In a rather hilarious development you have the opportunity to sponsor me as an Osbaldwick Cricket Club 🏏 player in 2026! I'm sure University Presses and publishers are queuing up for the exposure.

I just don't understand why people want to use AI to write or research. Those tasks are ones that could be done without it. I love writing. It is hard, a challenge, but it can be done. It often feels like the foundations of the intellectual landscape I thought I inhabited are being ripped up.

I've been thinking lots about the "lessons of history" recently. I'm struck by how much the "lessons" of history are now routinely ignored left, right, and centre. I don't know what professional historians should do with this.

I really don't understand how the UK and its government has lost its mind over immigration.

Can't help thinking Trump is going to have kittens when he discovers the Strictly results show on a Sunday is recorded on Saturday, and is produced to make it look like it is on Sunday.

I am trying to prune this tree!

The UK government's reforms to the asylum system are horrible. What a mean country we have become.

'After vigorous and partially successful attempts to save modern languages degrees at Cardiff...and the University of Aberdeen in the past two years, linguists are now called upon to point out the equally obvious folly of cutting modern languages at the universities of Nottingham and Leicester.' 1/3

Still a week and a half to budget day, plenty of time to decide to raise them again. Meanwhile I propose a tax on kite flying.

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I am learning so much from this book. It is even helping me understand some of the current economic debates in the UK a fraction more clearly.

Just pressed send on a short essay which I was asked to write. Glad it is done, and back to the book tomorrow.

Ok, GDP growth is anaemic is the UK. on.ft.com/3K2bh2R But, I'm fascinated whether the cyber attack on Jaguar Land Rover explains this adequately. An interesting story is being told. Supply chains are huge in car manufacturing, but would sorting out UK Higher Education help boost growth? Thoughts 🧵

Caption contest: Wes - "Window or aisle?" Keir - "Window or you'll what?" www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

(a) The endless speculation of what will or won't be in the budget to fill column inches seems very intense this year (b) Bicycles cost a lot (c) Higher rate tax payers are precisely the people who we need to get out their BWMs + Range Rovers, to save carbon and for health benefits on.ft.com/482DFtU

Fascinated by the York Air Map yorkairmap.org

Was it Charlemagne who said: "To have another language is to possess another soul."? Universities ditching modern languages are in danger of losing their souls. The structures of intellectual life in the UK are being pulled out from under our feet. It needs to stop! Pronto.

I'm so fed up with this. Languages are central to all of higher education. Everyone should be learning languages, precisely because it is hard. Not everything can be transacted in English. A monoglot English language University can only be poorer for the loss of languages. c.org/7nQdjc7cHJ

Treated myself to Michael David-Fox's Crucibles of Power: Smolensk under Stalinist and Nazi Rule.

I don't like the analogy between AI and the pocket calculator here. (NB. you can have solar powered calculators). There is a correct answer to an equation or maths problem. In the humanities there isn't a correct answer. Come up with your own sentence. 1/2 www.ft.com/content/057c...

I'm all for slowing down and thinking, but a very good alternative is slowing down and thinking. Getting away from the computer is even better. You can do all these things without AI, and a lower energy consumption. www.timeshighereducation.com/campus/use-g...

Au revoir work landline. You were very useful, now and then. Microsoft teams will never replace you, inmy heart. The sound of a voice, replaced with more emails.

A deeply moving piece. www.theguardian.com/news/2025/no...

If only educational institutions weren't embracing AI, and ripping up tried and tested ways of dealing with information.

I am old enough to remember the scandal surrounding an episode of Frozen Planet that involved footage from a zoo. That was in 2011. I remember relatives vowing to never watch the BBC again. www.bbc.co.uk/news/enterta...

Apologies for an unpopular opinion, but the "podcastification" of BBC Radio really annoys me. It was great when you could just listen again to radio, but now almost everything is reduced to a very informal chit chat. Less and less long form serious discussion.

Just saw Steve Harmison at Newcastle Central Station.

One thing about academic life I've never reconciled is the contradiction between (a) please use your research and platform to challenge powerful autocracies, influence policy, shape the world etc (b) please don't speak up within your own institution to injustices, your expertise isn't relevant here.

Motorists if you are going to shout abuse at cyclists, it really is a dreadful self own to do so in a van with your name and telephone number on the side.

What a privilege to be part of such fantastic discussions over the past two days. Taking away a lot to think about. Thanks to everyone #milwelfhist p.s. Someone with Japanese should translate Eri Nakamura's book. What an honour to speak alongside such a great presentation.

The perfect photo to challenge narratives of progress.

What a great afternoon today was. Nice to see familiar faces, and meet new people. Even better to get stuck into some methodological challenges.

I gave a paper in Warwick last year, and whilst waiting outside before my paper I got shat by a bird. Today I'm in Birmingham enjoying some fresh air ahead of a paper later on. I've just been shat on by another bird.

I don't know how many times I have to repeat this, but if you haven't got languages central to a University, it isn't really a University. Hard for Britain to appreciate, but large parts of the world doesn't operate in English. There is a whole world out there!

I'm sorry, mean spirited I know. On the trains they indicate the end of the carriage best to get on for your seat number. If people could try to get on at that end, or if you make a mistake wait a moment and not try not to barge through a whole carriage like a rugby league player that would help.

Atmospheric moon photo.

Looking forward to going to Birmingham tomorrow to present research at the @milwelfhist.bsky.social symposium on "War, Trauma, and Emotional Injury". #histmed #trauma #milwelfhist

Thanks to all the Newcastle Sixth Form College students for coming to me talk, and the opportunity to talk about being a historian. Thanks for all the questions. I hope tomorrow's conference paper goes as well!

I'm speaking to students at Newcastle College tomorrow. Praying 🙏🏼 I've pitched my talk correctly.

What would the economic impact of increasing job security be? I'd be more willing to spend if I had confidence I would have a job in a year's time.

I'm really enjoying "Once Upon a Time in Space". I was, however, fascinated by the different versions of the same events in episode 2 "The Russian Thing" www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m... and the 1998 Horizon documentary "Mir Mortals" (link below). 1/2

More about this here: www.york.ac.uk/about/sustai...

My wife has signed us up to an experiment where we have a geothermal "node" in the garden. I'm intrigued by how it works. My children are now calling me a "geothermal nerd".

We need a critique of AI in academic publishing. Following my decision not to sign an AI addendum to my contract with Cambridge University Press, I wrote this short essay which is now out in the Dublin Review of Books. 👇 drb.ie/move-over-fo...

Need to get this printed on a mug!

Happy Halloween! Nothing scarier than watching TOTP from September 1998, by this point I had done my A-levels and was working in a packing warehouse.