My response to anything over the next two weeks

Folk Song Tomaž Šalamun translated by Charles Simic #smallpoemsunday #poetry

3 night euro city break, countless cafe terrace wines, and *ZERO* cigarettes. I'd like my medal now please.

Another marking season, another jailbreak - Belgium with @oddreally.bsky.social

Luther has fallen

everything takes so much longer than you think it is going to and blends so messily into whatever was meant to be coming next and next and next like a comedy interlude in a crime film where the car chase accumulates fruit and boxes unwary pedestrians chickens mirror salesmen etc

Stockholm syndrome variation, where you just fall a little bit in love with any visiting tradesperson who is good at their job.

End of a long term, marking incoming, little pre-christmas city break to get ready for... so of course the perfect time to find a mouse in the house 😭

I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.

still my favourite ever wish from the university tree...

IVE GOT IT. a tote. academics CANNOT GET ENOUGH of a nice tote. like a really sturdy one with a cool picture but also it announces your failures to the world

'Rejected when it was still the AHRB' vintage fit

more pointless performative cruelty from a government of sickos

Blue skies, hot coffee, panoramic views, and the irrational nagging guilt that the dog is getting a bath the minute we're inside the door...

Coming on here to announce I Changed the Printer Toner, to try and stop myself telling any more of my colleagues as they just try to do their printing in peace..

It is an Andre Marriner, And he booketh one of three

Plague on the house of the person who walked off from the lido in MY TRAINERS. Plague and an eternity of cold feet.

It shouldn't take an FOI request to see grant success rates. UKRI has a duty of care to researchers to supply this from the outset. We are judged, compared, promoted (or not) according to unbelievably bad odds.

If I thought the time I mixed up Will Smith and Will Self in a lecture was embarrassing, I just spent ninety hideous seconds talking to the first years about 'David Beckham's poem, Omeros' before I realised why they looked confused.

Stop trying to over-intellectualise these people. There is no grand philosophy behind it. It’s hate, it’s as simple as that. If you’re grasping for reasons why that can’t be, save yourself the energy. You’ll need it for something else.

AI is the asbestos we are shoveling into the walls of our society and our descendants will be digging it out for generations”

When you should really be adding some pithy topical updates to this lecture, but you'd rather stick forks in a plug socket than spend another second with the news...

It always makes my day when strangers compliment the dog, but the specificity of 'she just needs one of those red neckerchiefs - she'd work that' might be my new favourite.

When you get a photo from the dogsitter and realise you've been so far neglecting her art appreciation activities...

In Barter Books, they're playing Leonard Cohen, buying Carbonel and Matilda for my friends' daughters. Bliss.

Eight miles of the coast path and a bucket of whisky sours... starting the holiday right

Don't worry academics, it's still only August 32nd. Still plenty of time!

This thread is exactly how I feel about genAI. Completely turned off by it on all artistic, intellectual and moral levels. I have no interest in anything it can say or generate. It is anti-human.

This, from the Quakers, is worth reading. It's a serene, confident, utter rebuke of the hate and fear that's peddled by Sex Matters. The last two pages are smokin'. If you're on the wrong side of the Quakers, you really need to sit down and have a good chat with yourself.

thanks so much to everyone who's signed - 300 signatures in less than 3 days and climbing. this programme is one of the best things about UoB and the very least of what the university owes the broader region

Please help. Please sign & share. I work on a degree programme known as ELCE for mature students who didn't or couldn't do a degree at 18. Bristol uni has decided to close it. Bristol was set up to serve this community & now we are losing our most accessible degree. docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

The sheer satisfaction of treating yourself to these beauties, whilst being able to completely shut down any judgy inner whisper of 'but do you really need any more books? / don't you have enough already?' because it's actually a matter of principle. Checkmate!

There is no justification for the BBC to be repeatedly broadcasting the lies Israel is spinning against the murdered Gazan journalists. Its irresponsible as well as totally shameful treatment of fellow journalists.

Kendrick & SZA in Cardiff last night - beautiful and bizarre (not pictured: huge mechanical ant) and maybe the most I've ever felt aware of witnessing a performance from people at absolute peak of their game. Incredible.

⬇️the most harrowing spice-rack misadventure since The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole

for example, Dorothy Sayers straining for 'natural working class conversation in 1935' and landing smugly on 'wot this country wants is a 'itler'

I do rather feel that if legislative/media attention's going to paid to reactionary academics who've been targeted by student campaigners, some should also be given to their progressive colleagues who've been targeted by, er, newspapers, media channels, supine regulators and the government

Day 1 of new tactic to deal with the dog's separation anxiety: putting on a ton of make-up and not leaving the house

the plan is to distract and deflect and overwhelm and numb until everyone is dead. and then they will say it’s in the past, and they will move into Gaza, and the western machinery will roll on as it always has. hard not to see proscribing Palestine Action is part of this plan

Oddbox leaflet reading like a child’s suicide note in a Hardy novel

It takes minutes to Find and email your MP. I write to mine often. She actually replies reasonably thoughtfully. So drop your a line regarding the disability cuts. Even a short email saying you think it's terrible helps show the feeling out there.

The conceptual problem with framing higher education as simply job preparation is that it fundamentally misunderstands education, but the practical problem is that universities have absolutely no influence on, or responsibility for, the size of the job market.

meanwhile, in work email.... 'Dear Turkeys, we're delighted to announce our brave new scholarship in Christmas Dinner Studies, and why not sign up for a seminar on The Ethical Uses of Paxo in Stuffing?'

As ever Judith Boyle has some brilliant quotations to discuss. I love both of these. But particularly the idea about big coats. Reminds me of the queens of the north on drag race UK - coats are for shoplifting....

realising (in a personal capacity) this means a non-zero chance of more compulsory freedom of speech online training

People who abstained from voting to decriminalise abortion: -Wes Streeting (health secretary) -Bridget Phillipson (women and equalities minister) -Rosie Duffield (top feminist and woman defender)

Yes, citizens of no.37! Reject planning! Time is bullshit, break the organisational bars and run free, you glorious creatures! (or congrats on your new planner, I guess)

Last year we ran a survey on UK HE redundancies. Based on 349 responses, the UNIVERSITIES DEGRADED REPORT uncovers awful conditions, targeting of marginalised groups, & far more cuts than estimated. People's stories matter. We can hold leaders to account. Please share widely tinyurl.com/48nzf7ew

Read this whole thread. I have lost count of the number of times that I've said my institution needs to be proactive in preventing mental illhealth. HE leadership across the sector deems poor staff mental health acceptable collateral damage and I'm tired of it (have been for years). 1/

The consultation questionnaire is both extremely dull and revoltingly dehumanising, and I don't have much faith in the process, but if you're tired of genital-obsessed bigots then it's still worth filling it it, and I'm so grateful for @sandraduffy.bsky.social's clear guidance