Kendrick Oliver @koushist.bsky.social reviews 'After the Flying Saucers Came: A Global History of the UFO Phenomenon', by Greg Eghigian @gegh.bsky.social academic.oup.com/ehr/advance-... @academic.oup.com

I'm teaching a new class next week on the confirmation of Einstein's theory of general relativity by the British expedition to observe the 1919 total solar eclipse. (thread 1/11)

On the subject of Tom Stoppard: I have never seen The Real Inspector Hound, despite performing in the play at sixth-form college. I was the corpse, and had to keep my eyes shut throughout.

Some seriously deep cuts played tonight by Gen X indie cognoscenti faves The Clientele, in front of a suitably reverent audience at St Pancras Old Church. Next time, though, I'm bringing a cushion. Church seating is less forgiving than church doctrine.

I attended a very touching memorial service for my PhD supervisor, Michael Dockrill, today. Michael died seven years ago. He was a model supervisor: kind, humourous and supportive (and prompt with feedback).

Off to buy my son a new cricket helmet, to keep him safe when he watches the Ashes highlights

Please support and share this petition to help save American Studies teaching at The University of Nottingham. Staff are facing redundancy. The expertise that would be lost would be monumental. Please sign. c.org/26qjPmffNy

This is true

When two dogs snuggle up against you, one on each side, and then fall asleep, are you allowed to move?

We have two dogs in our house at the moment, one ours, one a guest. If I sit on the sofa with my guitar, they immediately turn up and demand to be petted. Two dogs, two hands required, guitar goes away. It's a service they provide to the community, I think.

Reading Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America, a novel set against the imagined backdrop of Charles Lindbergh’s ascension to the Presidency in 1940 on an ‘America First’ platform, reminded me of a striking passage in Lindbergh’s posthumously-published Autobiography of Values,... Thread (1/15)

That time you wake up and read a headline and think, 'Ooh, that speaks to my expertise.' But also 'There goes my day'. But, in this case, I'm no expert. Speak to Dan.

I am currently in Malmesbury Abbey, and a local choir is rehearsing. There is some gentle swaying, and people are playing recorders.

I spent a nice afternoon at the Wallace Collection. Some brilliant Jan Steens and Reynolds portraits, alongside a cabinet of Asante loot and this, um, striking enamel plaque showing the Virgin and child:

Guardian nails it:

A reminder, if anyone needs it, that nearly two million Americans bought this record in 1971: youtu.be/4JoacW7woBY?...

Currently reading Philip Roth's The Plot Against America on my morning commute: at night, Sinclair Lewis's It Couldn't Happen Here. And between those, for zero light relief, the news.

I was very touched to receive my cricket club's annual 'person of the year' award last night. Not batter of the year, nor bowler, not even close to those.

Go work for Rachel!

Presumably someone finally pointed out that I'd never been invited onto the show. Glad he did the decent thing.

My article explaining the disturbing similarities between what happened to Japanese Americans in #WWII & today's #USA @hotcus.bsky.social @historyatsoton.bsky.social @universityofexeter.bsky.social @officialbaas.bsky.social @unisouthampton.bsky.social theconversation.com/why-japanese...

It's getting late for American democracy. The point is not crime in DC. The point is what else is there.

I'm sure this will be life-changing for some, but please, don't ever make my inner voice audible. It's nasal, neurotic and never shuts up.

Watching American sports on TV and thinking where do parents come up with these first names, and then remembering my own first name

The museum attached to the Cross in the Woods shrine in Indian River, MI. Rooms full of dolls and mannequins dressed in the habits of different Catholic orders, 500+ of them. Quite unsettling.

A single Kendrick dis track could destroy ICE

My American-in-laws, after every Christmas and summer vacation

Invite twenty or so 20 year olds, mostly girls, into your garden for a day-long celebration of your daughter's birthday, and you start willing deafness upon yourself remarkably swiftly.

On my way to this. The Midlands go on a bit, don't they?

I scored my very first half-century at cricket yesterday, at the age of 54. Nice to know that the sixth decade is not completely a story of slow decline and diminishing achievement. Sometimes it can be a sequence of fluky shots on a beautiful batting wicket and a hard, fast outfield.

It's also about bringing more institutions into a state of complicity with the administration's actions. If you can get the National Guard, LAPD and the Marines to the point where they fear political reversal because of the accounting it might bring for themselves, any reversal will take more work.

Well, it turns out there are still some reliable sources of joy in life. The music of Talking Heads, for example, played live by a tight band, ideally with one or two original personnel present. Jerry Harrison and Adrian Belew at O2 Indigo this evening: a real delight.

What are the chances USS bought shares in Tesla yesterday?

Currently registering the gentle blessing of having a fully fenced-in garden and moderate weather at a time when our dog has a stomach upset.

That the French, the Germans, the Spanish - any non-Anglophone foreigner - actually thought in English and translated those thoughts into a different, made-up spoken language out of spite and/or to hide their true intentions from me.

Edgar Feuchtwanger had already retired from the History Department at Southampton by the time I got there, some 30 years ago. But he's still with us and his story is quite the thing... www.theguardian.com/world/2025/m...

This is always good. I'll be going, but don't let that put you off.

Mark Eitzel was in fantastic form at the Mid Sussex Music Hall in Hassocks tonight. But WTF is one of the stand-out singer-songwriters of the past 40 years playing the Mid Sussex Music Hall in Hassocks? It was lovely, but in a just world, he'd be selling out the Brighton Dome at least.

Transpacific container spot rates becoming the new COVID R value, huh? Plan to drop some of these into my conversations today.

Delighted to see this article out in the world, drawn in part from a very fine Southampton PhD thesis: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Joan Didion on My Lai: that would have been something to read.

I thought Will Jennings was quite the modern Renaissance man. Turns out I have been following two different Will Jennings, both now fatally diminished in my eyes.

Luce has been very good on the unfolding crisis in the US. It looks to me right now that this is a race: can Trump (or more precisely Miller) build the structures of an authoritarian state quick enough to chill the growing popular opposition and then mop up the opposition’s key leaders?

A thread for science/cosmology nerds… This is a page from Powers of Ten, a book published in 1982 to explain in more detail the concept behind the film of the same name, released in 1978.

FWIW, some comments on the OAH conference in Chicago. A thread...

I'm out of contact with the world for one day, travelling, and the whole post-war economic order collapses. Next time I'm paying for in-plane WiFi and roaming. You guys can't be trusted.

Subject to the discretion of US Border Protection, I plan to be at the OAH conference in Chicago this week. I'll be contributing to a panel on ‘Sky Life: The Cosmic Dimension in US History' on April 5 at 10.30. If you are at the OAH and would like a chat about your work (or mine), drop me a DM.

I am culling my library, but decided to read my copy of Bertrand Russell's memoirs (Vol 1) before disposing of it. I’m not sure why: the book has sat on the shelf for nearly 40 years without me taking any interest in it. I'm glad I bothered, just for the clipped weirdness of passages like this:

What better way to celebrate a family birthday than to go together to the theatre to see Elektra, a play in which (spoiler alert) a father kills one of his children, his wife kills him, and two of their children kill her (and her lover). Followed by tapas.

Congratulations Paul, Weiss et al. You have produced a text suitable for many future gobbet/source commentary assignments.