Got taxi scammed this morning from official rank at Gare du Nord. Upset teen. 😡

It probably doesn't matter much now, because everything's collapsing, but every time you read something like this, remember there are hundreds of diligent, ethical, creative scholars who didn't get a job and this person did.

I realize academe has largely abandoned the mentorship model because it was often toxic under a regime of advisor autocracies. But if you are an early or mid-career academic, CHOOSE yourself a mentor (or 2-3!). This profession will not prepare you for what it’s going to throw at you.

They're all quite happy with co-authorship when it helps their metrics 🙃

Kew!

Well, that's because you're the boss 🙃 www.abc.net.au/news/2026-05...

I clearly need to Keep Calm and Embrace gAI

In fact, yes, I do think it’s a widespread social crisis that students are going to be graduating without the capacity to think critically and without subject matter knowledge. At a time when technofascism prevails, more of us should be terrified about the consequences of universalizing gAI use.

Few people realise that the Faculty of AI-Powered Marketing was the first established at the University of Bologna

So pleased that my paper on why Demidenko is good actually has been accepted by JAS after the most rigorous peer review process ever - and thank goodness for that! Can't wait to see it out in the world 🤓

Talking about post-war displaced persons while showing footage of everyone except the DPs lol www.instagram.com/reel/DX0FDFB...

It's cute how the hairdresser thinks I want to be here

Images of birds carved into the walls of the early 20th century detention center at the former U.S. Immigration Station on Angel Island, San Francisco Bay, now a National Historic Landmark.

Analyse AI's explanation of the causes of the Peloponnesian war! Analyse what ChatGPT thinks the major tenets of Stoicism are! Thrill intellectually as you critique Claude's translation of Ovid Amores 1.1!

Ok back on my bullshit* *writing “no!” in the margin of a scholarly monograph

4/ And while nazis et al may have again booed Bunurong Elder Uncle Mark Brown yesterday, today nipsters & the Sky News Boomerwaffen audience brought loud cheers to the city for 'war hero' Ben Roberts-Smith. 🇦🇺🫡

Lol www.abc.net.au/news/2026-04...

New article by Gerard Daniel Cohen www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Being a professor is just giving yourself homework for the rest of your life.

Voluntary assisted dying, very moving www.smh.com.au/culture/tv-a...

Please bring back subeditors before I lose my mind www.abc.net.au/news/2026-04...

history is unfixed; reactivating the archive - even from absence, or destruction, or silence (so many archives are hollows/negative spaces/chiaroscuro to begin with) - is always possible: the animating force is the speaking/compositing eye of the historiographer, i.e. narrative (or apophenia).

It's a dog whistle solely for domestic political purposes. Howard did the same thing. www.abc.net.au/news/2026-04...

😬 www.abc.net.au/news/2026-04...

I hope they're keeping an eye on his burner phones ..

Update on the Ben Roberts-Smith case: he was granted bail. In this Conversation piece, I discuss bail & the 'exceptional circumstances' of the granting of bail to BRS & Oliver Schulz, two former #Australian SAS soldiers charged with #warCrimes of murder. #ausLaw theconversation.com/exceptional-...

This story is so Garry Disher-coded, get Hirsch onto it #crimefiction

Footnotes are where you do justice to people who need justice done to them.

Why do we even bother with endnotes--this is my personal pet peeve as a historian, I need to read the spicy, sassy, whiny footnotes immediately

Grant proposal reviews are always like "but I don't see how this is going to revolutionise the field" while article peer reviews are always like "stop saying that you're going to revolutionise the field".

“I added all the necessary footnotes to the draft article as I wrote it and did not wait to insert them later”

New article by @drjessc.bsky.social theconversation.com/is-shaddap-y...

Given all the news, today is the day to remind everyone that you cannot assume postive outcomes from scholarship programs... Victor Orban studied in the UK with an Open Society Foundation scholarship...

Viewing Archie Moore's Biennale-winning exhibition Kith & Kin immediately gave me an idea for my next book. Wonderful, inspiring!! Look at those archive piles!

Both situations should be a reminder that our job as historians is never to decide what history is worth doing based on what we imagine might be "relevant" in some hazy future.

Ha, I've been told that about both migration and Nazis

Is international diplomacy more complex than the art of the deal? Probably unwise to get rid of all those humanities peeps

Missing the Sydney launch of Dan Goldberg's The Hunt for the Last Nazis, soon showing on SBS 🎉

Stuck in a traffic jam on the highway, trying to make flight to Sydney. Could we get a train from Brisbane to the LARGEST INLAND CITY IN AUSTRALIA PLEASE

Don't think so mate #hardquiz

Good news story for UniSQ www.abc.net.au/news/2026-04...

Balsamic Fat 😏

I have written abt invoking the Holocaust to shut asylum seekers out. Nothing makes madder. “In a whistle-blower letter, one fired judge quoted an official on the standard for asylum: “Maybe if you were Jewish and escaping Nazi Germany in 1943, you should get it.” www.nytimes.com/2026/04/09/u...

Ok. Now give Chris Masters back his book prize www.abc.net.au/news/2026-04...

Nazis in Australia and war crimes, linked again 🙃