Some light viewing for Sunday evening

I'm looking forward to this. I'll be discussing a very relevant, and hopefully interesting, case study 📷

I caught up with two old friends the other week. They were Everton season ticket holders, and went to every home and away match for years. They stopped going years ago and don't even watch games on tv now. Though I never had a season ticket, I've seen Liverpool hundreds of times since 1990...

A strong statement on refusing to resign to AI resignation www.nplusonemag.com/issue-51/the...

Coming soon💨 How has energy shaped a nation? Electric Wind by @DudleyMarianna.bsky.social is a cutting-edge history of wind power in Britain, from the industrial revolution to the aftermath of war, through energy crises and the changing politics of the late twentieth century💡 Pre-order now!

We need an associate lecturer in history of modern science @stsucl.bsky.social www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/...

Had a really good time at the Planetary Futures conference in Manchester. Big thanks to wonderful organizers @sadiahqureshi.bsky.social, @duncanwilson78.bsky.social and presenters! Snapshots from talks🧵 @mattholmes.bsky.social @angecass.bsky.social #envhist #envhum #histsci

On my way back from the "Planetary Futures" conference in Manchester, organized by @sadiahqureshi.bsky.social and @duncanwilson78.bsky.social Two days of vibrant discussions on how the humanities can help us understand extinction.

I'm wiped out after the Planetary Futures conference that @sadiahqureshi.bsky.social and I organised over the past two days at the University of Manchester. Huge thanks to everyone who gave papers and attended. I think it all went well!

In no sense are universities merging creating a 'super university'. They are institutions grabbing a life raft to stop themselves drowning. The merger of Kent and Greenwich is a sign of a sector that has been criminally neglected, the implications for staff and students could be disastrous.

We're hiring a new lecturer @stsucl.bsky.social. We're looking for someone with particular interests in the environment. Please share widely www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/...

Since Melvyn Bragg is in the news, here's a clip from the amazing profile of Francis Bacon on the South Bank Show, where the two of them have a good old booze up at The Colony Room Club among other haunts. 'Cheerio!' www.youtube.com/watch?v=yefq...

Please join us for a discussion event on Extinction, with @sadiahqureshi.bsky.social and Rachel Webster, at Manchester Museum, on 18 Sept 2025. blogs.manchester.ac.uk/chstm/2025/0...

Absolutely delighted to have been awarded the Wilkins-Bernal-Medawar medal by the @royalsociety.org for my research on science, race, and empire, including my book Vanished. An enormous thanks to everybody who made this possible, especially the Royal Society. royalsociety.org/medals-and-p...

I can highly recommend Endling, by Maria Reva. I initially got a copy because it's partly about conservation of 'lowly' species, but it's also a very ambitious and inventive novel that's ultimately about writing in a time of crisis. www.theguardian.com/books/2025/j...

I grew up in Mold and my family and lots of friends still live there. It's not without its problems, like all deindustrialised towns, but it's pretty galling to see it described it as a 'terrible place' following yesterday's asylum protests.

*Curb Your Enthusiasm theme plays*

I love how the seaweed patterns this black sand as it's dragged out by the tide.

🦤🦤🦤🦤

I had a nice chat with Jonathan Miller on the tube. I was on my way to a job interview and he said I should visit an exhibition he'd curated at a London gallery.

Tony Blair could lead a party that included Dennis Skinner — and often, in fact, spoke about the importance of the party being able to contain both of them within its broad church. This stuff doesn’t make Starmer look strong, quite the opposite.

If you're a social scientist who also claims to be a 'futurist', you're not real social scientist. The grift of tech determinist 'consultancy' is getting worse. Seemingly no costs to bullshit and countless uncritical journalists to write it up. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

At a certain point, the fact that every pro AI-in-education article is so eye-poppingly stupid - this one takes its data on how students use AI from a study by Open AI, and apparently sees no issue there - is itself a finding. theconversation.com/ai-isnt-repl...

I'm looking forward to this. Overshoot was excellent

I once had an email exchange with Alasdair MacIntyre on the relationship between his work on medical ethics and After Virtue. I learnt more from those emails than most books. He was undoubtedly one of the most important Anglophone philosophers of the last fifty years.

I’m old fashioned enough to think the BBC should be leading on what the deal is and what it means. Rather than the political claims from both sides.

I think that Blue Labour guy is going to get to live out his fantasy of closing universities, where absolutely no Real People work, and which will definitely not blight any Real Places.

Majority of 902. Reform-curious or just desperate? Or just the tenor of Starmer's Labour and the void at its centre. UK HE was one of Britain's few export success stories! The rest is beneath contempt.

As ever I'd like someone to ask him specifically if he'd be happy for Lancaster University to close - which has a campus in his constituency. Or is just unis in other areas he doesn't want?

That 10 Downing St briefing saying Starmer doesn't believe trans women are women seems so needlessly cruel. Why rub salt in the wound?

Today, just like every day, we stand with trans people and are in solidarity with them fighting for their rights, dignity and healthcare. But today seems like a good day to re-state this.

You can’t be a government that’s serious about growth while simultaneously limiting one of your most successful export businesses and diminishing institutions that are crucial to delivering local and national growth and innovation.

Organising a conference on extinction with Duncan Wilson. We have enough funding to provide free registration, some support towards accommodation and limited bursaries for travel. CFP here, with the form to submit your abstract. We also have incredible speakers for the keynote and plenaries!

Given horrifying attacks on US universities, it’s hard to see how the OfS line on Sussex can hold. Who in their right mind (so not Kemi Badenoch) would defend the state making these kinds of threats right now?

An idea from people who I'll bet have never marked student work in their lives. Good luck dealing with the pushback from students when they ask for an explanation of their grade and you can't offer any reasoned explanation, or finding out that AI isn't a subject expert in every single topic 🙄🙄

This is a great essay by Owen Hatherley on the Manics, who I'm not ashamed to admit have been my favourite band since the mid 90s. He's right about the missteps and dud albums, but also writes well about what makes The Holy Bible and Journal for Plague Lovers such incredible records.

With everything going on in the world, it's telling that the use of a logo in some hugely overrated Netflix show is what gets university leaders *really angry*.

As bad as anything from Trumpland - UK university regulator fines Sussex Uni more than half a million pounds because their policy to "positively represent trans people" is a free speech breach. www.bbc.com/news/article...

Medical humanities scholars who teach in UK medical schools: I am conducting a survey with colleagues asking about your roles in delivering core and intercalated teaching to medical students. If this applies to you, please get in touch and I'll send you an information sheet and consent form.

T-80 days, but roaring and ready to land! A huge thanks to some truly roarsome peeps for reading and sharing their kind words: @davidolusoga.bsky.social @hjm.bsky.social @historianmemory.bsky.social @alanlester.bsky.social Please do share. Info & preorder links @ www.penguin.co.uk/books/309254...

UK universities are in crisis. Dave Hitchcock (@davehitchcock.bsky.social) on how the sector became 'broken' and why it must be approached as an interdependent system. www.historyworkshop....

Look at this amazing object, hot off the presses - @cinziag.bsky.social's brilliant, game-changing, cross-national ethnography of breast cancer from Manchester Uni Press!

I've only just seen the sad news that Margot Brazier has died. She was an immensely important figure in UK medical law and bioethics, and a lovely person too. We lived a few streets apart in recent years, and I always enjoyed catching up with her.

I'm old enough to remember when Rupert Lowe was just the hapless chairman of Southampton FC.

Presumably everyone who thinks this is a good idea wants to first fund precarious researchers already here; open it to scholars under threat generally, not just in the US; and apply it beyond "strategically important" science - right??

So Royal Society what still attracts you to billionaire Elon Musk?

I’m glad Labour is supporting these workers, who are at risk of losing 400 jobs. Would be nice if they were also supporting university workers, where 10,000 jobs are at risk. In the first week of February alone 1,000 job cuts were announced. Nothing from Labour at all in response.

I don't understand the fuss over the Bond films. The original producers were American and Canadian, their successors were American, and the rights have now been sold to a US company. And with the exception perhaps of From Russia with Love and the Timothy Dalton ones, the films are largely terrible!

I'm actually raging at what's happening in Cardiff, and the callous treatment of friends and colleagues by a nakedly incompetent leadership class. Read this and weep: voice.cymru/two-weeks-in...