As a native Pittsburgher, I think the city as a whole should disavow Bari Weiss. No smiley cookies for you, lady.

Some days you’re lucky enough to see the “green and pleasant land” Blake was talking about. Henrietta Park, Bath, UK

Sorry, Spanx and SKIMS, there is very little new under the sun. Advert from “The Gentlewoman” newspaper, 14 April 1894, London.

People over 40 who were Midwestern or adjacent know that this is an interpretation/knockoff of a Frisco Burger. Flat top/bottom and 1000 island-ish sauce. Hence the name, I guess. Weirdly makes me nostalgic for old-school Perkins, or a Hardee’s drive-thru.

Run, don’t walk, to No.1 Royal Crescent and the Holburne Museum in Bath to see the Glenn Brown exhibitions! I was so fortunate to get to attend the private views tonight and all I can say is, WOW. Well worth travelling for if you aren’t a Bathonian!

Nice of the King to give the President a bell from the HMS Trump, but I would have preferred a presentation of a print of Hogarth’s 1745 self-portrait with his dog, a pug, named Trump.

I don’t think I can take another news cycle of Democrats solemnly tutting about how violence is never the answer while Republicans promise to put their political enemies and whatever immigrants they can find in a wood chipper

I think mine would be Catherine O’Hara. Or perhaps Ke$ha. It would be a vibe. Husband said Steve from Blue’s Clues or Daniel Radcliffe. Good answers!

Truth.

<nodding sagely> The secret to turning your chapter in when it’s due, young Jedi, is mistakenly believing it’s due on MONDAY, so when you finish it on TUESDAY, it’s actually on time. Follow me for more scholarly e̶r̶r̶o̶r̶s̶ advice.

Winning campaign slogan here if anyone wants it.

Can we extend an invite to JD Vance to come to the UK before the next election, to give Reform a little “boost”? Please sprinkle your magic fascist pixie dust our way just like you did in Hungary pleaseandthankyou.

Something I’ve done that I never thought I’d do, before writing my History of Art & Architecture thesis: Write an entire single-spaced page interpreting a painting that no one has ever seen, and that there are no records of save one (1) Edwardian newspaper article. With citations. Please clap.

Wondering if the Doomsday Clock measures in Planck time.

Writing this chapter of my thesis feels like Pilates for my brain. I’m using muscles (ok, neural pathways) that I often don’t, I groan a lot, and while I don’t love the DOING of it I will love having DONE it.

Apparently, a design competition (Soane medallion) for a West End club yielded subpar entries, and “A Correspondent” had some THOUGHTS: “Let the reader imagine, if he can, the lamented Viollet le Duc running amuck in the most blatant style of military fortification…” —The Architect, 29 June 1882

10 days to write another 40 pages for a thesis deadline…mama is flying a little too close to the sun, I fear.

J. D. Vance is... bell hooks' Wario?

In case you’re wondering how the whole “separation of powers” thing is working out, this just showed up in my inbox:

really can't be said enough that this case was decided by the same court that decided plessy v. ferguson. if they could have found a plausible rationale to limit birthright citizenship they would have done it. but there is none! the text is as clear as constitutional language can be.

And now Xander?! C’mon, 2026. It’s too much.

I have a Georgian architecture joke and you’ll still love it 200+ years from now.

Ladies and gentlemen, the meritocracy.

@mcsweeneys.net, I feel seen.

Are we at all surprised that someone dating a Kardashian [-adjacent] doesn’t see the relevance of art forms like opera or ballet?

Please join me in letting the Art Institute of Chicago know that demolishing Adler & Sullivan’s historic Trading Room, rescued from the Chicago Stock Exchange, to expand the museum is a terrible idea.

Say what you will about the strikes on Iran and the resulting chaos, but Hegseth truly has captured the chivalric ethos of the original Crusaders (purposeless, unstrategic, basically slaughtering people for clout)

When you put it like this, a $75 million bribe to Melania and gutting the Washington Post seems like a small price to pay.

worth noting that the second rich people stopped being afraid of mobs tearing them limb from limb, they stopped building libraries and opera houses and stuff and started ripping the copper wiring out of the walls of society instead

Sausage! Old Sausage Three Men and a Little Sausage

Still marking essays, mostly because I haven’t yet created macros for “Use hanging indents for the subsequent lines of each entry in your bibliography“, and “In the most recent edition of CMOS (18th), place of publication is no longer required for book citations.”

Reporter: You received a letter from AG Pam Bondi making several demands…. Walz: I would just give a pro tip to the AG. There's 2 million documents in the Epstein files we're still waiting on. Go ahead and work on those

Mary knows. We’re going to make it after all.

Klobuchar: "Somehow 50,000 peaceful protesters in 10 below weather were able to march without any problems, and then the next day half a dozen ICE and CBP agents couldn't handle a guy with a cell phone taking video of them and shot him. I think it's pretty obvious what's going on here."

Set a timer for each essay you mark, they said. You shouldn’t spend more than an hour on one, they said. Me, after grading one essay in two and a half hours:

My husband is from there, we met in law school there, we were married there — can confirm. So proud of the (aptly named) North Star state.

“The right gave us privatisation of the water industry…What it’s done is entrust our most important public goods to a bunch of hedge funds and private-equity sharks in other countries, who have siphoned off whatever returns they can get while putting barely anything back.” tinyurl.com/3mud5hmd

Re: Greenland (and Venezuela and whatever fresh horrors await us in 2026) — this is what happens when you acquiesce to a bully. He does not stop, until he is stopped. See Putin, V.; Hitler, A.; Bonaparte, N.

Sally is Christmas-ed out, Grinch feet and all.

The government failed at actually redacting the Epstein files because DOGE cancelled the feds adobe acrobat premium subscription is the funniest shit.

There's no rule of journalism that says you have to show a president telling lie after lie – uncorrected – many times a day. That's a decision that corporate media are making for purposes other than delivering the truth to the public.

Seeing a student take out her phone to snap a pic of my last slide made my day! Until next time, The Modern Interior — what a phenomenal first official Associate Lecturer gig at the Courtauld!

Sometimes I worry that I don’t belong in academia, and then I receive an email entitled,”i have a citation questionnnnnn” from a former student — the warm fuzzy feeling I get from a deep-dive into CMoS 18 minutiae and helping her out makes me think, whom else would have me?

I feel fortunate to have not seen Merrily We Roll Along until tonight, because the 2024 Broadway cast plus the fact that I’m 3-ish weeks away from turning 50 made it hit so very hard, which is exactly how I like my musical theatre.

I want to be able to mark emails neither read nor unread, but another, secret third thing.

Sitting next to two teenage girls on the train to London this morning, one is reading The Penelopiad and the other Never Let Me Go. My heart is full.

Who has two thumbs and is giving a lecture on the Edith Farnsworth House and Mies van der Rohe today? THIS GIRL.

But you know that when the truth is told That you can get what you want or you can just get old You're gonna kick off before you even get halfway through, ooh When will you realize Vienna waits for you?