Incredibly important read; the choices made by Johnson and his government during the first year of #covid to ignore and act against scientific data & guidance go beyond failures, into negligence.

Might be the greatest opening paragraph of anything ever.

The genocide isn’t over. Although the Israeli government has expanded its Gaza playbook to Iran and Lebanon, the Israeli military is still carrying out a genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.

Tiny fossil seashell imprint on a Brighton beach pebble.

146 workers died in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire on this day in 1911. The bosses responsible were never held accountable for the awful working conditions that sparked the blaze. Remember this today as politicians and their corporate backers attack workplace safety.

I bet the Dread Pirate Roberts is buried under a carpark somewhere.

The dividing-line for respectable leftist contemplation of the Bolshevik Revolution is between people who think the repression of the Kronstadt Rising was the beginning of the end, and people who think it was the last straw.

Help! Like the great who?

TAG 2026 is go! Excited to be hosting in Exeter this year, 14-16 December. Get those session proposal thinking caps on!

#OtD 22 Mar 1974 Scottish workers in the East Killbride Rolls Royce factory refused to work on plane parts from Pinochet's Chile. They kept the refusal up for 4 years, leaving the engines outside to rust, before they went missing one night stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/9498...

It’s the last week to see Emergency Exits at the Imperial War Museum, which explores decolonisation in Kenya, Cyprus and Malaya and which I was lucky enough to consult on as a part of a team of imperial historians. Go and see it if you can — it’s really great!

Our disturbingly adorable Bonhomme Hiver, a rare instance of Europeans burning stuff without being overtly sectarian or racist about it.

the vengeful pillow by Edward Gorey

Love love LOVE my research.

mill's dedication: this is a jointly authored work a century & a half of male editors: mill exaggerated out of a sentimental fondness for his wife mill's letters: no, really, most of "my" work was partly by her, i really could not be clearer on this

Just flagging up this great digitisation on a budget guide from the HLF for small organisations: www.heritagefund.org.uk/funding/good...

RIP Len Deighton. If you haven't read Bomber or Winter, both are well worth a read.

NEW The Melsonby Hoards, one of Britain's largest #IronAge metalwork deposits, made the news last year when their discovery was announced, and now the analysis is published in Antiquity! Learn how they change our understanding of Iron Age Britain in this #AntiquityThread 1/10 🧵 🏺 #Archaeology

The German Peasants' War (1524-26) was the largest uprising in Western Europe before the French Revolution. Lyndal Roper recalls how a cycle ride around Germany helped her to appreciate the sheer scale of its history.

If you want a picture of the future, imagine a pussycat stamping on your keyboard - forever.

Social model of disability superseded by the sybaritic model.

The Archaeologists found pins by the millions while meticulously stripping a portion of Manhattan worked over by women who mended between appointments:

Archaeologist? No, I’m an

Here is my best Habermas story. I am grad student waiting in LONG line for Habermas talk. There is a tall man waiting in front of me. Line moves so we are eventually visible to organizers, a woman looks over & makes horrified face. Runs out: "Prof Habermas! You don't have to wait in line!"

Applications are now open to join our 2026 UCL Master's programme in human evolution. Covering the Palaeolithic, Palaeoanthropology & other key disciplines, the course is designed to equip you for a career in the deep human past. #PaPa 🦣📷https://tinyurl.com/5duy6twh

Up late eating Pom-Bears and watching Das Boot.

One of the great things we have at OU Classical Studies is scholarships for MA students who are either teachers working in state schools or UK Black, Asian or Minority Ethnic students. You can find out more and apply here: www.open.ac.uk/blogs/classi...

*slaps roof of former insane asylum* this bad boy can fit so much imperialism and war in it

Goethe get me one of these

Archaeologists digging up the Ultramarine Factory Julius Curtius in Duisburg. www.facebook.com/LVR.LandesMu... de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_...

Me trying to write 2 books at the same time:

There are two things you can do right now to support young trans people in England. 1) Engage in political advocacy and community support. I've got *loads* of advice on this in my blog post and zine "But what can I do? How to fight the trans panic".

Cold Comfort Farm immunised me against folk horror.

The NHS has now stopped all medication - puberty blockers and hormones - for trans minors. For most, unless they get drugs from other sources, this means a lifetime, in an increasingly violent and transphobic society, unable to pass. Under Wes Streeting NHS policy is harm and death for trans people.

I don’t want to explain homophobia to my kids. It’s disgusting and unnatural and makes them upset.

At peak play-writing Shakespeare was eating a hundredweight of coal a day, quill glowing white hot and sparks shooting out of his arse.

Building for the Atomic Age. An exploration of the industrial archaeology of Britain’s ‘atomic age’: the physical traces of what remains and what has been lost of this endeavour. 🧪 🏺💙📚

"Air raids are not only wrong. They are loathsome and disgusting. If you had ever seen a child smashed by a bomb into something like a mixture of dirty rags and cat’s meat you would realize this fact as intensely as I do." - J.B.S. Haldane, 1938.

“Daddy is infinity a number?” Ffs I’m not prepared for this.

I am quite tired of being subjected to the worthless, imbecilic and mealy-mouthed statements of the day drunks, coke heads, racists, islamophobes, bigots, cowards and empty suits who have been elevated to our halls of power. What a massive waste of time and human life

Today’s research rabbit-hole is the life of the Marquess Moscati, who assisted at a mummy-unrolling in London in 1833. Good lord.

Shenanigans and shade-throwing at the London Phrenological Society, 1833.

Building a prison out of prisoners' own hair demonstrates either a terrifying knowledge of magic, or an equally terrifying ignorance of magic.

everyone enjoying the unhinged genocidal Islamophobia going around? good times.

Only a small and comparatively recent element of UK archaeological research is purely academic. Today, the overwhelming majority is conducted within professional archaeology. Meanwhile UK avocational archaeology has 200+ years of national and regional associations, publications, and collections.

people dying people torn apart people in utter terror

Maybe it’s because I’m a colonial historian but so many of these white nation states seem to behave exactly like they did in the 19th century: ‘your leaders aren’t right for you,’ ‘we’re only killing you/colonizing you/installing puppet leaders for your own good’

Imperial War Museum living up to their name with exhibition Emergency Exits: The Fight for Independence in Malaya, Kenya and Cyprus. Contributors include some of my lovely @museumofbc.bsky.social mates.