I love that BBC verify are ‘debunking’ false stories about the killing in Minneapolis without mentioning that the BBC itself broadcast false stories about it spread by Trump and ICE.

Britain's leaders think X's diversification into child porn-on-demand is "unacceptable". Although, in good news for people who want child porn on demand, they will continue to accept it. thecritic.co.uk/poli...

I have drafted a motivation for my university to leave X/Twitter, arguing that posting to it risks feeding our PR images into the porn and harassment machine (so leading to staff, students or others being harassed) and that being there violates our official stance against gender-based violence. /1

I understand the pressures on the BBC, but Radio 4's coverage of the Minneapolis shooting is an example of "bad balance". It's all "the Trump regime says she was a terrorist, but Democrats say it was murder". The BBC has the footage. It doesn't have to treat truth and falsehood as equally valid.

As well as the history of illustrated cigarette ads in truck stop paperbacks, I just learned that Pratchett once left his German publisher because they worked a soup advert into the text of one of his novels without asking him. gmkeros.wordpress.com/2011/09/02/t...

#Discourse2000 returns with the best #2000AD story yet as Judge Dredd goes epic in a story about horror, history, Britain's idea of America and what it means to be "THE LAW" - join me for a saunter across THE CURSED EARTH freakytrigger.co.uk/wedge/2026/0...

Listening to European politicians and media, it’s clear that we’re still stuck between denial and bargaining when it comes to the demise of the post-WWII USA.

little-flying-robots.ghost.io/rejecting-re... We live in an age where the Internet and LLMs are encouraging ever more people to reject reality entirely. Here's my thoughts on why this is happening, and why the Terminally Online turn amongst the powerful is so dangerous.

Oh dear. They’re going to get deeply passionate about hating migrants and loving flags again, aren’t they?

Were Kenny To Roger

Were It To Bite

Nothing can tell you more about the absolute disconnect between the political class and the rest of us than their insistence that Wes Streeting is the key to electoral success.

12/The key is that a neo-royalist order is not yet consolidated. It will face uncertainty both domestically and internationally. But only if actors recognize what is happening and come up with a plausible alternative. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

didn’t someone on here work out that the conservative proposals on immigration would have seen a greater number of people deported (!) than supported the proposals. a real achievement 👏

This is the age of Stupid Thucydides. Thucydides misinterpreted and reduced to a slogan, which is then rendered down to a bumper sticker.

Date of the fall of the Roman Empire really not a consensus among historians…

Maybe the greatest example of the bizarro world in which we now live is that European states are maintaining the dangerous fiction that the US would fight for them, when the more likely use of US military force would be to kick Europe out of Greenland.

It's fun when what I am blogging on fortuitously intercepts what I am working on re: scholarship. Revising a chapter and realizing that estimates for the size of the 'hoplite class' are actually a handy comparative benchmark for the full-throated absurdity that is the Roman mobilization system.

“Here’s a plan. You save time by using AI instead of humans as a source of data, and we’ll save time by not paying any attention to your results.”

In 2024, we founded a new open access, peer reviewed journal. I'll be at the #AIASCS in San Francisco with a stack of #ResDiffJournal postcards, and as submissions editor I'd be happy to chat with anyone looking to submit their work. resdifficiles.com #AIASCS26

The worst civil conflict in western Europe since WW2, which ran for thirty years *in the actual UK*, reduced to a 'something like' analogy for race war fantasies by a London academic. No words. www.theguardian.com/society/2026...

6/Again that is why the repeated claims to Greenland. This is not a world of sovereign equality or of balancing against China. It is about extraction. Why the interest in Greenland, it is about the resources and tech network state fantasies. bsky.app/profile/clae...

I’m sure someone will leap in to explain that I’m being very unfair to Scholar X, but it seems a reasonable assumption that anyone who publishes in Hungarian Conservative is automatically disqualified from being taken seriously.

AI slop comes for the Melian Dialogue… thesphinxblog.com/2026/01/04/i...

Barney Roney on Ben Duckett: “opening the innings with all the hard, seasoned permanence of Paddington Bear having an accident with a bar of soap and a skateboard.” www.theguardian.com/sport/2026/j...

Since it’s is in the news, or at any rate on social media, at the moment… Recent reflections on what, if anything, the Melian Dialogue can tell us about the workings of international politics - which may be primarily about the discourse rather than the reality: thesphinxblog.com/2023/10/22/w...

Continuing citation of That Thucydides Line, both here and on Ex-Twitter, as if it explains everything. What’s funny is the number of people on the other site giving the quote in Greek, as if that brings greater authority - except they all have different versions of the Greek…

It is arguably one of the more serious omissions in Thucydides’ narrative that we don’t get to hear the weasely, fig-sucking statements of the leaders of different members of the Delian League every time that Athens launches another aggressive campaign.

UK Foreign Office: "Um, well, you know, it's complicated, special relationship, we're watching closely."

It’s just hard for the rest of us to get our heads around.

And of course there are now a lot of silly arguments on the other site about the Melian Dialogue, or rather the about the only line from it that anyone ever quotes…

How to put the (GenAI) genie back into the bottle. (courtesy of @d20monkey.bsky.social: d20monkey.com/comic/shatte...

My wife has just come up with the most esoteric bit of character assassination ever - especially effective because it’s not immediately obvious whether or not it’s an insult: “You’re just like Suetonius”. (This to my mother; I get compared with Sallust, and not in the good way).

Jazz will be replaced by Buzz

Rogueclassicizing in the age of AI – rogueclassicism rogueclassicism.com/2026/01/01/r...

Julia Donaldson ft Neneh Cherry - Gruffalo Stance

Russia’s only real chances to win anything in Ukraine are political – by convincing the US and Europe that it’s inevitably winning. Take that away, and Russia looks much more vulnerable.

I just found out that our stuff is being sold on Amazon - WITHOUT our consent or any ability to opt out bc Amazon is just scraping artist’s websites and putting our shit in their search results. Again, without our permission.

Yes, very me. I can think of two ways of taking this; a sign that 2025 success in protecting the potatoes (and parsnips) from the bloody badgers will be repeated in 2026, or a warning that the 2026 potato crop may be worth its weight in gold as the economy tumbles into the abyss…

What can the rise of drum machines tell us about AI? – The AI Minimalist

Classicist colleagues will do their blood pressure no end of good if they simply recognise that Nolan’s film has nothing to do with Homer, but is essentially an adaptation of Tennyson.

From me today: The descent of Liz Truss and into full-on totalitarianism.

Is this Florence Price waltz the first music by a black composer to be played at the New Year's Day concert? I think it might be!

On the contrary: no one will play anything except ‘I Got Rhythm’, rather than the decades-long flourishing of creative variations and imaginative song titles to disguise the use of the standard chord sequence.

Picture of the staff who operate my account.

The year on my blog. thesphinxblog.com/2025/12/31/2...

December on The Sphinx: in which I manage to make at least a marginal contribution this year to the level of knowledge and understanding in the world. thesphinxblog.com/2025/12/12/t...

November on The Sphinx… This is the Internationalisation Strategy. And this Is the Impact Strategy, whose use you will see, When you are assessed for REF preparedness. And this is the Future Priorities Strategy, Which in your case you have not got. thesphinxblog.com/2025/11/07/t...