'mean-spirited'

Publication day! The Spinosaur Tales with @markwitton.bsky.social is officially out today! I'll be going a much longer and more detailed thread later on as today is rather manic while I'm hosting 400 school kids to my uni campus, but I wanted to get this early post out.

REMINDER: A socialist act by a New Yorker was a major reason why polio was eliminated in the US.

“This is an extremely serious and troubling case that raises wider concerns about the academic freedom of staff and students at universities across the UK.” www.theguardian.com/education/20...

A stream of blue humanities projects is flooding my desk (ok, done with the watery language now, I promise) for our new series. 1st manuscript is also now out with peer reviewers! Check out the series' overview and get in touch if working on anything relevant! www.bloomsbury.com/uk/series/th...

"The English profs keep sweeping our work under the rug, but that rug is about three feet off the floor by now, and things are coming out from under it and eating the English profs." (Ursula K. Le Guin, Prospects for Women in Writing, 1986)

We need more inspiration images of a beautiful future. I personally love Olalekan Jeyifous's revamped Lagos that takes what's already there (a great, messy city) and joyfully builds on its amazing street life and bricolage neighborhoods.

Would anyone be interested in joining me and Lily Fell to propose a ✨Weird✨ panel for the BSLS 2026 conference? @thebsls.bsky.social Its focus will be on intersections b/w the natural sciences and the fantastical - more info below ⬇️ Please do share if you know anyone w. relevant research!

Sing it from the rooftops

📣 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

I will never shut up about this. Immigrants to the UK pay for the NHS twice. It's deeply and obviously unfair

Ah, the two 2020s theft joke templates side by side.

Did a new one

They forgot "this website uses cookies"

A wee bit of news. news.sky.com/story/fascin...

Should be fireable

There are massive great chunks of the British-born population that do not have A-level English and the current government is doing everything it can to make that number smaller. One rule for us, another for them

So who’s teaching and testing this, because you’ve repeatedly argued that an English degree is not valuable and you are actively destroying universities??

We should be asking this c o n s t a n t l y.

Ok!

A great article from Rachel, who really understands the heart and soul of Dad’s work.

The only correct take on a fundamentally anti-human technology.

I just saw someone use the abbreviation “AI;DR” and I’ll be laughing for a while.

I... I don't know what to do with this

Brummie here. This is pure ragebait and beneath your notice www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Universities of Dundee, Kent, Brunel, Coventry & Swansea defer pay rises Kent’s “review in the coming months” is temporal evasion at its finest, while Coventry’s “break even position” heroically rebrands “we won’t pay” as “fiscal courage” The academic austerity opera continues

what if I told you that taking accountability for your actions was traditionally considered a load-bearing feature of masculinity?

"So we are left with a doleful picture. [...] Academic professionals are exhausted and demoralised. The public is not that interested. [...] Higher education’s years ahead are likely to involve a bitter, alienating and chaotic decline." politicalquarterly.org.uk/blog/where-n...

This should also be how universities reply to the AI thing btw

Read our response to the Government’s announcement that university maintenance grants will be reintroduced for certain courses, funded through a levy on international student fees https://bit.ly/4gPz7uO

I am genuinely baffled and distressed as to why the UK government is intent on destroying UK's genuinely world-leading universities, who bring £265 billion into the economy and support more than 250,000 jobs. This tax will kill us. www.standard.co.uk/news/politic...

This is massive and wonderful news and Hannah is the best

Exciting opportunity to work on a PhD with me in Glasgow & Bénédicte Coste in France, on Decadence and Translation in Periodicals. Become part of 'Decadocs' - a Marie-Curie Joint Doctoral group. (Feel free to share with anyone you think would be interested). euraxess.ec.europa.eu/jobs/375577

When I open a PDF with Adobe Reader, there are THREE separate injunctions to use "AI" on different parts of the screen. A core feature (eg. 'Save as...') has one place where we learn to go as a necessary part of the software. "AI" is not a core feature; it is something else

Seriously how hard is it to say “This is an outrageous attack on our friends and neighbours who are in this country legally and have followed all the rules to get settled status, who are valued members of our communities, get to fuck frog-face”?

“If you don’t like it you can leave” update

Yeah man we should really fight back by staying on X

Calling all Victorianists with Lego Ideas accounts! (yeah, I see you) VOTE FOR LEGO CRYSTAL PALACE beta.ideas.lego.com/product-idea...

I love this programme. Helping look after it is the great privilege of my career

I think we can probably *just about* afford it until the *exact moment* Gen X / millennials start to hit retirement age.

We’ve been living through 72 nonstop hours of this exact tweet

"Sleep 8 hours and wake feeling fully rested" is a lie peddled by Big Sleep 8 Hours And Wake Feeling Fully Rested to sell more sleep 8 hours and wake feeling fully rested

I am having a hard time reconciling "Charlie Kirk was a fierce advocate of open dialogue and free expression" with "we must identify and persecute everyone who is insufficiently mournful"

Well variety.com/2025/tv/news...

austerity brain: when you’ve got nothing left to cut you start trying to cut other people’s free labour

The last REF found that 98% of UK research was either "internationally recognised", "internationally excellent", or "world-leading". If you think low-quality research is the noteworthy challenge in UK higher ed right now, you are wilfully looking in the wrong direction

There's a new blog post over at The City of Lost Books, on Amal El-Mohtar's wonderful novella The River Has Roots! @uofgfantasy.bsky.social @dimitrafimi.bsky.social @mjrsangster.bsky.social @tattersdill.bsky.social thecityoflostbooks.glasgow.ac.uk/amal-el-moht...

“Thyme Travellers is fabulous...the timing of this anthology is perfect.” Review by @melaniemarttila.bsky.social. THYME TRAVELLERS is published by @fernpub.bsky.social. #speculativefiction #palestinianfiction @soniasulaiman.bsky.social theseaboardreview.substack.com/p/thyme-trav...

The first book from @bloomsburylit.bsky.social new innovative multidisciplinary series now published: 'Theory Across Disciplines' brings together key scholars to examine how theoretical concerns from a range of disciplines operate within their respective fields. www.bloomsbury.com/theory-acros...