Me, but with cricket bats.
10.03.2026 15:10
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Me, but with cricket bats.
Wow. I associate a certain type of usually male, American, politics podcaster with speaking at about 175% of a reasonable speed as it is.
I say this every year, but:
The uni students I'm teaching are thoughtful, intelligent, will make everything they encounter better.
With a new addition for 2026:
They deeply hate AI.
I remember immediately after the vote, @stephenkb.bsky.social and Helen Lewis saying Brexit would be an issue for the remainder of their careers. I was horrified, but here we are.
It sounds melodramatic, but it occurred to me the other day that even under a fairly optimistic trajectory, the USA is going to remain seriously dysfunctional for a substantial fraction of the rest of my life.
Somewhat similar dynamics with the occupation of Japan. And it was noted at the time of the Iraq war:
www.bostonreview.net/articles/joh...
Yup. Another favourite is stressing over precision about figures that are absolutely insignificant.
Thinking a bit more about students and LLMs. We've had calculators for decades, yet a) we still teach maths, and crucially b) a good quantitative sense is really advantageous.
Even if LLMs revolutionise the production of text, I'm willing to bet writing is still going to be a useful skill.
*and don't get the wrong end of the stick*
Today in ARB: @irapley.bsky.social reviews “The Ryukyu islands” by Gregory Smits @uchicagopress.bsky.social & “The Legacy of The Ryukyu Kingdom” by Takara Kurayoshi (JPIC) asianreviewofbooks.com/the-ryukyu-i...
Congrats!
T20 cricket is just astonishing.
And going out to India in the semi final, with a creditable but never quite challenging effort is the most bang on par performance imaginable.
Would 100% let beavers colonise the stream running down the side of our fields.
I've only been here for 12 years, but best I can tell we had the opposite ratio: 6/7 chapels, only 2 pubs. Both pubs are still open, but one is a huge building that is rarely that occupied I think.
And how many churches/chapels?
I'm reading A Small World at the moment. Is quite amusing, but feels really like a bygone age.
Has he played someone playing Churchill?
A new set of bookshelves, with space for more books
In our family have the potato & gravy problem. You've got a roast potato left at the end of a meal so you pour a little gravy for it. Then after the potato is finished, there's some gravy left. So you need another potato to mop up the gravy...
So too, the 8 year old has found, books and bookshelves
To be fair, that was also me, a southerner, when I first encountered Booths.
A counter argument would be that in/out of Europe cut right across both parties' voting coalitions. An issue that splits your base becoming very salient is always going to require skillful handling.
The most productive for me had been "just write the bloody thing"; but an underrated one is that readers are paying less attention than you think, and so you need to be direct and explicit, and maybe even (a little) repetitive
I used to say make it an episode of Columbo not Miss Marple, but very few of my students these days know who Columbo was, or the central gimmick of the show (you see the murderer commit the crime in scene one). We need a reboot.
Trying to learn how to hit over the top. Definitely not my natural game. And I very nearly needed a new phone.
An advert for a £300 toothbrush. Reduced from £800!
Description of the software support for an ai enabled smart toothbrush
AI in everything update: pretty sure I don't need a £300 toothbrush, I don't need a toothbrush with software updates, and you know what, I think my current toothbrush is protected against cyberattacks already, tyvm.
Look, reading week isn't for achieving research goals, it's for lying in a state of nervous exhaustion repeatedly telling yourself you should be taking advantage of the opportunity but ultimately failing to do anything.
I'm going to be so bloody cross if trump kills us all
He also told a story of Andrew visiting the Welsh town of Tonypandy, saying ‘he insisted on coming by helicopter, unlike his mother, who came twice to the Rhondda and always came by car. He left early and he showed next to no interest in the young people’.
Chris Bryant, in Isabel Hardman's @thespectator1828.bsky.social email.
The queen may have taken the car, but I once recall the ticket inspector on my way home buzzing because she'd had *Hugh Grant* a few hours earlier on the train up the Rhondda to visit Bryant.
Homer: "Kids, you tried your hardest and you failed miserably. The lesson is: never try."
I'm massively in the pro rhubarb camp, so maybe I'm just a hypocrite
Yeah, if the core case for a fruit requires loads of sugar and cream, I'm skeptical.
