and, actually, THIS is what's so troubling. Usually the feeling that everything's a kind of fake/simulacra, that people are acting a role, things are ultimately meaningless, etc, is a sign of fairly serious depression, which a depressed person takes as reality. But what if it truly is the reality?
it’s get-chat gpt-to-write-your-essay logic, scaled up. Just because something looks like an essay, doesn’t mean it is one. Just because something looks like a degree, doesn’t mean it is one
really having a hard time processing this. I wish these incompetent managers were forced to carry out a term’s teaching on these terms. Not only is it meaningless & unworkable bollocks, it’s this *in the place of* the things that make life actually worth living (thinking, talking, reading, writing)
The cyberattack on The British Library in October 2023 knocked out ebooks and almost ever other computer thing there for years.
Ebooks just came back. They were knocked out everywhere using the BL’s license (legal deposit libraries I think? More libraries?)
Distributed physical copies matter.
“Inside one of the mummies, the team discovered a rare papyrus containing a passage from Book II of the Iliad by Homer. The text includes part of the “Catalogue of Ships,” which lists Greek forces involved in the campaign against Troy.”
greekreporter.com/2026/04/19/h...
I'm obsessed with old library catalogues these days, & loved how Mrs Miniver connects to this one, courtesy of @sarahpyke.bsky.social.
absolutely fuck that
brutal, shameful and disgusting
I can't stop thinking about this + 'Hamnet-era' in the Guardian yesterday + that quote from Sam Altman doing the rounds, about buying intelligence as if it were a utility
Roll this out internationally.
2020?
'hamnet-era'
Before I unpin this, a belated note of appreciation for @akennedysmith.bsky.social's brilliant Cambridge Ladies' Dining Society newsletter, which introduced me to Mrs Miniver
a perfect six minutes
would quite like to start every day drinking an espresso and eating a croissant standing up at a bar on the edge of Bologna, in a tiny shop with a chorus of grumbling old people buying lottery tickets and cigarettes, and the radio playing and the windows steaming up because it’s raining outside
1777: Cuckow sings.
A cartoon bunny, Buster, carries an orange lunch box that says King Lear and has a man with a crown on it, his hand extended. I am not conveying how cartoonish this is. It's a kid's book.
Arthur's friend Buster has a King Lear lunchbox and I have.... questions
Lovely. The Snowy Day stamp is perfect!
#Rarebook and #manuscript people, esp. with New York connections, I have a weird, niche question for your Friday evening. In my mid-20s, so prob. early 90s, my grandfather introduced me to an eccentric character who lived in another wing of his building. This guy had a penthouse room... 🧵
great stuff
Wow! Yes! Thank you :)
BOLOGNA! do I know anyone on here heading to Bologna next week? I'm speaking on a children’s book fair panel on Wednesday and I'm around for coffee/gelato/drinks on Tuesday (daytime) and Thursday (evening)
recs for places to go and things to eat and drink much appreciated!
Trump threatening to destroy “a whole civilization, never to be brought back again” and we just all went to work and watched tv and went to the grocery store and talked about the weather
I have a father and mother in law in Iran. I have a sister in law. A niece. She's 14. She likes silly pink headbands and purses and dresses, just like kids her age all over the world. There are 93 million people like her in Iran. People who do all the normal mundane life things as the rest of us.
oh yes. Undeniably important work and ferociously dedicated, passionate, well-informed people, but aaaaaaaaargh aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh
Was this the Secretariat? We had a staff summer party once and someone did an interpretive dance ‘about being deported’. I had to leave the room
hahahahahahaha *screams*
Thinking of the end of Book 2 of Paradise Lost: "And fast by hanging in a golden chain / This pendant world, in bigness as a Starr / Of smallest Magnitude close by the Moon" (a passage that made my jaw drop the first time I read it as an undergrad!)
That was fifteen years ago but I bet they’re still using it
if you don’t know what lotus notes is then lucky you. Why am I thinking about this at quarter to one in the morning
the moon/outlook thing suddenly gave me a horrible flashback to the years i worked at am*esty intl and we had to use lotus notes