It never ceases to confound me just how many folks think the point of essays is to provide teachers with essays. That teachers just like, collect them, or need them for sustenance or something. Rather than the point of them being the *actual fucking act of learning how to think about shit*

Fascinating research - revealing graphically how religious affiliation today bears witness to the history of empire building and colonisation. www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/...

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.

The Scausländer (a delightful Anglo-German wordplay on Scouse + Ausländer/foreigner) is the @liverpooluni.bsky.social's German student newspaper. Our Honorary Consul in Liverpool Dorothea Mücke-Herzberg took part in the paper's fifth anniversary celebrations – Herzlichen Glückwunsch to the team!

Find my new recipe for Turnip Pottage, based on Richard II's recipe. A little spicy and surprisingly moreish. 😋😋😋 Plus a brief history of the turnip in medieval England. You know you've always wanted to know about this subject! 😆 modernmedievalcuisine.com/2026/01/18/t...

Kenneth Williams: born 100 years ago today.

If you liked this experiment, I published a full piece today in the same vein: a text that gets 100 years older with every section, from a modern blog post to a medieval chronicle. It's a single story spanning 1000 years of English. See how far you get. www.deadlanguagesociety.com/p/how-far-ba...

In unserer Partnerstadt #Lemberg gab es einen Terroranschlag ~ zusätzlich zu den Luftangriffen. #Freiburg

Cheese spread triangles.

BBC News - Newcastle pubs ban AI art from breweries to protect local creatives - BBC News www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

discrete = separate discreet = unobtrusive The E's are SEPARATED by the T in 'discrete.'

An event to bring together current, recent and future Welsh History postgrads in Swansea. Any queries just let me know! Signup here: forms.office.com/e/jBcZ05m2TR

TR: "WHAT? You can prosecute people mentioned in the Epstein files? - USA gobsmacked following Andrew‘s arrest“ #satire #ornotsatire

19/02/2026 – I decided to go down early for one of my (newly regular) visits to Llanybydder. Did I see anything? Yes, wonderful things. #llanybydder #sirgaerfyrddin #sirgâr #cymru #wales

Der UK-Korrespondent der FAZ nennt Opfer sexueller Gewalt "minderjährige Gespielinnen". Vielleicht muss man Männern einfach mal 1 Jahr lang das Schreiben verbieten.

A man in his 60s was arrested today, at his birthday dinner in Pizza Express, Woking. #TooLateForBTN #Andrew

Tfw you didn't study much medieval history at school

Okay, this is quite outstanding from Bedford Council.

Aberystwyth gets two finalists in the Independent Bookshop of the Year 🥳 www.thebookseller.com/british-book...

18/02/2026 – Dinas Maelor really is a quite magnificent tump #aberystwyth #ceredigion #canolbarthcymru #cymru #hillfortswednesday

My colleague has been very enthusiastic with the forward planning (the summer semester starts on April 20 and we‘re still marking exams from the winter semester).

3 weeks to decide, 9 months salary to choose to leave - almost certainly forever - the industry you've dedicated most of your adult life to.

Par for the course by now... 😵‍💫

Es schneit. Aber nur ganz klein.

THREE lectureships available in the Music Department @kingscollegelondon.bsky.social @kingsmusic.bsky.social — see advertisements in the thread below.

This will always be my favourite version of Wuthering Heights, though: youtu.be/BIMEPPZxzyg

#Aberystwyth band Misha and the Kings have auditioned to represent San Marino at #Eurovision this year. Such a feelgood story - and we‘ll find out this evening whether they‘re still in the running… 🤞 www.walesonline.co.uk/lifestyle/tv...

just came across a Samuel B. Sharp in a press article; presumably Samuel C. to his more intimate acquaintances

If a German public broacaster was deliberately seeking to bolster the accusations of bias and unprofessionalism levelled by its far-right critics, it might well do something like this. www.stern.de/politik/deut...

Happy 12-year anniversary to my favourite broadcast subtitle mistake And a happy year of the whores to you all

What's worse is it has affected my own writing. I now use fewer parenthetical emdashes, don't start summary sentences with "Ultimately, ..." and many other things that I see as LLM tells. I'm self-censoring my writing lest someone mistake it for UG student abrogation of cerebral responsibility.😢

I agree with the innate anxiety of how my reading,at least ofstudent work, has changed over the last few years. I used to start by reading the essay, finding its thesis, etc. Now I start with the presumption of guilt, checking the bibliographic items are where they say and quotations are real. 😞

It took literally 8–10 times as long to turn in-person lectures into high-quality online provision during the pandemic. I was working 100-hour weeks JUST on teaching, ON TOP of home schooling my son. I tried my absolute best. I burnt out in April 2022. The moral injury of these lawsuits is severe.

We're hiring at Birkbeck! Lecturer in Ancient History and Classics, full-time and open-ended. Closing date March 18th. Details here: cis7.bbk.ac.uk/vacancy/lect...

In bizarre marketing news, my dear wife's camomile tea is packaged in an exciting new Bridgerton Limited Edition. Oh how I used to long for a Z-Cars PG Tips box.

I wrote this about pubs and mourning - I hope this can help some people who might be going through grief. Just remember you're not alone wb.camra.org.uk/2026/02/05/h...

The slug and lettuce. Love that comment.

I propose to make universal the old policy of the Blackfriars conference at the American Shakespeare Center: If you do not end your paper on time, you will be forced to exit, pursued by a bear. Literally, a bear will come take your paper from you.

My brother Garry has dementia and is currently lost somewhere in the Chester area. If anyone should spot him please call the police on 999. We'd appreciate reposts. @shitchester.bsky.social

To give you an idea of how deranged the UK has become about gender stuff, here's Enid Blyton - the absolute avatar of classic English conservatism and a huge fan of racist "gollywogs" - casually describing a gender non-conforming kid in the 1940s and having their friends be totally cool with it.

+++ABSCHLUSS+++ Nach harten Verhandlungen bis tief in die Nacht haben Gewerkschaften und Arbeitgeber einen Kompromiss zur Gehaltssteigerung der Beschäftigten in den Ländern vereinbart: Insgesamt 5,8 % mehr! In Kürze mehr... #Tarifrunde2026 #ProfisbrauchenMEHR #ZusammengehtMEHR #BlueLZ

Today am finding it amusing that we refer to the most fundamental concept in highfaluting mind-bendingly abstract modern theoretical physics with probably one of the oldest, most solid germanic peasant words: *field*. We‘ve come a long way, „folks“. #bodenständig

Pffft. Red roses for Valentine’s Day? German supermarket Edeka is out here making sausage bouquets.

Joined the Dyfed FHSociety this morning, and it's already worth it, confirming that 2 people I thought might be related to someone else I'd been tracing were indeed his sons. Unfortunately, the info I found ruled out the possibility of one son and the father being my direct ancestors. #genealogy

There’s no problem so small that a German won’t overengineer a solution.

Elegance of the art nouveau elevator and staircase in Majolika House in Vienna, designed by Otto Wagner in 1898

Verliebt in eine Bildunterschrift 😍

🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈 We’re hosting the Lavender Languages and Linguistics Conference in Edinburgh this year! If you work on queer linguistics topics, please submit an abstract, we’d love to see you there! Conference dates: 2nd-4th September Submission deadline: 28th March CfP: lavlang32.ppls.ed.ac.uk?page_id=231