💯!!

Thank you for appreciating it! ✨

On Learning to Read Generously - Reactor What does it mean to be a generous reader, and is it a skill you can practice?

I've been referencing this essay by @mollytempleton.com a lot lately in conversations about reading fantasy and other literature. Templeton's piece includes a discussion of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's useful ideas about 'paranoid' and 'reparative' approaches to reading. reactormag.com/on-learning-...

Teaching vs writing time—100%‼️ Thank you! ✨

Every reply to this post is a version of Anne Lammott’s classic ‘Shitty First Draft’ (from Bird by Bird). If her version didn’t sing to you the song of writing liberation… see if one of these works better for you ✨📚

Loved this essay back in its early days, thanks for putting it back in my timeline!

This essay was such a big deal for me thinking about time and academic/research writing, vs teaching and managing a decade ago. Good to see it back in the timeline ✨📚

Delighted to see this essay about making vs managing and time pop back into my life.
11 years ago, I wrote a post about it that I still
love (and use the ideas!) and no-one else has every really appreciated. ✨📚

researchinsiders.blog/2015/02/28/c...

One of my favourite ideas ever! Thank you for putting it back in my timeline✨📚

We had soup yesterday, I
had soup for lunch and now my partner is asking for
soup for dinner and I am
delighted! 🍲

A Newly Discovered Recording Lets You Hear Delta Blues Legend Robert Johnson in Stunning Clarity Great swathes of rock music since the nineteen-sixties would never have existed, we're sometimes told, were it not for the recordings of Robert Johnson. Certainly the likes of Keith Richards, Eric Cla...

Holy SHIT someone found the test pressing of Robert Johnson's Cross Road Blues and it is clear as a PIN www.openculture.com/2026/04/reco...

You, me, my parents and WH Auden ☁️☁️☁️

This is literally what my hippy parents said in the 1980s about the disappointments of Maoism—the fantasy projection rather than any kind of solid engagement. (Or indeed English intellectuals disenchantment with Russia after the Great Purge). So you join a great tradition

Anthropic Settlement Update: 91.3 Percent of Books Claimed in Settlement - The Authors Guild Yesterday, class counsel in the Bartz v. Anthropic lawsuit filed papers apprising the court that 440,490 of the 482,460 eligible works had been claimed—a remarkable 91.3 percent rate (the typical clas...

New on the Anthropic settlement from the @authorsguild.org : over 91% (!!) of eligible books were claimed as of the claims deadline (I would not have predicted such a high number!)

Looks like the payout will be close to the $3000 originally estimated authorsguild.org/news/anthrop...

Death and life are the same thing-like the two sides of my hand, the palm and the back. And still the palm and the back are not the same...They can be neither separated, nor mixed.

Painting of crested pigeon perched on branch with flowers, fungi, tiny fairy houses, one which has a little face peeking out.

Morning.
Crested Pigeon, Kyoko Imazu.

Emails Reveal Space Force’s Hardest Mission Is Writing a Song Internal Space Force emails obtained by 404 Media show the work it takes to have a government agency make a new theme song. A general even wanted to start the whole thing over again.

This is my jam (indeed was the sort of thing I studied in my PhD).
What admin and negotiations are required in making an official song? What about a song for Space Force?

www.404media.co/emails-revea...

The call/email should be to get more information about the role—asking about the cohort, specialisations they are interested in, culture, etc. Pitch yourself then, obvs. And yes, then they might go ‘did that awesome person apply? they sounded promising’ and fish you into the longlist.

This one is shifting really fast right now, so only a phone call to the hiring manager is going to (maybe) answer it. 2 years ago, I’d have said one thing, now we are all defensively crouched against the AI slop apps and are making it up department by department

Ah yes, if the cover letter is also supposed to target the person spec then 3 pages, but also do everything that shows you are human. In humanities academic jobs, we know you can all wrote a sentence and pretend you are enthusiastic, your own voice will matter

These days: use the ad for the cover letter. Don’t be too formulaic or you look like you used AI to write your ap. Also, all jobs are wildly oversubscribed so do call the hiring manager so they remember to fish your app out of the pool. (I just had 500 applicants for a role! It’s ridiculous)

Victor Glover will be the first Black crew member on the space station. (Published 2020)

Six years ago I got to speak to Astronaut Victor Glover about him being the first Black astronaut to be part of an extended crew on the International Space Station. Pretty cool to now see him a part of the #Artemis II crew 🧑🏾‍🚀 www.nytimes.com/2020/11/15/s...

These Chimps Began the Bloodiest ‘War’ on Record. No One Knows Why.

Explore this gift article from The New York Times. You can read it for free without a subscription. www.nytimes.com/2026/04/09/s...

Rosemary needs regular trimming to keep it happy. You are contributing!

🍂 Hong Kong's 'hero trees' lose their glory as climate warms

The bright red flowers of Hong Kong's kapok trees should have been shed during winter but now persist into spring -- a sign, conservationists say, that nature is falling out of sync as the climate warms.

As far as I know there is literally no reason for this, it is just an incredibly lucky coincidence that we get to enjoy for free

Cool map

If this is a Man… not the company I was expecting to
find Primo Levi in!

Awesome! You might like
some of our other books too—Writing Well and Being Well for your PhD and Beyond is the one most people recommend of mine, and probably Inger’s How to Be an Academic. ✨📚

There was a faint puff of smoke from the bottle, and a small genie appeared.

"You have freed me," it said, "so I'm obliged to grant you a wish."

It hesitated. "But I am not very powerful."

I nodded. "Of all things I need, give me the greatest you can."

Suddenly, I held a large mug of hot cocoa.