I really hate the - honestly very right wing - framing that it is somehow good to constantly be shocked and offended. This is simply not how the real world works *or should be expected to work*

This was always my biggest issue when I was an active Lib Dem — the transformation of an electorally successful strategy under FPTP into an ideological commitment that often made substantively liberal policy/values secondary to "localism" (ie parochial cowardice)

The nub of so many of this government’s problems is that there is a Keir Starmer where the prime minister should be.

Oxfam Bookshop on St Giles (Google Street View)

The Oxfam Bookshop on St Giles’, Britain’s first, has earned a reprieve. Oxford City Council has refused permission for landlords Regent’s Park College to turn it into a graduate common room, pointing out that the Local Plan prioritises retail, entertainment, and office uses in the city centre.

Post from Andrew A.N. Deloucas @aandeloucas.com: In line with discussion about the job market, the latest majors being closed at Syracuse University: Nine majors "sunsetting": • Classical civilization • Classics (Greek and Latin) • Digital humanities • Fine arts • German • Latino-Latin American studies • Middle Eastern studies • Modern Jewish studies • Russian ALT

The First University in the Nation to Build a Center Dedicated to the Creator Economy Syracuse University is creating something that doesn't exist anywhere else in higher education. The Center for the Creator Economy is the first academic center of its kind on a U.S. college campus. Led jointly by the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications and the Martin). Whitman School of Management, the center reinforces Syracuse University's commitment to bold, forward-looking academic leadership. By aligning strengths in entrepreneurship, media, communications, athletics and digital infrastructure, the University is charting how higher education can prepare students for the 21st-century economy.

Another university getting rid of things you could only ever do at a university and replacing them with stuff a 13-year-old can do on a phone

This whole concept in LOTR is one of my favourite parts of the whole book. “Evil fucks up because evil people fundamentally cannot imagine that others are not motivated by the same things as them” is another theme that feels relevant right now

View south from Sardis acropolis towards Boz Dağ (Mt Tmolus), with a Roman inscription built into the wall

View west over the valley in the background with a wall section built from spolia hanging over the edge

Me, suddenly realising how sheer the drop is immediately in front of me

View towards the Temple of Artemis from the acropolis

Highlight from day 2 (16/03): a long hike up to the acropolis of Sardis — very difficult to capture in a photo just how improbably these Byzantine fortifications are clinging to the edges of these cliffs, and quite how high up we were

Testament of Epikrates (Nakrason, Roman period) — don't ask me where Nakrason is

Funerary stele of Atrastas, son of Sakardas, including curse invocation of Artemis of Ephesos (Sardis, LW54)

"Weeping Rock" on Spil Dağ (Mount Sipylos), identified with Niobe

Hittite rock relief near Manisa depicting (potentially) Kybele, flanked by two hieroglyphic inscriptions of which we could only find one

Some highlights from day 1 of our Turkey trip (15/03):

(1) Testament of Epikrates — in awe of the lettering on this lad
(2) Stele of Atrastas — funerary stele written in the Lydian language
(3) Weeping Niobe rock at Manisa — big ol' rock
(4) Akpınar Relief — Hittite relief depicting Kybele(?)

One of the weirder aspects of modern UK politics is "free market" think tankers who have never worked in the private sector lecturing businesses on how they're doing capitalism wrong

I think the key to understanding why parts of the British right have ended up where they are is they self-identify as being more successful than they are.

hate this in general but also what is Labour doing to reopen women's shelters? what is Labour doing to make sure conviction rates for rapes start going up again? what is Labour doing to make sure women feel they can trust the police? what is Labour doing to stop sexual harassers?

Perhaps we should all be banned from social media Focusing only on under-16s obscures the lack of internet safeguards for everyone else

My column in today's paper: on banning the under-16s from social media, the trade-offs and assumptions that the ban makes:

So glad we have massively restructured transgender care on based on the works of someone who believes absolute nonsense.

They said "free speech" and "academic freedom" but never believed in either and now in texas you need a permission slip to mention race in class and they're fine with it. Might not have worked if people with large platforms weren't furious about marginal increases of black people in their offices

you are not going to somehow "free market of ideas" Elon Musk out of turning the X platform into a platform for demolishing liberal governance in Europe

My clothing choices are practical and stylish, thank you very much

Pentiment Disco Elysium Oblivion Fallout New Vegas Baldur's Gate 3 Dragon Age Origins Breath of the Wild Red Dead Redemption 2 Knights of the Old Republic Ocarina of Time Stardew Valley Hades

Happy to help rig things for Pentiment 🫡

This is also underscoring how many of the top-rated games I simply have not played, which I should fix at some point...

With Plato in the Republic I think they're wrong about this; they're simply incorrect about their own self-interest. I didn't understand this until I saw in real life the exact kinda guys he was arguing with, and it's just utterly obvious from the outside that theirs is a pathetic and degraded life.

This is basically the view of the world that Plato sets out to refute in the Republic. One of the core questions asked therein is: why do powerful people think the mere fact of them exercising dominion makes it good for them to do so? Sure, you *can* get away with stuff if you're powerful - so what?

kind of darkly funny that "gender studies" is the stereotypical "useless degree" because gender studies will help you understand a large and important chunk of the current psychosis in american life

they're doing it for gender, imo

Since very few people are giving this absolutely GOATed JRPG any love:

THEN: Golden Sun
NOW: Golden Sun

look we're all making a big bet on AI! and if it pays off as big as we hope, well, it's going to make a handful of people super rich and you're going to lose your job but get to watch mickey mouse fuck geralt from the witcher. if it doesn't pay off well then you get to pay for the bailouts

Be clear, the American far right are coming for British democracy.

twitter being bought and turned into a propaganda machine for fascism, which is directly pumped into every journalist in the world's brain, is one of the worst things to happen in the last few years. we might not survive it.

This is also yet another case which even a few years ago would have been universally recognised as scandalously disqualifying even on the British right. Actual popular views haven’t shifted since then, but British elites have baked their brains on Twitter so they think this repulsive bile is normal

"Plans for a new artistic bench that have been two years in the making have caused outrage among a community."

Today in absurd Oxfordshire planning disputes

A paragraph that patronisingly describes what a party conference is.

Maybe - just a crazy idea, but bear with me for a moment! - the reason why the Lib Dems should not “get serious“ is that the UK’s most important media organisation covers politics in babytalk so much of the time?

(I think a lot of the BBC’s written output can likely be explained by them interpreting “need to write for a reading age of seven” as ”need to write for a moron with an adult reading age”.)

That is the point of a university you fucker.