“Bound in Iron” #rarebooks album titles.

Things that demand a 17th-century printed broadside with amazing woodcut illustrations and terrible doom-laden verses …

Nigel Biggar's entire life is now just him staring at this quotation, while putting his fingers in his ears and singing "Lalala, I don't believe you" at the top of his voice.

Show Me the Data: New Practices for Historical Sources @ruthahnert.bsky.social, @kmcdono.bsky.social and @danielwilson.bsky.social

Of course, there are two parties, the LDs & Greens, that we might call the moderate & radical wings of political sanity, polling more than 1/4 of voters together, but which the media bubble refuses to acknowledge. And so Nigel floats on…

I wrote about this top down process here in particular and it's just incredible to see people who know better still pushing these damaging narratives 2/ journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Pretending the rise of the far right and the focus on issues such as immigration or trans people comes from the "legitimate concerns" of "the people" is not just factually wrong, it's a deeply political point Refusing to see this as primarily top down processes is to protect the status quo 1/

“Uncut and unread though unclean” superb bibliographic description.

Happy Birthday to Frederick Douglass who didn’t know his birthday because he was born into slavery so he chose February 14 as his birthday.

I think I am quite a romantic, but I think I will skip this read 😀🫣

Westminster should advertise also

A pretty bleak threat from the Reform party on Kent county council... Reform threatens to pull funding for Margate’s Turner Gallery as ‘naked retribution for local MP exposing Kent savings lies' - via Polly Billington MP

My fellow Library workers had to strike for 3 weeks to move a pay ‘rise’ from 1.6% to 4% (and the Executive want everyone to know we are the bad guys with no idea of ‘reality’). All the while, Bank CEO’s pay is up 20% and more: Nat West bod from £4.9m to £6.6 million. The playbook of inequality.

I am on a flurry of buying novels online. Quite exciting.

I’d prefer open and functioning youth clubs to mending potholes. Both is clearly some kind of Utopia.

Stupidity is exhausting, bring back the value of expertise, please.

The first winter following cancer treatment has been the hardest I’ve known. Please can everyone do a sundance?! Super strength Vitamin D is very underwhelming - Bring Me Sunshine!! 🌥️🌤️⛅️☀️🙏

On the eve of #ValentinesDay: gilt-lettered pink paper framed with blue silk, in a devotional manual printed in Nuremberg in 1782, this copy given by a loving bridegroom to his bride in May 1787.

The judiciary finds its way to justice, unlike this cruel, vindictive government. UK ban on Palestine Action unlawful, high court judges rule www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

Fantastic funded PhD opportunity here in the School of Humanities at Reading - please share widely! www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

This brave woman speaks for millions of British people. Meanwhile these thugs behave in an entirely menacing manner and nothing is done.

Ratcliffe is where populism leads. To multimillionaires spouting ignorant racist horseshit that divides us but unites the far right in their cynical bid to exploit prejudice for power. Ratcliffe will just shrug from his tax haven home. He doesn’t care. Farage laps it up. Everyone else loses.

"Offshoring" and "outsourcing" of asylum systems isn't new. We have plenty of data to show how incredibly harmful it is, including increasing human trafficking. Basically, it leaves be stranded in countries where they have no links, and often don't speak the language www.euronews.com/my-europe/20...

I dare "Sir" Jim Ratcliffe to remove all forrin Man United players. Otherwise it's one rule for some, right?

For anyone unsure whether Jim Ratcliffe saying the UK has been 'colonised' by immigrants in that interview was being a full-on racist, he goes on to imply that they all scrounge benefits without looking for work. *This* Jim Ratcliffe, in case you were wondering:

Get in the sea!! The brass neck of these greedy rich bastards!

Rarely mentioned but about much of Ratcliffe’s business ‘success’ is based on draining public money (very common among these ‘self made tycoons’) Eg democracyforsale.substack.com/p/ineos-set-...

Trump’s escalation of the illegal blockade on Cuba has triggered a humanitarian crisis. This is but the latest attempt by the U.S. to destroy Revolutionary Cuba. For more on that history, consider these titles. We've also made the e-book for "The Declarations of Havana" free.

Best pen trial ever. ‘Kiss my Arse’ On the endpapers of an 1700 edition of Terence’s comediae sex. #bookhistory #provenance

we do not have to be this evil, this self-destructive there is no law of nature that says people couldn't be persuaded by a different vision - public opinion is what it is because we don't even try www.liberalcurrents.com/we-need-to-g...

& it's not even working politically, we're keeping economic growth low, destroying our own support, & not gaining any from the other side www.politicalphilosophypodcast.com/appeasement

& this is from a labour government elected because their predecessors destroyed our economy & social fabric with their isolationism what are we doing here?

3 in 5 fear family separation absolutely monstrous www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

One of the things I will include in my new book on history from below is a series of discussions I had with Christopher Hill about the relationship between 17c religious radicals (Levellers, Diggers, Ranters, etc.) and late 20c liberation theologians. They used the same Biblical passages.

Nigel Farage calls for an end to working from home as the Reform leader kisses goodbye to a generation of voters. Just don’t vote Reform www.thelondoneconomic.com/politics/nig...

This is a really fucking stupid and irresponsible thing for a widely-read magazine to publish. Claude is a large language model with an unusually large context window. It is not self-aware, nor is it a new entity. It's a set of rules which run really fast and produce a predictable outcome. Software.

#Grauniad rapture to rupture

Macron says Europe facing ‘profound geopolitical rapture’ amid changes in world order” Rapture?! What joy!

Just as a historical thought experiment, at what point would you have considered it morally defensible for subjects of the Third Reich to attempt to physically dismantle Nazi concentration camps? 1933? 1939? 1944?

New Labour State Organ. Such a joke ‘newspaper’.

None of this makes any sense, because either morality is grounded in real life, which an “AI” definitionally can’t experience, or it’s just a set of rules, which you don’t need an “AI” to apply.

The Church of England is developing a reparative justice scheme in recognition of its complicity in trans-Atlantic slavery. Project Spire has been attacked in Parliament and the right wing press with claims of flawed historical research. What’s the truth? alanlester.co.uk/blog/the-arg...

“No God, no masters, [no Chomsky]” Pedestals and heroes are never wise or healthy. Beatification is the behaviour of authoritarians.

“… to conclusively show that the party serves the people who keep society running … they also need to be jolted into understanding that social justice, equality, feminism and the party’s other articles of faith need to define every choice it makes.” Dream on! www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Epstein was very clever when it came to charming very intelligent people. Salesmanship. Noam Chomsky's wife, Valeria, responds to Epstein controversy www.aaronmate.net/p/noam-choms...

University of Edinburgh holds one 👇 of only three extant copies of Foirm na n-Urrnuidheadh, the earliest book printed in Gaelic/Irish. The other two are in the British Library in London and The Morgan Library in New York! #Gàidhlig

Cover reveal for Richard Frohock's fab new 🏴‍☠️ book! Piracy Mythmaking in the Eighteenth Century Criminality, Human Nature, & Civil Government from @routledgehistory.bsky.social will be published 21/5/26! www.routledge.com/Piracy-Mythm...

Stunning novel. I feel a richer person for reading this. I grieve for the persecuted.

A street medic said “I’ve been working in this field for over 8 years now and I’ve seen a lot of shit, but that was truly one of the most terrible things I’ve witnessed and I never thought that I’d have to see actual children getting gassed like that, but here we are I suppose”