"By shortening the time between asking a question+getting an answer these tools are actually undermining curiosity — + paradoxically threatening our ability to understand the world. Curiosity requires a gap between what you want to know+what you find out." www.nytimes.com/2026/07/08/o...

I have a friend who says surrealism is realism but in Belgium. Can't wait for my passport full of smurfs to come through (application is in, after seven years in this pleasantly absurd land) :D

One thing that's tricky to appreciate about Belgians is that they have a real love of the absurd, which you would, if you lived in Belgium.

I find these stories and this now well refinded research so intriguing when coupled with the rapidly aging demographics in areas populated by resolute monolingual, anti-interculturalists They point to the accuracy that is the death wish of rampant anti-migrationism

Who cares about D&D novels anyway? Some thoughts on why scholars of fantasy probably should, and a bunch more people, too. This is the first essay in my forthcoming Dungeons & Dragons reading series.

Symbolbild deutsche Wissenschaftsförderung.

This 1952 memo from the Pentagon UFO files is superb There is no point preparing for aliens ‘because no one of consequence is going to take this rubbish seriously unless it happens. At that point, our policy will be determined in the traditional manner of grand panic.’ 🤣 www.war.gov/medialink/uf...

My book comes out next month and I'd love to talk to your research group/seminar series/PGRs about it! Potential talk topics: Why do we think natural history museums are for kids? How public are our public museums? Truth and fiction in the museum Looting: empire in the museum...

J. H. Prynne wrote a guide to reading works of literature for Cambridge students. This was the postscript:

Hello all, could somebody with a NYT subscription please send me a gift link for this article? I'm writing a related thing... Thank you 🙏 www.nytimes.com/2026/04/02/w...

How does a small group of agents shape our sense of what counts as literary? How come there are so many debut novelists but so few careers in writing? Why is the short story so important even if it doesn’t sell nearly as well as the novel? ALL THIS AND MORE IN… press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...

The BSLS Want to help keep the BSLS running smoothly? Ahead of the 2026 annual conference, we are seeking expressions of interest and nominations for two positions on the executive committee: Treasurer and Book Reviews Editor. Interested? More info here: www.bsls.ac.uk/2026/03/bsls...

These are the questions that we should be asking, with curiosity, mixed-methods, empathy, systematic scrutiny, inclusivity and an awareness of how organisations (for example, universities) and humans (for example, students, academics and professional services staff) actually work.

Absolutely endorse, totally recommend. The genius we all need today. 🤣

Working on book revisions and another footnote sacrificed to the word count: "One of Parkner’s more quetionable assertions is that sea water on Mars is salty (153). This of course enhances the analogy between Mars and Earth, but is hilarious from an empiricist standpoint."

New Position: Associate or Full Professor in Cultural Studies at Maastricht University. We are looking for a senior colleague who is capable and enthusiastic to take on management roles. Please share widely. www.academictransfer.com/nl/jobs/3589...

Writing is realizing that in 1903, car dealerships springing up all over the Midwest were outfitted with dozens of charging stations because so many cars were electric. The racing news reported Carl Fisher's custom 1000 hp engine car (weighing 2600 lbs) would run on gasoline bc that wasn't a given.

www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0... #academicsky

A couple days late because it's been BUSY, but I had such a great time doing the BSLS Winter Symposium with the wonderful @lejhouston.bsky.social on Friday! I can only echo what they say: many thanks to all the speakers, especially Aanchal and Francesca for their excellent plenaries.

A year ago Elon Musk tweeted that he had fed USAID "into the wood chipper." It was an act that killed people. We don't know most of their names, but we know 27. I've listed them below. Much like with Renee Good + Alex Pretti, we should also remember these lives taken by the cruel men who lead us

What's important to remember about BRIDGERTON is that all of the characters are actually crew members on the USS Voyager, killing time during a long warp haul with a holo-novel programmed by Neelix (who did several whole hours of research about ancient human society and mating customs)

Ethan Hawke has just been crushing it lately!

"Alternate Histories of the Body" is next week! I'm highlighting our workshop, "Experiencing Academia Through the Body" by Francesca Young Kaufman (11:15 AM GMT). Join us if you're interested in neuroscience-based tools for managing academic stress. The workshop is free and online. #AcademicSky 1/4

I’m sharing this video again because people don’t really get what these data centers and ai are doing to our planet and our communities. Especially Black communities because they were strategically placed there. I need you to listen to these people. STOP USING AI. STOP SUPPORTING AI.

Yesterday it was cows using tools, today its penguins using satellite imagery.

Roses are red AI pretends to know best

Registration is open for the @thebsls.bsky.social Winter Symposium "Alternate Histories of the Body" on January 30! It's free and online, and we're re-evaluating the human body, the stories we tell about it, and their impact. Come check it out! Full programme here: drive.google.com/file/d/18kep...

I just had "microsoft world" as a typo and jfc imagine moving your furniture.* *brought to you from the darkest pits of formatting a table in word

The astronomer Richard Proctor commenting in Other Worlds Than Ours (1870) on notable nineteenth-century scientists' ideas about life on Jupiter. A highlight: Sir Humphry Davy held that Jovians were "numerous convolutions of tubes more analogous to the trunk of the elephant than anything else"!

My little book will be available for pre-order in January 2026. Please consider ordering a copy for your library. I'll be eternally grateful if you would like to review the book. Happy reading! 😊 www.routledge.com/Irish-Writer...

Gent being peacefully photogenic last night

Thaler's post (click it for graph showing striking decreases in science spending) immediately under yet another repost of this fantastic letter to London Times. And I'd just like to say: can we PLEASE have a Democratic candidate who knows we need a massive reinvestment in US arts & humanities too?

If you've published a book in 2025 related to literature and science--get your publisher or a current @thebsls.bsky.social member to nominate it for the Book Prize! Nominations are open until December 31! #academicsky

SUCH a brilliant and important essay by Tanvir Ahmed, go read it!

Just one more day to get your abstracts and proposals in for the BSLS Winter Symposium ("Alternate Histories of the Body"): www.bsls.ac.uk/2025/10/call... @adeleguyton.bsky.social and I can't wait to get stuck in to the submissions.

Anybody have access to ASAP Journal and able to download a couple of PDFs for me? :)

Nick Gaskill and I are organising a panel on Whitehead, focused on Science & the Modern World, for the MSA/BAMS conference in 2026, and are looking for an additional contributor. Email me by 25 November on [email protected] if you’re interested! #WeirdModernisms #BAMS2026 #MSA2026

When people say that Wuthering Heights doesn't have anything to do with race or that no film has engaged with race, what they mean is that for them Romani people do not count and they also haven't been paying attention. I'm going to share a little material from a recent talk. Content note: racism 1/

Friends, anyone have access to '"All Smell is Disease": Miasma, Sensory Rhetoric, and the Sanitary-Bacteriologic of Visceral Public Health' (Winderman et al.) in Rhetoric of Health and Medicine and willing to share a PDF? #AcademicSky

A little less than two weeks to send in your abstracts for "Alternate Histories of the Body"! @lejhouston.bsky.social and I are very excited by what has come in so far.

Any work out there on the experience of time in different modes of transport historically? A passage in a German novel from 1927 acts like everyone knows 15 minutes seems like an eternity in an airplane but passes quickly in a train. Was this a thing? #academicsky

Just over two weeks left to get your abstracts and panel proposals in for the @thebsls.bsky.social Winter Symposium: "Alternate Histories of the Body" www.bsls.ac.uk/2025/10/call... @adeleguyton.bsky.social and I are already thrilled by what people have been proposing.

An axiom on cafés serving specialty coffee: the better the coffee, the jankier the bathroom.

Here's a paper we wrote about how it's actually very bad that a "context of constrained funding has incentivised... providers of adult education, sports, arts and community services to demonstrate ancillary wellbeing benefits." pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40447986/

CFP: "Alternate Histories of the Body" (BSLS Winter Symposium, 30 January 2026 - Online) www.bsls.ac.uk/2025/10/call... @adeleguyton.bsky.social and I eagerly welcome papers and panels for this one-day symposium exploring alternate ways to historicize 'the body' and embodied approaches to history.

I've got an article in November's @historytoday.com on the remarkably durable hypothesis that Earth is hollow, from Halley to Symmes to underground feminist utopias to UFOs. You know the drill — to the centre of the Earth (I've probably used that one before).

📣 CFP British Society for Literature and Science Winter Symposium 2026 -- "Alternate Histories of the Body" I'm very excited to be organising this together with Lloyd Maedhbh Houston! 🥳 Send us your abstracts by November 21! #academicsky #callforpapers #literatureandscience

truly when a new word comes to your life, a klaxon goes off in the wordhoard and its wild iterations come to find you

Call for Papers – BSLS Winter Symposium 2026: Alternate Histories of the Body. 30th January 2026. See full CfP here: www.bsls.ac.uk/2025/10/call...