I regret to inform you that 'misunderstanding the end of the Roman Empire' is alive and well in the Other/Bad Place.

WHY ARE YOU ANNOYED THIS IS WHAT YOU WANTED TO HAPPEN

Bad isn’t it that it really isn’t clear if Russia and China are allies with the USA or Venezuela…

Since his FIFA peace trophy looks like someone with their head in their hands it makes pics like this even funnier

Me: Is there no depths of stupidity that people will not go to? The internet:

The Nobel Prize committee should announce the World Cup winner tomorrow

Nobel vs FIFA

This has enormous potential for other sports/Nobel prizes crossovers: The World Athletics Prize for Chemistry, International Cricket Council Prize for Medicine, etc etc…

They’re an anarcho-syndicalist commune. They take it in turns to act as a sort of executive officer for the week. But all the decisions have to be ratified at a special biweekly meeting. By a simple majority in the case of purely internal affairs, but by a two-thirds majority in the case of more…

“All right, then. Pens down. Father O'Shea, you didn't stop writing. You're disqualified.”

Happy Friday to one and all except the person whose burnt food tech caused a fire alarm during Biblical levels of rain #TeacherProblems

When the cover email comes through #TeacherProblems

Big commotion at the end of school today. Large group from all years crowding around a bench. Wander over as it potentially looks like a problem… They’re all looking at a pigeon. #TeacherProblems

Me, being a Head of Year that seems to have been struck by the plague* *That was a Y9’s description, not mine. #TeacherProblems

For when you just can’t have an English enough headline.

can't believe the BBC edited Donald Trump's posts to make it seem like he threatened violence against members of Congress

It's corruption only it comes from the Corruptian Mountains of Eastern Europe, otherwise it is just a sparkling gold bar.

Loving the effort that this guy put into his union election pitch.

Kinda fun that the endgame of QAnon was turning the government over to pedophiles

Well, it's a little clearer now why billionaires are so invested in technology that produces better written emails.

The ghosts of 27 million Soviets are jamming line one...

Liz Truss was Prime Minister for 49 days, departing in October 2022. Today marks her fourth appearance as a former Prime Minister at the Rememberance Day service. Liz Truss is 50. If she lives to be 96, she will have spent more days attending the service than actually being Prime Minister. /1

One for those* interested in the niche crossover of father/son Lake District antiquarians/philosophers of history. *(I suspect the Venn diagram of those into both WG Collingwood and Robin Collingwood is a circle with just my name in it)

The next edition of the paper (13 November, 1989) was just as muted.

My annual post about how the Morning Star reported the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 hatfulofhistory.com/2014/11/07/h...

At this time of year some of the stuff you see (mainly from the excellent @mascotsilence.bsky.social and @remembrancewatch.bsky.social accounts) always makes me think of Sergeant Detritus at the site of Koom Valley in Thud:

Is it just… humans?

Really glad that the wheel of fortune has turned again and we are back to telling students to put blazers on after years of telling them to take their coats off…

There are few things you need more today than a court transcript of someone on trial for assaulting a US federal agent with… a sandwich.

You laugh, but this is how the exododus went extinct

Isn’t it also a myth that the imperial civil service was tiny? Amongst all the other many problems with this…

I’m still not entirely clear which side is laughing and which side is crying…

Just finished The Death of Yugoslavia on iPlayer. Cannot recommend it enough. (I think one of the reasons it hits home hard is that I can’t get away from the fact that the small children seen living through the descent into hell are the same age as me).

Appreciate this is not the main point here but I’m not convinced that Musk understands one of the central themes of the Lord of the Rings.

So inevitable it has already happened. Several times.

Proof that, given enough time, everything gets clouded with nostalgia. By 2050 there’ll be pandemic lockdown Facebook nostalgia groups. “Yeah, thousands of people died and we couldn’t leave our homes. But weren’t Joe Wicks workout videos great?”

I know I say every half term was the longest ever but seriously that one tested that idea almost to destruction.

This, but for ceasefires, international diplomacy, and indeed tariffs.

This whole article made me so angry. My memory of that week in March 2020 was like being on a rollercoaster that was out of control. My memories of the entire year 2020-21 was of a veneer of organisation thinly disguising chaos, and for Johnson to admit it was all a mess really boils my blood.

Devastating news for those like me who were sure Taylor could fix them.

The Japanese Crown Jewels are even better because they're so sacred that even the Emperor isn't allowed to see them (they're presented to him in little boxes at his enthronement) and they also might not even actually exist.

How nobody has looked at a medieval crown which not only has a curse against usurpers but possibly used that power to finish off a senior Nazi and not seen a potential film I do not know.

Does this mean Trump has to reduce the number of wars he has ended back down again?*

Not sure putting yourself in the company of Napoleon (also crowned himself) is a good look.