Academic colleagues, please fill out the UCU workload survey. Even if your own workload is fine, more data helps other colleagues. yoursay.ucu.org.uk/s3/Workload-...

Out of recent offerings the best bit is the following: "This morning, the village of Denethorpe, Northants, Was suddenly roused by ten men in strange pants." — T.S. Eliot surveys the Faber poetry slush pile, 10th June 1944

Or should VCs and the academic members of their senior teams instead be required to lead and teach 1 undergraduate module per term/semester, including all module admin and marking? Non-academic members of SMTs could all annually take a module, completing all assessments. Serious counterproposal. 3/3

Walking into work and a white van has just gone past blasting out Frank Zappa. That’s my day made instantly better.

Who you choose to cite says something about you as a scholar. The conversations you choose to join matter. The voices you choose to elevate matter.

Petition to canonize Dr Routh so he can be the patron saint of anyone citing things. ‘[L]et me recommend to you the practice of always verifying your references, sir!’

I dunno, I'm beginning to think leaving two vast and trunkless legs of stone behind in the desert, and nothing else, would be close to a win in the current circumstances. At least the legs aren't radioactive or anything. Give Ozymandias his due.

I'm sorry, what? In writing my first monograph, I spent six weeks trying to track down a citation in TWO languages I didn't know. And good thing too, because the citation was wrong. That's scholarship. That's research. You know, the thing we're trained to do?!?

Some of us* have been known still to use ‘to maffick’ in this day and age… (And I love those famous lines ‘Mother, may I go and maffick/Tear around and hinder traffic?’) *OK, me.

Actually, SHAPE subjects cross-subsidise STEM subjects in most comprehensive UK universities annually through differential central charge or 'contribution' models. It's another reason we're all in the current HE crisis together, whether our own particular discipline is 'at risk' at present or not.

Man, Time Regulation Institute would make the perfect Bond film title

The Archivist - a new documentary about folklorist Doc David Rowe from Tim Plester & Rob Curry - trailer! www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWYB...

Pick a Bond from photos you already have in your phone

Pick a Bond From Photos you already have in your phone.

Burnham would come? Too dunce? Inane!

There's a guy in Ireland writing African stories and publishing in Irish because "he knows colonialism and how important preserving language is" and we love to fuckin see it folks

‘Guardian Top 100 Books Read by Men in Their 20s on the Tube c. 2012’

Ohhhhh my god u think a newspaper list of 100 novels made some omissions? should we tell everyone? Should we throw a party?should we invite Harold Bloom

That was one of the best things I’ve ever seen in a theatre. See it if you can. Unbelievable acting.

Back in my favourite theatre (I should start paying rent here) to see an adaptation of *not* my favourite author, but I’m very much looking forward to it. @jstheatre.bsky.social

What is an educator without hope? Futures that they can put their typically immense energy into making real, or trying for? Not just hopes for their own careers, but for all those they teach or work with? How many of us stuck around in this sector because it represented that kind of hope?

I think this maybe the most niché bit of trivia I’ve ever heard.

First beer in almost two weeks for my birthday after my annual early May detox with new scarf. Cheers!

'Mrs Woolf said she would buy the arsenic herself'

i like this photo where it looks like you've interrupted t.s. eliot and virginia woolf in the middle of planning your murder

'The key findings were said to be “surprisingly simple”: “a good student academic experience ultimately comes down to quality teaching, access to in person interaction with teachers and a strong sense of belonging”.' 2/3

I miss using this library.

Delighted to see that Rob Curry's film about Doc Rowe, that great observer of British folk traditions, is getting its world premiere at this year's Sheffield Doc/Fest. I think it's going to be a real treat for anyone who has a soft spot for odd local customs and celebrations.

Feels like a good day to say that I am writing a trade history of the Italian colonial empire, 1869-1951, tentatively called Fantasylands, under contract with John Murray (UK) & Basic Books (USA)! my focus is on the men & women who dreamed, built, resisted, lived in and dismantled the empire

In the UK Farage is investigated by the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner and laughs on his way to the pub. In Italy he would be investigated by the Guardia di Finanza and antimafia magistrates and would fuc*ing terrified.

Students, if you’re thinking about dropping a note to that teacher or professor about what their class/project/mentorship has meant to you, but you worry it will be cringe or cheesy, let me just tell you they will coast on the fuzzy feelings prompted by that note for months, if not years

They need it now more than ever too

Super excited that my new book Culture Wars in Britain is out in paperback today. There is a launch at Waterstones Aberystwyth tonight at 7pm in which I discuss it with @emmas.bsky.social: www.waterstones.com/events/in-co... If you can't make that, the book is currently from Amazon and direct... 1/

H.G. Wells' proposed epitaph, in 1941, was "I told you so. You damned fools." Somewhere John Brown is looking Democrats in the eyes and saying the same thing.

Some theses on #slop. A thread. Slop is automated ideology. It's content made of content, optimized for circulation, prompted, shaped, and refined through feedback loops of adaptation to platform conditions 1/

Nearly as good at the Croydon Council bin that ended up in Lagos.

Do love the biogs of these early C20th arty bohemian types . There's always a bit that goes "his marriage to Angelique was over, they had become estranged while staying on Crete. He immediately formed a tortured relationship with her married sister Melody but was unfaithful to her from the start"

I’m now wondering if this lettuce, like the last one, is only about fifteen minutes’ walk from my house…

Excellent thread. The concern is whether the government pays attention to—or is even, at the moment, able to pay attention to—the report.

‘If you’re a nativist, you believe in mono-ethnicity, you believe in mono-religion, then London is the antidote and the antithesis, because we are diverse, we are pluralistic, we are liberal and we are incredibly successful on any objective criteria.’

Sadiq Khan for PM, if for no other reason than that level of arterial strain should finish off an awful lot of wrong 'uns.

Early bird registration for the BAMS/ MSA conference closes in 3 days on May 15! This is also your last chance to register for a seminar/ workshop at the conference. See link below!

i think every other italian city and province is completely correct about milan

I'm never getting those Alexei German watching hours back

When you return to these ancient churches, when you step down into the nave, deep and somber and heavy with the weight of centuries, notice how far the world has come, and be glad. We still have so far to go, but churches sink much more slowly these days.

This is both true and not true. True in the sense of that’s how many burials have happened, minimum; not true in the sense that the overwhelming majority of those were children under five, whose bones return to the earth more quickly and leave less physical trace. The earth shows the weight of love.

Italy prosecutes its crooked politicians.

Like this is also about us. Sorry but it is.

Steel industry: £1.1bn in GDP and 20,000 employees University sector: £265bn in GDP and 400,000 employees What the fuck am I missing here.

Missed it was the 20th anniversary of the Guy Goma interview. We are all, at various points in our lives, this person.