Et incarnatus est de Spiritu Sancto ex Maria Virgine, et homo factus est.

The low sunlight enters Taversoe Tuick, Rousay, on the Winter Solstice. "At the time of the year's deepest darkness, a finger of light touches the chamber of death; there is a hint of a promise of resurrection." George Mackay Brown

Aside from the doublespeak of this being "ethical", the irony is that young people are going to absolutely rip the piss out of such nonsense. And rightly so. It reeks of "how do you do fellow kids" desperation.

RIP Adam McNaughtan, legendary Glasgow singer who carried the traditional songs and added new songs to the tradition - above all his Jeely Piece Song www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

I think it was about 17 years ago, supervising 3rd year anthro undergrads, that I asked them to write an essay addressing the following: "If affect is the answer, then what is the question?" Conversations today and yesterday have made it pretty clear that I STILL don't know.

For those interested in how Catholic Social Teaching is responding to AI, this in-passing remark of Pope Leo XIV when receiving an audience of actors and film producers is quite striking: "The logic of algorithms tends to repeat what 'works', but art opens up what is possible."

RIP Keith Hart "I never got over that primal scene of moving between Manchester and Cambridge. They seemed to be two completely different civilizations...

Mongolian National University of Education (MUBIS) last year posted a series of videos about reading Classical Mongolian on Youtube. Hat tip to Dr. Dotno Pount for sharing. www.youtube.com/watch?v=peFi... #mongolsky #tengri

Neepie lantern. Happy Halloween.

Excellent commentary from Will Hayward on the Caerphilly by-election. This bit is crucial: "I have already heard Labour folks talking about the need to change messaging or direction. While this is true, I believe it misses something fundamental - they need to make people’s lives better."

I go on a lot about mass extinction & catastrophism when writing about deep time... but this fascinating article cuts across the accepted idea of the "big five" mass extinctions, introducing the work of palaeontologists who question how & where we read catastrophe within the fossil record

"it was all just too polite." I absolutely agree with this review of the 2025 Liverpool Biennial, which left me quite underwhelmed and honestly a bit disheartened.

1813 a Great Auk killed at Papa Westray, Orkney, the penultimate Great Auk record for Britain. Which Miss Traill was kind enough to send Mr. Bullock the specimen for his London Museum? www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/wor...

Danny Kruger's book Covenant was a deeply thoughtful outline of the post-liberal position (not to say I agreed with it all). Disappointing that he's thrown it in the bin & defected to Farage's grifters, who have no interest in a "renewed social contract", only divide and rule for personal enrichment

Happy Gibraltar National Day! Today commemorates the sovereignty referendum of 1967, when the people of Gibraltar voted to reject Franco and retain their British sovereignty. Wonderful to be back on fieldwork here.

Reading over the fieldnotes for my undergraduate dissertation research in Gibraltar - 22 years ago (!) - before heading out there again for National Day and a short bit of fieldwork. Still the best fieldnotes I've written but it's hard not to cringe at the po-faced scrawlings of youth.

Hard to explain the impact of this deeply personal work by @wildtwin.bsky.social. There's a sadness to it, no doubt, but in the afterglow I felt uplifted and the Liverpool streets seemed full of mystery and promise again. Well worth seeing for anyone who's in town.

Yer da paints roundabouts

A life-sized bronze statue has been unveiled on the island of Papa Westray, Orkney, in memory of the last known Great Auk Pinguinus impennis killed there in 1813. The statue is an exact replica of the preserved remains of the bird, which are held by the Natural History Museum.

No more Test Match Special to listen to. Feels like the end of the summer.

It's hard to see what we're not seeing when working from the dominant or majority (normative) social position. As researchers, we share a normative but rarely critically considered position as ADULTS. This means our research has likely been shaped by adult-centrism. I made a resource.

Was re-reading Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities and thinking about this; specifically his argument "the development of print-as-community is the key to the generation of wholly new ideas of simultaneity" that made possible imagined community with people we'd never met, & thus the nation...

Recently stayed at the monastery of the Sons of the Most Holy Redeemer, Papa Stronsay. The brothers work in the Redemptorist tradition of St Alphonsus Liguori- but their life at the face of the sea & architecture of separate cells also revives the spirit of St Columba's Hiberno-Scottish monasticism.

When someone I admire passes away, I always think of the words featured on a Liverpool banner of the early 2000s. None more so than today.

RIP Diogo Jota. Such horrible news, could scarcely believe it at first and hoped it was just a wild rumour. His poor family. He was a man who made the people happy. www.bbc.co.uk/sport/footba...

If you're getting notifications from Academia(.)edu about AI versions of your papers now being podcasts, that's because the (predatory) platform has opted you into AI-enhanced outputs, which you can turn off in your Account Settings here.

RIP Helen de Cruz, philosopher. I met Helen at a two week Cognitive Science of Religion training workshop in Oxford back in 2009. Her intellectual energy was remarkable - she had PhDs in both archaeology and philosophy, and her work on mathematical cognition combined the two.

Fire to mark the night of the Summer Solstice, Egilsay, Orkney.

In Oct during fieldwork in Gibraltar I witnessed this march in La Linea, reflecting widespread anxiety about the prospect of 'no deal' on Gibraltar's post-Brexit relationship with the EU. Today I'm mostly relieved to see a deal has been struck-I look forward to studying the details in days to come.

"What matters at this stage is the construction of local forms of community within which civility and the intellectual & moral life can be sustained through the dark ages which are already upon us." RIP Alisdair MacIntyre

My son is studying for his Modern Studies National 5 exam. I asked him when modernity begins. He told me that anything within the past 10 years can be used as an example. I always knew I was pre-modern.

"this continuity is not simply the comfort of familiarity; it is an unsettling of the ordinary and the everyday... Stability is a work of perseverance open to the unknown." My new book, The Vow of Stability, now published open access with @scotunipress.bsky.social books.sup.ac.uk/sup/catalog/...

Congratulations to Dr Richard Irvine on the publication of his latest book, now available open access from @scotunipress.bsky.social! The Vow of Stability traces the daily lives of Catholic English Benedictine monks: what does it mean to take flight from the world? books.sup.ac.uk/sup/catalog/...

We are living at the end of a just-in-time supply chain

Annual celebration of Norwegian Constitution Day, Kirkwall, Orkney.

What does it mean to take flight from the world? Delve into the fascinating world of monastic life with Dr Richard Irvine to celebrate the publication of 'The vow of stability': 📅 22 May ⏰ 2pm BST 👉 www.sup.ac.uk/news/the-vow... @robotforaday.bsky.social #SocialAnthropology #ReligiousStudies

The Department of Social Anthropology at St Andrews has now migrated over to bluesky. Please consider following if you're involved in/ interested in anthropology.

If we're an "island of strangers" it's because of Thatcher and Blair's embrace of self-interested capitalism at the expense of community & civil society, because of the empty boarded up high-streets, because we've decided that caring for the vulnerable is too expensive. It's not because of migrants.

pope leo xiv confirms that he chose his name to honour and continue the work of pope leo xiii and rerum novarum in defending human dignity in the face of challenges from the industrial revolution, and now, artificial intelligence. i like this guy.

FIRST AMERICAN POPE, it's Robert Francis Prevost as Pope Leo XIV

HABEMUS PAPAM!

It is always joy to read Julian of Norwich. She is a voice for apocalyptic times because she embodies refusal: a refusal to fixate on the presumed degeneracy of the times or drown in noise about the corruption of the world. Instead she yearns for the love that pierces through all that.

The Vow of Stability, my ethnography of an English Benedictine monastery, is published later this month. Please join this online launch event Scottish Universities Press have organised. Solitude is valuable for monastic life but not so good when it comes to Q&A sessions www.sup.ac.uk/news/the-vow...

The Vow of Stability, my ethnography of an English Benedictine monastery, is published later this month. Please join this online launch event Scottish Universities Press have organised. Solitude is valuable for monastic life but not so good when it comes to Q&A sessions www.sup.ac.uk/news/the-vow...

Offering a unique anthropological account of life in a Catholic Benedictine monastery, 'The vow of stability' by Richard Irvine publishes on 20 May! Join Richard for a fireside chat to learn more: 📅 22 May ⏰ 2pm BST 👉 www.sup.ac.uk/news/the-vow... @robotforaday.bsky.social #SocialAnthropology

An interesting article on the Blue Origin NS-31 spaceflight by Deana L. Weibel, an anthropologist who does excellent research in this area. It highlights the spiritual dimensions of the voyage to space,& femininity within space travel beyond a "steely-eyed missile man" stereotype of the astronaut...

Great Maitreya Statue (Их Майдар хөшөө) near Zuunmod, Tuv aimag. A stalled construction project initiated by former president Battulga. Haunting sounds of crows within the structure. This statue of the future Buddha was to be at the heart of a planned "Maidar ecocity", population 300,000.

Heavenly Mother Mary (Тэнгэрлэг Эх Мариа) at the Catholic Cathedral in Ulaanbaatar. The statue's story is quite remarkable, having been discovered by a Buddhist woman in a landfill in Darhan and taken to the place of honour in her ger.

"At the end, we will find ourselves face to face with the infinite beauty of God. In the meantime, we come together to take charge of this home which has been entrusted to us. Let us sing as we go. May our struggles & our concern for this planet never take away the joy of our hope." RIP Pope Francis