@songsforhorses.com Heading back to Mongolia next week and I've bought a copy of your book for the journey, it just arrived in the post today. Looking forward to reading it!

"I was far too scared to hit him but I would hit him in a heartbeat now"

Secret Drug Addict@scrtdrugaddict.bsky.social · 2w ago

Gibraltarians and Falkland Islanders have overwhelmingly declared their intention to retain British sovereignty. To refuse to accept this is not anti-imperialism - it is quite the opposite.

People who oppose the right to self-determination of the Falkland Islanders or the Gibraltarians are telling on themselves - they are the colonialists who disregard the democratic will of the population, they are the nationalists who believe in fictions of "territorial integrity" over human life.

Rodger Sherman@rodger.bsky.social · 3w ago

World Cup final between two teams that believe very strongly in their home country's claims to various British-controlled rocks despite referendums revealing that 99% of citizens would like to remain British

People who oppose the right to self-determination of the Falkland Islanders or the Gibraltarians are telling on themselves - they are the colonialists who disregard the democratic will of the population, they are the nationalists who believe in fictions of "territorial integrity" over human life.

Rodger Sherman@rodger.bsky.social · 3w ago

World Cup final between two teams that believe very strongly in their home country's claims to various British-controlled rocks despite referendums revealing that 99% of citizens would like to remain British

Very nice article about Mongolian Town and Central Asia Street in Seoul, with some great interviews and profiles of restaurant owners there, and images of the #LinguisticLandscape in this area. Super interesting! I want to read more! Also, great food there! v.daum.net/v/2026071607...

Gwanghui-dong's Central Asia Street: One neighborhood, many flavors

[About Town Global]: Gwanghui-dong's Central Asia Street Korea is no longer the homogeneous nation it once was. The country saw a record high 2.16 million foreign residents as of 2025, accounting

v.daum.net

This is an absolute disaster of an interview. Rouse comes across as arrogant and, in places, ignorant. It's probably making people think the whole dumb "Report on the State of Scholarship in the Humanities" has a point.

Stephanie M. Lee@stephaniemlee.bsky.social · 3w ago

New Q&A: Is anthropology hopelessly politicized, more than any other humanistic field? That's the charge that's been flying around this summer, so I wanted to hear from Carolyn Rouse, the president of the American Anthropological Association. She had a lot to say. www.chronicle.com/article/is-a...

Living in an island group that was Norse until 1472, and is the only part of the UK that celebrates Norwegian Constitution Day, I think it's a fair bet which side will be getting the most support in tonight's football match between England and Norway.

Richard Irvine@robotforaday.bsky.social · last yr.

Annual celebration of Norwegian Constitution Day, Kirkwall, Orkney.

Have you tested your smoke alarm lately? We recommend testing them once a week and you should have one installed per floor of your home.

"Fire answered fire from the hill-tops, till all Orkney was a dapple of flame and shadow in the midsummer midnight. It was the great Johnsmas fire... At the fire on the hilltop the young men and women danced among the flames till morning" George Mackay Brown Fire in Egilsay at the Solstice Festival

Call it what it is - it's terrorism, and we need to root out these far right terrorists by any means necessary.

APPG on British Muslims@appgbritmuslims.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Statement on Edinburgh Anti-Muslim Attack

"'Less is more.' By knowing less, by narrowing the scope of our inquiry, we hope to understand more. This cognitive shift has been compared to the dilation and constriction of a camera lens. One might call this approach microhistory, but labels are ultimately irrelevant." RIP Carlo Ginzburg

I've worked out one of the reasons I get so wound up in academic gatherings. Among pre-financial crash academics, there's often a kind of performative, jolly incompetence around practical matters like IT, admin tasks, & newfangled (i.e. anything within the last, say, decade and a half) ideas...

One of the great pleasures of summer is listening to Test Match Special as you write.

What a bellend.

Research Professional News@resprofnews.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Peer-reviewed papers are ‘old hat science’, says millionaire investor. Candy Crush businessman Mel Morris says universities “must embrace AI” to transform into economic powerhouses. www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-i...

A thread about Magnifica Humanitas. I'll stop banging on about it for now

Richard Irvine@robotforaday.bsky.social · 2mo ago

I finished reading Pope Leo's first encyclical Magnifica Humanitas last night. With its call to 'disarm' AI, it's pretty bold. "With the heart of a shepherd and a father, I ask everyone to abandon the construction of yet another Tower of Babel and to join forces in building up the common good"

I finished reading Pope Leo's first encyclical Magnifica Humanitas last night. With its call to 'disarm' AI, it's pretty bold. "With the heart of a shepherd and a father, I ask everyone to abandon the construction of yet another Tower of Babel and to join forces in building up the common good"

As part of my teaching on contemporary catastrophe & anthropology of apocalypse, I've been researching emerging Catholic social teaching around AI. Last year I wrote a thread commenting on Antiqua et nova, & today I'll be reading Magnifica Humanitas, Pope Leo's first encyclical on this very topic.

Richard Irvine@robotforaday.bsky.social · last yr.

The Vatican's note on Artificial Intelligence, Antiqua et nova, has been out for a couple of weeks. I finally had time to read through it. It's explicitly about epochal change & I suppose I didn't have an appetite for nuance in the face of existential threat. But it's bolder than on first sight...

Some happy fieldwork memories from the Cambridgeshire chalk hills... At Pentecost we would go to Whaddon where dancers would sing the Whitsun Song while carrying their "royal branch of oak" through the street and into the church. And then on to the golf club for a beer/cider festival.

Ah, the vacation, finally time to work on my very nearly completed draft paper on AI apocalypse and Catholic social teaching. Shouldn't take long, a day's work maybe and I can hit submit on it. Oh wait, what's this... www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news...

Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical Magnifica humanitas to be published May 25 - Vatican News

Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical, Magnifica humanitas, on safeguarding the human person in the time of artificial intelligence, will be released on May ...

vaticannews.va

Today's game between Celtic & Hearts is an existential moment for Scottish football. Celtic (& Rangers) massively dwarf their rivals in terms of spending. For years the league has been uncompetitive and characterised by poor quality football. A dominant yet mediocre Celtic have suffocated the game.

Hearts Finances 2024/25

Shapeshifter

swissramble.substack.com

Bad teachers make bad scholars. That is a hill that I am more than happy to die on. It reveals something fundamental about the way they approach research. And the class of academics who spend their entire lives hunting out ways to buy themselves out of teaching are worthy only of contempt.

KG Hutchins@songsforhorses.com · 3mo ago

I just think that if you made it all the way through a PhD without getting good at teaching, with guidance or *on your own*, that's a mark of incredible privilege and sending the message that every person with a PhD is a useless Blueblood is kind of a pyrrhic thing to do as an academic in 2026

Whenever Russell Brand is in the news there are a lot of absolute weirdos whose first response is to trash Mark Fisher. What a ridiculous world we live in.

"Do you want me, a helpful robot, to summarise the key points of the text?" "No, I want to read it and to be annoyed by it, thank you very much."

Richard Irvine@robotforaday.bsky.social · 4mo ago

More than ever, I'm convinced that LEARNING WHAT YOU DON'T LIKE is a key aspect of academic reading. Students expressing frustration with a text because they disagree/ it winds them up/ bores them/ they think the point is laboured - that's part of the learning process that can't be outsourced to AI!

More than ever, I'm convinced that LEARNING WHAT YOU DON'T LIKE is a key aspect of academic reading. Students expressing frustration with a text because they disagree/ it winds them up/ bores them/ they think the point is laboured - that's part of the learning process that can't be outsourced to AI!

I obtained an internal Party document from Inner Mongolia University, stamped "strictly prohibited from external distribution," that details 19 directives for eliminating the Mongolian language. The original Chinese PDF is also available for download. open.substack.com/pub/soyonbo/...

'Must Be Corrected': A Leaked University Document Reveals China's Plan to Erase the Mongolian Language

An internal Party directive from Inner Mongolia University

open.substack.com

The dream of a Sefton Coast final of the FA Trophy comes to an end. www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/sport/footba...

Southport and Marine suffer FA Trophy heartbreak as Wembley dreams over

Merseyside non-league clubs Southport and Marine were vying for a place in the FA Trophy final

liverpoolecho.co.uk

I didna speak whan it bleetert doon. Ma man wis gey taen up wi’ getting us sortit, an’ it wis fell lang afore we had the bastes in an’ the fowl settled… —Eunice Buchanan, “Wife to Noah” published in MARKINGS 30 (2010) #poem #poetry www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/wife-no...

London Review of Books@lrb.co.uk · 5mo ago

‘In addition to the practical questions, there are moral puzzles: God’s remorse over having created humanity is hard to square with his perfection; he punishes human wickedness by taking innocent animal lives.’ Alexander Bevilacqua on attempts to explain the ark. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Philip McKibbin on time "recurring, spiralling, and recalling itself". theconversation.com/how-indigeno...

How Indigenous ideas about non-linear time can help us navigate ecological crises

Māori, for instance, do not place the present at the centre; as some researchers put it, ‘there is no centre’.

theconversation.com

The gross ignorance about Tourettes syndrome that's been demonstrated in the last 24 hours is truly sad. There's a eugenic logic about it: implying that neurodivergence is a moral failing to be apologised for, suggesting they shouldn't be in public if they can't control themselves, etc. etc.

Prof. Anthea Butler@antheabutler.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Tourettes. or not, an apology is in order. Immediately.