If the British government, and indeed other governments, can’t muster a fast and strong response to Twitter adding a facility enabling users to create and share AI child sexual abuse material then not sure what Musk could ever do that would actually provoke a response.

I had a long thread written out but the app closed and it's deleted so here are some mostly-formed thoughts: it's a mixture of their central problem (lack of a clear mission), unforced errors (WFA) and a failure to recognise the information environment they're operating in

Many congratulations 🎊

Do I know anyone in Hull?

Nesrine Malik here gets to the nub of the issue. The rise of the "sinister...malevolent" Farage to the threshold of power was enabled by a veil of plausible deniability, gifted to him by others. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

So delighted to see my first book up online with @oxfordunipress.bsky.social! Huge thanks to @anzamems.bsky.social @memorients.bsky.social @earlymoderncircle.bsky.social. DM or email me for a review copy request form, and ask your uni librarian to buy the book!! global.oup.com/academic/pro...

There isn't a single problem "solved" by edtech that couldn't be fixed with smaller classes led by well-paid teachers given real academic freedom

I'm delighted to announce a funded doctoral position (2026-2929) with me at Campion Hall, University of Oxford. Designed for those working in the field of ECOTHEOLOGY via systematic, political or applied theology approaches. For more information: lsri.campion.ox.ac.uk/news/applica...

Please take a look at our latest blog post from @victorianhand.bsky.social about the fascinating sensory world of intrepid 'Blind Traveller' James Holman.

What a pleasure to find this book is out now (digitally): Alice Wickenden 2025 Hans Sloane's Library Collection and the Production of Knowledge @ doi.org/10.1017/9781... Congratulations to @awickenden.bsky.social 🥳🎉 -- going straight to ch. 4 "Unreadable Books: False and Foreign Languages" now. 🤓

A second book launch, this time at Uppsala University. Thanks to all who came and listened to @lindaaburnett.bsky.social and I outline our next book - on humanity and the history of scientific instructions. It’s a tale of skull collections and the colonial history of ideas.

Google at its peak was basically the best information retrieval system in human history and they and every competitor decided going from there to “you didn’t want answers you wanted half-assed auto-complete 80%-wrong hallucinations” in a few years was the right idea

Lancaster University UCU members have beaten back compulsory redundancies. After weeks of pressure management has agreed to halt all forced job cuts until July 2026. This is a victory for jobs and every branch fighting cuts across the sector. We are the university. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

A pleasure to welcome Ben to QUB yesterday and to hear his brilliant talk on ‘healing the hospital’ with contemporary French philosophy, literature and film.

I had an AMAZING time Steven!! thanks so much for having me — from the warm welcome and fantastic questions and feedback from QUB colleagues to the famous Tara Lodge sausages, I felt very honored to be there!

Hurrah! Well done! Small tech history for the win!!

Really pleased to see my latest article out with @medicalhistory.bsky.social - this article looks at the underappreciaed role habit in the medical thought of 18th century Britain. Drawing on a wide range of works, but focusing on William Cullen, this article 1/6 www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Really pleased to see my latest article out with @medicalhistory.bsky.social - this article looks at the underappreciaed role habit in the medical thought of 18th century Britain. Drawing on a wide range of works, but focusing on William Cullen, this article 1/6 www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

The takeaway IMO is aggro centrism is an astonishing historic disaster. Not only does it not work - it delivers very little for the public, doesn’t address core problems of the era and disillusions the public with democracy itself - but it actively aids the far right and prepares the way for fascism

The 2025 Pfizer Award, awarded annually for an outstanding book in the history of science, is given to Adrian Johns for The Science of Reading: Information, Media & Mind in Modern America. (Apparently he wrote the entire book in ~8 months during COVID!) press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo... #HSS2025

I travelled to NYC to help launch (last night) Joanna Stalnaker's astonishing new book _The Rest is Silence: Enlightenment Philosophers Facing Death_. The book is a treasure, humane and moving: a vindication both of the #18thc philosophes and of what literary studies scholarship can do with them.

It’s not over but when it is I will never, ever forget the “serious people” who buckled and compromised and abetted the torture and crime and murder for a fascist lottery ticket.

Lovely to be at Alison Bashford’s talk @lancasteruni.bsky.social as a part of the @victorianhand.bsky.social project.

We are so proud of this work. Not only is it the first effort to publish & analyze **open-access data** derived from the entire text contents of digitized @britishlibrary.bsky.social newspapers, it presents a metadata-driven approach to understanding bias in big historical data. #dh #skystorians

I feel as though this is the right moment to share that I once shared an elevator with Joyce Carol Oates.

The fact that the BBC has made serious culpable errors does not negate the point that there is a real and concerted right-wing media campaign to destroy it. Both points can be true at the same time and the campaign would not end even if the errors did.

Maybe Keir should demand the heads of major US news networks any time they imply Britain is on the brink of civil war or that we live under sharia law. Or does it not work both ways?

Historians here: Anyone up for joining a panel on early modern translation practices in science and medicine with me and the wonderful Sare Arıcanlı? It’ll be for the 2026 ESHS–HSS Joint Meeting in Edinburgh. Let me know!

You can now register for our exciting conference that spans disciplines, time, and place and offers exciting hands-on sessions. Please sign up soon as spaces are limited!!

The first photo of my new book, courtesy of my editor... "The Most Awful Responsibility: Truman and the Secret Struggle for Control of the Atomic Age" comes out in early December! Feel free to pre-order it today! www.harpercollins.com/products/the...

The problem with diagnosing "the electorate have unreasonable expectations around tax and spend" is that those expectations did not develop in a vacuum. They are the product of decades of politicians and the media telling them they can have x services with y tax levels, or not contradicting it.

The generation that experienced WW2 knew how bad things could get. The horrors that they had directly experienced in Coventry, on Omaha, at Belsen, Bastogne, Dresden, Nanjing & Tokyo meant that they understood how dangerous THIS was. This is where all that started.

Amazing how a few TikToks of e-bike thieves can create a completely false impression observer.co.uk/news/nationa...

Do I know anyone in Edinburgh?

The Conservative immigration proposals cannot be allowed to stand without a profound and widespread statement of moral condemnation inews.co.uk/opinion/tori...

"The idea of deporting people with settled status is disgusting, and anyone proposing it should be immediately drummed out of polite society. Breaking promises made in good faith to our friends and neighbours is racist, extremist and immoral." I'm basically shouting at the sky here, but still.

The idea that our friends, relatives, neighbours and colleagues should be summarily flung out of the country by some future Tory government because they don't fit some right wing extremist's definition of "cultural coherence" should set alarm bells ringing everywhere.

CFP for HSS/ESHS 2026 - The Science and Medicine of Bodily Habits. I am excited to be working with @wraggem.bsky.social to co-organise symposia on bodily habits from the medieval to modern periods. From sleeping to eating and urinating, how much do we control our bodies? Abstract deadline 21st Nov

#Job opportunity Lecturer in early modern history Full time - permanent

Today is a day when arts degrees are worthless, but the product of those degrees is so valuable it would kill an entire industry if they were made to pay for it.

Looking forward to this exciting event!

And our FIVE YEAR teaching and research position in Early Modern Europe and the World is now live..... Please do circulate and/or think about applying. I truly love our department! @kingshistory.bsky.social

Lecturer in the History of Early Modern Europe and the World (closing date 13 October) . This post is a five-year appointment, starting on 1 January 2026. my.corehr.com/pls/coreport...

Reform are now coming after people with permanent residency. It'll be citizens next. No one is safe from authoritarian governments.

New post just out: "Three seconds" What links Charlie Kirk, the overthrow of the Nepalese government, the US-China trade deal, and the trial of a Romanian Presidential candidate? TikTok. Here's why it's changing politics and what that means. (£/free trial) open.substack.com/pub/samf/p/t...

All political tribes can be hypocritical but the right's current level of hypocrisy on free speech is deliberate. It's an assertion of power not a blindspot.

We're delighted to see that @mollieray.bsky.social is shortlisted for the Young Comics Laureate 2025-6! geni.us/YCLAU Mollie will be appearing at our Autumn Weekend to discuss how the graphic novel format allows her to treat challenging topics with wit and sensitivity. Book now £6: geni.us/LFMBHB

Liberals are unwilling to admit that there is a form of politics that exists in the world that centers around causing harm for pleasure, destroying things, and looting the rubble, and they're unwilling to admit that this politics has a stranglehold on the right