Reached that stage of the semester where I’m so tired I just feel it in my bones.

Why it's important to teach children to recognize birdsong Knowing which bird is chirping or warbling is actually child's play, as long as you approach it methodically. We asked experts to guide us in this learning process.

Stanislas Wroza, an audio-naturalist at the French National Museum of Natural History, began identifying birdsong at age 10. Now 32, he can recognize about 1,000 different bird songs and calls.

Why it's important to teach children to recognize birdsong

@lemonde.fr

www.lemonde.fr/en/environme...

Dickens on Screen: Dickens Society Online Event — The Dickens Society Call for Papers

Some exciting news: I'm organising an online event on the topic of Dickens on Screen for @dickenssociety.bsky.social! More info on the Society's website 👇. Abstracts of 100-200 words & short bio due by May 11th. The event itself will be on June 6th in the afternoon (East-coast US time).

Advance notice 😊

'it has become an article of the creed of modern morality that all labour is good in itself - a convenient belief to those who live on the labour of others. But as to those on whom they live, I recommend them not to take it on trust' - William Morris
www.marxists.org/archive/morr...

It is only Cecilia, or Camilla, or Belinda.

There comes a point in every semester, no matter how good it is, where it simply needs to be over. That point was two weeks ago.

Super stoked about this. #Divination

Illuminating cave art

I’m on the @manymindspod.bsky.social podcast! We covered a lot in this one - from Herzog’s Cave of Forgotten Dreams, missing fingers in hand-stencils to children drawing in caves. If you’re (somehow) not tired of hearing me talk about cave art, give it a listen! open.spotify.com/episode/2pVl...

Je découvre au hasard d'un passage en librairie que les Belles Lettres ont réédité l'excellente traduction de Pierre Ryckmans de 1975 de La Mauvaise herbe de Lu Xun ✨💫

(superbe nouvelle car épuisée depuis de nombreuses années et pas facile à trouver (et chère) en deuxième main 🎉)

I just republished my short essay "In the Scale of a Human Being" from 2020, on how the "Anthropocene" is out of scale for the "anthropos" after which it is named. Originally published by the Canadian Centre for Architecture.
palmbl.ad/2026/04/09/i...

rattlesnake

Our editor-in-chief, @jessicamdewitt.bsky.social, is back with her picks for environmental history worth reading, exploring, and watching from March!

niche-canada.org/2026/04/07/e...

#envhist

Where Does a Dog Belong? In restaurants or grocery stores? Tensions between canine lovers and other New Yorkers are boiling over. By Rachel Sugar, a freelance writer who covers culture and food.

We were walking along Atlantic Avenue when he said this. Within seconds, we had stumbled upon a doggy day care and “automated self-wash ‘spaw’” called Doggittude. I asked him what else he might consider a harbinger of yuppification. “Certain venture-capital-owned cafés.” I thought of a story Karl Steel, a CUNY medievalist, told me about a 13th-century French nobleman who apparently delighted in terrorizing the countryside with what he claimed was his pet wolf, a classic case of a rich and powerful person behaving with impunity. “I will say, very satisfyingly, he was killed in a revolt of his social and political inferiors.” He paused. “Probably some of the dynamics in the neighborhood are around that.” Not everyone is afraid of being eaten, though that is one valid reason to dislike dogs.

Got interviewed for NY Magazine, here's the anecdote that made the cut
www.curbed.com/article/dogs...

30 March 2026 Welcome to our subterranean growth special issue, Strange HoRhizomes.

The new @strangehorizons.bsky.social special issue on Fungi in SFF is out! A mycelial network of stories, poetry, essays and reviews.

Read the special issue here: strangehorizons.com/wordpress/is...

And my introduction to it here: strangehorizons.com/wordpress/no...

Some of the most special moments at Bansa Library unfold like this. For our primary group members, this is often the highlight of their day, when our student leaders sit beside them, gently working through homework, strengthening reading fluency, and creating a space where no child is left behind.

The manuscript (MUL 00105) is in the collection of Mumtazul Ulama Library in Lucknow, India. See each page in HMML Reading Room: vhmml.org/readingRoom/view/833306

This Arabic text on coping with the death of loved ones and children was written in 1547 CE by the Lebanese author Zayn al-Dīn al-Shahīd al-Thānī, the "Second Martyr" of Shīʻī Islam.

Copied in 1710 CE, it is now in the collection of Mumtāz al-ʻUlamā Library in Lucknow, India: https://bit.ly/4rpp2Iv

“They never came from idly browsing the internet or being cast out forlorn in a provincial town. Opportunities were made possible from flesh and bones connections, people. Cities are people.“

#EnvHist Worth Reading: February 2026 Find WWII munitions dumps, the collapse of ocean currents, and suburban garden wars in the latest list of environmental history worth reading from Jessica DeWitt.

Don't miss my picks for environmental history worth reading (and watching) from last month over on @nichecanada.bsky.social!

niche-canada.org/2026/03/19/e...

#envhist

A) Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead - Olga Tokarczuk. First association that comes to mind.

B) Stone upon Stone - Wiesław Myśliwski. Thinking there was an unconscious Polish association here

C) Was a bit tougher but Brave New World immediately comes to mind.

The Demetrius Dilemma: The Implications of Induced Love in A Midsummer Night’s Dream In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the use of the love-in-idleness enchantment is not confined to producing Titania’s comic union with Bottom but is also applied to Lysander and is the source of Demetri...

Can't tell you how thrilled I am to see my PhD student Mary Bellman's first article published! 🥳

'The Demetrius Dilemma: The Implications of Induced Love in A Midsummer Night’s Dream' in the British Shakespeare Association's journal, *Shakespeare*:

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

What Things Want Robert Bly 1926-2021 You have to let things Occupy their own space. This room is small, But the green settee Likes to be here. The big marsh reeds, Crowding out the slough, Find the world good. You have to let things Be as they are. Who knows which of us Deserves the world more?

You have to let things Occupy their own space. This room is small, But the green settee

Likes to be here.

....
You have to let things Be as they are. Who knows which of us Deserves the world more?
- Robert Bly
#Poetry 💙📚👀

move slow and repair things

My paper on 🌱🦧 ANIMAL MEDICINE 🐜🍄, written with Cristian Saborido (office mate and tip-top philosopher of biology and medicine), is finally out in Philosophy of Science.

We offer a cool new framework for understanding medicine in different species, including our own. And it's ✨ OPEN ACCESS ✨

Nineteenth-centuryists (#C19th) - I'm looking for novels in the first half of the century where the rural English poor are racialized as "savage", "dark" etc. I know English rural examples from journalism/non-fiction, and fiction about the urban and "Celtic" poor, but fictional examples useful!

In the 1930s, Harry Chandler's LA Times ran regular columns on eugenics. The Human Betterment Foundation (backed by Chandler) included PSAs like this one. By showing a clipped vine from infecting a tree, it endorsed forced vasectomies to stop impure bloodlines from undesirables.

Argentinian pulp covers, circa maybe the 1960s. I love how incredibly lurid and dark they are.

I have seen a lot of cursed stuff in my time in academia but this is among the *most* cursed.
Grammarly is generating miniature LLMs based on academic work so that users can have their writing ‘reviewed’ by experts like David Abulafia, who died less than two months ago.

Meet the Fictional Families of the World | Kirkus Reviews The best way to experience different countries is by getting yourself adopted into the fictional families of their literature.

We're thrilled to see two Europa novels included in this feature. TANGERINN is out now and FLOODLINES is out tomorrow!

www.kirkusreviews.com/news-and-fea...

Stop telling me what Wuthering Heights is really about. You haven’t got a clue.

Colour plate depicting two snails in a garden setting, separated by some distance, firing love darts at each other which fly through the air.

Happy #ValentinesDay! 🐌❤️🐌

Delightful, if fanciful, depiction of garden snails exchanging love darts. By English artist Frederick Polydore Nodder and published in the Naturalist’s Miscellany in 1790. [The darts don’t propel through the air as the image depicts but are fired on contact.] #histsci 🌈🗃️