why do taxi drivers think it's ok to shout at women and when will the patriarchy end.

Just released in Germany... www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFza...

Beautiful letter in @theguardian.com from my University of Birmingham colleague, John Fagg, capturing - in the way metrics and league tables never could - the friendship that emerges from shared intellectual endeavour. www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...

Gillian Rose was born September 20th, 1947. All of Rose's books are 30% off through the weekend, to celebrate what would have been her 78th birthday

Conor Gearty's obit (dammit). www.theguardian.com/law/2025/sep...

"bourgeois parents" v the Tate brothers. Whatever will the Spectator be advocating next? Abolition of the propertied classes with their disproportionate wealth? Private ownership of the means of production? Lace tablecloths & scented candles?

It is possible to support assisted dying without being an unimaginative twat about the condition of old age.

In between things, with some time to kill, a nice park and an English bookshop in the vicinity … very nice to see this in the shop window (and finally buy it) @lyndseystonebri.bsky.social

Judith Butler:"It is important to refuse the notion that this is just how things are..invoking a feckless realpolitik that justifies complicity with a brutal & rising authoritarianism. It is time to resist the injustice that now threatens to be normalized" www.chronicle.com/article/when...

Be ungovernable.

Rebel nuns breakout of care home & re-occupy their home. As I've been saying: old women are the future. www.bbc.com/news/article...

It was in just such weeks as this that it was so so good to hear the wise, wonderful & witty voice of Conor Gearty. He will be missed greatly. Thank you Conor. Here is that voice again via @prospectmagazine.co.uk www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/podcasts/pro...

It was in just such weeks as this that it was so so good to hear the wise, wonderful & witty voice of Conor Gearty. He will be missed greatly. Thank you Conor. Here is that voice again via @prospectmagazine.co.uk www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/podcasts/pro...

This was Conor Gearty only a week or so ago at @prospectmagazine.co.uk on ECHR withdrawal and the Palestine Action ban.

If you can get France24 news channel (in English), it is often wider in scope than the BBC and, being French, doesn’t have the same fixations.

"The practice of violence changes the world, but the most probable change is to a more violent world." - Hannah Arendt

What if all this was – stay with me now – a “single life”

Senior prof unsolicited advice to all carers, first-generationers, women & anyone not raised to "do" finance: - look at your pension now - do not put this off until you're 60. - know that you will be disadvantaged - re late start, gender, maternity leave etc. - but there are fixes, so take advice.

Very much enjoyed talking - Arendt, evil, Anna Burns - with John Plotz for his excellent "Recall the Book" series last month. newbooksnetwork.com/lyndsey-ston...

Remind me again why we need the humanities in our research infastructure? www.theguardian.com/science/2025...

Or... you could spend a little time imagining what it is like to be in a body that is unlike your own, and then grant that body a mind that can also say yes or no (thank you) ? Ie. dignity is something we share. In other words, of course you offer your seat. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

“It is important to get this right,” said Vallance. “We must not get bound down on measuring things that we cannot.” www.timeshighereducation.com/news/patrick...

Always liked @raskin.house.gov www.theguardian.com/politics/liv...

Deadline 2 October 2025.

Meta’s Threads have mysteriously banned @writershq.bsky.social on the first day of its Writing As Resistance Festival 🤔 From today ft. Leone Ross, LS Nguyen, Beth Daley, Tunji Offeyi, Sage Tyrtle, Sarah Lewis, Jude Potts, Marcella Rick, Mara Livermore, Lydia Wilkins, Mathew Gostelow & Kathy Hoyle👇

Swiftly followed by an email telling me that all liberals should be shot...

🤦‍♀️

"I did not know of you before, but I asked an artificial intelligence to introduce me to someone whose writings and life might resonate with my own situation—and that person was you." And so the new nightmare for women in the public sphere begins.

The SHAPE Involve and Engage programme opens on 1 September. We are looking for researchers from across the UK to deliver innovative public engagement projects working in partnership with a gallery, archive, library or museum (GLAM organisation). Find out more: buff.ly/efUOSoL

73-year-old husband sounding very Victor Meldrew on the phone to a friend just now. He's talking about the Palestine Action ban.

Wow. The University of Chicago, a world-class institution whose humanities faculty in the past has included Homi Bhabha & Lauren Berlant & Ralph Ellison & Hannah freaking Arendt, is getting rid of basically every graduate department involving the acknowledgment that other cultures & languages exist.

In April 2024 my husband & I ate breakfast in a Copenhagen hotel listening to Frenchman from the arms trade discuss just this with an American (diplomat?). They ignored us bc we look old & inconsequential, but it was v. revealing & now @financialtimes.com has the story. www.ft.com/content/ce61...

Letter of the day (in the Times)

Many of the 60+ activists at the weekend will remember the last time Labour ministers told us to trust them on terrorism & national security as they justified indefinite detention, black ops & broke the rule of law. This was a breach of trust then, & is now. You can't impose consent to bad laws.

Going to return to this list of original, relevant, creative social sciences & humanities new research every time I'm asked to defend SHAPE research this year. Look at them! Congratulations to new @britishacademy.bsky.social post-doc fellows. www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/funding/post...

Life in your 60s discoveries: Heatwaves are v. bad for bunions & sleeping & writing, & you'll never find a cheap hotel room by the sea in August.

A great selection of books...📚💙 @lyndseystonebri.bsky.social

"In her deficient, warped soul, it seems she lacked something that every woman must have: a morality that she valued more than male approval."

It's August. The month when after 6pm I only read Georges Simenon's Maigret novels.

Last month we welcomed Lyndsey Stonebridge and Amanda Rubin to discuss the work of two remarkable women who understood totalitarianism close up, Charlotte Beradt and Hannah Arendt, marking the re-issue of 'The Third Reich of Dreams' for the first time since the 1960s Catch up now 🎥 buff.ly/MDWKVWC

I judge that this is the wrong question.

Just (smashes out ill-advised, incandescent, and barely coherent email to the University of Berkeley) in the mood to re-post this.

An open letter has been launched today (27/7/25) for members of the UK academic community (academics and other university staff) to sign, to press the UK Home Office to facilitate safe passage out of Gaza for 40+ students with offers for UK universities. docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Do this. It's an extraordinary book.

"Many Americans are demonstrably disgusted, shamed, and angered by their tyrants, but mainstream literary and intellectual institutions seem unable or unwilling to give voice to them." - Pankaj Mishra

Just thinking where women's football would be this morning without all those feminists, men and women, and those pesky equality and diversity initiatives that freed up pitches, coaching, money & faith to liberate the sheer brilliance we saw last night. #Lionessess #Euro2025

Not sure I can cope with 90 mins of listening the men in my family bending over backwards not to sound patronising about women's football, and contorting themselves into bundles of awkward ridiculousness in the process. #Lionessess

Just to be clear: the evil being visited on Gaza is not banal. It is direct, motivated, radical evil. The evil that is banal belongs to Western governments, their tacit and material support for Israel, and their self-serving, spineless, profoundly thoughtless, platitudes. #Gaza #Arendt

This alum of North London Polytechnic (1986-1989) endorsees this message.