Taskmaster has had a lot of brilliant and chaotic line-ups but I think this one is gonna be top-tier www.comedy.co.uk/tv/news/8613...

Crossing out "Thriving" from the 2026 mood board and replacing it with "Iraq War just dumber."

Could have sworn he said "ruin" not "run."

Very important in these media times to distinguish between independent journalists who do real reporting, and newsfluencers who repackage others’ work. It’s right to direct people to seek reporters with frontline sources, and wrong to smear independent journalists ly lumping us in with pretenders

Historians since 2016

thinking about how, in the Russian history elective I took in HS, every time a tsar was facing domestic weakness the teacher would turn to the assembled students and ask "so what is it time for?" and we would chant "stunning territorial annexation!" and she would respond "well, DUH, girls"

Shoutout to every scholar of the United States who will have to explain this to people in the next few days and cannot just resort to this meme.

Ok who had January 3 in the "when will this year turn into a fiasco" betting pool?

I recently started making my way through the French Nouvelle Vague and it almost made me angry how entertaining many of those films were. Society is all too often treating movie classics like they're some kind of chore. Most were meant to be thrilling, or funny, and they still are.

Normal about this

They should eliminate name change fees for any kid named by an LLM.

With a painting created by a German-born immigrant to the U.S. in Germany. A painting inspired by the 1848 European revolutions. Yeah, nothing global about that.

You can tell Star Trek is post-capitalist because none of their tech things have annoying branding. Meanwhile I have to remember not only what company made my thermostat but also what they chose to call the app that controls it.

Happy New Year, Bluesky.

As promised, here’s a year-end #ScholarSunday thread featuring some of the best public scholarly writing, podcast episodes, new books, & more from throughout 2025. I really appreciate folks who shared work, their own & that of others, for this meta-thread! 🗃️ blackwhiteandread.com/special-best...

It’s been half a century and it seems like this still isn’t widely understood. (from Robert Caro, 'The Power Broker', Vintage: 1975, p. 897)

I have to admit, I also always had kinda the wrong idea about Norman Rockwell until I saw the piece "Murder in Mississippi" as a teen in art history class

It’s been half a century and it seems like this still isn’t widely understood. (from Robert Caro, 'The Power Broker', Vintage: 1975, p. 897)

Just a quick year-end review of things I meant to do. Ah yes, buy that one book. Let’s go. One hour and €100+ later I somehow have half a dozen books coming in the mail.

Artificial Intellligence as a breeding ground for male entitlement and supremacy. This is no less than MaaS - Misogyny as a Service.

Die Praxisgebühr war in den 2000ern so allseitig unbeliebt und unsinnig, dass sie 2012 *ohne Gegenstimmen* (!!!) abgeschafft wurde.

Eine Kontaktgebühr beim Arztbesuch würde kaum zur Schließung der Finanzierungslücke im Gesundheitssystem beitragen, aber Frust von Patienten & Ärzten sowie sozialen Sprengstoff bedeuten. Sie würde vor allem arme Menschen vom Arztbesuch abhalten. Ich halte das daher für ungeeignet.

That means I’m giving y’all a few more days to nominate public scholarship from throughout the year for the best-of-2025 thread, which I'll drop on New Year’s Eve. Check out the call & make sure to nominate great work from any time in 2025, especially your own! blackwhiteandread.com/announcements/

I watched this in the cinema and everyone laughed when the joystick popped up. Turns out that's just good design if you need to react quickly.

Do you teach? Because I have to admit it doesn’t matter how professors might want to engage with gAI but how students end up using gAI because they are being sold this technology as a magical shortcut machine, by administrators and tech companies, and who can blame them for buying the pitch?

All of the money that changed hands in the Teapot Dome scandal totaled less than $10 million after adjusting for inflation, and it was considered so corrupt we still teach it in high school government classes a century later.

90% of bluesky posts, to me

He was in a tv romcom in the 90s that I still think about.

If a billionaire not paying taxes leaves a place that starts taxing them, can anyone hear it?

you've just opened up a star trek-themed restaurant what are you calling it? PHASE II

Why am I only NOW discovering NASA-themed ugly sweaters?? Daaaamn. nouvette.com/product/nasa...

The figure of the Main Character on Other Platform is central to Bluesky soteriology. In this essay I will…

J. D. Vance is the answer to the question "What if Orson Welles had been cast in Doctor Strangelove"?

With Stranger Things ending after five seasons, at least these kids will be able to have some time to enjoy their teenage y… I'm sorry, I'm being informed every single one of them is somehow 32 years old?

Next up: All beds in the White House will have fully stainless steel mattresses. Gold plated, naturally.

james cameron every few years

We‘ve covered several holiday movies on @infrontofira.bsky.social so if you‘re not sure what to watch, give us a listen! We may be the last 2 people who have nice things to say about Love Actually and also did - The Holiday - Heidelberg Holiday - Round & Round - Hot Frosty - Serendipity (this Fri!)

And the Serendipity episode is live! We surprisingly talk about 9/11 a lot. Merry Christmas?

Don't need to imagine, Sinatra had something to say about multicultural liberal democracies 🧵

Bahn-Bingo letzte Fahrt des Jahres: Ausnahmsweise pünktlich, dafür hustet der halbe Wagen und mehr als eine Person sitzt direkt vor dem Ruhewagen-Schild und versteht es scheinbar nicht.

Since the humanities and history in particular are all about context, it is worth noting that Lauren’s post is in response to someone who works in tech/AI telling historians how we should be using gAI in the classroom, and arguing when we said no. He deleted his post, but yes, context.

Sure, lots of stories about how much agentic AI sucks, but plenty of cases where it's genuinely saved time and energy. Such as, uh. Well, for example, ahh, hang on

Gandalf wanted to find out one thing and ended up doing a dissertation in ring lore.

Wow. I feel called out on behalf of my academic friends

Merry Christmas, people of the internet who celebrate! (And congratulations on making it almost to the end of this year, the 2016 of the 2020s.)

christmas on bluesky

December 25th to 31st = the airport of weeks. No rules, everyone is slightly feral, no sense of time and/or place, and very questionable food and drink choices all around.

I'm finally getting round to watching Coppola's "Megalopolis." I'm almost certain the pitch was "what if Adam Driver played a supervillain Robert Moses in 'Batman Forever?'"