Taught about modernity and tradition in Wales today, so I had to slip in a reference to Joe Calzaghe, naturally www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VSj...

It's happening all over the post-92 bit of the sector. Moves are afoot in places not making headlines yet and the cover excuse is the TPS pension. The question now is will organised labour react and will this get the urgency it demands from academics in USS?

Rickrolling my students by playing The Scorpions' Wind of Change video instead of the Harold Macmillan speech www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4Rj...

Next reading project. Good so far!

I make it a point to always give constructive feedback

Typing up a lecture on the Blitz and fighting desperately not to use the phrase "A screaming comes across the sky."

Few things more dispiriting than some dude asking a dive bar to put the golf on

Hey, Victoria E. Thompson has a new book out! Cool liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/book/10....

In geopolitical terms, it's probably not the *most* critical thing going on right now, but I still think we should consider a Cadaver Synod for whoever keeps updating Powerpoint to be less functional

Thinking about becoming the kind of guy who spells it “débâcle”

“Remove justice and what are states but gangs of bandits on a large scale?” Augustine of Hippo, The City of God (Book IV, Chapter 4)

2025 Movie Roundup: Best New Watch: Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (Akerman, 1975) Runner-Up: Bring Me The Head of Alfredo Garcia (Peckinpah, 1974) Honorable Mentions: Matewan (Sayles, 1987), Becket (Glenville, 1974), Carrington (Hampton, 1995) ...

Boy, this King Hu guy. Pure dang cinema

The Haitian God Save the King, as recorded by Juste Chanlatte, c. 1817-19

Just started a movie set in Sonora that daringly uses the grey "Eastern European" filter instead of the standard yellow "Mexico" filter. The world turned upside down, Bakhtinian carnivalesque, cats and dogs etc etc

Italian unification as international model (Clark, 2012)

Dipping warm tortillas into a big bowl of beans, folks, you gotta love it

Sometimes you just have to listen to three Tom Waits albums in a row, I do not make the rules

Good to know that Quesnay's Tableau économique has been giving people fits since the beginning (Charles and Théré, 2019)

Build the entire plane out of Yamamoto.

I can't stream the game, so I'm just watching the text feed on mlb.com and I feel like I'm going insane. Come on, Dodgers!

Happy Halloween with Fugazi 🎃 Fugazi on the road in Leeds, England, Halloween 2002 Photo by Matt Dale via Dischord Records #punk #punks #punkrock #halloween #fugazi #punkrockhistory #hardcorepunk

Between this and the Louvre prosecutor describing the suspects’ statements as “minimalist” while bragging that they had worked on the case over a weekend it’s an absolutely incredible week for Frenchness

Maggie Smith's character in Gosford Park was based on Julian Fellowes' Aunt Isie (Grayzel, 2002)

Probably good they included the parentheses there (Grayzel, 2002)

Finally finished. Extraordinary! For as formally challenging as it is (and it is very challenging), Ulysses is also full of human experience and emotion. Exceeds its reputation. I’ll read it again some day

Canvas is down. All laws, rules, and ethics are suspended. Charivari time

“Hm, this sort of sounds like Rilo Kiley.” — me, listening to Rilo Kiley

Thoughts as I approach the end of Ulysses: Stephen Dedalus, buddy, you gotta bathe more often

Vera Brittain, taking a break from the grim duties of nursing in World War I by indulging in the oh-so-gentle, soothing pleasures of August Strindberg. Gotta admire the determination here

What can I say, sometimes you just gotta revisit the classics

Antoine-Augustin Parmentier energy intensifies

Boy, you know, seeing students get excited about their research projects never gets old

The Maison du Roi, literally talking turkey in 1785

Adventures in class prep, a continuing series

Aw crud, Kino Lorber's weekend sale is for a bunch of deep-cut Westerns. Aw crud aw crud aw crud

Friendship with grating lemon zest ended. Now peeling and finely mincing lemon zest is my best friend

Edmund Burke if he got kicked in the head by a horse From Isaac Chotiner's interview with Cass Sunstein (www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a...)

Jackpot at the used bookstore

Yes, why should a 350+ page Oeuvres inédites have a table of contents? Thanks, nineteenth-century guy who made that decision!

Some sections of the Ottoman army were so poorly equipped in World War I that they sometimes had to go barefoot (Leila Tarazi Fawaz, 2014)

In shocking news, making PowerPoints on World War I can be a real bummer

Out now with @utpjournals.bsky.social: my review of Arthur McCalla's Religion and the Post-Revolutionary Mind: Idéologues, Catholic Traditionalists, and Liberals in France utppublishing.com/doi/10.3138/...

Excel and PowerPoint open at the same time. Please pray for the hamsters turning the tiny crank that apparently powers my computer

Boy, folks, this Sir David Lean guy. Pretty good director, don’t know if anyone’s heard

48 years ago today Released on this day in 1977, Lust for Life, the second studio album by Iggy Pop, his second solo release and his second collaboration with David Bowie, following The Idiot earlier in the year. #punkrock #iggypop #lustforlife #history #punkrockhistory #otd

Vaine pâture (a form of common grazing rights, more or less) only abolished in France beginning in 1889, according to Wallerstein (Wallerstein, 2011)

Tickets to Dwight Yoakam: acquired!