"He's obviously having a very reflective afternoon."

was briefly so excited reading this until I realised he meant Davos

Congratulations also to Modernism/modernity, who took home the CELJ Best Digital Feature award for "Hope Mirrlees's Paris: A Poem @ 100" Read the feature for free at M/m Print Plus: modernismmodernity.o... 2/2

On this day 108 years ago, biographer, critic and Bloomsburyist Lytton Strachey went round Virginia Woolf’s gaff and talked dirty – and not for the first time. According to an entry in Woolf’s diary (written the following day)... 🧵

Tom Baker is 92 today

I wonder if Ancient Historians are thinking about the wilder bits in their sources anew- ‘ he clearly hated the ‘Mad Emperor’ but on the other hand perhaps this story isn’t entirely impossible’…

The document base for the ‘Age of Trump’ History Special Subject in 2045 is going to be fucking incredible. (Admittedly assuming we make it to 2045 and the subject still exists might be optimistic)

RIP German anthropologist Johannes Fabian, who passed away last Tuesday. Fabian was most widely known as the author of "Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes its Object" (1983), a then-radical & still-influential critique of anthropological writing, knowledge-making & fieldwork relations. RIP.

I’ll bet! I’ll add that one you hear a lot is people back forming ‘Tonbridge’ with a distinct ‘o’ with ‘Tunbridge Wells’. The ‘o’ is an imposition of the Post Office in the late 19th century: the u is the normal historical spelling for the town the wells are named after.

It’s such a shame there are so few surviving of recordings of poetry on BBC radio from before the war — it would be a rich resource to study all this

You'll love academic publishing, where it's quite common for publishers just not to pay royalties if they fall below £50, as they say the admin costs of paying them are uneconomic

Gosh, yathink? The 1930s, the "Devil's Decade", were a bit rough? Wow.

This is your reminder that Hungarian-Jewish scientist George de Hevesy dissolved two Nobel Prizes in aqua regia to keep them out of the hands of the Nazis. He then left the dissolved solution on his shelf and fled to Sweden. (After the war he un-dissolved the gold and the prizes were re-cast.)

To betray your hosts like this is something that practically every society since the Bronze Age (at least) would have considered sinful.

A rich, thoughtful post about the fine difficulties of translating the Old English poem The Wanderer, including its most famous line. Perfect for a winter night! @nikgunn.bsky.social nikolasgunn.co.uk/2026/01/13/b...

I quite enjoyed this bit

Holy hell, what an obituary

"All the stories about alien abduction and spaceships? They already happened. Entire mass populations moved; forcibly dematerialised. How much more alien do you think it gets than slavery?" Kodwo Eshun in The Last Angel of History

So much hard detail in this cartoon.

Wake up babe new meet-cute dropped

As a historian, and now bear in mind I am not a modern historian so I will defer here to experts on the topic, but as a historian, I think in several years historians will decide that by this point, we’re already there. In the earliest stages, but. Already there.

Liebe Medien, ich kann die Schlagzeile "Keine Einigung zwischen USA und Dänemark" nicht mehr sehen. Wenn ein Bewaffneter eine Bank stürmt, titelt ihr doch auch nicht: "Räuber und Kassiererin finden keinen Konsens über Geldübergabe." Hört auf, imperiale Aggression als normale Diplomatie zu framen.

For non-German speakers: “Dear media, I can’t stand the headline "No agreement between the US and Denmark” any longer. If an armed man storms a bank, you don't run the headline: "Robber and cashier can't reach an agreement on money transfer." Stop framing imperial aggression as normal diplomacy.”

Higher Ed temp check: 1. It will get worse before it gets better. Still. The runway is short for this assault and that only means the turbulence gets wilder. The goal is raising the bottom. 2. Realize everyone is more scared than you think. Frame actions collectively; protect one another.

Akbar Gbajabiamila surprisingly accurately illustrating the evolution of the Yoruba idobale (greeting). www.youtube.com/shorts/tI2BN...

Post Nowydh! Treylya Safran yn Skomblans sordya.net/2026/01/14/t... Niwlen Ster a skrif erthygel olldhalghus war an peryllyow a SK ow tochya an taves Kernewek ha prag yth yw res dhyn sevel er y bynn: drehevel trest ha kemeneth a-der palas skomblans. #Kernewek #Kernow

New Post! Turning Saffron into Slop sordya.net/2026/01/14/t... Niwlen Ster writes a comprehensive article on the many perils of AI when it comes to Cornish and why we must resist: building trust and community in place of shovelling slop. #Cornish #Kernow #Cornwall

The deadline is now extended to the 5th of February - please do send abstracts in (and share widely)!

Language pals/leid freins - I've written a new blog post: "The linguistic adventures of Rupert the Bear - or we need to talk about Machine Translation." Also features Hendrix, spooky singing androids and philosophising about Gaelic translation. treanaichean.wordpress.com/2026/01/08/t...

Falcons and falconers haven’t seen one another in weeks.

A lot of words to basically say: OK, GOING TO THE PUB MIGHT NOT BE GOOD FOR YOUR WAISTLINE/SLEEP/WALLET but it might be really really good for your friendships, stress, connections and happiness. So it's actually healthy to go to the pub, you guys, and maybe we should all just do that a bit more

One of my hobbyhorse convictions is that drinking culture in the US and the lack of pub-style spaces is an important factor in a lot of its problems. Not how *much* people drink, but how they drink or not drink - it’s taken too seriously, so to speak, and ‘accidental’ socialization is missed out on

This is very good on how shared pleasures are essential to us all. The chat earlier in the week about the decline of the high street reminded me how much we need more shared pleasures and shared spaces.

This is truly excellent. I think it was Zygmunt Bauman who says somewhere that a focus on doing the ‘right’ things for *our* bodies comes from a sense of powerlessness about changing society, and this fits in well with that in certain ways - and above all the huge social value of pubs vel sim.

On screen-time-menace grifters.

This reminds me of what Russell had to say about pin factories. "A man should not receive wages in proportion to what he has produced, but in proportion to his virtue as exemplified by his industry"

That thing where students are perfectly happy in group discussions but will not speak in front of the class even though you’ve said something like ‘one person from each group needs to summarise what you talked about’. Has anyone ever worked out a way to deal with it?

Want to do a funded PhD at Cardiff Uni, starting in Sept, supervised by me? Here's our funded project: What stops people from exercising? Why do they keep going? What makes them quit? This project explores narratives of health and wellbeing across media, to see to what people feel about exercise

🚨⛈️ NORTH CORNWALL MP on STORM GORETTI RESPONSE: “There’s been no COBRA meeting, no declaration of a national emergency… and many of my North Cornwall constituents didn’t even receive the emergency alert."

If Kernow’s MPs are currently in discussion with Government about what Cornish devolution should look like, those talks should be informed by the woeful national response to Storm Goretti and a desperate need for greater self-sufficiency. @perranmoonmp.bsky.social @jaynekirkhammp.bsky.social

The UK National Health Service has very clear information on all major medical conditions. It is browsable by all Never EVER rely on an LLM for health advice www.nhs.uk/conditions/

The whole set of comparisons are worth going through: great reminder that we could use extremely conservative, widely tested solutions to solve so many problems.

Has anyone come across a journalist writing in German and Austrian newspapers in 1920s/30s who used the pseudonym Till?

Proposals invited: special issue: *Feminist Modernist Exiles*, to show how women’s ongoing experiences of transnational, transcultural, and translingual experiences in voluntary and involuntary exile continue to generate new forms of feminist modernism. Info: phyllisl @ northwestern .edu

The author of that piece, Andrew Brown, says “The story would no doubt have pleased Hardy, not because he would have approved of it, but because the slaughter of a creature for obeying its nature in order to gratify human sentimentality would have fitted well with the grammar of his heart”

Among my favourite fellow flitters through Aberdeen, though unlike Baron Corvo I have yet to be physically flung from a flat on Union Street while my possessions rained down from the windows, made my home in a sand dune, or tried to have myself declared insane as a way of weaselling out of my debts.

Also, Graves jumped out of he window after Riding, but had the foresight to run down a flight of stairs first, jumping out of a lower window and so not hurting himself nearly so badly. Got to admire that.

The glorious River Camel.