BBCNews fails to mention Orban being "right wing" let alone authoritarian, once in this article. Apparently Orban just "ran out of steam". Nothing about him dismantling democracy, politicising the courts & universities, or banning independent media. No mention of Putin! www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Nigel and his nasty authoritarian pals want us, and the EU, weaker out. But as the world becomes more uncertain, and our traditional alliances crumble, the UK is clearly stronger in.

Can't believe it's been a year since the publication of my book, The Destruction of Medieval Manuscripts in England! 📖 Run to your local bookstore to buy your copy 🏃‍♀️ but actually don't 😊 because the whole book is free to download from Oxford's site: 🎉 🙌 🎂 academic.oup.com/book/59790?l...

Only 2 more days to submit your paper proposals for our 'The Church and Race' Summer Conference at Royal Holloway, University of London (13–15 July 2026). Don’t miss the deadline! ecclesiasticalhistorysociety.com/26summer/ #HistoryConference #CFP #SkyStorians

The point of the university as a concept is that it's been here for a thousand years and meant to be here another thousand. Turning education over to producing what the market needed five years ago is never going to work well.

Magyar says he’s starting work with the EU and NATO immediately. “The EU doesn’t have to worry anymore.”

Ido not understand what this means in practise. the 4 freedoms? What is in and what is out?

Hungary: TISZA now projected to get 137 seats out of 199. 4 seats beyond the needed 133 super majority to amend the Constitution and replace all Orban loyalists in the government. Orban is done. Magyar will be the new Prime Minister of Hungary.

This is the work. Harm reduction and outright resistance.

Hungary has chosen Europe. Europe has always chosen Hungary. A country reclaims its European path. The Union grows stronger.

Woop! Woop!

We can't have them forriners showing us how thick we are.* *Not my view, I hasten to add.

The Home Office' anti-immigration agenda is strangling growth across the economy. It prevents a closer relationship with Europe, deprives us of the workers we need and undermines universities. getting-out-of-the-hole.uk/labours-red-...

Racism, incompetence and cruelty are always integrally linked. The “efficiency” of the cruelty in racist (or authoritarian) systems is dependent on the incompetence of administrators. Kafka recognised and described this perfectly. See also apartheid SA, Soviet Union, that place across the pond.

If it’s such a ‘gold mine’ why did the 14 year period of the last Conservative government, throughout which it pursued a policy of issuing licenses and maximising oil and gas production, end up being defined by austerity and the worst wage growth since the Napoleonic era?

The Telegraph just gave a convicted criminal a two-page spread to explain why he's pumping £4 million into Reform UK. They tucked his criminal record away in the small print. So as a former financial crime specialist I’ll do their job for them👇

you ever notice how media uses this weird framing when talking about men and boys? it's always, "hmm, women are doing better according to this specific metric. how do we help men get back on top?"

First Plato—now Dr. Peterson—out the door at Texas A&M! Who’s next? Here is Dr. Peterson’s letter of resignation, which he just shared with the faculty.

I AM GOING TO SCREAM

🗃️

10 April 1583: At the assizes in Essex, a gentleman called Thomas Tusser from Tolleshunt is tried for giving forth false prophecies - the text is in the image. Political prophecy still seems rather a neglected topic, and this one is certainly cryptic (an elephant in ... 1/ #earlymodern Source:

we’re winning

Some help with these two words would be much appreciated. TIA #PalaeographyChallenge Text in the Alt text.

Praise be! Starmer finds backbone "because of the actions of Putin or Trump" + citing Brexit. But why, oh why, BBC, are you uncritically citing Reform & Tories on "North Sea drilling" without examining this as not making a difference to prices or energy security? 1/ www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

The British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research Grants is now open for applications, supported by DSIT, @leverhulme.ac.uk and @wellcometrust.bsky.social. Apply now: https://bit.ly/4t0MDRl

Book bans often target women's stories (Handmaid's Tale, Color Purple, The Hill We Climb) and women's stories are also absent in school curricula. Where state standards focus on women in history, they emphasize domestic roles, rather than women's work or activism. progressive.org/public-schoo...

NATO SG Rutte, has concluded his Trump visit of personal debasement. In the org's history there's never been a more supine weak embarrassing SG. His praising of Trump is pure MAGA. Meanwhile here's what Trump has actually done..

💯 this.

Schools are like "hey lock up your cell phones they're too damaging to the learning process. now please open up your lying plagiarism machine and start generating content"

'there have been only 29,900 [sponsored study visa] applications in the first three months of the year. This is 31 per cent less than the 43,100 in the same period in 2025, and 36 per cent below 2022 levels.'

That we have arrived at the idea of the Trump regime decapitating the Roman Catholic Church by deposing its first American pope must, at long last, be too much We are not just in a computer program, but more specifically in a random scenario generator

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has called for the EU to end its Association Agreement with Israel.

Among the most depressing things I've read for a while (and there's a lot of depressing news). We shouldn't treat students like this. www.theguardian.com/education/ng...

*UK.

stares in Danish...

The University of Iowa's new Center for Intellectual Freedom appears to be off to a rocky start in terms of enrolling students. They also went over budget on alcohol and food for their introductory event, which isn't surprising when faculty and legislators get together.

This is making me feel sick. So, we're banning people coming from places we dragged their ancestors to in chains because they want some education & help for their country when the interest on the UL govt loan to compensate owners was paid off only in 2015? Right!

I know we need agents for this. But these cowboys now are just demanding whatever they like, to the harm of institutions and individuals alike. If there were literally *any* oversight and universities not made this desperate, so much human hurt would be avoided.

Quote of the week!

Anyone else out there spending ridiculous amounts of their own money on books because it's actually cheaper than making long journeys to collect and return them to the library (esp if you need them more than once)?* *And that includes physical books when ebooks are available because I hate them.

In case you missed it, we had an eventful Easter! 16 million of our records, including our massive collection of wills, are now available to search and view on Ancestry.com (and can be accessed for free onsite at the Borthwick). www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

You have to go back to how, in 2016, Iran was at the centre of an agreed international deal blocking its nuclear-weapons development. Then Trump tore it up, for absolutely no reason. Then he gave Afghanistan back to the Taliban. And now…

WWIII seems to have been averted, at least for a day or two. The birds are singing loudly. The sun is shining outside. R3 has just played this. It's looking like a good day so far. open.spotify.com/track/076qGS...

The US has declared victory, saying it has achieved its objectives of spending tens of billions of dollars and causing thousands of deaths in order to return things to roughly as they were before the war started. Read more: theshovel.com.au/2026/04/08/us-claims-huge-victory-straight-of-hormuz/

You may wonder why the Europeans aren't responding more forcefully to JD Vance in Budapest 1/ Because Orban looks set to lose & any EU intervention could be counterproductive 2/ Because the US is so far beyond the pale - Greenland, Iran, Ukraine etc. The EU is quietly moving on

americans only save the world in movies

is trump getting a kickback on that

Aaron Swartz was hounded and persecuted by overzealous prosecutors for a mass JSTOR download until he committed suicide. Sam Altman says that he deserves to violate copyright law in perpetuity because otherwise he can't make a fortune from a large language model. We are in the wrong timeline.

Working the morning shift as a scholar in 1540, a browser tab and a word document opened on two screens, other needed texts opened and handy, an overfull mail account nearby, and a hot beverage in reach to make for the best working condition. Bonus: wearing a thinking hat. #academicchatter

US Vice President JD Vance in Hungary claims Ukrainian intelligence is trying to influence US and Hungarian elections, calling on voters to support Viktor Orban in the upcoming vote. #Hungary