Russia hacked ex-MI6 chief's emails and claimed to have uncovered a British "deep state" conspiracy.

But the truth is a LOT more complicated...

👇 by me, for @ComputerWeekly / @BylineTimes

computerweekly.com/news/366565960… In April 2022, Russian hackers leaked a cache of 22,000 emails from a network of encrypted Protonmail accounts, including ex-MI6 chief Sir Richard Dearlove.

A group of hard-right Brexiteers, including a former head of MI6, secretly attacked a top science journal after their debunked paper on an "alternative" Covid vaccine was rejected.

From @ComputerWeekly & @BylineTimes, this is a MUST READ 👇

computerweekly.com/news/366553435… This piece raises serious questions about the conduct of Sir Richard Dearlove, the former head of MI6 who is best known for his role in the intelligence failures surrounding the Iraq war.

I am so pleased to join the @AEI in honoring the distinguished career of political theorist and @Harvard professor Harvey C. Mansfield!

Check out this website, which celebrates Mansfield's most important intellectual contributions: mansfieldat90.com #Mansfieldat90

https://twitter.com/sophie_e_hill/status/1544377782414737409

Mansfield's in-depth ethnographic work has given him an unmatched insight into the inner lives of Women. #Mansfieldat90

In 2021, Harvard apologized to Terry Karl and many others who were sexually harassed by Jorge Domínguez, acknowledging "institutional failures".

At the same time, Harvard was doing the exact same thing to the complainants in the Comaroff case!

And that's not the only overlap... Jorge Domínguez had been director of the @HarvardWCFIA from 1996 - 2006, a position that allowed him to exert considerable power over funding opportunities.

John Comaroff is affiliated with the Weatherhead Center, as are (by my count) 22 of the 38 signatories to the open letter.

Thanks @allthecitizens for interviewing me about @My_Little_Crony!

Adding new links to the map each week is depressing, but one silver lining is seeing a coalition of journalists, lawyers, academics, and citizens come together to expose this government's corruption.

https://twitter.com/allthecitizens/status/1430925152410296331

On the origins of @My_Little_Crony in November 2020:

"I thought, I need a side project that's going to keep me occupied, something useful, that's nothing to do with Trump."

#ENGGER match-up: goalscorers

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 🇩🇪
Sterling vs Havertz
Goals 2 2
Assists 0 0
Attempts 5 9
Speed 33km/h 29km/h #ENGGER match-up: defensive midfield

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 🇩🇪
Phillips vs Kimmich
Assists 2 1
Attempts 1 1
Distance 33km 34km
Pass 87% 85%
acc.

Lord James Bethell, the quintissential aristocratic failson, should not be allowed within 1,000 yards of government, let alone have a ministerial position. After just 1 year in government, Lord Bethell has already implicated himself in multiple scandals, demonstrating an astonishing lack of integrity.

He must resign.

One very simple heuristic that would exponentially increase the rhetorical effectiveness of Labour MPs is to focus on the facts of a given issue and never venture into the meta-discussion of "what does the public think about us talking about this".

https://twitter.com/LBC/status/1409092251188350976

Trying to shape public opinion as an opposition party is hard. You need to grab every opportunity to lay out the facts of an issue and draw a clear contrast between your party and the government.

If you're a journalism or curious citizen looking to use public databases to identify political sleaze in the UK, check out my new tool, Crony Connect*! cronyconnect.com *Yes, "Crony Connect" is supposed to be a pun on the quiz show "Only Connect".

**Yes, I know it's not as good as @My_Little_Crony... I'm doing my best here! 😅

🚨 My Little Crony (v2.0) 🚨

...now with even MORE government sleaze! 💫

mylittlecrony.com New additions:

(1) A bit of Matt Hancock's family tree...

i just got my teaching evals from last semester and my students were so niiiice 😭😭 special shout-out to the person who wanted to clarify that i am "funny haha"

Harvard prez: “On behalf of the Harvard community, I apologize to Dr. Terry Karl for the University’s failure to assure that Domínguez met the conditions of his 1983 sanction. Harvard failed her.”

about 👏 goddamn 👏 time!!! 👏

provost.harvard.edu/files/provost/… I am incredibly relieved that the report is finally out. We had to fight for a LONG time to get this review, and it didn't get off to a great start when they spent more time talking to Harvard faculty than to *the women who were sexually harassed*...

https://twitter.com/sophie_e_hill/status/1207039926258327557?s=20

The Tories' 'chumocracy' over Covid contracts is destroying public trust.

Me in the @guardian 👇

theguardian.com/commentisfree/… In this piece, I try to take seriously the government’s argument that it was important to use “informal arrangements” in procurement given the urgent need to source PPE.

🚨 Based on exclusive reporting by @BylineTimes and @allthecitizens, I created a new visualization of the COVID contracts being awarded to firms linked to the Evangelical Christian sect, the Plymouth Brethren.

🔎 Take a look: sophie-e-hill.com/post/pray-to-p… In this map, I've broken up "government" into Central, Local, and NHS.

This is a more wonky thread about how I made this visualization in #Rstats using the awesome visNetwork 📦...

sophieehill.shinyapps.io/my-little-cron… First step is to create the underlying network data. We need one file of "nodes" - i.e. the people and organizations. And one file of "edges" - i.e. the connections between them.

I created these by hand, based on excellent investigate journalism:

The cronyism in this Tory government is so out-of-control that I honestly couldn’t keep track… so I combined my two main skills (puns and #Rstats) to create this interactive visualization.

Introducing… My Little Crony!

sophieehill.shinyapps.io/my-little-cron… Explore and follow the links to read excellent reporting by folks @guardian, @openDemocracy, @BylineTimes, @GoodLawProject, @PeterKGeoghegan, @david_conn, @robevansgdn, @RussellScott1, @JolyonMaugham, @WritesBright, @gillplimmer1, @carolinejmolloy, etc.!

sophieehill.shinyapps.io/my-little-cron…

Ep 2 of "Suspicious Activity" (a podcast on the #FinCENFiles by @pineapplemedia and @BuzzFeedNews) recounts how George Osborne lobbied US regulators NOT to prosecute senior execs at HSBC...

podcasts.podinstall.com/pineapple-stre… ... which is a brilliant illustration of "structural power" as developed by folks like @PepperCulpepper and @RaphaelJReinke, as well as @Cornelia_Woll's "collective power of inaction".

Check out the podcast and then follow-up with some further reading from #polisci! (a 🧵)

Harvard will continue employing David Kane, who has never published in a statistics journal and has a history of making basic stats errors, as Preceptor of Statistical Methods.

This isn't just failing upwards. This is affirmative action for racists.

thecrimson.com/article/2020/9… The 🧾's:

In 2006, David Kane wrote a blog post on the Harvard @IQSS website, accusing the authors of a study published in Lancet of fraud.

So it turns out that the Harvard instructor who invited Charles Murray to speak in his class also blogs under a pseudonym and... it's pretty much exactly what you'd expect...

https://twitter.com/sophie_e_hill/status/1309166137394032640

Most of his posts involve him offering an in-depth commentary about events at Williams College, where he graduated from in 1988 but doesn't seem to have any current affiliation...

a recap of the Harvard Gov department's anti-racist efforts so far in 2020... 🧵 1⃣Senior faculty member tries to "both sides" the killing of George Floyd

https://twitter.com/k_r_johnson/status/1266126906904248322?s=20

📜 New research roundup: social science papers that caught my eye this week! 📜

a 🧵... "Voter Responses to Fiscal Austerity" by Hübscher, @SattlersThomas, @MarkusWagnerAT

Turns out, Pierson was right! Austerity *is* electorally treacherous - especially in the form of spending cuts (vs tax increases).

cambridge.org/core/journals/…