitted 5 days ago • 66 comments

My small daughter just said “if you don’t play with me, I’ll thrust a knife into your heart”. The Brothers Grimm corrupting the youth.

submitted 5 days ago • 1 comment

Such a lucid and thoughtful blog post. It's quite clear that the government are scapegoating newts and bats because they are unable or unwilling to tackle a broken housing system and powerful developers. @kierachapman.bsky.social have you seen this?

submitted 5 days ago • 2 comments

Asking myself this morning, as I often do, why I can’t just go to sleep at night and wake up 7 or 8 hours later, like a normal person. I mean, why does every night have to have a fucking narrative?

submitted 5 days ago • 1 comment

Really detailed article from @thecanaryuk.bsky.social on our Lost Nature report - and what's going so very wrong with planning reform right now. @malcolmtait.bsky.social gets some juicy quotes in, along with @danicapriest.bsky.social! www.thecanary.co/long-read/20...

submitted 6 days ago • 1 comment

In an NHS ward I saw how Britain relies on immigrants. Yet still we tell them they’re not wanted John Harris www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

submitted 6 days ago • 0 comments

*New paper* Denialism campaigns are growing in attempts to discredit science, scientists, and the scientific process generally. Biodiversity loss denial is a new phenomenon that needs our attention. -With @alexanderlees.bsky.social + Eliza Grames! #CommSky 🧪🌏 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

submitted 6 days ago • 17 comments

If I want to get really angry, I think about how much money was lost to Covid fraud/profiteering and how little effort has been made to recover it. We’re all expected to carry on and pay our taxes like good little citizens while those fuckers stole billions from us, enabled by the British state.

submitted 6 days ago • 5 comments

www.waterstones.com/book/modern-... The paperback version of this seminal book will be out on 27 February! #naturewriting #envhum

submitted 6 days ago • 0 comments

Hello! We are Eurydice Lit, a paying youth arts magazine for ages 11 to 24. We just released our first issue, and we'd love for you to take a look if you're interested in youth literature and art. Submissions from Canada, Greece, Ukraine, Kenya, the UK, and more! www.eurydicelit.org/index.html

submitted 7 days ago • 0 comments

History buffs will know that every authoritarian leader eventually converges on some version of: "I *am* the state. I can not break the law, I am the law, the law is instantiated in me." Our march to authoritarianism so far has been excruciatingly by-the-book. Hitting every beat. No surprises.

submitted 7 days ago • 345 comments

submitted 7 days ago • 1 comment

Around 400,000 people work in universities across the UK, and more then 200,000 of them are academics. The closures and job losses we’re seeing in the sector just now are a major industrial crises affecting the key workplaces and economic drivers of hundreds of towns and cities.

submitted 7 days ago • 14 comments

At first glance, a quintessentially beautiful Irish landscape. But in reality, it's a deadzone. The graveyard of a once species-rich Atlantic rainforest wonderland, smothered under sheep and, in the distance, sitka. We are, however, waking to just how much has been stolen from us.

submitted 7 days ago • 10 comments

I've extended the deadline & adjusted the wording on this scholarship after queries from prospective students. Please encourage students interested in a funded PhD on poetry in either 18c/Romantic and/or settler colonialism & Indigenous sovereignty to get in touch! www.wgtn.ac.nz/scholarships...

submitted 8 days ago • 1 comment

Leading publishing House advertising for a 52k marketing manager job for their leading author and brand. No shade at all on their perfectly delightful said author. I tell you what though. Aside from how we could bring on so many brilliant writers and widen the pool, let me offer something personal

submitted 9 days ago • 1 comment

Eagle-eyed @rs4vp.bsky.social members may have seen in the newsletter that I'm back at the University of Leeds to work on the fantastic Curran Index! I'll be delving into the scrapbooks of feminist philosopher and journalist Frances Power Cobbe to give attributions for her work as a jobbing writer!

submitted 9 days ago • 5 comments

An act of grotesque vandalism is taking place in British universities inews.co.uk/opinion/colu...

submitted 10 days ago • 3 comments

👋 I’m Ingmar, based in Rotterdam, often in Hamburg. I’m an artist who creates physical installations in both the physical and digital realm. I see interfaces as interiors. And interiors as interfaces. I create detours with an interest in the behaviour and shortcomings of humans in unknown space.

submitted 9 days ago • 1 comment