Spain 🇪🇸 Gay couple Alejandro Vigara & Álvaro Cabezas have faced homophobic abuse after posting stadium kiss photos. Athletic Bilbao responded by inviting them to speak to 40+ academy players about LGBTQ+ inclusion.

Austerity conditions and manufactured scarcity is what is driving the creative class’ use of AI. The epistemological issues around AI get a lot of attention, but we need to talk about the political-economic conditions that drive people to use AI in the first place.

have I mentioned that I teach first year writing here and that I am being laid off

This collaboration allows participants to access the Making History collection in full. Making History was a successor project to our re-launched Interviews with Historians collection www.history.ac.uk/resources/di... & feature eminent historians reflecting on their lives and professional practices

The normalisation of right wing discourse in both major political parties, let alone in much of the media, has been one of the most striking, and disturbing, changes in my lifetime. Things weren’t great in the 1960s (Smethwick) but this is off the scale.

Past & Present No. 271 (May 2026) is now published All articles in the issue can be accessed here: academic.oup.com/past/issue/2... via our publisher @academic.oup.com Or by scrolling down the thread👇

Quite enjoy living with a rooftop view of Himalayan foothills

"I wonder why the birthrate briefly increased slightly in 2021, 9 months after everyone was forced to stay home with nothing to do, then dipped again as the public mood soured? The only possible explanation is immigrants."

For Xana, always and forever

Good reporting on the Iranian military economy and post-war state-society reconciliation. www.dropsitenews.com/p/inflation-...

NEW: A lot of bad has happened to American science over the last year but nothing comes even close to what’s about to happen if we don’t speak out in opposition to the OMB rule changes and I hope @aaas-socsci.bsky.social @apsphysics.bsky.social and others will launch public campaigns about this. 🧪🔭⚛️

The acclaimed ‘Hamnet’ author revisits themes of strife and loss but on an epic canvas spanning centuries and continents: ft.trib.al/aMuBzdn

'The panel discussed the relevance of a humanities education in the age of AI and why, as Professor Abigail Williams described, AI leaders are advising their children to study the humanities rather than the sciences.' 1/2

This is an excellent, albeit brief, documentary on hereditary Muslim musicians in Pakistan who continue to sing the Sikh kirtans that their predecessors once performed in gurudwaras. www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-vu...

People don't long for "inconvenience." They long for permanence. And though streaming services may be convenient, people are waking up to the fact that we are paying rent-seeking middle men month after month for things we will never actually own.

The whole industry is after apologists, and it's also willing to buy apologists—via grants, lucrative speaking gigs, summer institute bullshit, proximity to extreme wealth and power—which means that as those apologists emerge they should be regarded with suspicion so intense it's visible from space

An excerpt from Pope Leo XIV's encyclical this morning. The full text can be read here: www.vatican.va/content/leo-...

Sonny Rollins, colossus of jazz saxophone, dies aged 95

How I wish the new breed of Reform-supporting English nationalists, with their dreams of unbroken blood & soil ancestry, would read Daniel Defoe’s 18th century definition of the True Born Englishman: www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44081/...

“On Thursday, the CJP's Instagram account crossed 10 million followers, overtaking the official account of the BJP - widely described as the world's largest political party by membership - which has around 8.7 million Instagram followers.” www.bbc.com/news/article...

Labour lost almost four times as many voters to the Greens as they did to Reform UK in the local elections, according to new YouGov polling

my latest article: "Conversion as Translation and Transference: Becoming Muslim in Colonial India." 🙏 @amandazillo.bsky.social, Harini Kumar, SherAli Tareen, & @rajbirsinghjudge.bsky.social & the editors of CSSAAME @dukepress.bsky.social nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com?url=https%3A...

New special section of CSSAME on "Methodologies of the 'Everyday' in South Asian Islam" co-edited by Harini Kumar and me is now out! Featuring articles from Mudit Trivedi, Ali Altaf Mian, Elizabeth Lhost & Taushif Kara, Harini and me, with a post-script by Shahzad Bashir. Check it out here!

This is where the absence of strategic oversight hits: in what way is it wise for the UK to lose expertise in China?

Just a reminder, emotions historians take note. Please continue to circulate the cfp.

December 2023: 54% of Americans support economic and military aid to Israel. 38% opposed. (+16) May 2026: 37% of Americans support aid to Israel. 57% opposed. (-20) A *36-point* net shift against aid to Israel in less than three years.

London friends: Who were the Indian Muslim travellers of Victorian London? "Elsewhere in London," an exhibition exploring the multicultural legacies of 19th-century London. Developed and curated by some personal friends. Featuring a talk on 'lascars' by the public historian, Asif Shakoor.

daaaamn london

What do English grads do with their 'useless' degrees? Oh right! They become politicians, lawyers, execs in tech firms, civil servants, academics. They teach, write books, do journalism, work in advertising & communications, the Health Service and, oh yes, become top diplomats!

The 'America First' strategy in the US is accelerating scientific research exchange between Europe and China according to Max Planck Society. www.scmp.com/news/china/s...

Two events; two days! Sydney in November! Call for papers deadline coming up soon!

The German chancellor said he would dissuade his children from moving to the US given the 'social climate developing there'. Friedrich Merz added: 'I am a big admirer of the US. But my admiration is currently not growing.' ft.trib.al/c7Cd0aU

Weird not to see real estate expansion projects, chatbot TAs, or ed-tech privatization on this report of what makes university experience valuable to students

'London’s Wellcome Collection is to restitute 2,000 manuscripts that had been acquired in 1919 at “a low price” from a Jain temple in what is now Pakistan. This represents the largest group of Jain manuscripts outside South Asia.' 1/3

Perfect metaphor. Twitter has fully morphed into a Habermosh-pit at a neo-Nazi skinhead concert. Niche platforms like Bluesky will never match the reach of Twitter or Facebook at their peak, but that doesn't mean it can't be a pleasant place to hang out, talk about cool shit, and learn new things.

Who would have thought it?

Very proud to announce the publication of my first book, "Feeling Like Lovers: Affect in Medieval Sufism." Buy it from @ucpress.bsky.social for 30% discount (use promo code UCPSAVE30) at: www.ucpress.edu/books/feelin... And, its open access! Download for free: webfiles.ucpress.edu/oa/978052042...

Lamine Yamal waves Palestine flag as Barcelona celebrate La Liga win https://aje.news/kxmj5o

Responses to statement "AI is the next industrial revolution" in 2022: blank stares 2024: half-nods 2026: open boos

Partha Chatterjee on the stripping of voter rolls in the WB election

Always a bit pathetic when a big Premier Club celebrates having avoided relegation on the final matchday.

Excellent analysis from my BBC elections team colleague and YouGov data guru @patrick-pme.bsky.social on what the local elections data tells us about whether Labour is losing more to Greens or Reform. Spoiler alert: its the Greens open.substack.com/pub/patricke...

To be clear since the headline isn't: a study that claimed GenAI was good for learning, actually, turns out to have been bullshit.

Tagore's Asian Universalism failed to take hold 100 years ago, but his thought is perhaps worth revisiting at the dawn of the Asian century. thewire.in/history/tago...

Shamelessly getting back on the social media to say that my imperial history of military medicine is imminently about to be published: press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...

Sky News projecting a national vote share for Reform of 27%, based on results so far. That’s four points down on what they achieved in local elections last year. Somewhat of a counter to the prevailing narrative. More evidence that Reform appears to have peaked.

If you published a book on legal history in *2025,* please nominate it for a 2026 ASLH prize! For US work: Cromwell Prize for early career authors & Reid Prize for mid- and senior career authors. For non-US work: Stein Award. Due June 1: aslh.net/award_type/b... #legalhistory

The strategy of rhetorically punching core supporters in the face going as predictable for the Labour Party

New arrival!

Important data point here: “A sharp fall in Labour's performance is accompanied more often by an above average Green performance than it is by a strong Reform performance”. The Greens have already hurt Labour even before any direct gains.