Lol. Anyone who believes a delivery person can just stroll up to the Oval Office and hand the President a meal should definitely buy the bridge I own over the Hudson.

Out today!

Truth

God, this administration has the macho sensibilities of a 13 year old boy addicted to Call of Duty and terrible hard trance music.

If one of my students made this "argument", as specious as it is mendacious, I'd probably be required to report them to Prevent.

So a dissertation student has disproven a myth *and* made a really insightful point corroborating the ideas of a much more advanced scholar. Either if I can confirm it is publishable. This is why I do what I do. Absolute magic.

I see nobody asked Israel about this horseshit deal.

When was the last time such an obvious military failure to achieve war aims spun as a victory? The War of 1812?

In a nutshell. What a cluster fuck.

So, a complete capitulation by the US? Among the worst US foreign policy disaster in living memory. An Iran controlling 20% of the current global energy supply, massively enriched, the regime intact and more powerful than ever, and certainly with nuclear ambitions resumed.

Pete Hegseth: "We execute with precision...we fight with honor." Bro, you bombed schoolgirls.

Agree 100%. I’d like a return to more autonomy at subject / module level. But if we can’t have that, then at least the people making the decisions should have some clue what it’s like now. Even just to be able to communicate in terms that make sense in the reality the rest of us are dealing with.

It speaks to a wider problem: senior managers, and many of them, now have little to any contact with either students or front-line teaching/research staff. The corporate structures place them into bubbles of like-minded colleagues on the same career trajectory, resulting in group thinking.

Operation Fortitude would like a word with this joke.

This passed. Clearly, the objective is that Palestinian prisoners will be railroaded to death by military (not civilian) courts. Far-right Israeli politicians are destroying the diminishing defences one can still mount for the idea of Israel as a liberal democracy.

* Bletchley Park did not reduce the length of the war by 2-4 years. * It's successes were not the product of eccentric, boffins but rather the organisation, administration and investment necessary to build an intelligence factory. * Winston Churchill did not save Britain.

The depths of sycophancy that drip from all levels of the cult are vomit inducing.

Why do most degrees take three years? Because academics need sleep and holiday. www.lbc.co.uk/article/univ...

As a professional academic, never a high flying professor like Matt, I have not used AI in my work. Ever.

I'm genuinely annoyed that this is not being taken more seriously.

We have to think about designing modules we won't even necessarily teach because it was decided to do a whole sale curriculum transformation at the same time as making 25% of the staff redundant. So what you design, if anything, you may not be delivering. Connected thinking.

What if Iran not only has nukes, but has also mastered tritium production and boosting, explosive chemistry and geometry, and wants to bet their entire country on a single low yield, virtually no tactical benefit nuclear attack?

The oldest political magazine in the world putting racist cartoons on its cover. Note the Jewish nose trope and the orientalised depiction of the dangerous and demented Muslim man.

After a bad couple of weeks (for personal employment reasons), a bit of light tomorrow is that I get to talk to a dissertation student at another university about Bletchley Park. It will be nice to forget about everything and just talk about the subject I find most fun.

There is a lot of elaborate post-hoc effort being expended trying to avoid the apparent fact that the US blundered into a war the administration didn't want, didn't need and have no coherent plan or exit strategy for. That Trump was and is a suckered who got played by Netanyahu.

I created a poll to allow students to choose which film they are to watch next week, I forgot to set it up so they could only vote once. As of 20 minutes ago, it only had 17 responses. Now 31 & the last 14 all for the same film. I think some e-ballot stuffing is in play. I've contacted Matt Goodwin.

I started watching Theroux's Manosphere and had to turn it off. It told us nothing new (as far as I watched). These people are just relentlessly stupid or utter grifters. There is nothing to them. No belief system, no intellectual project, no philosophy, and no argument. Just selling shit to teens.

The irony of this the Trump regime won't say, is that Mueller was ordered to do a job and did it.

One can only presume that this screed escaped the eye of any qualified peer-reviewer.

Without my comment, discuss:

Defeat...

So the US has, once again, lost another war it shouldn't have started. Make no mistake, that is what this blather implicitly tells us. Humiliating defeat, complete failure to achieve central objectives, and now running away with tail between legs and leaving others to clean up the mess.

I have a weird relationship with my immediate managers. I really like them as people but hate what they are forced to do for money.

9 years of loyal service. £6400 redundancy. Great.

That Farage hates the Welsh people and Welsh language should come as a surprise to nobody. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/ng-i...

Trump's body language here is fascinating. He clearly is lapping it up. Obviously, we all know he is very easily swayed by the last person who speaks to him. So clearly, Miller, the actual President, will talk him into more bullshit. Thus all of this fine rhetoric is for nought.

I've just been reading about what would be involved in sending escorts to protect shipping from Iranian attack. The expert commentary in every article is eye-wateringly pessimistic and, even if entirely successful, would only increase the volume of carriers and tankers getting through by 20%.

To see a former PM, even as short-lived as that disastrous episode was, turn into a far-right YouTube grifter, on a par with any other dismal characters who peddle hate, complete with the JAQing-off and thus normalising an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory, is a national embarrassment and disgrace.

Trump doing his gangster boss routine, "That alliance you like so much, it would be a real pity if something happened to it. You'd better do as you're told or else."

Ah, but if you ask questions about the impact of trying to marketise the system in the first place (which has contributed to spiralling student maintenance loans), you might get some very expensive answers. Better to just let the universities go bust.

The sight of large ICE men in paramilitary gear (cosplaying the War in Afghanistan) throwing a woman, whom is clearly much smaller than they are, to the ground tells you all you need to know about the calibre of the men being recruited into ICE. It also tells us a great deal about toxic masculinity.

I'm going to guess that most of the people affronted that Churchill might not be our £5 notes much longer have not read much about him or by him and that this is all performative outrage.

I'm old enough to remember when the entire global media went mad and said that Joe Biden had dementia because he performed about half this poorly in a debate.

Yeah, but at least it wasn't a tan suit, right?

Gave a talk with Claire Hubbard-Hall today at @bletchleypark.bsky.social. Thanks to the organisers.

I appeared on the @anglotopia.bsky.social podcast last month, for the second time, on this occasion to talk about @bletchleypark.bsky.social. The host Jonathan and I had a very fun chat. podcast.anglotopia.net/podcast/angl...

"These people are often shrill and conspiratorial, and it is one of the great frustrations of my own politics that I so often find myself on their side. For I did not believe in military action against Iraq in 2003, or Libya in 2011. I did not think we should bomb Syria in 2013." Hugo 8/9/15 Times

The Lords is one of the few functional parts of Westminster, it has destroyed much of that limited credibility over the Assisted Dying Bill.

"The only limits we have is (delete as appropriate: Il Duce's / the Führer's / Vozhd's / El Caudillo's / Brother Number One's / The Great Helmsman's / El Caballo's) desire to achieve specific effects on behalf of the People."

Yep. A lesson to PhD students and vivas. Admit when something is pointed out to you, and you hadn't thought about it or got it wrong. But if the examiners have some point you fundamentally disagree with, stand your ground. Offer to better clarify it, but don't concede when you're right.