Could we get them baking or dancing instead? The Tea and Cake party, best for British identity! Slogan: Have a Cuppa with us!

People who need to see this prob aren’t on Bluesky. The hostile environment is already v effective. I’ve watched people from various countries going through this (Australia, Italy, Czech Republic) and some (many more tbh) deciding not to. Visa insecurity is devastating. Immigration is positive.

It’s not a disease. You can’t cure it. Or prevent it. Being different is not bad. Society’s intolerance is the problem.

Proud girls, you gorgons, gorgeous in your gowns, rising back unrepentant out of your loam house, tiptoe fripperies, overlook my misreading. ‘Autumn Cyclamen’, a poem by @aestallings.bsky.social: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

"Democracies risk falling into a doom loop, in which restrictions on immigration mean ever greater demands on the purse of the native-born population and ever worse services, which in turn deepens opposition towards immigration" @stephenkb.bsky.social calls for honesty. www.ft.com/content/43da...

Sometimes I feel my main role is life is to host microorganisms

Fuchsias have finally come into their own #tinyjoys #bloomscrolling

Well, thank goodness for our students, who want to learn

really feels like the culmination (at least I hope it won't get worse) / consequence of decades of valuing surface: the idea that a candidate "looking presidential" is important; the excessive manipulation of image in television, movies, magazines, youtube; fucking civility over actual decency.

Oh ffs. No, I do not want to "Chat with the PDF" of this interesting looking academic journal article I just came across. I would like to read it. With my own eyeballs. And think about it. You know, with that grey matter sitting between my ears. Just make it stop. #AcademicChatter

It’s a dead rat sort of morning.

Multiculturalism: allowed to work, but only inasmuch as it sells things

People have a lot of questions about how my vessel, the Fuck You Poseidon I'm On Fresh Water, sank with all hands

In other news I made soup. Butternut squash and chili.

We are at risk of losing a generation of researchers. It’s worse than the 1980s. I’d say: only do a PhD for its own sake. The work you do s as an ECR is itself important work. But this period of contractions is going to be incredibly hard for all career stages, & impossible for ECRs.

I love London so much. So much. Did you know that London has the lowest level of ethnic violence of any city of comparable size in the world? Multiculturalism has in fact worked here. They just don’t want it to be true because we happen to have a Muslim mayor.

A friend from my office shelf for anyone that is feeling in need of support. This is the cuddly Totoro I was given when teaching English in Japan in 1997. I guess they wanted to make me feel less lonely - but I didn’t realise its significance until I watched the film later! #tinyjoys #shelfie

Written by a doctor at St Thomas' Hospital, London after the Tommy Robinson march on 13/9.

Every time I have to participate in any attendance process, particularly the PGR monthly in person meeting form requirements, I am forcibly reminded that I live in a racist society. I hate it.

"A future where I can live" www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_vz...

Really don’t want to pack for going back up to Nottingham again tomorrow. Bleurgh

radicalised are in control of their actions. Being poor is not an excuse for being a racist. These people are making choices they are very comfortable with. We don't make these efforts to explain away any other kind of extremism. Only angry white people are ever given this grace

This is why I am here.

Life goes on. In the morning adults hurry to work; children go to school; grandmothers go to stand in lines. More and more frequently a family member is taken away, now a friend from work, now a neighbor. Why, that's life. – Ryszard Kapuściński, 'Imperium'

Classical Antiquity Sidequest 8 – Trauma in The Aeneid with Dr. Helen Lovatt The Aeneid is one of the most popular and significant works of literature. It is an amazing story that serves as the origin story for Rome, but, more than that, it tells a story of coping with trauma. In fact, trauma…

The owner of and absolute unquestionable algorithm controller of a preferred communications channel of the UK Government calling for violence and the overthrow of the Government. www.theguardian.com/politics/liv...

Composer Hans Eisler is not so well known now, but worth thinking about. Before composing the East German National Anthem he fled the Nazis to the USA. A decade later he was on a plane in the other direction, hounded out by the McCarthyites as the ‘Karl Marx of music.’

PSA: you can now save this post and find it whenever you want it instead of having to come looking for it on my page

I dunno, it’s like the problem is not individual media or social media platforms, but broader people and society. Today I feel like all parts of my life are conspiring to make me feel violently sick.

Any progressive brass banders out there who feel the same way I do about Eric Ball’s Indian Summer? I find it hard to see that piece as anything but extremely racist.

On today’s new #PeoplingBlog, @lylaahlb.bsky.social takes us through her research on elephants and how they, and their accompanying peoples, served as vehicles for cultural exchange and transmission of knowledge as they traversed land and sea in antiquity: peoplingthepast.com/2025/09/12/b... /1

Royston Town Band on the telly tonight! www.instagram.com/p/DOf6l6gjfH...

This is a good piece. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about this already and will keep exploring the ever changing landscape of AI capacity, tells and student use of it. As a researcher I’m most interested in the ways it foregrounds ‘literary voice’ as something distinctive and special, and how

Hello lovely writing friends: any suggestions for where a young author with a developing non fan universe WIP might go for constructive supportive crits? Daughter is writing and has reached the stage where she wants feedback. I’ll explain the mutual nature of it, but not sure what is best place?

Very good thread. Also REF categories pitch quality requirements very high. It’s already the case that QR funding only follows 3 and 4* = internationally significant and world leading. Nothing for nationally signif. UK research culture is v strong & independent scholars are more like grass roots tbh

Sounds like an academic publisher! (Some of them anyway)

And what helps those with dyslexia also helps visually impaired and many neurodivergent people. Maybe it looks a bit less posh and learned, but wouldn’t you like people to actually read what you write?

My periodic reminder that the British Dylexia Association has a great styleguide. Basically, don't interfere with the formatting suggested by your word processor, unless you want to increase the spacing between lines.

every time there's political violence discourse i think about how jo cox was assassinated in broad daylight by a fascist who shouted "britain first" as he shot her, and now nine years later her party is dedicating every moment in power to placating the ideology of her murderer

"The only people who should ride their bikes during the workday are bike messengers, who I also dislike. They weave, they bob—it’s inappropriate. Bike messengers need to do what drivers do: go straight, get pissed off, and hate everyone."

Now more of a French thing? It would be nice to write a book on unconscious intertextuality and reference only the works consciously and intentionally consulted.

Anticipatory SAD, anyone? My sense of time is generally a mess, but I always get very up and down at this time of year as I swing between appreciating the last bits of summer and dreading the long dark cold ahead. On the other hand, I hate heat and feel more positive about rain, these days.

america is such a young country.

Accountability: I’m going to put 500 words on my book chapter, edit the marketing description of my module, and start working through updating Moodle. Also go for a walk.

This course in humanities will contain men and women.

This is the English disease. Nonsensical justifications for nimbyism. EV fires are the new trans women in toilets (a problem that does not exist)

The jam is done. Now I must set this frenzy of fruit processing aside & get on with things. But what are those things? Vagueness competes with lurking awareness of term (and survival mode) heading towards me. The anticipatory grief of September? Meanwhile it is so tempting to sit in the sun.

"an androgynous, bejewelled young sitter with long ringlets, thought to be the earliest known likeness of Henry Wriothesley, 3rd earl of Southampton, #Shakespeare ’s friend and patron – and possibly the “fair youth” of the sonnets, as some have speculated." www.theguardian.com/artanddesign...

I’m actually quite excited by this. Trains ♥️ classical music ♥️ radio 3 ♥️ train related work soundtrack ♥️

#BBCRadio3 is broadcasting from a train for an entire day to mark the 200th anniversary of the modern #railway 🚂 📻 Listen to Train Tracks, live on Saturday 27 September on BBC Radio 3 and #BBCSounds #trains #music More 👇🏻