The borders of the U.K. have been in place since 1922.

Pascal Jacquemain@jacquep.bsky.social · yesterday

Rosindell is mad as a box of frogfaces.

The campaign of harassment and intimidation Raise the Colours have undertaken against council staff, contractors, and members of the public as reported by the Clarion today is shocking if not surprising. Excellent reporting. oxfordclarion.uk/the-clarion-...

The Clarion, 4 August 2026

We're doing a rain dance. You? While we wait for some sorely needed water, here is some news, not all of it cheerful. Including less than savoury details about Raise the Colours; celebrating Oxford Ci...

oxfordclarion.uk

Fraudster has to keep her grift going. It’s hilarious how all these “AI will revolutionize humanities/social science research” never know what they’re talking about. They’re bullshitters.

Aparna Nair@disabilitystor1.bsky.social · yesterday

"History involves sorting and organizing hundreds of thousands of facts" I remain astounded by how loud and wrong people are about what history actually is.

"History involves sorting and organizing hundreds of thousands of facts" I remain astounded by how loud and wrong people are about what history actually is.

WHAT DID THEY DO TO HER

Roberto Baldwin@strngwys.bsky.social · 3d ago

Important crossover event

Your weekly reminder that universities cannot enhance the employability of our graduates if there are not graduate jobs to go to. Let’s hope Saint Burnham of Manchester can begin to fix the economy…

Margot Finn@eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 3d ago

New graduate posts down 7% from last year's figures, at lowest level since 2020. Overall UK job postings are down 11% since the start of the year. This decline stretches across almost all occupations. War in Middle East and AI adduced as potential drivers.

I'm with the critics of music in public, as I sit in Greggs trying to have a relaxing cup of tea and am having to listen to some awful rubbish on the piped-in radio. Would you like it if I had a shop that played only PE? Why is it assumed we all have same taste? www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Traffic, mobiles, music … let’s turn the volume down | Letters

Letters: Readers respond to an editorial on the health impact of noise pollution

theguardian.com

airbnb I’m staying at unintentionally created the toughest punk album cover of 2027

Listen- If you are going to feed my unpublished paper into an AI data set, can you at least delete the prompt from your review before submitting? Not only is this unethical but it's a goddamn waste of my time. I'd rather have gotten a desk reject.

*sigh* Historians of medicine and psychiatry have so much to contribute to these public conversations, and yet, judging by the description of this new documentary, are still not being included. www.channel4.com/press/news/n...

Bridget Phillipson, reflecting on her years spent standing idly by while UK higher education crumbled into the abyss and tens of thousands of university workers implored her to do something, literally anything, to save their jobs: BUT WHAT ABOUT ME THO www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

‘It hurts to lose a job you love’: Starmer loyalist Bridget Phillipson fights on despite cabinet demotion

Exclusive: The former education secretary on her new role as Labour chair and continuing as the minister for women and equalities

theguardian.com

No longer content with pillaging intellectual work and dismembering our environment (already critically weakened), AI companies are now hellbent on destroying books galore including rare editions. Shut down these nefarious enterprises already.

AI labs buy, scan, shred millions of rare books

If you have retreated to physical books because the internet is too full of AI slop, bad news — now they’re shredding the books to feed their AI slop machines.

news.com.au

My Oxford Bibliographies entry on 'Asylums, Mental Hospitals, and Other Forms of Institutionalized Care' is now out 🎊 If your institution has access, please consider recommending to your students and adding to any #histpsych reading lists! doi.org/10.1093/9780...

Asylums, Mental Hospitals, and Other Forms of Institutionalized Psychiatric Care

The appearance of the asylum as a form of institutionalized psychiatric care is a major theme within the history of psychiatry. Ranging from private asylum

doi.org

This disingenuous commentary doesn’t help anyone. Frauds start unravelling pretty quickly. That you apparently cannot afford to put your oven or treat yourself is quickly undermined by the question “so why are you spending £50 per week on petrol?” Then, it turns out, she has an agent and /1

Ash@queerash.bsky.social · 2w ago

Elaine in this article "can't remember the last time she used her oven" but also spends £200 a month on petrol (so driving probably ~50 miles a day?) (she's also a professional old person; she was on Good Morning Britain last year, and then also at the Nov budget, and the year before lmao)

futurism.com/artificial-i...

AI Companies Are Buying Antique Books, Ingesting Their Contents to Train Models, and Then Destroying Them at Incredible Scale, Even If Almost No Copies Remain

AI companies are quietly obtaining rare books, ingesting their contents, and then destroying them -- even if they're exceedingly rare.

futurism.com

Historian friend was reading a civil war era letter in an archive, the letter said “In this envelope I include my smallpox scabs” and sure enough there they were. Had to call CDC for a hazmat team.

Quick thinking having a tablecloth handy. I didn’t even notice the twitching from that dead robot.

Monstrilio, Gerardo Sámano Córdova Brian Moore, The Great Victorian Collection Jane Oliver and Ann Stafford, Business as Usual Donna Tartt, The Secret History Sarah Moss, Night Waking Ann Patchett, The Dutch House Sally Vickers, The Librarian John Bowen. The Girls

JacquiWine@jacquiwine.bsky.social · 2w ago

What are the books you yammer on about to anyone who'll listen? CASSANDRA AT THE WEDDING, Dorothy Baker MRS PALFREY AT THE CLAREMONT, Elizabeth Taylor THE AGE OF INNOCENCE, Edith Wharton THE BEGINNING OF SPRING, Penelope Fitzgerald IN A LONELY PLACE, Dorothy B. Hughes BALKAN TRILOGY, Manning 💙📚

First time in recorded history that a man has been simultaneously arrested by the cops and the fashion police

blippy@blippy.bsky.social · 3w ago

those pants are insane wtf

Real. This is y’all? 👀

Conservationists: We’re so excited to see this monkey! Monkey: Well I’m fucking not. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

New monkey species with orange lips found 'hiding' in DRC forest

Scientists describe "amazing feeling" to look into the face of an animal that so few people knew existed.

bbc.co.uk

Vintage fair weekend for me and @jasonbbernard.bsky.social at Millets Farm Centre in Oxfordshire. #vintage #retro #collageart

TIL about the Twelve Boys who Routed the Fascists in Weymouth, Dorset in August 1938. 12 Boys, some of them less than 10 years old, went to Weymouth beach and barracked Mr. Robert Saunders, a Fascist speaker He ignored them, so they went away and returned with toffee tins half filled with stones

I've been thinking about the 'usual suspects' problem when it comes to conferences, podcasts, Blu-ray extras, etc., and wondering whether a simple rule could be that for every 'usual suspect' you should aim to have a balancing 'new voice'.

oh he on DRUGS drugs

Nina Zeelen@ninazeelen.bsky.social · last mo.

Palantir CEO Alex Karp couldn’t stay seated in his chair as he proudly stated: 'We kill people sometimes', while speaking to shareholders. (Feb 2026)

"Unplug your chargers".

Saul Staniforth@saulstaniforth.bsky.social · last mo.

"Energy bills now are about 79% higher than they were in the winter of 2020.. turn those devices off of standby, unplug things at the wall, these really little simple steps do start to add up"

An open letter, to readers, about Charity and Sylvia. I am very pained to feel the need to write this. #queerhistory #pride

My book on nineteenth-century asylum periodicals is out now with open access! A massive 'thank you' to everyone involved in this project. 'Places are nothing in themselves; it is what we feel in them that makes them beautiful or the reverse.' – St Ann’s Magazine, 1896

The Nineteenth-Century Asylum Periodical | Cambridge University Press & Assessment

cambridge.org

They gave US zinester Elizabeth Soto *50 fucking years* in prison for publishing a zine that supports an anti-fascism stance. Prosecutors also used her feminism themed zine, and an anti-AI zine as evidence against her. This is unprecedented.