Status: skimming the indices of the history books, looking for "Emperors who forgot to pay their mercenaries, life expectancy of".

This section of McCulloch's View of Glasgow in 1853 looks almost empty, but it gives us a glimpse of some of the least glamorous yet most essential vessels ever to use the river: the mud punts of the Clyde Navigation Trust. 🧵

And only a few days ago Orville the Duck said he had complete confidence in Mr Harris.

FALCONER: Look, let's try this again. It's not that you're not superb; nobody's saying you're not superb; it's just that... it's an internet joke, OK? Most of these people aren't really celebrating owls. OWL: Nope. Still don't get it. What?

This section of McCulloch's View of Glasgow in 1853 looks almost empty, but it gives us a glimpse of some of the least glamorous yet most essential vessels ever to use the river: the mud punts of the Clyde Navigation Trust. 🧵

Folk who follow me for stuff that isn't Glasgow historical nerdery (why?): a new thread is due to drop tomorrow, so you might wish to mute me for twenty-four hours unless you want a timeline full of exciting facts about mud.

I was not expecting this in the UoG album of Anchor Line personnel photos. On the left, the artist Muirhead Bone. On the right, his brother David, Merchant Navy commodore and author of sea stories. In the middle, Joseph Conrad (yes, that Joseph Conrad). flic.kr/p/vGPmGJ

Four species of tit — great, blue, coal, long-tailed — jostling on the feeder just then. (Did I have the camera? No.)

I forgot when I was writing last week's thread that there's a vivid glimpse of the Lancefield heavy-industrial complex on Sulman's bird's-eye view from 1864.

I'll never entirely get tired of the sight of urban dinosaurs.

The Science Policy Research Unit at the University of Sussex appear to be spamming researchers demanding unpaid labour which they claim is "crucial" for their research project on "Metascience Novelty Indicators". I have a novelty indicator for them. It is digital, and highly expressive.

LECTURER: The next part is interesting but non-examinable, so please feel free to leave if you wish to. /Exeunt omnes./

I think it may have been one of those lectures that was more blessed to give than to receive, but at least one person in the room enjoyed it, and it makes a pleasant change for that person to be me.

If it weren't totally inappropriate for classroom purposes, I would use this, together with the passage linked in the quoted post, as a lecture example on confused units of measurement and unreferenced percentage increases. (Men: you are not going to jump over a 4x4 by making your willy bigger.)

"Awe is easily weaponized against the worker, allowing anyone to deploy a vocational purity test in which the worker can be accused of not being devout or passionate enough to serve without complaint." Putting this out there for friends and colleagues not only in librarianship. RIP, Fobazi Ettarh.

Looks as if, as a very special treat, I will be permitted to attend a half-day meeting on an industrial estate outside Cumbernauld. Sometimes the glamour of this job overwhelms me.

That moment in a meeting when the same thought bubble appears over every head but one, and never makes it into the minutes.

It always seems to be the sanctimonious disciplines who are too selfish to put a classroom back the way they found it.

St Christopher learns that under new productivity targets, he needs to carry at least three infant Christs across rivers per month or he will be considered to be underperforming. [Tallinn]

To lower morale and with it, production, be pleasant to inefficient workers; give them undeserved promotions.

Petition to replace the term "hybrid meeting" with "ghastly chimera meeting with a snake for its arse" on the basis that this more accurately reflects the experience.

I used to do a thought experiment with students. The Devil appears and offers you a deal: your 2.1 is now guaranteed, but you will never learn anything more in your life. How many people, I asked, do you think would take that deal? Typical answers were 60 to 75%. I think my students were right.

This is fundamentally shite of Google, and it's a good moment to recall that archive.org holds about 900K public-domain books originally digitised by Google, and that IA's metadata may be lousy but their search is good.

Always good to see a new blog from the good people at the University of Strathclyde Archives, especially when it's about our favourite eighteenth-century bampot. guides.lib.strath.ac.uk/blogs/archiv...

Oh dear. It is February, and someone is driving round Glasgow in a van adorned with "Lest We Forget"s, poppies, and kitsch silhouettes of mourning Tommies. This is probably unfair of me, but the ensemble gives off a strong yer-da-guards-statues vibe.

Feeling almost sorry for mid-tier Labour politicians right now. Roughly once a week you have to change your beliefs in public because some focus group says it'll improve polling in Lincolnshire by 0.1% if you agree that macroeconomics is a fish; then suddenly *gestures expansively at All This*.

So has he defected to Reform yet?

The Simple Sabotage Field Manual (1944) invents Sharepoint.

It appears to be Hedgehog Day. Please appreciate this... unconventional Victorian fairy painting by Charles Altamont Doyle, father of AC Doyle. (artuk.org/discover/art...)

THEY: Take on this extra project on top of your allocated workload and we will pay you £1200... ME: 👀 THEY: ... into the special account which you can only use to pay expenses incurred on University business. ME: I'm fed up of this scam.

Time to mute "UCU" and "NEC" for a bit, since I wish to continue to believe in my trade union as a force for good, and on previous form this will not be aided by watching Tweedleshout and Tweedlesnark at their annual battle.

A bit of Glasgow historical nerdery I'd not come across before. UoG's Flickr pages include an album of maps, which contains David Smith's large-scale town plan of 1822. I don't think the NLS site has anything of comparable detail between 1807 and 1857. www.flickr.com/photos/uofgl...

"Mr Slop, The Medium".

To all those who are aware of the Emu War: I regret to inform you that the enemy appear to be in possession of a nuclear bunker. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

A few days ago in the Ramshorn Kirkyard, the sun was picking out an unexpected piece of Glasgow industrial history at the base of a mortsafe.

A few days ago in the Ramshorn Kirkyard, the sun was picking out an unexpected piece of Glasgow industrial history at the base of a mortsafe.

Safety-conscious people, please look away. (Note that in accordance with Victorian Hat Politics, the bloke balancing on the pulley as 30 tons of iron descend towards the deck does not wear a hat, while the bloke superintending with one hand in his pocket does. Thus was professionalism maintained.)

Distracting names in old PO Directories: the Friendly Bread Association. (I'm assuming it had a counterpart Hostile Bread Association, which broke up after two members were savaged by an enraged sourdough.)

First crocuses and first woodpeckers of the year. A wee brightness amid the gloom and smirr.

Contemplating yet another nineteenth-century industrial dynasty with not enough first names between them. Would it have hurt you lot to chuck in an occasional Habakkuk or Artaxerxes among all the bloody Johns and Alexanders?

I am again, and with no very lively hope of success, asking academics to advise students on the basis of the actual course regulations, not on the basis of something that would be quite a nice idea if it were true.

Pro-tip: if you wish me to believe that what you're looking at on your phone during class is the lecture notes, turn the sound off.

Aaand the day starts by signing off on some paperwork which my HoD wants signed but doesn't want to sign himself. Somehow resisted the temptation to put my name down as "Alan Smithee".

There can't be many bands who can take a song about a pigeon fancier from Derby, orchestrate it three quarters of the way to being an MGM musical number, and still sound exactly like themselves. (I think the clog dancing helps.)

*sigh* Another well-meaning resource that tells me that claiming to be colour-blind is racist. I know what you mean, but get your ableist tanks off my nice red lawn.

"It is no good speaking to such folk: they cannot be idle, their nature is not generous enough; and they pass those hours in a sort of coma, which are not dedicated to furious moiling in the gold-mill...

One of the lifts has an unnerving habit of pausing for five seconds before the doors open. If you time it exactly right, you can intone the Elvish word for "Friend" in a loud voice just before they open, giving your awestruck fellow passengers the impression that you're a really strange nerd.

In which we learn what happens when you combine the effectiveness of online learning with the efficiency of UK government, the academic rigour of management consultancy, and the fundamental honesty of purpose of ChatGPT.

Back in the time of year when the sky, briefly, looks like this.