I am particularly enjoying everyone’s cats today. Thanks all.

Thelonious Monk with a cat in his lap #Caturday

A boy and his excellent cat.

This was a fun thread to wake up to.

Ooo! Ruffalo as Columbo. Yes. Indeed, that is now the only acceptable reboot of that role.

‘We should say that there are fans are at Old Trafford who 💯 applaud what Radcliffe is saying’, BBC 5 Live presenter says after a semi critical comment from a guest. Why ‘should we say’ that some bigoted people agree with the bigoted rich man?

This tweet was correct.

Lots to love in this list. Particularly, a well deserved Silent Film Hero win for HippFest’s Alison Strauss!

Whoop whoop it’s Hippfest lineup announcement day! silentlondon.co.uk/2026/02/04/h...

New fuck/marry/kill list just dropped

Happy Birthday to TV. Television turns 100 today!

Entire bus busnapped! You just know this started with an argument between the driver and his supervisor about this not being the shift he agreed to.

Sad news: Gregory de Polnay, Dixon of Dock Green regular and the incomparable D84 in Doctor Who’s Robots of Death has died aged 82. He was a lovely man and an excellent actor and renowned drama teacher.

the innovative thing about "ai" is that you no longer need a real chortlemuffin to get started

This is utterly depressing. It’s bad enough finding AI hallucinations in the reference lists in my marking pile.

The glory that is my hometown—Aberystwyth. Wales’s first UNESCO City of Literature. Y peth gorau! unesco.org.uk/news/wales-f...

On tonight at the Bo’ness Hippodrome! www.hippodromecinema.co.uk/whats-on/tas...

Humanities and social sciences are being systematically gutted while STEM disciplines rediscover their half a century-old research insights and pass them off as their own

BREAKING: economist discovers “second shift,” a concept coined by sociologists almost 50 years ago; gives it new, stupider, and less explicitly labor-oriented name

PPC Commentary: How Much Television Have We Lost? Over the last few days friends, I’ve been down a deep, dark and honestly, fairly mysterious rabbit hole. I suppose, I should also add, it’s a bit of a depressing one too. You’ve been warned. The current state of the world leaves plenty of room for…

In the Virgin book dept in the 1990s it was the Jim Morrison biography, No One Gets Out of Here Alive. I swear I lost 3 copies for every one I sold. Hoffman’s Steal This Book couldn’t hold a candle to it.

"Why I gave the world wide web away for free. My vision was based on sharing, not exploitation" www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

An excellent, if depressing, piece on the BBC Written Archives situation. Caversham has long been one of my favourite places to do research, and the archivists have always been magnificent. But increasingly, I fear these important records are no longer safe in BBC hands.

Absolutely delighted that Dan Briggs, son of the BBC's first official historian Asa Briggs, has written to The Observer supporting the need for on-request vetting to re-instated at the BBC Written Archives Centre (p.29; not I think online). Letter's wording is in the .alt element. #waccampaign

Post some product placement. Busby Berkeley’s first screen gig (Whoopee! 1930) was a spectacular product placement for Stetson!

Radio historians, please sign this. The BBC WAC is an invaluable resource for research not only into British and Commonwealth broadcasting history. Not vetting files upon request is cutting independent research off from a truly global history of radio that has just started to be written.

On-demand file vetting was vital in enabling me to uncover the role of BBC Talks policy and practice in triggering a major libel case. The 1950 judgement defined the legal meaning of ‘fair comment’ in British law for well over half a century (replaced by ‘honest opinion’ only in 2013).

The country, Americans, good businessmen and women, anybody with leadership skills, the military, women, Black people, Latino and Latina people, gay people, Trans people, disabled veterans, children, old people and dogs! But if you think about it, the only idiot that is a common denominator is HIM!

I still have this on VHS. I was so excited when it was released in the 90s. With hindsight, I understand why my shop colleagues thought I was a bit weird. And I probably do belong in academia.

'“I don't think that people appreciate how few people are working to keep these collections online, even at huge institutions,” Weinberg told me. “It's usually an incredibly small team, one person, half a person, half a person, plus, like their web person who is sympathetic to what's going on.'

This cannot be said loudly or often enough.

Ha! Yes, I read this last night and was trying to work out if it was an AI hallucination or put together by a 30 something who is close to committing murder if she has to spend another weekend and a bucket of money she doesn’t have on ‘celebrating’ other people’s love.

flip book! "Dance Lesson: from the good old days" (1941) #mediaBeforeMedia

This. These are people who generally left university after their undergraduate degree and most retain an undergraduate notion of what constitutes ‘research’.

This is such sad news. Barb was a friend and a truly extraordinary archivist, someone genuinely interested in sharing her knowledge and the collections she managed as freely and widely as possible. The exact opposite of a gate-keeping archivist. A phenomenal loss for Hollywood historians. 💔

Oh wow! 👏👏👏👏👏

What fool gave a polar bear a saucepan? www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...

Nicholas Brothers klaxon 📢

Ooo ooo ooo! This means I have a constant excuse to talk about the origins of cinema: Viewed through a coin-operated peepshow device with communal earbuds.

I think this is genuinely lovely - and the outline of it was obvious when I interviewed both of them, separately, in 1993 for my BBC production 'MeTV: The Future of Television'. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/06/s...

Gustav Klimt's Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer reimagined with biscuits/cookies, by Julia Timoshkova. The model is her daughter Antonina #Monday

inevitably, the dots

Fully funded PhD at Glasgow University as part of the AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnership Scheme Fanfiction and Online Fan Communities: Collecting Practice and Inclusion in a National Collection www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

Happy Eve Arden's birthday!

So... Beanie Walker. If you want to see silent movie title cards done right, Walker was the best to ever do it. Nobody came close.

Anita Loos at Palm Beach, Florida (with Cecil Beaton) - BOTD

I’m not sure what’s crazier: the fact that this wasn’t already a rule, or the fact this absolutely has to be made a rule and is not something which all members automatically do.

This remains totally outrageous. The National Library of Australia ought to be totally ashamed. And every Australian librarian should be writing to them in protest. updates.timsherratt.org/2025/04/11/u...