Can we arrest the lot of them please?

Upping my entrance game.

“You’re not regretting the exit of the grown-ups from the room, are you? Remember who they were. Remember what they did. Look at the civilian-to-combatant death ratio for the Battle of Mosul. (A good battle.) … We are nothing, and they have the drones: that sums it up.” www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

I like Andy Burnham - former Fitzwilliam alum, met him a couple of times - but to get him into parliament again, you’d have to win the by-election and then find a mayoral candidate at short notice. Both loaded with risk at the current juncture. Better to serve a term then start a new one.

New in Area: 'Witnessing health and place: Sebastião Salgado and the photographic legacy of polio eradication' by @wstaylor87.bsky.social This paper situates the photographic work of Salgado on polio vaccination within debates on humanitarian visual culture. doi.org/10.1111/area...

This week I signed a book contract for an edited collection on public health geographies. The focus will be on writing about public health from the academic, social, geographical and epistemic margins. quaint-bottle-ea0.notion.site/New-Book-Con...

This photograph from Anglesey Abbey’s winter garden this morning is going to be the cover of my first theory book.

New, by me, on the ethical and political dimensions of global health photography, situating Sebastião Salgado's polio eradication work within debates on representation, witnessing and power in humanitarian visual culture. rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Lumumba’s independence speech still shakes history. This blog revisits its words, context, and afterlives—through Ludo de Witte’s meticulous work—showing why Lumumba’s defiance of colonial mythmaking remains foundational. He was assassinated on January 17, 1961. www.versobooks.com/en-gb/blogs/...

Shame that my kids and in-laws have come back deflated after a negative time at Edinburgh panto. Families with younger children leaving because it was far too loud, for starters, and also very blue in places. Barely a story to speak of seemingly.

I've just devoured Anthony Sattin's Nomads, a rightly celebrated account of nomadic lives and culture across human history and into our present. I've found myself telling people I meet about the stories contained within, undoubtedly a mark of a good read! www.johnmurraypress.co.uk/titles/antho...

“Several [small modular nuclear reactors] have been promised, but the problem is that they do not yet exist, except on paper or on a computer. No factory has been built to make their components, no prototype has been built, no licensing process has taken place.” www.theguardian.com/environment/...

A dazzling, immersive biography of George Villiers: court intrigue, power, beauty, ambition, and a spectacular fall from grace. If you’re into Stuart politics, gender fluidity in early modern England, or gripping historical narratives, this is a must-read. www.4thestate.co.uk/products/the...

@totallyshow.bsky.social FIFA are going to award a "peace prize" at the 2026 World Cup Draw. Presumably doing what the Nobel Committee wouldnt do and giving it to Donald Trump. After awarding World Cups to Qatar and Saudi Arabia, presumably Gianni wanted to do something *less* controversial?

"It is protected by an energy shield which is generated from the nearby forest towns of Oxford". www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Every rankings e-mail I receive (THE, QS etc.) ends up in my institutional e-mail quarantine. Think of all of that labour around soliciting e-mail addresses and a lot it ends in invites being filed as spam…

Excellent piece on the worrying decision to ‘sunset’ UNAIDS in 2026. The rise of injectables has given the tech fix brigade a victory, but it was also the advocacy, social and demographic work of highly stigmatised communities that marked out UNAIDS. www.theguardian.com/global-devel...

Exploring Earth Photo 2025 competition shortlist and the dazzling dahlias at Anglesey Abbey this morning.

Enjoying the faulty train signal outside Bishops Stortford that is only showing red/stop this morning.

“Britain has been infected by a mind virus that sees no value in place,” says chair of GB News. They’ll be on about scale next. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Can’t recommend this book enough (having had it recommended to me by an Australian undergraduate student). The chapter on the ghostly afterlife of the Golden Ridge Station hair sample collected by Alfred Haddon in 1923 is worth the price of admission alone. www.dukeupress.edu/haunting-bio...

Time spent with this excellent book has been one of the benefits of the return to long commutes this semester. The focus is on the murder of Emmett Till, but with a focus on the long history and geography of the Delta landscape that made that horror possible. www.penguin.co.uk/books/467703...

I’m not sure what I think about this book. It’s an accessible overview of planet hunting, but for all the possibilities of life elsewhere never really gets to addressing the fundamental shock that alien life on *one* exoplanet would be to our entire sense of being. www.penguin.co.uk/books/460729...

Nice trip to Audley End today with the kids. Last time I was there, I got engaged.

Future geographer has a birthday party today, and I provided some consultancy on the design of the cake.

So @totallyshow.bsky.social, Almaty is closer to Tokyo (5329 km) than it is to Newcastle (5539 km). Roll on the Champions League draw!

This is a great and accessible book on indigenous histories, particularly the experiences of those who chose or (more likely) were compelled to come to Europe’s “savage” shores of inequality, violence and intolerance. www.weidenfeldandnicolson.co.uk/titles/carol...

Alea iacta est

Some of the fiercest fighting in World War I was in Serbia, Poland and elsewhere in Eastern Europe. I enjoyed Nick Lloyd’s different perspective on that conflict and learned a lot. www.penguin.co.uk/books/443194...

Thanks @pierrenovellie.bsky.social for a great night on the front row at @monkeybarrelcomedy.bsky.social #edfringe yesterday. I very much deserved my “sniping” but he was just so funny! #comedy #DaretoDiscover www.edfringe.com/tickets/what...

First time using Google AI mode in search. Completely made up answer that bore no semblance to the original search response.

Just devoured Quinine’s Remains by Townsend Middleton. Rooted in fieldwork across Darjeeling’s overgrown - yet somehow surviving - cinchona plantations, it eloquently excavates the afterlives of empire, colonial medicine, labour regimes, and conflicts around land. www.ucpress.edu/books/quinin...

The Phillies debuted the “Coldplay Kiss Cam” tonight 😂 (via X/JasonFox29)

Quite the paragraph here on pregnancy tests and frogs. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

"[M]any digital nomads end up doing a global tour of Starbucks." www.theguardian.com/money/2025/j...

Quite the statistic here: 11 women (all aged 19-35) accounted for 9% of the total A&E admissions at Barrow-in-Furness hospital last year. It’s believed to be a pattern of self-harm and self-neglect among vulnerable adults intended to access hospital care. www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

Here's my MLB All-Star Ballot.

Quite the line in the independent report into the University of Dundee's finances: www.sfc.ac.uk/wp-content/u...

Surely one of the rare times that we've seen THAAD batteries shooting down incoming missiles above luxury yachts.

I hear Qatar is a great place to live #expatlife

Has our geographical knowledge really sunk this low?

I’ve just finished this on the ‘imperial history’ of the CIA. It’s successful into Vietnam, but after that ‘imperial blowback’ takes second place to reviewing the conspiratorial and the GWOT. Both have ‘imperial’ connections, so frustrating these weren’t dealt with. basicbooks.uk/titles/hugh-...

I was reminded today that Linda McMahon - of WWF fame - is the US Secretary of Education. No problems there. Nope.

I can't remember how I stumbled across this book - and I am ashamed that I hadn't encountered it sooner - but it is going straight on my reading lists. The ‘forgotten’ story of forceful abortion in Réunion and the hypocrisies of the metropole that enabled it. www.dukeupress.edu/the-wombs-of...

There's a lot of US conservatism in here, but I find that we're already leaning the way of many of his recommendations on screens and unstructured play. The idea of age-marking devices is an interesting one (i.e. tell apps/sites a device is used by a 14-year-old). www.penguin.co.uk/books/456971...

Just back from holiday

“Twilley says that she got interested in refrigeration around fifteen years ago while thinking about the ‘farm-to-table’ movement… ‘I got stuck on the conjunction,’ Twilley writes. ‘What about the to?’” www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

I've enjoyed V13, the full collection of Carrère's weekly L'Obs columns about the 2015 Paris terror attacks trial. It's fascinating to read how a series of disparate events are spun into a narrative during a trial and all the moral judgements that this involves. www.penguin.co.uk/books/456038...

Just submitted a manuscript to a journal. Very easy process, all as described on the Author Guidelines page, and then WHAM, 'describe how your paper fits with the aims of the journal (200 characters max.)'. Is that question necessary? If so, put it in the Author Guidelines as something to prep!

Did I pay for a day of Sky Sports? Yes, I did.