‘Brother blues skiffle’

Petition against changes at Cardiff uni library. Cardiff Uni wants to scrap the 2nd floor of the Arts and Social Studies Library. Please help us save this crucial campus resource before it's ripped out in June! Add your name here: you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/sa...

Vandalism

Funny mood this evening . Music to accompany cooking tonight was a tricky one. Tried Johnny Cash (American Recordings), then Pet Sounds, before finally settling on, of all things, Purcell Ode to Saint Cecilia’s Day!

Come hang out with me from afar in July! It'll be a blast.

Recently, FamilySearch digitized and uploaded tons of microfilmed records, including many from 18th-century Massachsuetts. They're using some sort of AI to transcribe/summarize the handwritten documents. I've noticed that the AI strips out references to race and enslavement in 18thc documents.

I watched, then in a scene in a restaurant I heard something vaguely familiar. Yep, there it was. Playing on a radio, barely audible under the characters’ conversation. 3/

Much to my delight the show recently became available in the uk. I know which episode it was in, so went straight to watch it. I was looking forward to seeing perhaps as a soundtrack to a big emotional moment. 2/

From a couple of ago I started getting royalties from a song I recorded with my band in the late 80s. Turned out it was because it was in the US show Yellowjackets but which was unavailable in the UK. 1/

Immigration make Britain brilliant

Can’t wait to read this!

Amazing the personal risks people will take to preserve archival material www.theguardian.com/world/2026/m...

This is Teo. He is conducting a very thorough sniff inspection. Not saying that giving him a treat will help you pass, but it wouldn’t hurt either. 12/10 (IG: itagure_teo_kobe)

"Ultimately, the UK needs to review how higher education is funded and regulated. We cannot leave the future of essential teaching and research to a scramble for students and a race to recruit." #Skystorians

We 'are a long way from proactive system stewardship. Course closures continue, and the landscape keeps shifting – and contracting. With our interactive maps updated using new 2024-25 HESA data, we can now see, one year on from our first assessment, how closures are reshaping provision [cont.]' 1/4

Morning. Storm coming over barley.

Black Studies under threar in Birmingham UK Please sign and distribute this petition. ✊🏿✊🏽✊🏻https://c.org/ZbbpdQxk97

If anyone in government has a few minutes to run the country in between plotting leadership challenges, could they please cast their eye over the devastation of Higher Education in the UK. www.theguardian.com/education/20...

The State of the Subject 2025-26: online forum Join us to reflect on and respond to the English Association’s State of the Subject Report 2025-26 by Antony Rowland An online forum to hear your thoughts about English Studies in these difficult times. englishassociation.ac.uk/the-state-of...

Even this report, which is damning, is a kind of whitewash, because it mostly focuses on 'protections' for when the very worst happens and students cannot complete their degrees because their university sank into the ocean. PROPOSE A FIX. Tuition up with inflation IS NOT A FIX.

The result of government abandonment means disgraceful local decisions around who and what's worth saving. Someone, somewhere has got to take holistic control of the collapse of HE.

It's a hard life being a whippet...

Monday Morning Blues (with a smoking pipe, and a hot beverage) in early eighteenth century Europe.

Following the Canvas story from UK makes me wonder whether anyone is working on critical studies of Blackboard which is the LMS/VLE in a lot of UK HEIs …?

Free to join and open to all UK-based SHAPE postdocs (or equivalent) within 10 years of PhD (with career breaks subtracted out of that calculation). 9 regional hubs across the 4 UK nations (travel to events is paid for, and there is pump-priming funding to apply for if you join). Do check it out!

Some worrying figures here www.thetimes.com/article/d758...

On Friday afternoon before the Bank Holiday, colleagues in the Humanities department were called to a meeting on Tuesday. They were informed that the University Portfolio Review had decided that English Language, English Literature, Philosophy, History & Creative Writing UG degrees would close

Ffs

6 yard ago during the first Covid lockdown I dragged a large branch to this spot on my dog walk to sit and take in the silence. It’s coming apart a bit now but still there.

Fascinating 🧵

Joe Strummer and his white Fender Esquire ❝𝟭𝘀𝘁 𝗠𝗮𝘆 𝗧𝗮𝗸𝗲 𝗔 𝗛𝗼𝗹𝗶𝗱𝗮𝘆❞‬ guitar. #MayDay

I still remember a conversation years ago with a colleague who was doing a project on the history of archives. Me: are you doing a database? Him: no, we're doing a book so it will last

Some fantastic designs! 🧵

I’ve been hearing so much anger and disappointment from frontline workers about the BBC investigation into fraudulent asylum claims. One of the most damning responses has come from one of the experts they interviewed, solicitor Ana Gonzalez. It’s really worth reading her response in full: