IMO, learning about non-Western craft traditions and styles can open our mind in terms of how we view and understand aesthetics. Many places have great traditions; they are just not covered enough in Western European and North American media.

A lot of attention is paid to craft traditions in Western Europe and North America, such as handsewn Hermes leather goods and bespoke Savile Row suits. But the uneven focus leads some to believe that things made outside of these places are low quality. This is not true. 🧵

I love my books dearly, but sometimes their presence taunts me with the selves I once was and the dreams I once dreamed.

I WILL get back to my seminar papers, but, 1st, 1 more quote from Pope Leo. For my deans and yours: "We must learn . . to protect our young people from the promise of the perfect machine, from that subtle temptation which renders human thought seemingly superfluous when it is most needed."

Has any woman ever bought a Cybertruck? Genuinely curious.

A postage box in a village on a small Scottish island that has been yarn bombed with a knitted PS Waverley, the last ocean-going paddle steamer still running (named after the Walter Scott novel.)

The comparison I heard was data centers using the same amount of water as golf courses, and for that I was all, my brother in Christ, let me tell you what I think we should do with golf courses

Corporate Retreat is a terrifying concept in and of itself, even without the new horror film attached to the title.

It's marking season. My academic epitaph will be 'Italics For Titles'.

The internet, smart phones, webs 1.0 2.0 3.0, the information super highway, all promised to liberate the individual from the stultifying oppression of mass culture. Yet here we are, with AI turning the world into one mass of stunted goo no one can escape.

Science publishing giant Elsevier has joined the dozens of firms and individuals suing artificial intelligence companies over their alleged use of copyrighted works in training AI models go.nature.com/4eFGLZK

In future, I shall just point my phone at a box of eighteenth-century manuscripts, and... oh, wait... absolutely nothing will happen.

What looks like “just old machinery” is actually a disappearing industrial craft. One that survives because a handful of people still know how to make it work.

One of the UK’s fully fashioned stocking factories appears to have closed — and it’s a reminder of how fragile vintage manufacturing knowledge really is. 🧵 whatkatiediduk.substack.com/

"This will transform historical research!" Cool but it's already being transformed out of existence by the same forces pushing these transformative technologies. Forgive us if we're skeptical of a moment that's telling us "This will help you do your work--which we despise--faster and better."

I know Sex and the City is pretty dated now, but living in New York, one can't help notice when SATC-like events happen. Today, for example, I'm going to see one of my gay neighbours at the Manolo Blahnik store where he works and will give me his discount. What are book royalties for if not shoes?

Can I interest you in a Viking resurrection egg in these trying times?

He writes 8 solid hours a day five days a week and has a staff of 35. Someone cleans his house, makes his meals, handles his admin, and does his laundry. One cannot compare oneself to Sanderson levels of output 😆

Remarking on a part of today’s discourse… the “AI” slop thieves stole and scraped over fifty (50!) of my novels and gods know how many years’ worth of my blog to “train” their plagiarism machine. So my writing may be labeled as “made by ‘AI’” due to the sheer scale of the theft. This infuriates me.

It lasted 12 hours before I was gently reminded of two outstanding tasks 😞

Hoop Skirt Zone Ahead

As of this moment I have no (none, zero, nada, 0) personal academic work due. This hasn't happened for ohhhhhh, a minimum of 18 months, maybe two years? There's things coming up but not for a bit. I genuinely don't quite even know how to feel this feeling. I'm listening to the sound of silence.

When you want to give fascist zillionaires a squillion pounds for dreck, but you aren’t sure how to go about doing it

Glad someone else thought this too. This is pretty much the green dress from the 2005 P&P, plus all its hand / nature / morning tropes.

New forecast from EPRI: data centers will consume 9% to 17% of U.S. electricity by 2030, up from 4% to 5% today. This is a 60% increase from last year's projection. Under existing policies, "incremental [power] supply is dominated by natural gas." powering-intelligence.epri.com

The long 2010s are finally over

The nicest thing about a snow day, and working while the college is officially closed, is that it's a snowbody bothering me day and I get more done.

a friend of mine posted this to me on facebook, god bless her...

FYI, Academia.edu has changed its terms of service to give an irrevocable worldwide license for anything uploaded to its site to be used for generative AI. I do not consent to this and have pulled all my papers.

So lemme tell you about @adapalmer.bsky.social's Inventing the Renaissance, which came out last year and absolutely blew me away. I'd replace half the 1st-year curriculum with this book. Reading it made me a better historian, and also the kind of person who underlines books. Plus, it's hilarious.

it's weird to see people complain about Bad Bunny's performance being in Spanish when there have been entire operas in Italian, German and French performed in the US and the top song of the last two years, K-Pop Demon Hunters' "Golden" has lyrics in Korean

Did you see this? I chose the decade of my late teens / early 20s too!

Holy shit. This is extremely relevant -- like, it's eerie how relevant -- to a story called "Lily the Immortal" by Kyile Lee Baker, that I narrated for It's Storytime last week.

Heathcliff is only written as 'dark'. In Bronte's day, that could have applied to Roma, black Irish, Welsh, Mediterranean, north African, western Asian, Indian, Black, and many more. Jacob Elordi is half Basque, a Spanish ethnic minority that would have been called 'dark' in Yorkshire.

Judging by the sound from the dudes in the apartment next door, something significant just happened in the Super Bowl

#TheVictorianBookoftheDead 1911 Mourning ensemble with hat and veil and muff. “The Grace that Lacks any Harshness of Line Makes Mourning Distinctive.”

Look at Norma Shearer in this get up. An absolute scorching knock out. From The Sketch, 1925.

GIVEAWAY! To celebrate Jonathan Anderson’s sophomore show from Dior's AW26 collection, we are giving away a copy of Paul Poiret: Inventing Modern Luxury by Mary E. Davis. To be in with a chance, like and share this post by midnight 31 January 2026. Winners will be DM'ed from this account only.

HUGE NEWS!!

Idk I kinda think we should bring beliefs like this back. Tell them we gotta fix global warming asap or the Leviathan will escape. We gotta sacrifice another billionaire to the ocean or the harvest will be bad and food will get more expensive

In anniversary news which I can’t quite verify, it may be 39 years (possibly more) since the Indian Air Force dressed their helicopters up as elephants for Republic Day

Reform genuinely out here arguing Suella Braverman can’t have a mental health condition because *checks notes* she’s well-educated and has a successful career. Try again, lads. Your bigotry is showing.

Late Afternoon On The Wolds. 4°C and heading home. Blackbirds in hedges.

My take on this in NYC is that people have suddenly realised they can't order anything in on Sunday and will have to cook for themselves.

"Newly filed internal documents show how Google viewed its work with schools as a way of turning children into lifelong customers..." www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-...

"My husband complains about the cold," the man said. "Can you teach me a spell to keep him warm?" "I can teach you to bind hair into a net to catch heat," the wizard said, "using arcane counting and a pair of fine wands." After a while, the man said "Isn't this knitting?" "This, too, is magic."

As our Bluebells wake it’s worth pointing out the rules 1 - Bluebells ring when fairies summon their kin. But if a human hears them your death will follow 2 - It is considered unwise to trample on bluebells, because you would anger the resting fairies & your death will follow

Last term I tried an experiment: I walked into my Tech and Design Ethics class, admitted that I had *no idea* what to do about ChatGPT - so I would let them figure it out. As in: their first project was to decide and write the ChatGPT policy for the class. Here's what happened: