I really enjoyed talking about Ghosts Behind Glass on Thursday in Stockholm. Was great fun to bring their own natural history museum’s display into conversation with the book. I’m looking forward to doing this at more venues. Some bookings already for Feb in UK. I’d welcome more invites to do so!

Opening for a tenure-track assistant professor in the history of science, with a preferred focus on water issues: 👇 #HistSTM

My Space Quest site, Roger Wilco's Virtual Broomcloset, launched 30 years ago this month. That makes it one of the oldest video game fan sites on the web. To celebrate the milestone, I've updated the site for the first time in ages with tons of new content. Check it out! wiw.org/~jess/roger.html

When Bashir told Garak about the boy who cried wolf.

Did you take part in a mock election at your UK school or college between 1983 and 2001? Share your memories for a research project on young people and democracy in modern Britain! Write to us about your experiences here: forms.office.com/e/FNAwjfFR7f

Always makes me crylol whenever I'm back in Britain and my phone suddenly starts asking me to show how old I am.

Actually, folks, this is not phrenology (feeling the bumps on the skull) as people are saying in comments, it is physiognomy en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physiog... a similarly exploded 'science'. (What it is to be C19th quackery nerd.)

What a queen

This is like when they make me worried I've missed mother's day...

Born in a small town in Yorkshire. Have 4 BAFTAs. Left UK because felt like the country was bad at celebrating and supporting its creatives! 🤷‍♂️ (*Moved to US. They love creatives here! We just got to pay for our own healthcare and all that 🫠)

Andrew to lose 'prince' title

My personal version of “men think that they could have a fistfight with a bear and win” is that I think I would come across OK in a Chotiner interview

Having spent time looking at other germanic languages for the past few years, English needs to bring back/adopt: * distinction between sing. and pl. "you" * distinction between "yes" and "yea" / "no" and "nay" * compound words without spaces

Half the problem with discourse in the UK and the US is that the word "political" is used completely incorrectly. Yes, human rights are political. It is politics. My political position is that they're good, actually. It's fine! It's not a bad word!

Also, allowing for the fact that "best selling" charts always contain dross, the UK is doing substantially better than the US on this. I'll follow Alex into the Karaoke booth with some of these bangers.

Genuinely delighted to download a PhD thesis from a university repository where the author has neglected to remove the words "BITCH THIS IS YOUR THESIS" from the filename.

When did "speak to" replace "talk about" in academic speech?

once again: I put most of my teaching efforts into coming up with jokes and the weekly deadpan reactions cut deep

The wonderful @jaakkostenros.bsky.social has pointed to this as "accidental gender studies", which is accurate. If the vast majority of your respondents belong to a single gender group, you're not just studying their non-gendered reference group (e.g. players, teachers).

Poppyrami

Oh no. Nobody likes to see that.

If you campaign to abolish tuition fees, tax the rich, up funding for the NHS, nationalise water, you'll soon have a briefcase wanker Labour MP come tell you how actually all of that is very complicated. If you shave your head and scream "send the buggers back" outside a hotel, not so much

Consider how few anecdotes it took for the media to declare a Free Speech on Campus crisis. Every day we get more evidence that the Republican Party is teeming with white supremacists yet elite institutions refuse to frame this as a crisis that needs the nation’s attention.

800 words please on why this proves the Labour and Conservative strategy to primarily target Reform voters is working perfectly.

I know the BBC is terrified of being accused of bias, but what is the point of running a story like this if you're not going to tell us which one of them God favoured

Each one of those 98/99% of failed applications represents dozens or hundreds of hours of work for the actual applicant; a vast stack of emails about budgeting, cost-centres, reviews, approvals, HR, Finance Office, Research Support... Pissed. Up. A. Wall. For the sake of only picking "winners".

"Valve just updated CSGO to let you trade up reds ($10 skins) into knives ($1000+ skins)"

everyone is twelve (laudatory)

Prince Andrew is taking it well, I see, father.

As I tell my students, historically speaking, the % of British women who never have children has been remarkably stable for the last 100 years in the face of huge demographic shifts. Women having kids later gets confused with a significant rise in childlessness that's not yet happening #skystorians

Sometimes you have to just gasp in horror. It's not that she just ignores her own family history. It's that she understands it, has discussed it with her actual refugee grandfather, & still thinks he's not just wrong, but "nuts", & her vile exclusionary racism is good. Completely conscious evil.

(if anyone would like to maybe start some sort of campaigning or pressure group of and on behalf of immigrants with ILR and settled status in Britain then I would be interested in helping, or indeed trying to get it off the ground myself, email in bio, etc)

Re: US Nazi tattoo. The reason you bring up "purity" stuff is to see how people respond. For example, it's absolutely right that "hypnotits" became a talking point. But Polanski has engaged with it and tried to show how he's learned from it. Not tripled down as he rapidly becomes a giant corn cob.

student feedback

Well well well

Lots of snobs will come out and say horrible things but actually this is a really bad news story. If uk economy can’t sustain what should be affordable family restaurant chains something has gone badly wrong. It will be a combination of bad landlords, bad private equity & increasing business taxes

Grimly amused by the number of people with various transphobia tags reposting this, especially given these two panels

egregious example of post hog justification

#OTD October 20, 1946, elections were held across Soviet Occupied Germany and in Allied Occupied Berlin. These were the last competitive elections in the Soviet Zone and marked a turning point leading to the creation of the German Democratic Republic as a socialist dictatorship.

A lot of centrist commentators who genuinely got worked up about the unforgivably insulting nature of "cling to guns and religion" or "basket of deplorables" are weirdly silent about Trump portraying himself as literally shitting on American cities

It seems pointless to fact check someone saying "curry isn't proper British food like fish and chips", just like it's futile to correct someone saying "there are no pronouns in the Bible". They haven't made a mistake. What they're saying is, "Britain is a white country".

Before the Taylor Report after 1989’s Hillsborough disaster, the Popplewell Inquiry investigated crowd safety at UK football grounds in 1985. Alongside a fire at Bradford City’s ground, a cause for the inquiry was a riot at Birmingham’s St Andrew’s ground. bradfordcityfire.co.uk/2012/09/popp...

If you're going to embelish your backstory, don't do it about professional sport...

Can I say "I'm Italian I've been to literal Rome" is my favourite way that I've ever seen someone write "I'm American"

Dress for the job you want

We're excited to announce the call for papers for #MBS26, the next Modern British Studies conference, at Birmingham in June 2026. We'll be launching the #MBS Association at this event, to support further regular conferences in Modern British Studies. www.birmingham.ac.uk/events/moder...