The absolute fallacy of conservatism is that existing generations have done such a good job of stewarding our physical, economic, political, and moral inheritance that we would accept the obligation to honour their posterity. What a miserable deception.

If the claim is that criticism of the policies of the government of Israel constitutes antisemitism, then any person making that claim is thereby obliged to defend those same policies. Every interview with a public figure making that claim must be conducted on this basis.

Trump is literally a reverse-Midas. Everything he touches turns to shit.

Whatever their uses may be, I have neither seen, read, or heard anything to persuade me to use, recommend, or tolerate any LLM. I have however found considerable evidence to make me mistrust, despise, and wish destruction upon all the corporations who have forced LLMs upon the world.

As a species, humans richly deserve the extinction we are working so assiduously to accelerate by cooking the planet. The many millions of other species we are burning with us are due an infinitely greater share of our attention, obligation, and our urgent action than our own.

When I studied political science in the 1990s, we were taught that ‘conservatives’ were in favour of property and tradition, and an attenuated notion of the common good. Turns out in the 2020s that conservatives only favour their own advancement by excusing corruption and defending pedophiles.

One of the things about democratic governments that most people do not understand is that they are based on the simple idea that given the opportunity, many humans will literally say and do anything for power over others. What they want is clear a pathway to power (or money, status, fame, etc). 1.

I don’t know much about Ilhan Omar, but she has two powerful recommendations. First, she is an articulate and courageous critic of American fascism. Second, as this incident shows, she is a demonstrably stronger and more admirable person than the deranged cowards who would silence her.

We’ve become far too complacent about political hypocrisy. We expect it of our political class. It sickens and infuriates us, but we tell ourselves ‘they’re all the same’. Years ago Judith Shklar eloquently warned us that hypocrisy leads inevitably to cruelty.

A yearly reminder to the flag wavers on our national day: just like donating to charity, or being kind to animals, if you have to advertise it to all and sundry you’re not actually doing the thing. You’re engaging in self-promotion. There are better ways to love your country than waving a flag.

Here we are again. January 26. The date on which British colonisation of Australia officially commenced. It’s a poor excuse for a national day. We could do a lot better if only we allowed our imaginations free, for once, from the dark shadows of colonialism. #ChangeTheDate.

Pardons issued by an impeached and criminal president should be nullified.

One of the advantages of being a historian of the #C18th is making shrub. Equal parts freshly pressed fruit juice (or syrup) and alcohol of choice. This is strawberry vodka, strawberry brandy, cherry vodka, cherry brandy, and strawberry Irish whisky. Fruit sourced from the beautiful Adelaide Hills.

The Adelaide Hills. South Australia’s best kept secret.

Without doubt the best undergraduate course I studied at Uni was a multi-disciplinary unit called ‘Revolution: A History’. It studied theories and practices of political change from the ancient to the modern world. Now seems a good time for it to be revived. I think it would be a popular course!

A sign of our mutual incomprehension is the return of the ‘profession of faith’ as a surrogate for virtue. Yet there is nothing more tiresome under the sun than someone else’s statement of faith. It’s about as compelling as being inveigled to endure the viewing of another person’s holiday photos.

“We need writers now more than ever, as our media closes up, as our politicians grow daily more cowed by real power, as Australia grows more unjust and unequal. Adelaide Writers Week is the canary in the coalmine. Friends and colleagues in the arts, beware of the future. They are coming for you.”

It is somehow fitting that on the anniversary of the Trumpist insurrection, a failed state put the former tyrant of another failed state on trial in a judicial system riddled with deliberate inequities. Happy anniversary.

Trump is the broken centre of a tangle of brokenness intent on breaking all it can grasp. All the breaking accomplished by the concatenation of breakers he has unleashed is merely a spreading reverberation, a perpetual repetition of the original shattering of his broken ego.

I don’t think we should discount the possibility that nobody in this Admin, least of all the President, knows what they are doing, or why they’re doing it. There are probably 3 or 4 (and most likely more) factions advancing their own agendas under the guise of Trump’s rapidly advancing senility.

The career reflections of a born chancer. It’s almost as if she profited politically, personally, and financially in a fit of absence of mind. She was moved by self-pity, chased every unworthy resentment, sought new opportunities for cruelty, and bequeathed fascism. Some career.

The humiliation of the United States has already plumbed greater depths than anyone thought possible. And still he sinks it further into degradation.

Creatures of #Renaissance Florence.

Faces of #Renaissance Florence.

Views of San Marco, Florence. Part 1.

Close encounters with Girolamo Savonarola. #Firenze #Renaissance #Machiavelli

Firenze!

The corporate creators of LLMs are vandals systematically destroying for profit our common inheritance: knowledge, culture, language, art. These are the means by which any of us can come to comprehend truth - the bedrock of our capacity to communicate.

The Gulf of America.

A volcanic optical illusion at the Jardin des Plantes.

The illuminations at the Jardin de Plantes.

A second book launch, this time at Uppsala University. Thanks to all who came and listened to @lindaaburnett.bsky.social and I outline our next book - on humanity and the history of scientific instructions. It’s a tale of skull collections and the colonial history of ideas.

The old anatomy theatre (dating from 1662-63), in the Gustavianum, Uppsala. An amazing demonstration of visibility in architecture, and of the prestige and power that anatomical science then commanded. #HistoryOfMedicine #HistoryOfAnatomy #HistoryOfArchitecture

Trump always was and always will be the asset of a foreign power. If treason had a corporeal shape, it would look like Trump.

For too long we’ve been subjected to a disempowerment discourse that asserts “the humanities are dying”. They’re not dying, but there is an effort by governments and corporations to kill them. And yet, the public’s desire to learn and engage with the humanities persists.

🎵 “Join Ice” - @wellesmusic on Colbert

Why were heads hunted in the Enlightenment? Who hunted heads, and where did they 'acquire' them? It’s a complicated history. @lindaaburnett.bsky.social and I tell some of it in our new book. We'll tell more of it in our next! You can read a little about it here: yalebooks.yale.edu/2025/11/20/h...

“In short, social-democratic parties should stop chasing after far-right voters.” www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

As the old saying goes, ‘Charity begins at home.’ It ends there too, apparently.

Late autumnal frost, Uppsala.

Not sure it’s the best thing I’ve read on AI in higher ed, but it is worth reading. It confirms my worst suspicions and most depressing experiences. Abomination that it is though, AI is only one of the horsemen of the looming Apocalypse, the others being user pays, student debt, and job readiness.

The far right are no longer knocking on the door to public office, because centrist governments the world over have been busily taking that door off its hinges.

The political epitaph for a generation of American evangelicals will read “we professed faith to protect pedophiles in power who made cruelty and corruption our legacy to future generations.” They did the Lord’s work.

Europe’s #Enlightenment invented race as it also invited its critique. In 1780, James Dunbar warned that by dividing humanity into races: "...the oppression or extermination of a meaner race, will no longer be so shocking to humanity.” - Essays on the History of Mankind, 1780, page. 150.

Uppsala slott.

Here in Sweden, excitement is building for Australia’s team selection for #TheAshes.

This is the fascist playbook. It never, ever changes. Fascists only ever persecute the most vulnerable among us. They have no conception of seizing power from oppressors in the name of justice. Their entire raison d’être is to stomp on the oppressed and call it vengeance.

It was his idiotic policy, introduced without congressional approval, so if anything it should make him personally liable to pay back those sums, with all the coin he has scammed through his very own crypto-corruption.

Book launched! @lindaaburnett.bsky.social @kathryn-seymour.bsky.social #C18th #race #colonization #ScottishEnlightenment

Book about to be launched! @lindaaburnett.bsky.social @kathryn-seymour.bsky.social www.intellectualhistory.net/events-outsi...