A world full of cis male abusers in power and getting away with grotesque violence - but don’t worry, wealth and media power is focusing on breaking children’s hearts in other ways too

Gregor Samsa if he’d tried CBT

When will conservative Republicans realise that saying things like ‘you don’t understand, the president will DIE if he doesn’t get his dream ballroom’ is the gayest shit ever

'bum-shaking yet sanitised immersion' is a phrase that's going to stay with me for a while

So perhaps I might be finding my linocut/linoprint niche in... portraiture? This was last night's first attempt to depict Samuel Beckett. Turns out, in a medium where you're constantly working in little line carvings, wrinkles are really helpful. Grateful to Sam for being never using retinol!

Remember when people speculated that Karl Jenkins attending the King's coronation was actually Meghan Markle in disguise? What a timeline

So - and I cannot stress this enough - what

I do not want to create an account or open a subscription I just want to buy a thing and never hear from you again why is this so hard.

Sometimes I wonder: were we just younger and stupider, or were we all under some kind of collective mass-delusion about Stephen Moffat's Sherlock series being good. What do you mean a boomerang did it

Working the morning shift as a scholar in 1540, a browser tab and a word document opened on two screens, other needed texts opened and handy, an overfull mail account nearby, and a hot beverage in reach to make for the best working condition. Bonus: wearing a thinking hat. #academicchatter

Let me talk about one of the things that disturbed me most about the whole Louis CK scandal. Here's a transcript from one of his bits where he's talking about a hookup he had in his 20s (I can't remember exactly when this is from, but I remember watching this c. 2011)...

The first rule of an adequate response to climate collapse is "You must change the assumptions of normality that politics/economics/society-as-usual has been built on since before you were born." Every day, we watch people fail to do this.

I don't want to encourage anyone's impostor syndrome but if you are using ChatGPT to write for you, you're literally an impostor. Literally!!! Of the worst kind! Either stop or get out of the way!!! Sigh... I guess this stuff makes me made because the actual work IS hard, and THAT. IS. THE. POINT.

+ some more stuff he said “A recent meta-analysis found “that consuming short-form video content…is assoc’ed w/poorer cognition &reduced attn, &the results of a clever expmnt from ‘23 found that the mere presence of participants’ smartphones in a room signf’ly reduced their ability to concentrate”🧪

The Scott Mills news has brought out all the most normal people on Facebook.

The director’s cut of The Comedy of Errors is wild

Re-post for the weekday crowd. The thing about linocutting is that it becomes very addictive: I have various very doable tasks ahead of me today but all I want to do is go back to the table with my tools.

MA Scholarship Award for scholars of colour. In 2026, we plan to offer two scholarships of £4,000 each, to contribute to the costs of postgraduate study. This scholarship is open to candidates studying on either a full time or a part time basis. Apply by 15 July 2026 rensoc.org.uk/apply/schola...

If you want a new-found appreciation of early modern visual culture, teach yourself linocut and try and replicate famous woodcuts from the period. Here’s The Spanish Tragedy.

the girl guides in the UK just kicked out all their trans members specifically bc they were threatened with a lawsuit from a rowling-funded group

For never was a story of such munch Than this of Romeo and his Caramel Crunch.

Me and my friends would’ve killed Lumo with hammers I can tell you that much

"Your steadfast commitment to our strategic mission, despite the multiple tramplings, maulings, and other encounters we shall henceforth refer to as 'terminal networking opportunities' has not gone unnoticed." www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/a-m...

She doesn’t use genAI for historical research, she uses genAI to plagiarise the work of historians who conduct research.

Performance studies books I don't have time to write... VICE: Comic Characters as Disruptive Agents, From Morality Plays to Mr Blobby.

I have decided, purely for my own amusement, to start a thread of critical quotes about Falstaff, but illustrating them with an image of Mr Blobby. '...a character deeper than life, a wit unmatched by anyone merely real whom we will ever know' (A. C. Bradley)

I have never seen a politician more directly copy this speech in my life

I have decided, purely for my own amusement, to start a thread of critical quotes about Falstaff, but illustrating them with an image of Mr Blobby. '...a character deeper than life, a wit unmatched by anyone merely real whom we will ever know' (A. C. Bradley)

Fitbit alert: You’ve really pushed yourself this week! Take it easy for a few days (Later) Fitbit alert: Time to get moving, you lazy git! How did I end up in a coercive relationship with my watch

Good deed of the day: rescued an old dog wandering down Cabra Road. Rang the number on his tag. Woman answered ‘oh, thank god you’ve got him: he’s blind!’ 😱

Unflinching refusal to use or allow the use of A.I. in reading & writing should be the uncontroversial, default position of teachers from K-12 to colleges & universities. If our administrators tell us we "have to" we tell them to eff off. We will not kill the planet's water for systemic plagiarism.

Bloomsbury are having a sale at the moment and there's one day left to get my book, Shakespeare's Body Language, at 30-40% off! @ardenpublisher.bsky.social If you've ever wondered why Romeo and Juliet starts with a thumb bite - and what it means - I got ya. www.bloomsbury.com/uk/shakespea...

I texted this to my friend and they replied 'well thank goodness someone found a way to blame a woman'

Good morning to my department’s new printer, which thinks I am using an Adobe font to print out a facsimile page from Shakespeare’s First Folio of 1623

Even if I won an Olympic medal the highlight of my day would still be meeting a dog

I appeared as an expert witness before the Joint Committee on AI at the Houses of Oireachtas (parliament of Ireland) to discuss "AI: truth and democracy" this morning. You can read my opening statement here: www.oireachtas.ie/en/publicati...

A question for Sky News: does this caption refer to Mandelson, or the dog in air jail?

This broke in the middle of the night in TX. 2am or so. Millions of people are going to wake up in the morning and be completely disconcerted. El Paso is the 23rd largest city in the US and they're willing to lose 10 days of economic activity (cargo included). This is not normal. What is going on?

“…and Keir Starmer, who did NOT resign…”

The internet is somewhere we used to visit. Now it’s somewhere we live.

It was today, watching The Tempest at the Globe's Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, and seeing Sebastian and Antoni(a) chipping in with snide comments from the boxes, that I realised William Shakespeare invented Statler and Waldorf from the Muppet Show.

Without naming your job, tell me something you say over and over again at work. ‘Play titles need to be written in italics’

lol he’s so good at this

5 months old yet still topical.

I think another problem is that in America you are very much safer telling lies about a public figure (and being protected by the first amendment and restrictive libel laws) than telling the truth (which is probably covered by an NDA and exposes you to Gawker-like privacy damages)

Okay, this is genuinely alarming. But also, I misread this as pictures of Steve Bannon to play a terrifying role and was like hmm that figures

The Epstein files have clearly shown that there has been a concerted effort to promote right-wing and far-right movements by the wealthy elite behind the scenes. And yet it looks like the first genuine comeuppance for anyone involved will be..... a Labour government.

In summer 2024, a film called Blink Twice came out: it was about a billionaire tech bro who invited people to parties on his private island, only it turns out there's something more sinister going on. The film's original title was Pussy Island. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blink_T...