This is the "testing the waters" phase of the playbook. The GOP ecosystem targets groups like Somalis, Haitians, and trans people specifically because they've calculated that the average person's passive disapproval won't ever turn into active defense. They're exploiting public apathy.

You've probably been following the story about fraud in MN. I wrote about the people who provide services who are being driven into bankruptcy, thanks to the Walz' administration decision to hire Optum AI to screen all payments. It's a disaster.

The ability to ask an inviting, open-end question, not produce a comment.

Extremely healthy that the same platform shapes my country’s politics more than ever and is the only way to find out if my football team’s match is frozen off.

Yes.

In what's now become an annual tradition, I've written another piece for The Gist about how and why I hate A.I. On a bubble about to burst, a future rotted to its core, and the limits of the Mrs Doyle Theory of artificial intelligence. www.thegist.ie/guest-gist-2...

I knew it.

Calls to strip pro-democracy activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah of his British citizenship pile torment on top of torture. New piece by me on a dangerous and manufactured storm: www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Incidentally, if "migrants should have fewer rights" is stage one, then "dual citizens have divided loyalties" is almost invariably stage two of every historical example of mass oppression. Usually followed by second/third-generation migrants or full citizens of a particular minority being targeted.

This is an act of war and illegal under both US and international law, let’s just be clear about that:

Part of why I'm in no hurry to even become a dual UK citizen is that it's quite obvious politicians and a slice of the public already understand it as something given which can be taken away, something hard to 'deserve', rather than a right earned and protected.

You sure do a lot of client journalism for an outfit so publicly proud that your favourable verdicts "cannot be bought".

What I'd really like to know about the New New College is whether or not all that organised contrarian bile has led to increased enrolments or not. Staff fleeing the place in droves is perfectly obvious, but are students voting with their feet too?

permit me to add that digitisation, contrary to belief in some quarters, does not mean permanence by any means

Indeed, plus how much of 'the archive' will never BE digitised. We cope as a profession with constant massive "data loss" all the time and that's purely in analogue terms. Imagining that today the digital can capture the historical is utter nonsense. This is likely the case for many decades to come.

Get in losers we're doing old school proper corporal works of mercy (also merry christmas)

Back, for a time, to my ancestral occupations.

If I had to read up on the current state of play in US higher education, are there strong places to start outside of the normal media ecosystem there? I tend to know where to look for the Canadian, UK, and even to some extent Australian systems.

On the blog: Speed, games, academia, and AI. The annoyance is building to inescapable levels. stuckness.ghost.io/ai-is-speed-...

This AHA guidance contradicts itself in a couple pretty bad ways. It says using AI to summarise an article for you is fine without citation but then says using that summary in a review article is never OK "because the source has never directly been engaged with". That's also true in the first one??

It is not normal and certainly should not become normal and no amount of saying "it's normal" is going to gallop people into doing this more than, like, once. They try it, it doesn't work and invents sources, and surely because they're academics and have principles they stop at that point. Right?

So Bari Weiss’s first real editorial intervention at CBS is to repress coverage of American concentration camps.

How do these AI evangelists not understand that part of becoming an expert in any subject area involves developing a personal capacity for discernment?

Mr. Beast, all my friends and I were saying how good at boxing you’d be

I got LLMs to summarise my own work back to me and every single one (including the AI feature on adobe which had the PDF in front of it) just made shit up to fit a general average of what scholarship on this topic over the last 100 years might generally say. Utter garbage.

The Society currently invites applications for 6 funding programmes across a broad range of career stages. These include the Society's new Applied History Fellowships, offered jointly with @ihr.bsky.social, providing 6 months training for historians with the publisher DC Thomson bit.ly/4iKCwvU 2/2

Tate got his face rearranged by a reality TV star who throws uppercuts like he's playing street fighter on half-speed. As boxing that is just embarrassing for everyone involved. "Peak masculinity" indeed.

I think there's a long form way to show just how far apart 'summary-shaped text' is from the real thing. It would require having an LLM attempt an 'annual review of periodical literature' akin to the EcHR's, and I'd expect absolutely incredible lies and bullshit to emerge over that length of output.

I'd have been very happy for any of the three, we've really liked this year's run, but Kaz's face tells you everything you need about why she's absolutely the right winner. #strictly

Do not cite an academic paper unless you’ve read it

📣You have just under a month to send in your proposal for our 2026 Social History Society Conference - where we will be celebrating out 50th anniversary! 👉Find out more here: socialhistory.org.uk/conference/s...

A nice surprise this morning: my article on prison reform from below is out! I believe it’s open access but let me know if you can’t get a copy and would like one. academic.oup.com/histres/adva...

Going out on a limb a bit but I expect this article will be a big deal. I encounter "but we freed the slaves at sea!! right?" way too often these days.

Ask and ye shall receive

Don't steal pies this Christmas.

Actual good news from this government. No notes. Maybe some more of this in 2026? Please, I beg a crumb.

😍We are rejoining Erasmus. Official announcement tomorrow😍 www.theguardian.com/world/2025/d...

a little friday academic confidence mantra: I reread a thing I wrote a few years ago, but haven't published anywhere (place it was destined for ended up not wanting it), and it's actually pretty good I think, and I should try to publish it, and so I'm gonna.

Canada's PM knows economics, but that makes it sad to see another attempt to either pick the research winners or poach them (bad R&D economics). These programmes almost never pan out the way policymakers desire and talent does not stay. Fund basic, early career, fundamental research, long term.

WINTER Term Card: We are excited to share our seminar schedule for next term! Our slate of speakers cover a range of #18thc British history topics. Registrations are now open (with paper abstracts) at the link below 👎 @ihr.bsky.social @ihrlibrary.bsky.social www.history.ac.uk/news-events/...

Miller: "There may be a new and less caustic side of Legrand emerging..." Legrand: "First of all, how dare you? Secondly, being the point most thoroughly propinquant to my first, above, I must set out the ways in which, far from diminishing in my causticity, I am in fact endeavouring to become..."

Turns out our comparative law guy might literally be on a decades-long performative art quest, fleshed out and flourished with florid prose, to critique the foundational concepts of comparative law.

One of the many reasons AI can't produce good writing is it can't hate its own writing. It can't think to itself "Maybe I'm illiterate" during the writing process. And that's essential

The ad for the second postdoctoral position on our @leverhulme.ac.uk Britain’s Early Medieval Letters project is now live. We’re looking for an Old English specialist (who also works with Latin). 32-month FT post. Deadline for apps is 16 Jan 🙂 jobs.kent.ac.uk/Vacancy.aspx...

Well, I think I found the problem guys.

It's not a thing I talk about a lot, but last year I went through the *whole* process one can go through when it comes to being made redundant. I am still in post. I have no idea if my experiences are useful to others going through the same now, but if they might be, and you want to talk, reach out.

Ongoing decimation of British universities part 252: Apx. 1000 academic staff at University of Essex just received formal ‘risk of redundancy’ letters via email. Please share @ucuessex.bsky.social @ucu.org.uk

One of the reasons that emergence of ‘cold spots’ of subject provision matters: 52% of 18 year olds from the most disadvantaged backgrounds (the most deprived quintile in the Indices of Multiple Deprivation) plan to live at home when they go the university www.thetimes.com/article/22cc...

SKULL OF THOMAS AQUINAS: TAKE A LEFT NOW PRIEST: No, the GPS says we have to keep going— SKULL: I KNOW A SHORTCUT PRIEST: Do you remember the last ti— SKULL: FOR THOSE WITH FAITH, NO EVIDENCE IS NECESSARY; FOR THOSE WITHOUT IT, NO EVIDENCE WILL SUFFICE