can't wait for kids 20 years from now to create carefully handcrafted visual media that looks like creepy AI slop and call it 2020s aesthetics

Post a banger that's not in English. www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6wl...

It is the feast day of St. Jerome, who had a pet lion. upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/co...

Reading Zille's response to this, I'm struck by how she digs herself ever further into her delusional sub-Trumpian reading of South African politics. www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2025...

The more interesting question to discuss is why British people on the whole are so averse to ID cards, which co-exist with democracy and freedom in many other countries.

It's taken him this long to realise?

Not weird at all. I cannot imagine listening to a podcast nor to an audiobook. Radio is like that annoying person who talks too much.

As a vegan I understand. I recently ate fake meat for the first time in ages (it was the only vegan thing on the menu) & regretted it for the rest of the day. Processed fake food is not the way to promote veganism. www.theguardian.com/food/2025/se...

'für Captain Kirk das gab ein großes Feuerwerk' #toosoon

Applications are now open for the 2025 Colin Murray Award. Deadline: 30 September 2025. The award supports post-doctoral researchers to carry out original ‘engaged field research’ in Southern Africa. Please see the link below for more details jsas.blog

One of the creepiest things about Facebook is when it's the birthday of a long-dead friend. No problem with the 'happy heavenly birthday' or 'missing you always', but it's the comments like 'HBD have a blast, mate' sent by someone who's been out of contact for so long that the death passed them by.

New development in the MAGA-Boere crossover?

Joburg friends... I'm back in my favourite city on Wednesday to stock up on good company and interesting conversations. And I'm speaking at Wits on Wednesday. Hope to see you either at the talk or elsewhere.

Once again, the Ukraine situation provides an opportunity for some of the worst people in the world to look maybe not so bad. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/a...

Just received the cover for my latest book! Coming in February 2026 to a bookstore near you in Southern Africa (available in North America and Europe, too), but published in RSA. Exciting stuff!

This is maybe the worst part about being an educator in the AI era. AI companies are *stealing your time* by making you work around it/find it/adjudicate it. Time that, 4 years ago, you would have used to improve your materials, or stay up-to-date on some area of research.

I have some students aspiring to that even younger.

Furthest I've been: N: Bit north of Narvik 68.55 N, 17.53 E E: Dubai 25.25 N, 55.36 E S: Cape Agulhas 34.83 S, 20.00 E W: San Francisco 37.81 N, 122.48 W Though I've spent more than half my life in the southern hemisphere, my N-most point is almost twice as far from the equator as my S-most point.

Amazing to think I was born in what was once the East Indies. Great article by @gianamar97.bsky.social on changing concepts of what the east was, and where the Cape fitted in. (The province's own uneasy relationship with the continent abides.)

Wow, apparently I'm part of a trend, I'm an AI vegan! (To the point where I was shocked to learn that this Guardian columnist for whom I have some respect admits that AI has become part of her daily routine.) www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Life in the global semi-periphery... can't deny I am closer to Perpignan than to Poitiers but not particularly close to either 🤣

Just realised that the song that I have spent 30+ years hearing as 'kiss from the rose on the grave' is actually 'rose on the grey'.

Having read the article I have no doubt the answer to the (rhetorical?) question in in the headline an emphatic yes. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/j...

It's nearly 11pm in departures at Rome airport. I should have been on the plane 3 hours ago. The experience is redeemed by a free-to-use piano. Everyone who's played is pretty good and even if there's an odd wrong note, it's such a relief from the blandness & monetisation you expect at an airport.

Because some recent flights were booked for me by a Norwegian travel company, I now automatically get the company's security alerts. I have been warned about pro-Palestine demos, heatwaves and now Pride marches. It's a dangerous world out there.

When I started making kombucha I knew the word 'scoby' sounded familiar but couldn't remember why. Just picked up a copy of The Heart of the Matter, and remembered. (I've often felt I lived in a Graham Greene novel, but this is a new dimension.)

In Italy. Getting by with a mashup of three Romance languages in which I have varying degrees of competence (Portuguese, French, Spanish) and pronouncing it like Lady Gaga in House of Gucci. I guess this is Bad Romance.

If you're at #ecas2025 in Prague & have a Southern Africa paper you'd like to publish, senior editor @justinpearce.bsky.social & chair Rebekah Lee are here. We'll be at the Meet the Editors event Friday 17.30-19.00, at the T&F stand in the Arts Faculty 3rd floor. Or message us via the ECAS website.

In Prague for #ecas2025. Ana Santos & I organised Friday's double panel HIS333 'The contested memory of anti-colonial & post-colonial wars'. Sessions are at 09.00 & 15.00. I present at 15.00 with Daria Zelenova on our coauthored paper 'Soviet & Angolan veterans’ memories of the Angolan conflict'.

Enjoyed talking about the relationship between MPLA soldiers & ANC liberation fighters in 1980s Angola: more difficult than the official declarations of solidarity would suggest. I argue it fuelled the 1984 MK mutiny. The article will be published in @jsas-journal.bsky.social early next year.

In Luanda for the launch of this edited volume on #Angola after Dos Santos, produced in record time in Portuguese & English with chapters by Angolan & foreign scholars. Both versions in the link. My chapter is on the politics of public memory 50 years after independence. www.cmi.no/publications...

I don't post much on Twitter any more - but number of likes and retweets on Twitter and Bluesky for the same post show that the other place is still the place to be for Africa-focussed academia.

Fico bastante feliz de ver o meu capítulo sobre o 'Lourencismo' publicado na colectânea #Angola pós-dos Santos (lançamento na #UCAN aos 15-16 de Junho). PM > pdf (English version to follow shortly)

If you have a master's in history & are interested in a PhD particularly on #Angola, #Mozambique or transnational histories of liberation in southern Africa, I'd be interested in seeing your research proposal.

The irony of the article being that if there is a publication that could be replaced by AI, it's probably The Economist.

Why do we have such difficulty making sense of our current moment? I brainstorm some possible answers www.theideasletter.org/essay/certai...

JSAS Special Issue - Beyond Failure: Exploring the Heart of the Malawian State - is being launched in #Malawi now. Gift Wasambo Kayira speaks to his article 'Contesting the State in Malawi: Covid-19 and the Quest for Inclusive Democracy'. Issue online here: www.tandfonline.com/toc/cjss20/5...

Great to see this Special Issue of JSAS being launched next week in Malawi & online: papers by Malawians & non-Malawians using #Malawi as a case to rethink the study of African politics. Congrats editors Sam Farrell, Tanja Hendriks, Zoe Groves. www.tandfonline.com/toc/cjss20/c... t.co/GZS24CSqoG

‘On Tuesday 27 May our new Special Issue www.tandfonline.com/toc/cjss20/c... ‘#BeyondFailure: exploring the #heart of the #Malawian #state’ will be launched @unima_official. Join in person or register here for the link to join online: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

What price sovereignty? Feeling somewhat trolled by Temu as our president heads to Washington to appease a president who clearly hates us.

As someone who loves Joburg but is stranded in the W Cape because of work, I read this with a mix of 'told you so' and envy. I'll be back as soon as those supposed 'stronger job prospects' materialise.

What are Rihanna's pronouns in Portuguese? Ela, ela, ela.

If I've read one thing so far this year that sums up where humanity is at in 2025, this is it.

This is a decent corrective to the 'Paypal mafia' conspiracy theory - Trump's obsession with white SA farmers began long before his association with Elon Musk et al.

Putting the kak back into kakistocracy, or putting the kakistocracy back in the kak?

But how long until the inevitable generational-stereotypes article on the first boomer pope?

Glad to see this book published. My chapter shows how the historiography of anti-colonial mobilisation & war in #Angola & #Mozambique has shifted from Cold War binaries to examine socio-political history & the position of the two states under global capitalism. www.taylorfrancis.com/books/edit/1...

Is 'introduced atmospheric vibration' just a verbose translation of 'nem bom vento'? #Portugal