Introduce yourself with 10 bands/artists you've seen live. All About Eve Apocalyptica Half Man Half Biscuit Kate Rusby Michael Nyman Ozric Tentacles The Pet Shop Boys Ravi Shankar St Etienne The Tallis Scholars

Times are difficult but I feel we should take inspiration from this plucky spud

Quote with a fictional band that isn't Spinal Tap. "You fill me with inertia."

Tech evangelists: AI is the future. It will completely change the world. It's actually a new, conscious, superintelligent sentient life form. AI recommendation system: I see you've literally just bought a new Kindle less than a week ago. Would you like a new one?

FPTP is like The One Ring of politics in the UK. They know they need to destroy it, but once it's in their hands they think "Why shouldn't we keep it? We can use it for good!" and then everything goes dead-Boromir-shaped

The Iliad is a Helen Hunt

What is the whole odyssey if not a penelope cruise

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?!?

Someone just told a pro AI bro in my comments: I’m not using it because it’s not smarter than me, I can see why you like it though.

Melania Trump infesting the White House with bees is the funniest thing no one's talking about right now #Bees #WhiteHouse

These #Eurovision pictures from @happytoast.co.uk are absolutely brilliant.

Pick a Bond from photos you already have on your phone.

New glasses! (These are just for reading and peering over - thanks to my new bionic lens my distance vision is now pretty good.)

In case people haven't seen it, there's a truly marvelous academic epistolary fanfic about this: archiveofourown.org/works/28299630

"Thanks to a lawsuit that we can’t discuss and probably never even happened, we have formalized our promotion and tenure criteria so that everyone can be held to the same nearly impossible standard."

A friend in an alleyway

Incredible

"We commit to putting substantial resources behind ideas that are presently viewed with skepticism by scientists and scholars. By leveling the intellectual playing field, we seek to achieve a more democratic university to bring about a less democratic world."

It simply can't be done.

Morning 😂.

Me: nice everyday red ... Google: ... wine? Me: ... fountain pen ink

I started this thread on twitter back in 2017. I add to it occasionally whenever the opportunity offers itself, but want to start it again so I can add to it on here. So… Amazing how grater technology has developed. My current grater (left) and an original 80s grater, the size of a brick!

Well, it's that time of year again. Pudding (Honorary Assistant Module Leader) is Helping.

If you read them from the beginning they're the words of a dog who desperately wants you to come over because they've seen a frisbee

The comment about how "telling people you don't use AI feels like telling people at a student party you don't drink" strikes right home.

Not to victim blame but this balloon does feel like it's asking for trouble

This is splendid news. One of the best things broadcast in the 1980s. Sadly most of the satire is even more relevant for decades later. "This university is a swamp of fear and loathing. It's the cuts, it's got them all at each other's throats."

People often wonder what these tiny little slides next to the steps could possibly be for. Well, people, wonder no more, they are in fact for mouse fun.

A tale of two bird apps. One (Duolingo) is a frankly abusive language-learning programme that threatens me with unspecified consequences if I don't practice French every day. And the other (Finch) is a wellbeing app with a friendly little bird who encourages me to believe in myself.

My uncle John, inspired by the 1980s "Slam in the lamb" adverts, came up with "You can risk it with brisket".

Adulthood is just cycling between "If I don't say yes to every opportunity, no new opportunities will ever be offered to me" and "Oh no, I have said yes to too many things" over and over until you die.

Doctor Who - Attack of the Cybermen (1985)

If you're thinking about using gen-AI to "write" books, this 🧵 is for you. I’m a highly experienced editor who’s been in the biz a long time. Recently I’ve had manuscripts come to me where the author has used gen-AI – not for writing, I’ve been assured, but for “structuring” or "organising"

If this time travel experiment works, I should be able to go from here and now and reappea—

There's no debate which is improved by the intervention of Tony Blair. This is ableism. It frames anxiety, depression and ADHD as things people just need to get on with, with no acknowledgement of how damaging that attitude is, or how hard it can be to be recognised and diagnosed in the first place.

Happy birthday, Dad. Wish you were here. You’d know what to do. Or at least you’d know what to write. ❤️

If anyone is in the Whitehaven area, could you pop over to the Jawas and ask if they have any secondhand droids for sale, thanks.

i feel like society moved on from these too quickly

truth coming out of her cup noodles to shame mankind

A helpful graphic I made, to explain what happened to Britain between 2018 and 2025 and how it brought us to this current situation

What a time to be alive! youtu.be/V74n68YhKeg?...

But it is tho…chatting with ai should be considered like chatting with a malevolent demon that may seem like it can help you but you can never trust it and it may well drive you into madness

A reminder that we did this. (And had to pay Mirror Group Newspapers for the copyright of the text, one of the finest rights payments I’ve ever approved.)

"Oh, were you sitting here?"

“It’s time to apply for our amazing funding of £700. It’s highly competitive and must result in three academic journal articles. It does not cover subsistence costs, we expect you to pay these yourself with your job which you don’t have.”

In case people are confused by Matt Goodwin's suggestion that all academics get masses of funding from dodgy organisations, let's be clear: the best most of us can do is a few small grants that cover expenses for the occasional train journey to London.

I remember a fragment of a short film where someone peers closely at an inkblot on a map, and has a vision of a terrifying ghostly apparition. Years later I read the MR James ghost story "Mr Humphreys and his Inheritance" and recognised the scene. This is the film I saw: youtu.be/8cNvma-h7KA

Man Who Threw Molotov Cocktail At Sam Altman’s Home Claims He Was Following ChatGPT Recipe For Risotto https://theonion.com/man-who-threw-molotov-cocktail-at-sam-altmans-home-claims-he-was-following-chatgpt-recipe-for-risotto/

Any random billionaire or even merely millionaire executive controlling literally everything, would die in a gristly manner in about a week of living like a normal person with a normal job.

Berlioz invented concept albums. The only reason Symphonie Fantastique and Harold In Italy were not so-called is that 33 rpm vinyl records were not invented until 80 years after his death.