It was towards the end of my second year of uni and probably the first moment i realised:
"Fuck it. People will still like me if i'm myself."
Lifelong friendship came out of that. And though my memory is generally terrible, that pub chat is forever crisp in my mind. Weird how that works.
Cooking on this today
Why is my feed always the place where normies find out that most professors don’t have health insurance and that disorganised prof you hated freshman year had no teaching experience and no one told them where the copy machine was?
What I’m saying is I’m available to do comms for your faculty union
Just trying to buy a new soap dispenser and target is playing the last song in Coco (the only movie that reliably makes me ugly cry). Honestly, rude.
That's a good one, too! (one that the US in its imperial era seems to keep forgetting)
A subclase to armies March on their stomachs is professional armies need to get paid. Regularly and well.
1: armies March on their stomachs
2:no land wars in Asia
3: large numbers of young men who don't feel like they have a stake in society= you're gonna have a bad time
4: disease kills more soldiers than the enemy
There are very few universal rules in history, but almost all of them have to do with military strategy/how to run a military.
Historian here. Diseases have never been a problem for militaries, especially those on the move. Just ask Walter Reed.
It is no coincidence that the people promoting AI in education:
a) are not in classrooms
while also
b) underestimate the talent and needs of students
and
c) think that students are incapable of doing complex and creative work
Normally I’d say the president has very little control over the national economy, and that’s true, but it is actually Trump’s fault if we go into a recession six years after coming out of one
I love it. Absolutely the same stuff I've advocated for!
Every time I hear "the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" it feels like a hymn.
This Is Just To Say
I have turned off
the AI features
that were in
the update
and which
you were probably
hoping
to monetize
Fuck you
they were stupid
so unnecessary
and so annoying
The only flights I've missed in my life have been because of airline delays, and even that is terrible. Do not recommend.
I'll have to pull out my notes (it was published in 2019) but you can start with Ellis-marino, E. "The view from the hills: considering the future of early modern studies in Trump era Oakland" Sixteenth Century Journal (50? I think?) 2019.
Unfortunately the man responsible was probably named something like Henry Smith-Smythe (pronounced "fanshaw"), third Baron of Fotheringtonshire (also pronounced "fanshaw") and died from looking the wrong way at a draft in 1767.
I am not kidding or exaggerating! I have actually published on this and I will give you sources (unfortunately most of them are behind academic paywalls).
The whole idea of Western Civ was cooked up by the US military in World War I and promoted by US University history departments in the 20th century. There is not a single method of inquiry that is not, in some sense political, but Western Civ is a wholly political creation. I will die on this hill.
ALL! HISTORY! IS! POLITICS!
We are pleased to be supporting the
"Mexico in Algiers, Rabat in Bahia: Rethinking Interactions Between the Iberian Atlantic and the Magreb" workshop
Taking place 22 May 2026 @cemskcl.bsky.social
For programme and registration see:
pastandpresent.org.uk/registration...
It's fine. Honestly, you have a kid like mine, you expect the occasional call from the office. (Last time it was for slugging a boy who wouldn't leave her alone. She got a not-very-stern talking to about how we use our words, not our fists)
Name, not bake
Thanks to you all, my 5yo listened to this on a loop on the way to school. I anticipate a call late today from the principal wondering why my kid was screaming "God damn them all!"
Really, I'd like to have a word with whomever decided to bake Austria and Australia. 🙎
MY HOUR HAS COME!!
The year was 1778
How I wish I was in Sherbrooke now
When a letter of marque came from the king
To the scummiest vessel I’d ever seen…
5yo's current questions about the world map:
"Do they speak German in China?"
"Why do they speak English and French in Canada?"
"Why is Russia so big?"
"Who named Austria and Australia?"
this is awful for many reasons, but IHE's framing suggests a frictionless market for academic labor where tenured faculty who dislike the terms of their job can leave for "bluer pastures" anytime. This recodes a functionally collapsed market for humanistic expertise in terms of free market fantasy