Itay Lotem
@ilotem.bsky.social
Looks like I’m a historian. Senior Lecturer at UWestminster: wrote a book about the memory of colonialism in Britain and France, and another one about the pitfalls of memory politics in post-WWII Europe. Dogs are better.
-tu sais qu'en 1988, on a exhumé le palais des rois wisigoths de Toulouse? -Wow, j'imagine que c'est un musée aujourd... -Non, il a été bulldozé par les promoteurs six mois après pour construire des apparts de luxe -ah -mais c'est cool on a une maquette -ah
Identical sculptures of Robert Clive by John Tweed, early 20th Century. One is beside the old India Office in London and the other is in the Victoria Memorial Hall, Kolkata. A century later, how are they viewed? (1/2)
Looking back to surges of elite anti-Semitic or anti-Slavic sentiment in Germany and Austria between 1848 and 1932, a key factor was how upward social mobility of once marginal communities fuelled a vicious response from established groups fearful of losing their monopoly on positions and power
I think a big problem with this conversation is that many people making the decisions think that teaching students to write is a one-semester inoculation to make them sound correct rather than the beginning of a process of grappling with their own ideas.
I think this is the saddest point about the whole debate around UK higher ed right now, when we forget expanding universities was a choice about public good, not employability metrics.
Glen O'Hara@gsoh31.bsky.social · last mo.Between the 1970s and 1990s the UK state made a strategic bet to expand Higher Ed. They poured in untold billions of your money. Now it's been handed over to private creditors to burn in a furnace. Then they just laugh at you: at all the taxes you've ever paid or will ever pay. True story. (2/2)
It really is odd (as in personally dispiriting) to see how much of the European and especially US left has embraced the silliest type of nationalism in so many cases, completely forgetting there should be at least some anti-nationalist strain in the very DNA of the left?
Alexander Clarkson@aphclarkson.bsky.social · last mo.It is rather bizarre to see so many on the European and American Left embrace myths of Iran's supposed 2500 year continuity as a state that have their origins in Pahlavi-era nationalist identity narratives
So I don’t want to be the guy doing the postcolonial cultural history of kebab, but there’s a place in Paris that is officially specialised in naan kebabs with TV blasting local news from Uzbekistan in Russian and when I got asked what sauce I wanted I went “algérienne et harissa?” And it was ok.
People we have learned that Andy Burnham hates: 1. The creative sector, which is full of soft southerners who don't work down the pits. 2. Lisa Nandy.
James Ball@jamesrball.com · 2mo agoI can't work out if this is intended as a punishment to Lisa Nandy, who clearly hates the job; or a punishment to the entire UK culture sector, which is suffering as a result of that. Maybe both?
The anatomy of an AI-supported academic article is becoming more apparent. I desk reviewed ~70 manuscripts this week for our journal. Reckon 20ish had significant AI assistance. On top of hundreds of others recently I'm starting to see patterns. Are other editors are seeing the same or similar? 1/
Are we still a serious country? Discuss.
Jessica Elgot@jessicaelgot.bsky.social · 2mo agoIncredible amount of Binface truthers on the other place
Cranks splitting the pro-Binface vote.
Sam Freedman@samfr.bsky.social · 2mo agoPiers Corbyn is also standing in Clacton. Lucky lucky Clacton.
So the Clacton by-election is going to be a run-off between a clown solely interested in media attention via cheap stunts who plays a cartoon villain for social media idiots without the slightest interest in representing Clacton or doing the work of a parliamentarian... and Count Binface?
So today is the day of both Farage resigning and MLP being declared guilty again (yet with a more lenient verdict). And it feels like this should be the day corruption caught up with some of the far right goon squad, yet the vibes do not validate that.
Over the last few days I’ve become obsessed with all the “no petrol” videos from Russia. Here’s a good thread about what it all means.
Cédric Mas@cedricmas.eurosky.social · 2mo ago#Russie 05/07 (1) Nouveau fil sur ce qui émerge du pays ces 2 derniers jours. Un pays connecté et industrialisé qui plonge dans le chaos et le collective. Rappel : ce clip UKR sur la question qui émerge « Qu’est-ce qui se passe ? »
The narcissism of small scale. This is us.
Marie Le Conte@youngvulgarian.marieleconte.com · 2mo agothese debates about what the north is, where it starts, etc etc, always remind me of how geographically dinky England is, if you tried to argue with a French person about whether some north/south line is here or 40 miles down they'd look at you like you were an alien I think
This (and the whole of BlueSky) is the best ever example of Poe’s Law (no, not Murphy’s, but the one that says one should never try to make jokes on the Internet)
Ben Ansell@benansell.bsky.social · 2mo agoOK, I’m calling it. Burnham to win next election with 550 MPs.
at an event today at the Institute of Historical Research: a genuine reminder of how much amazing work is being done on history AND how fortunate we are to have institutions like this+ people whose work sustains them. just in case anyone wanted something to feel good about amidst the general gloom
Having spent the last few weeks in the purgatory of organising AI vivas for over a half of my first year students, the thing that struck me most was colleagues’ unhelpful understanding of AI as an individual moral failing (and hence: the students they liked could never, but the bad students would).
Jeff Sharlet@jeffsharlet.bsky.social · 3mo agoIn winter, I spoke at a faculty event about AI. I was alarmed by the range of faculty awareness. Some believe our students are so "good" they'd never cheat. Yes, cheating's wrong. But systems that explicitly or implicitly incentivize cheating--AI does both--will produce cheating. 11/
"Es wäre eine klare Einschränkung der Wissenschaftsfreiheit, wenn die faschistische Agenda von Björn Höcke nicht als faschistische Agenda bezeichnet werden dürfte."
Henning Ernst Mueller@ermu.bsky.social · 3mo agoSo geht es los. TU-Präsidium verbietet AfD-kritische Vorträge, weil sie nicht "neutral" seien. Unfassbar! taz.de/Antifaschist...
Could not agree more. '... this war is unlikely to end at a negotiating table in Geneva or Istanbul. It will end when the cost of imperial ambition becomes unbearable for the Russian elite and the broader society... [The defeat] must be driven by a collapse of the regime’s capacity to function.'
Maria Popova@popovaprof.bsky.social · 3mo agoMy latest for @policymag.bsky.social “we should not be looking for a change of heart in the Kremlin, but for signs of a systemic failure [..] Until then, hopes for a “negotiated settlement” serve only to prolong the bloodshed. Russia will not take an off-ramp; it needs to be defeated.”
I have a student son Henry Nowak’s age & I can’t imagine what it took for his family to respond outside court with the grace they did, asking that their son’s death not be used for division and hate. That Reform & Restore chose to throw that back in their faces makes me feel sick.
This is a very reasonable kind of attitude which I will adhere to.
Dave Karpf@davekarpf.bsky.social · 3mo agoYet another newsletter just arrived in my inbox that was clearly written with (by) AI. Look, I'm not being unreasonable here: I am not going to bother to read your newsletter if you aren't bothering to write your newsletter. Have some fucking self-respect, people.
Lucille Bluth's Iconic 'Good For Her' - Arrested Development
ALT: Lucille Bluth's Iconic 'Good For Her' - Arrested Development
static.klipy.com
Hoodlum 🇺🇸@nothoodlum.bsky.social · 3mo agoA bear was caught red-handed breaking into a parked U-Haul van in North Carolina and making off with a bag in its mouth. abcnews.com/video/133461...
The government really will do absolutely anything except just raising taxes a bit and using it to fund public services at a level where they stop disintegrating, won't it?
East Asian Studies is being gutted at Sheffield - all staff at risk with 8.6 FTE proposed to go (a third of us). Biggest cuts in Chinese and Japanese Studies. We’ll be taking a few days to process. Solidarity to Materials and Chemistry colleagues who are also dealing with similarly bad news.
Still some places left for this online workshop on presenting the history of the British Empire, Mon 1st June: onlineshop.sussex.ac.uk/product-cata...
Talking about the British Empire and its Afterlives | University of Sussex Online Shop
In this workshop, led by a leading specialist on British colonialism and its afterlives, we will learn how to talk about Britain's colonial past with nuanc
onlineshop.sussex.ac.uk
but let's face it, getting wound up by obvious American trolling about British food is not a good use of anyone's time
#Ukraine Depuis cette nuit, les vagues ce succèdent sur l’Ukraine : À 8h, on était à 139 drones (111 revendiqués par la DCA). Et depuis des dizaines de plus… Les alertes se succèdent sur les grandes villes du pays.
For further context: almost everyone in the Faculty of Arts is at risk of redundancy. Music, Modern Languages & American & Canadian Studies courses to close completely. History will not close but staff numbers will be significantly reduced. This is what 'right-sizing' looks like, apparently.
Onni Gust@onnigust.bsky.social · 4mo agoEvery single member of the History Department at Uni of Nottingham is at risk of redundancy. Every single one of us.
