Want to stay home today.

Morning.

Labour’s one big chance to right themselves blown. What is the bloody point of putting the country through all of this? I’d much rather have mammary enlargement through hypnotherapy, thank you. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

They only sat the exam today and the scripts are already in my inbox. FFS.

This is terrific news.

Beautiful wet.

I think there is a perception problem with PR, similar to that of climate change, in that it seems like some ethereal abstraction that we can afford to ignore or deprioritise. But, as with climate change, the consequences of inaction will be all too tangible.

Aren’t these two adorable?

Thank you @carolinelucas.bsky.social Use this opportunity to leverage proportional representation and stop Reform @zackpolanski.bsky.social !!!

I just spent far too much time deciding. (Result: gatekeeper. Small, not flashy, enjoy each others’ company, top behavioural nominative determinism).

So Farage is living in luxury and Polanski in insecure rented flat after living in a house boat yet the press seems hell bent on trying to persuade the public that there is some form of equivalent corruption. Clearly @greenparty.org.uk has rattled the billionaire owners.

I would like to go back to waxed-paper crisp bags anyway.

‘It’s like watching an LLM be prime minister’

Crowded night in the greenhouse. 🥶

👀 Is ‘Angela Rayner’ the subject controlling the verb ‘mounts’ here?

How many metaphors can you mix in one headline?

Not the usual kind of sighting out the window.

When you’ve been working on a project for so long and with so many interruptions that you’ve bought the book you ‘have to have’ twice (2019, 2024; I blame Covid).

Being born in the same year as the Voting Rights Act was an important ingredient in my growing up with an assumption of continued progressive change in the US. So today I feel like part of me has died.

Extra point to the student who clocked the date of the exam—I hadn’t!

Respect. (Spotted at local allotments.)

All local prejudice aside, this is beautifully done and full of bibliographical and archival delights. (NB: researchers always welcome @lincoln.ox.ac.uk ) lincoln.ox.ac.uk/600/historic...

Love this.

Snapping into focus another vague dissatisfaction that I can now resent and worry about properly. 👇

This is one of the best impromptu threads I’ve read on here.

String course.

I love this part—getting the straight collar piece onto the round neck opening.😬

That point in spring when you think, ‘Did I really choose that combination?’

A favourite April combination: apple blossom (on dwarfs trained as step-overs) floating above a froth of Forget-me-not (Myosotis).

Morning. Crabapple ‘Rudolf’ at full tilt.

Funny (almost) example of digital not forever. My first book (1998) pub'd with what was then a trendy disk for its huge appendix. Until recently was available on link from CUP webpage for the book, but that now gone too. Anyone dying for the calendar of court sermons 1558-1625 get in touch.

Is anyone else getting random 'Forbidden' blocks when using Bluesky, sometimes with a follow-up about 'data limits'?

What man who wages war, asked Erasmus, does not think his cause just? Impossible not to hear the great humanist's contempt, all these centuries later.

Trash alert. Make more people aware of this kind of—I almost said ‘slop’, but genAI is worse than that; it’s falsehood.

'Comely'. Reminds me of an estate steward in the 1550s recommending to his lord as a chaplain 'my neyghbour beyng a talle man & a very honest pryst'. In that order: 1) good looking for your entourage, 2) religiously acceptable. #earlymodern

Early modern status and precendency was so important: now reading a precept which instructs companies to provide 'comely' men on horseback attended by footmen, both of which are to attend the Lord Mayor and Aldermen who are themselves attending on the king. Phew.

At least Edinburgh staff are getting a chance to object. That's much more than many of us were given before deals were announced. Strength to Edinburgh colleagues.

And @lincoln.ox.ac.uk is in its first year of wildflower planting in Chapel Quad. (Meanwhile @bodleian.ox.ac.uk has returfed lawns round the RadCam to get rid of ‘weeds‘ and close-mowing stripes 🙄)

(Taps sign)

Warmer this morning in Sourhwold than many a summer afternoon. Strange.

I think I over-picked.

What a morning. Happy Easter.

When you start worrying slightly about cholesterol levels in tomorrow’s pudding (flourless chocolate cake with crème Anglaise).

If Miliband approves the Jackdaw field for Shell, he shreds all international climate diplomacy credibility, and any remaining empathy domestically after gambling so heavily on hydrogen and carbon capture and storage. Reeves wins. Bugger the future.

And now for the discipline of not touching them until this afternoon.

One of the richest doughs you can make, on the most penitential day of the year. I am not asking questions.

Book design really lost its mind in the 19th century (Type specimen from 1830) #typography

Fake news somehow isn't funny this 1 April, and even less so when illustrated using AI. April Fools indeed.

The garb (not to mention the décolletage) is, to my knowledge, unique for a clergy portrait of that date. Since he had been installed dean of St Paul's late in 1621, I think this is channeling (Roman) orator in a gesture toward a deanship to be defined by preaching.