Nick Hall
@penwys.bsky.social
I write, if I may. Doctorate in History (Soviet things) / novels (faintly unreal things) https://nicholasshall.com/
Thinking on threats to, particularly, Modern Languages. Languages often seen as 'problems' to solve. Achieve translation a la Star Trek and we're done. Babel predicated on the idea of this radical diversity as being bad, damaging. Yet anyone who engages with languages sincerely will know that (1/2)
A day at Ashley Court, Tiverton, writing and meeting other writers. Lovely food, excellent company, a novel commenced. Everything very cool, calm, collected. Splendid. Incredibly fortunate to have such opportunities. www.ashleycourtdevon.co.uk
Home - Ashley Court
An enchanting Regency house set in 19 acres of woodland, gardens and pasture overlooking the Exe Valley Welcome Welcome to Ashley Court This enchanting Regency house invites you to escape from modern ...
ashleycourtdevon.co.uk
"Humanities are being extinguished by university bosses across the country. We desperately need an emergency rescue package to stop the death-rattle of Britain's great universities." @drjogrady.bsky.social in the Guardian 👇 www.theguardian.com/education/20...
Humanities among degrees being ‘extinguished’ by hard-up universities
Exclusive: Experts fear rise in education ‘cold spots’ and social immobility as 4,000 academic posts lost in one year
theguardian.com
I recently finished the first draft of a novel. On Wednesday I am commencing the framing of the next. I don't know where the energy comes from. It will go. Hoping to enjoy it as much as possible whilst it's here. #writing
Catching up on my PPF, this is a greatl episode that succinctly articulates what for me is a core concern - not only in historiography, but in how we live generally. Story as explainer, reducer, evocation: brill. Story that allows us to say we have answered something definitively: not brill. 1/2
Past Present Future Podcast@ppfideas.bsky.social · 3w agoNEW EPISODE OUT NOW! Today’s bad idea is a way of doing history: David talks to historian Alec Ryrie about the seductions and pitfalls of narrative history. Why do we need more Herodotus and less Thucydides? And how can podcasts do it better? Find us at...🎧 ppfideas.com
Job cuts here. A handful of ultra-competitive interviews there. Academia really is splendid.
Great letter in the LRB on the managerial university and its consequences.
A statement from Exeter UCU branch @ucu.org.uk - please share far and wide.
Considering the narrowing of everything - as Musk's trillionaire-hood is live-texted on the BBC - to the whims and logics of a few fountainheads of mammon, I am increasingly convinced of the need to just... turn it all off. Just turn it all off. I didn't say I had a complex solution.
What's the word for sci-fi that predicts a far-future, but is made sufficiently long ago that elements are bizarrely anachronistic? E.g Minority Report: the newspapers have moving pictures, but they're still newspaper size and shape? Anachronism, sure, but...? Yes, I am watching Minority Report.
Sure am glad there's no women president in the USA, would be awful undignified to see a bitchy drama unfold.
Reading George Saunders on writing is rather lovely, not least for the mastery with which he delivers his own moral thinking about writing. The lesson is a lesson in itself, as it were. There are rules and you can learn rules and these are good rules but also you need that ???? and off you go boy
When I find myself in times of trouble All out for 53 Speaking words of Wisden Let it be
'Damning with faint praise' feels like somewhat understating it.
Bring le Bruit. In some ways a message that threatens to eat itself - Godspeed came in 1997, after all - but these guys sound like nothing else: a blow to the head and a tonic and an invigoration, all at once. bruitofficial.bandcamp.com/album/the-ag...
The Age Of Ephemerality, by BRUIT ≤
5 track album
bruitofficial.bandcamp.com
Wrote some riddles to really annoy your family this Easter
☑ Disagreeing with other letter-writers ☑ ‘Well actually’-ing on a tangential point ❌ Celebrity namedropping yes – but not from personal acquaintance ☑ Bathetic ending to puncture the self-seriousness So competent, certainly, but not flawless adherence to the form. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Cslmn@rapsacnomlas.bsky.social · last yr.I've only just come across this terrific LRB letter from a little while back - the platonic ideal of a letter to the London Review of Books, imo.
Made a website. 'putting myself out there'. there is a strange place. nicholasshall.com
Nicholas S Hall - Writer
Visit the post for more.
nicholasshall.com
Terrific thread, that will fire your brain up (in a way an LLM could never understand.)
Oisín McGann@oisinmcgann.bsky.social · last yr.One of the most common arguments you hear from fans of generative ‘AI’ is that it’s not plagiarizing people’s work, it’s just learning like a human learns. So I’m going to break down why that’s just not true, and why it can never be true, with the existing systems. 1/
One of the most common arguments you hear from fans of generative ‘AI’ is that it’s not plagiarizing people’s work, it’s just learning like a human learns. So I’m going to break down why that’s just not true, and why it can never be true, with the existing systems. 1/
Too many meetings. It is utterly bleak outside. Beckett is waiting on the sitting room table. This is on loud. (this is genuinely a happy place) www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NTA...
This Will Destroy You - Black Dunes (HD - Official Video)
YouTube video by hobbledehoyrecords
youtube.com
This is a wonderful, eloquent article that I think stands as a clear and compelling case (quite why it needs to be made is another matter...) for writing in general, not only for children.
London Review of Books@lrb.co.uk · 2y ago‘Children’s writing is by far the work I find hardest, because it has its own urgent imperatives, and its own laws, and those laws are both the laws of writing and the laws of childhood: laws that must be taken seriously.’ Katherine Rundell: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
guanteandbigcats.bandcamp.com/album/war-ba... And and and ('like if Sauron dropped the One Ring into his Oreo McFlurry, and then accidentally ate it')
War Balloons, by Guante and Big Cats
8 track album
guanteandbigcats.bandcamp.com
