The car’s on fire, and there’s no driver at the wheel… We’re trapped in the belly of this horrible machine, and the machine is bleeding to death. www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

Kudos to my 85 year old dad who still got me to the train on time, despite having to turn around and go back for the crucial bag containing wallet phone and keys. I hope he’s ok.

The question of where the centre is remains a crucial issue in global politics. Everything is in flux, and the Overton window is flapping around like a contested flag.

Shoutout to the Classics Library at Senate House in our latest #VirgilsAeneidPodcast, in which we discuss whether Aeneas was a pious #Faithful or a #CelebrityTraitor! youtu.be/fmZZI5NtBbQ?...

If you want kids to read: -Reopen the closed libraries -Give them free books -Sponsor author visits in schools with high % pupil premium or FSM students -Work on adult literacy Then Y8s will have a chance of passing this test www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Home alone, OH visiting parents. Running out of things to do. Practice ✅ washing up ✅ washing ✅ tidying ✅ might have to do some work.

Our road is closed for the next two months, leaving an extra 20 min journey for anyone giving me a lift. Sigh.

Mood. ‘One with nothing’

Read in public. Read in private. Read e-books, genre books, comics, fanfiction. Read literature. Read nonfiction. Read books you’ve already read. Listen to audiobooks. Read what you want. There’s no such thing as “doing reading the wrong way.”

🎓 We’re at @uniarchday.bsky.social today at The British Academy! It’s a fantastic day for anyone curious about studying archaeology, with talks, careers advice, and a chance to meet archaeologists from universities all across the UK. Come and chat to us, or find out more here!👉

Drop an old person you’re going to be in the future

For Halloween (and LGBTQ History Month), a weird tale of a Clive Barker typo. 🧵

Meanwhile reunited with my parsnip soup

1. This can only be a good thing 2. It is going to make people very cross every year

Nottingham: birthplace of Su Pollard. Also special pockling in Pocklington (a name we always particularly enjoy as we drive through it on the way to the in-laws, and my husband’s second least favourite town after Exeter). Might try and go in Nottingham!

Vile stuff. At my own university all new staff are employed via a subsidiary company to avoid the TPS pension (remember: pensions are pay) and we all fear the costing staff will be next. Management think staff are so desperate that they’ll accept anything. Remember: university managements are so…

Thinking back to those golden days when a management restructure (say the move from departments to schools in was it 2005?) was just a matter of senior colleagues arguing with each other a bit, renaming a few things and harmonising regulations. Now everything feels like an existential crisis.

When @ursulakleguin.com started writing a new novel, she would begin by drawing a map. The Word for World is the first publication focusing on her maps. THE WORD FOR WORLD: The Maps of Ursula K. Le Guin is available in the US from @pointreyesbooks.bsky.social Here: ptreyesbooks.com/book/9781068...

Boo: this week’s Helen brought up a pot of sauerkraut instead of the parsnip soup she lovingly made Yay: last week’s helen left half a pot of soup in the work fridge, which tasted pretty good with sauerkraut

Train. Coffee. Words.

Mood

Reform candidate visibly squirms as he's confronted by a local family in Caerphilly.

Finally watched Oppenheimer yesterday. It was good, but Barbie was better.

Remember folks. The original bluesky ethos by us bluesky elders (apparently I count?) is block and move on. Don't quote dunk, don't pick fights. Block, and move on. This is what made this site unpalatable to the right early on, and we can continue to make it unpalatable to them.

The mist-shrouded morning at Point Reyes National Seashore, hiking with @sallyfisherprice.bsky.social, felt not just haunted or ethereal, but otherworldly. The zenith of that sensation came when a huge bull elk appeared out of the landscape as if a ghost from another land entirely.

Very ancient history nerd tyrant mode

Literature shapes the very spaces we live in. We cannot extract life from the contexts of art and culture. Arts and humanities are not a luxury, a waste of time and money. They are crucial to continued humanity. (On The Word for World exhibition. I see @unamccormack.bsky.social is in the book!)

Too true.

Ongoing wibbles as admin colleagues move on, out and up. Makes me appreciate how lucky I’ve been in the wisdom, generosity and compassion of my Nottingham colleagues over the years. Also very sad to hear of the death of Ting Chang, a really lovely person, who I wish I’d known better.

Acrostics in the wild

#History #SkyStorians Very timely blog by Julia Moses and @pseudo-isidore.bsky.social on 'Using Large Learning Models in the History Classroom: Practical Perspectives' www.history.org.uk/higher-ed/re...

Today I published a new section of my website with resources for those who wish to learn, study, and/or teach ancient languages using braille. It rests on work we did over the past year to expand screen reader access to these languages through the LibLouis library. Check it out and share around!

The Word for World: an exhibition presenting the maps of Ursula K. Le Guin is now open at the AA Gallery! It's free and on until 6 Dec. Here are some photos from opening evening 🌀 www.aaschool.ac.uk/publicprogra...

This Wednesday!

As a Gen X, for the first time in my life I want to hug a politician.💚

Feeling like I don’t want to do anything today, so guess this is a good day for doing all the things I really don’t want to do

14 October 1940 | A Dutch Jewish girl, Mirjam Lewkowicz, was born in Gouda. In September 1943, she was deported to #Auschwitz and murdered in a gas chamber after the selection. --- A short video showing the ruins of gas chamber and crematorium III: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/ipQmBPAlJQ8

The politics of animal stories. Interesting for children’s literature. Nature, like the ancient world, can be used to justify many different modern beliefs.

Today I am mostly thinking about the popular inter-war literary genre 'animal stories written by fascists'. Join me.

A really excellent Open Letter to Students on using GenAI, which I came across over on Mastodon: librarianshipwreck.wordpress.com/2025/10/10/a...

Why an urgent path to net zero is not a socialist conspiracy…. number 3456328… www.theguardian.com/environment/...

YA fiction is often better written than adult fiction, because more tightly edited

Today is National Coming Out Day, and we're reading an article about one of the most famous stories of (maybe (not)) coming out ever told,:Twelfth Night! Jami Ake's "Glimpsing a 'Lesbian' Poetics in Twelfth Night" (43.2, pp. 375-94)

Went to make squash soup. It’s not a squash, it’s a melon. No soup for me

Nice cuddle with cat. Still loads to do, and really don’t want to. Technically my day off, but need to clear decks before weekend. Sigh.

As a lifelong hate-watcher of #BBCQT it's been incredible to see the tone shift in last night's prog with @zackpolanski.bsky.social on. It should have never been that hard to call for common sense - and actually popular - policies. Someone is actually doing it. Quick 🧵

“The girlfriend of one of the founders of antifa”

And please keep writing beautiful books that make this case

Today feeling sad and worried. Please can the good competent decent people keep going and not be afraid to take on responsibility? We need strong leadership at all levels of our society.

Same goes for academic writing including the PhD