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...

Edinburgh!

The Firth of Forth on a sunny autumn morning. Quite a rarity in Scotland!

Nero fiddled while Rome burned.

The word “healthy” here is doing quite a lot of deceptive work in this exchange. A more honest word to use than “healthy” would be “compelled”, and the more appropriate term than “health system” would be “compulsion system”.

Imagine a university where academics are free to teach what they are researching, where students are enabled to follow their interests, and where scholars are supported to push the boundaries of knowledge. That university is so far from our lived reality as to constitute a half forgotten dream.

From the tyrant whose entire philosophy of government is to use the constitution as toilet paper, this is truth masquerading as metaphor.

History will record it as The Great Patriotic Portland War. It will be regarded by future generations as an axis in world history, after which no nation will be from the scourge of a dancing T-Rex.

Our book launch is happening, at IASH in Edinburgh, October 29. It was there that @lindaaburnett.bsky.social and I first met, and had an idea that we might do some work together. That was in 2012! If you'll be in Edinburgh then, please come to our launch. Details below.

When I was studying political science 30 years ago, we kept being told about democratic governments being concerned to govern within the bounds of ‘legitimacy’. Anyways…

Gettysburg, 2.0.

Many think that time travel was a creation of science fiction. It wasn’t. It began as a presumption of Enlightenment thought, and became a concomitant of global colonisation in the #C18th.

With thanks to @global-ih.bsky.social for promoting my article on mobility, Enlightenment, war and colonisation.

A tale of two countries. apnews.com/article/ital...

Over 2 million people across Italy have rallied in more than 100 cities for a one-day general strike.

Can we all just now admit that over 20 years on from the September 11 attacks on the Twin Towers, Osama bin Laden definitively won the the ‘war on terror’. The US is now demonstrably weaker, more divided, animated by more strident extremism, and governed by their own version of the Taliban.

A scandal of enormous proportions. A debasement of public service, a fraud committed by government against its own people, that drove some to suicide. And none of those responsible held to account. But in spite of it all, a story of tremendous courage. Watch it. www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/tv-...

After they lose the impunity gifted by this degenerate and rapidly degenerating president, the perpetrators who authorised this vast wellness scam in place of medical science, will find themselves permanently residing in courts, losing their fast dwindling finances.

It is worth remembering that there is nothing inherently valuable in having an opinion. We earn respect by winnowing out unjust, ill-founded, and vile opinions. Our humanity resides in shouldering the burden of judgement. Not in the entitlements falsely claimed for mere opinion.

It will do nothing to alleviate the suffering of the Palestinian people, but there was a time not so long ago when this recognition seemed impossible in my country.

“Gaza has illuminated a dark truth – barbarism and Western civilisation are inseparable.”

Few of us expected it, but the global empire of the United States, its vast wealth and military might, and its unimaginable cultural power, has all been burned to the ground, immolated and razed by the most pathetic simulacrum of a man; a man so small and weak, he is an existential vacuum.

An observation for our times. Michel de Montaigne, "Of Cannibals", 1580, translated by John Florio, 1603.

Getting a bit sick of the sanctimonious reification of ‘debating’. From over 30 years as a university educator I can say that debating should most often be categorised as performance art. Persuasion, it rarely is.

Our politics seem deranged, and history offers few bearings. In dark times we should recall that every age decides for itself. You are either on the side of monopolisers of privilege and executors of power over the weakest among us, or you are against them. All else is prevarication.

Our book, Race and the Scottish Enlightenment, now published, @lindaaburnett.bsky.social and I were challenged to the ‘Page 99 Test’. The challenge, as defined by Ford Madox Ford, is whether the whole book can be seen in a single page. Here’s our response. page99test.blogspot.com/2025/09/lind...