In memoriam...

As the first female Archbishop of Canterbury is appointed, it’s worth remembering that dissenting women were preaching to mixed sex congregations in London as early as 1645. My book Voices of Thunder has a whole section on 17th-century “she-preachers” #earlymodern

@zackpolanski.bsky.social nails it: "Britain is not broken because of migration. Britain is broken because of inequality. Because of an economy that allows billionaires to hoard wealth while millions struggle to get by. Because of a political class that has lost its nerve and forgotten its purpose."

#FridayFan - just a gorgeous autumnal sunset scallop #Beachcombing

I somehow missed the news of the horrific attack in Manchester yesterday. My thoughts are with the victims’ families and the Jewish community. Antisemitism is abhorrent and any attempt to justify such atrocities is disgusting.

Tony is many things but he isn’t a moron, so we can assume he can see exactly what kind of “peace” is being imposed upon the Palestinians and by what means, and we can instantly throw any charitable assumptions about his noble motives in the bin.

This is a major and under acknowledged crime against humanity.

"one officer smiled for a selfie with her as she cried."

It really is just relentless the constant dehumanisation in this country. Prove you deserve to be here. Prove you deserve to be cared for. Prove your gender. Prove you deserve to have human rights. Prove you deserve to stay after a whole decade. It just chisels away at your humanity

I wonder if this guy is related to "Boris Johnson" who introduced "voter id" as Prime Minister in 2023 ... off the back of some crazy US conspiracy theories ... and in the process, made digital ID pretty much inevitable.

There seems to be some *confusion* among Reform supporters over Nathan Gill being one of them “But, but, Reform didn’t exist when he took his Russian bribes” “But, but he was in UKIP” “But, but it has nothing to do with Farage, he barely knew the guy” So here’s a little history lesson 👍🏼🧵 1/14

There’s no easy answers for Starmer’s government confronting Reform. But it should understand the opposition. Not ‘ordinary Britons with legitimate grievances’, but a trans-national, far right propaganda machine built patiently over decades with Russian & US funders among others.

This was good until I got to the nonsense about the history of witchcraft (the midwife-witch thing was debunked ages ago). Historical scholarship has moved on, public knowledge has not, and this is partly why I am writing my Everyday Bewitchment book. www.theguardian.com/music/2025/s...

An interview about taking the fight to Reform in which racism isn’t mentioned once. Not sure anything captures Britain today than the most mediocre of white men throwing minorities under the bus out of desperation to sustain himself in a role he never should have held.

Well, this is worrying…

This. I'm seeing a lot of media coverage of this along the lines of "Trump and Kennedy are driving disinformation/are just ignorant" but its more; they are driven by a deep, obvious and abiding ableism--their contempt and dislike for disabled people are very clear and have been for years.

The "asylum seekers eat our swans" lie was disproven 22 years ago. The Sun had to print a retraction back then. No PCC probe into 'swan eating' story | National newspapers | The Guardian share.google/lpdL9szwkmC0...

Mrs R: "There was a woman on the ward today who didn't want to take paracetamol. We've had to explain that we're not giving it to her because she's got a fever and we want her to feel better, but because she's got a fever and if we don't get her temperature down then her baby is going to die."

Not only do they want to give no one* the option to terminate a pregnancy, even one that isn’t viable and/or will put the pregnant person’s life at risk, but they also want pregnancy & childbirth to be as painful as possible. *Obviously exceptions will be made for the mistresses of rich white men

Farage shows his absolute weakness as a Trump puppet on LBC. Asked about Trump blathering about a completely unproven link between paracetamol and autism, Farage said “I have no idea, I have no idea” and he would “listen” to RFK Jr. He went on to say “science is never settled”. Dangerous.

I keep hoping that the further Nigel Farage burrows his way into Trump’s asshole, the more likely it is that people who somehow think he is credible will finally come to their senses & see him for the grifting weasel that he is. I won’t hold my breath, though.

Reminder that every day, trans people have to wake up and see themselves being portrayed as monsters by the most powerful idiot in the world. And the UK government nods along with it, enthusiastically.

I can’t wait for the Daily Mail to spin this into it being Meghan’s fault somehow…

To people in the know: what time is the Rapture starting tomorrow? Because I am prepping for a class right now & maybe it won’t be happening if we are Rapturing before 10am GMT…

In semester 2 I’m teaching a new module on the Apocalypse & I see Christian fundamentalists in America are saying the Rapture is happening tomorrow. This means that I either don’t have to bother writing the new module, or I’ll have more material to include, so I guess it’s win-win for me either way.

Better late than never, I guess. The Lancet tells us that over 680,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israel’s bombs, bullets and starvation in the last 2 years, so can we we actually do something to end the genocide now?

4pm on Friday is totally the moment to post the news you're proudest about. Could it be Oxford is as embarrassed about this as it should be? They're burning their most valuable asset, that centuries' old reputation, & offering legitimacy to a cognitive-power-&-resources-destructing plagiarism tool.

Well, this is certainly a choice… 👀

I have just deleted my account. Absolutely nope.

Nothing ages a piece of academic work faster than naming it “New Perspectives on …” 😬

Bit late to the party, but if you haven’t seen it, Boy Swallows Universe on Netflix is brilliant.

If you’re on academia dot edu, let me suggest that you strongly consider deleting your account.

mass shooting at minneapolis homeless encampment days after a fox news host calls to kill all homeless people

Celebrities including Cillian Murphy, Joaquin Phoenix, Steve Coogan, Billie Eilish, Finneas and Peter Gabriel are holding a Benefit tonight at 7pm for Palestine at OVO Wembly Arena. Free Palestine, end the Genocide.

It is Freshers Week. I have been onto campus twice & I already feel like I’m coming down with a cold.

FOX news host suggests we euthanize the homeless, someone goes into two encampments and starts shooting. 13 people shot and Jacob Frey and the media are just talking about it as the new best reason to clear the encampments

NO SHIT

QUEEN 👑

Hiding the truth.

You use the Facts to beat the hate.

I mean, call me a Loony Lefty if you want, but it *is* starting to look a bit weird arresting disabled pensioners protesting peacefully one day and telling coked up bellends attacking you to “calm down” another day the same month. Obviously, just my opinion. I might have got it wrong.

The Nazi extermination programs didn’t begin with Jews. It began in September 1939 with the involuntary euthanasia of people with disabilities and the mentally ill under the Aktion T4 program. That’s how they developed their techniques of mass extermination.

Reporters talking with everyone who has ever met the shooter asking if the shooter knew any trans people. Healthy society we have here for sure.

Everybody in the UK, whether it is Pro Palestine, Anti-Brexit or Scottish Independence can turn up and have peaceful marches with hundreds of thousands or millions of people and have almost no trouble. But the Far Right can't.

Sky News says police are "overwhelmed by the numbers". Met coped perfectly well with 2x as many at the pro-Gaza rally, 5x as many at the anti-Brexit march, and 15x as many at London Pride. They're not overwhelmed by the numbers. They're overwhelmed by the ratio of violent thugs in those numbers.

This is the bad place.

You can use ChatGPT instead of your own brain to write your paper if I can talk about ChatGPT instead of you in your letter of reference

He was also a homophobe and transphobe; and even said he would force his young daughter to carry a pregnancy to term and give birth, even if she were raped. He was every possible flavour of bigot.

The far right turnout today is much smaller than the number of people who came to protest at London Trans Pride this year, but the far right will of course get infinitely more press coverage.

it really is astonishing how quickly it goes from “civil war” and “blood in the streets” to “wow guys it’s just a sad tragedy” when it becomes inconvenient