"Santa, your failure to plan for an extremely common weather occurrence has led you to devise a murderously reckless plan, just the latest crisis brought on by late capitalists’ misguided faith in 'innovation' and 'disruption' as ends in themselves."

This guy spent days on X arguing that you didn't have to know Latin to study ancient Rome because you could read everything in translation and then followed it up by badly misinterpreting some straightforward English translations.

J.D. Vance making small talk at the White House Christmas drinks:

This reminds me! Five years ago I had a chat with the local council official who created “Winterval” in 1998. A real canary in the coal mine of future British culture wars. TBH the real story is that councils used to have money to spend on cultural events. www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...

It's a minor Christmas miracle that Dickens wrote a character called "Mr Fezziwig" for whom Fozzie Bear is near perfect casting.

this is an incredible and very touching story but unsure what the BBC felt those weird AI images added to it?

Centuries from now, British mourners will be laying marmalade sandwiches over the eyes of their deceased loved ones "to pay the bear."

Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year from @ucunorthumbria.bsky.social @ucu.org.uk

Getting to the point in the ~holiday season~ where my body starts crying out for vegetables and I have to calmly smother it, like going down to the basement to beat up the hostages who are tied up down there.

Bari-tleby, the Freethinker.

When we say "no, everything hasn't been digitized," I need you to understand that we really mean is that virtually nothing has been digitized. This is because the realm of primary sources that historians use is incomprehensibly large.

I dissolved into helpless laughter when I got to this bit.

Happy solstice!

The Gore campaign, November 8, 2000:

A Lord of the Rings cover band called Helm's Deep Blue Something.

Sooner or later, LBJ always gets his revenge.

"The Donald J. Trump ... Memorial Center"?

It's lovely day in Countesthorpe and you are a horrible goose.

This would go hard as an album cover ngl

Well, I'm reassured. Looks pretty innocent!

And the out-of-office is on!

For @thenation.com, here's my obituary of Norman Podhoretz—the last canonical New York intellectual, and the first of a now-familiar breed of discourse demagogue

The only thing cooler than this post box? Posting your vote in the @ucunorthumbria.bsky.social local ballot to stop a pay freeze @northumbriauni.bsky.social!

@ucunorthumbria.bsky.social say get ahead, get a hat, and get the vote out... @ucu.org.uk

Sent my Christmas card to Civica Election Sevices! #YesYes @ucunorthumbria.bsky.social

In 2007, a clip went viral of a man being stopped on the street by a Guangzhou TV reporter. The man was asked about a sex scandal that was all over the news at the time and his reply has been a popular Chinese slang phrase for not getting involved ever since. He said “I’m just here to buy soy sauce”

Lol "every single one of our prime ministers except the one who led a Tory-majority government has been Bad." Great work, lads, top political strategery.

Susie Wiles, panel chair:

I don't want to sound unsympathetic, but I also don't think that being able to tell a galea from a balteus automatically entitles you to an academic job.

He's either announcing war on Venezuela or his personal ranking of Rob Reiner movies.

HARD BOILED DETECTIVE: another cruel sunrise over the city of the damned. another corpse. another widow. another cup of black coffee to drag my sorry ass back to life- *sputtering* ME: do you like it? it's an ethiopian washed process single origin DETECTIVE: ME: are you getting apricot notes

Sixty years to the day since the release of the best spy movie ever made, so I know what I'll be watching tonight.

"No less an authority than the United Kingdom's former Prime Minister, Liz Truss..."

This is the exact lighting they use for the pic to accompany a profile of a professor who got suspended because he kept using slurs in class as a supposed intellectual provocation.

Walking into the first coffee break at a conference:

my favorite thing about the benoit blanc movies is that they aren't really about benoit blanc. he is not grappling with demons from his past. we are not getting flashbacks to the husband whose murder he never solved. he just shows up and does his job like mary poppins for homicides

you know what record absolutely rocks? SILENT ALARM

"A great carol service reflecting on the *true* meaning of Christmas: the endless war against our nebulous ideological enemies."

incredible content from my phd granting institution

Me, an academic: "Wow, a runaway bestseller."

He's clearly laying the groundwork for a Scooby Doo-style plot where he'll spend most of 2026 disguised as a ghost trying to frighten Zohran out of Gracie Mansion.

Horrified libertarian accidentally invents collective bargaining.