Whose voices count in the modern history of distinction?
@sadiahqureshi.bsky.social considers how much historians can learn by paying attention to the remarkable lives of plants.
It's 500 years since the first text printed in Yiddish, and one of our amazing grad students is hosting a symposium this October to mark the date: please forward the CFP to Yiddishists, book historians, typography nerds, and anyone you think might be up for this! medieval.ox.ac.uk/500-years-of...
‘Luck is central to our lives.’ In the first episode of season 10 of the We Society podcast, Will Hutton is joined by @richardwiseman.bsky.social @herts.ac.uk to discuss how we can use psychology to create our own good fortune and become luckier.
🎙️ Tune in: media.leverhulme.ac.uk/podcast/rich...
Lovely piece on my upcoming talk in @bristol247.bsky.social by a recently graduated student from ELCE. Please share - we have seats and all proceed go to the brilliant @arnosvalecemetery.bsky.social
www.bristol247.com/student/news...
Opening slide for keynote address "Margins of Experience: Witches, Conspiracy and Godly Power"
Rousing start to second day of Histories of Experience conference at Tampere University with fascinating keynote address by @witchykallestrup.bsky.social on "Margins ot Experience: Witches, Conspiracy and Godly Power."
So many students have come to me over the years feeling trapped by a law degree they only did because people around them pushed them into a "sensible" option, and yet this messaging is now so loud my response that the right degree is what you want to study falls flat:
wonkhe.com/blogs/who-ge...
Net replacement rates in unemployment for a single homeowner on average wage without children (%, 2024) - pink dot is at month one of unemployment and blue dot at month 60. UK rates are low by international standards
Even if AI doesn’t hit jobs in a big way, unemployment is starting to re-emerge as a policy issue. So it’s good that @sarahoconnorft.ft.com reminds us how low our unemployment benefits are, and how this can lead to people taking jobs below their skill level
www.ft.com/content/771a...
'It had been expected that many universities...would encourage more of their academics to focus on teaching, with research commitments, particularly at less prestigious universities, under threat.'
But 'the number of teaching-only roles fell by 3,555 across the sector last year'. 3/3
'There were 85,170 (35 per cent) in teaching-only roles, which was 4 per cent down on the year before and in contrast to the number in research-only roles, which rose 4 per cent to 52,220 (21 per cent).' 2/3
'Of the 244,755 academics recorded [by Hesa], the largest share were in teaching and research roles – 105,630 (43 per cent of the total), which was slightly fewer than in 2023-24.' 1/3
NYT article “How ICE Plans to Put 8,500 Immigrants in This Warehouse,” with the comment “Experts say the initial designs raise health, safety and security concerns.” The image is a vertical floorplan with pods tightly packed that resembles diagrams of slave ships in abolitionist literature from the 18th century
The person who made this image is well versed in the iconography of the transatlantic slave trade.
1. an oatmilk dirty chai is barely customized + people with issues with dairy deserve alternatives. talk to an actual fucking barista.
2. "let our appetites rule us" what in the temperance movement??
3. "cultural unity"?? bro is 3 seconds away from yelling abt immigrants over a coffee order wtf.
Happening in just over two weeks!
Did everyone catch @nimishabarton.bsky.social's incredible essay on the DEI debacle in Academe Magazine? If not, here's your chance to catch up on an essay we badly need academeblog.org/2026/02/04/t...
It’s also very unlikely to happen to genres considered to be more ‘masculine’: you can bet that editors would find authors who read sci fi to write a piece about sci fi and/or sf readership
Thanks to everyone who came to the ‘Women Strike Back! exhibition launch. And to the team that made this possible: Abi Freeman, Sarah Howard, Sreenanti Banerjee & Siza Dube. It will be up for a few weeks at St Paul’s Learning Centre and Bristol Central Library. www.bristol247.com/news-and-fea...
Briefly here to post that the ‘Women Strike Back’ exhibition has just launched in Bristol. It explores the activism of Black and South Asian women. Free and open to the public. Pls do share the news.
www.bristol247.com/news-and-fea...
when our time comes we will make no excuses for the pronouns
Illustration of a small fluffy black cat lying flat on a soft pink and purple ground under a purple sky. The cat has very large round eyes and a tiny white nose dot, looking calmly toward the viewer. Above the cat, the text reads: “It’s okay to step away and give yourself a little space to breathe.” 🐈⬛
In this blog post, @rachelpeacock.bsky.social and Jenny Lelkes-Rarugal discuss how the Bibliography of British and Irish History (BBIH) can be used to research and teach the histories of medicine and health
Good news that the digitised Beowulf manuscript has survived the digital equivalent of the Cottonian Library fire, the British Library cyberattack of 2023
part of their discussion. They’re not reflecting on their emotions or thought processes. They’re thinking about the content and whether it feels good and whether people are upset they said a thing. By that criteria being racist and using the word “ret@rd” absolutely is contrarian and “intellectual”.
The process can be brutal. You need your attention solely on the task. You need to do this as a kind of practice for at least 5-10 years. And you need to continue practising it after you learn how to think.
And you’ll continue to have blind spots in learnings it’s the nature of it.
None of this is
In addition to all this, they don’t even know what they’re doing is the absolute most common style of thinking, and the laziest.
The absolute laziest.
There’s nothing to overcome, no memory required, no real shifts in understanding, and we need to get better at explaining what this feels like.
And I think what makes me bewildered the most is the reason they think this is because that’s the only criteria they think the Left uses. That equity initiatives are just people having feelings because that’s what THEY DO.
This seriously haunts me.
except just to have different ideas and thoughts to most. This is the onto criteria for critical thinking. There’s no understanding of sentential logic, or epistemological thinking, or understanding of the rigorous review process for science and facts.
It’s just “me had a fun idea”.
mainstream as a matter of principle. That being intellectual just means thinking things other people don’t, which is such a ridiculously insipid understanding of critical thinking it’s been haunting me for months.
Months.
It still haunts me.
There’s no process by which they come to conclusions
One of the most important things I made sure I understood with the reactionary Right is what they mean by “critical thinking”. Like, clearly they don’t understand what it is, but think they do. I’ve realised their understanding is so shallow they think all it means is contrarian. To reject the
Kenelm Digby (1603-1665) writing of his grief after the death of his wife Venetia:
'everywhere I carry my hell with me'.
