For sale. Baby clown shoes. Never worn.
Business archivist by day; rowing club archivist by night. So, quite a lot of 19th and 20th century British history, and grumbling about digital and A/V preservation. Not the UNICEF spokesman. Be nice, I'm trying my best.
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For sale. Baby clown shoes. Never worn.
Camera holds on you as you read this tweet and react to it (with “Taken” playing, obvs)
“It is a tool for perceiving complexity and is already a simplification that, in my experience, is understood or rejected intuitively. You cannot have an easy discussion across a paradigm shift.” 2/2 Thanks Frank. That’s really helpful.
I still get annoyed at Frank Upward’s attitude to explaining it: “In face-to-face discussion with those who have been perplexed all I have ever been able to do is shrug my shoulders.” 1/2
I had somehow forgotten in recent weeks that my Mutuals feed provides a welcome relief from my UK Politics and US Politics feeds. You’re all lovely.
History IS for everyone, see! (National Archives cat!!!)
That’s the kind of expression that sounds like it should be a euphemism, but really doesn’t work as one.
Bof. Wishing you a Happy Birthday and lots of redundancy money.
You love to see it.
Samira Ahmed is my strong hope. I think she’d be perfect for it.
I am really hoping for Samira Ahmed. She’d be perfect, in my view.
Reminder that, great as Melvyn Bragg has been on In Our Time, he does appear to have quite a blindspot when it comes to Climate Change: essaysconcerning.com/2024/01/24/n...
Samira Ahmed would be brilliant.
My first choice would be Samira Ahmed, not least because she's been unaccountably passed over for so many jobs, and she'd be *brilliant*. But Matthew Sweet, as demonstrated by Free Thinking/Arts & Ideas podcast, would also be great. (Bragg has not always been great at science topics)
Samira Ahmed. Job done.
Can I start lobbying that Samira Ahmed would be a *perfect* replacement?
I am likely just missing the relevant coverage here, but what's the PLP saying here? Surely there must be a lot of MPs both very worried by the polls and not sympathetic to a lot of the positions being taken. Is there noise from them about the Govt's policy and tone on immigration, higher ed etc.?
I am still waiting for sounds of Labour backbenchers getting very nervous about No 10's tonality, combined with the polls, to become loud. Maybe that requires the end of recess for them all to start fretting and gossiping in person.
I have a cushion in one of Gail’s designs, and it’s lovely. Strong recommend.
Ah well.
My personal conspiracy theory: It was not Trump’s office that put out the statement that he would be making an announcement, but Vance or someone else trying to box him in to either making an appearance looking sick or cancelling and causing further rumours.
Where can I find out more about the Vanguard Project run by the Department of Trade and Industry? (Not the submarine, not the investment platform.) Seems like an amazing initiative to introduce email and data transfer to British businesses, but I can't find any documentation or mention of it.
You’re probably right.
There’s so much good stuff on here beyond the well-known. Musos will be familiar with all of these but: Dreadzone -Captain Dread Skunk Anansie - I Can Dream Fluke - Bullet The Auteurs - Lenny Valentino McAlmont/Butler - Yes Bangers all.
Discogs is not showing the full glory of the playlist. (I’m sorry for lack of AltText - I can’t get the formatting to play ball)
I’ve realised that, if I’m being scrupulously honest, the album that more than any other makes me incredibly nostalgic and gives me a real Proustian rush, it’s this one: https://www.discogs.com/release/8755288-Various-The-BestAlbum-In-The-WorldEver-Vol1
I guess that’s right that recess does have a lot to do with it.
Some US political obsessives have such a parochial idea of who is using Bluesky and what they are using it for.
I’m slightly surprised to not have read more about nervousness on the Labour backbenches - in terms of the tone from No 10, the failure to stand up clearly to the hard right, and the polls. Surely there must be a lot of disquiet? Are they just keeping good discipline at the moment?
Increasingly think he’s had a stroke and currently has impaired speech.
SAD lamp on for the first time since early Spring.
At least, so far as I know, he's not on here and so not doing his Twitter thing of ego searching and replying to any tweet that was critical of him. I experienced this when I mentioned that he'd monopolised the Q&A at David Kynaston's Orwell Prize lecture to wang on about grammar schools.
When I was Secretary of my rowing club, one of my jobs was looking after the flagpole. We only really ever flew our club flag, on race days (and half mast for deaths of members). I don’t think I was ever asked about buying a union jack to fly and certainly St George’s cross never came up,.
As someone with Crohn’s Disease, I get so annoyed with the tendency (this is not just an American thing) to equate not liking hot/spicy food with not being cosmopolitan and with being staid or conservative. “Haha he’s the kind of person who has lemon & herb at Nando’s!” It’s deeply tedious.
There will be a test of the UK Emergency Alerts system on 7 September 2025 at 3pm. If you know anyone with a concealed phone (e.g. someone in an abusive or coercive relationship), do please make them aware so they can take action and possibly prevent their device being compromised.
I shall again be at the foot of the BT Tower doing a show and tell on its history for those who have just been up.
You see, this is the kind of thing that makes me wonder 1) how many times you’ve been approached by someone in Labour to run/join their operation, 2) who exactly that was, 3) whether you’d ever consider it or are a journalist for life.
Yes, and you’re definitely not alone. And objectively I understand all the criticisms - it just somehow worked for me. Fallout still the high water mark though.
It’s odd, I ended up seeing Mission Impossible a second time in order to avoid the heat, and I don’t quite get the hate for the non-action stuff. I felt it largely worked, mainly because of great casting (Angela Bassett, Nick Offerman, Hannah Waddingham, Tramell Tillman, Katy O’Brian, Rolf Saxon).
In these Trying Times, I do recommend this. If it's on near you, give it a try over the weekend. It's an unusual film and I'm sure many will find plenty to criticise. But it's great fun, it's sweet, it initially has a nice puzzle box element, it has a great ensemble cast and it looks fabulous.
“I miss the good old days of the Chorleywood Process” So much nostalgia (although in this case not clear she actually believes it) is SO WEIRD.
I’m in love with ALL of this
@edent.tel Very much recommend watching the 'Personal View' element at 35 minutes into this programme for telecoms and IT professionals from 1986. Shows the origins of this debate. There's quite a good response in the following episode too. btarchives.access.preservica.com/uncategorize...
🤷🏻♂️
Presumably either way we’re not going to get anything meaningful from the US until about 2pm our time.
I also gave a short presentation on some of my Wikidata/GLAM experiments. The slides have lots of links to code, demos, queries etc and are online here: https://slides.com/wragge/wikifest-slv-2025
I think that just at the Toronto International Film Festival? It seems to have had its main US release in June 2025.
And the administration and legal expertise to do all the necessary stuff in a timely and efficient manner?
Not bad at spotting problems with regular expressions presented to them in my experience. Slightly less good - though still helpful - at coming up with expressions from scratch when given an intended outcome. Same goes for command line syntax. I’ve certainly found Copilot useful in this regard.
In these Trying Times, I do recommend this. If it's on near you, give it a try over the weekend. It's an unusual film and I'm sure many will find plenty to criticise. But it's great fun, it's sweet, it initially has a nice puzzle box element, it has a great ensemble cast and it looks fabulous.
Relevant: https://bsky.app/profile/beenwrekt.bsky.social/post/3lxhqzfq55s2o
Relevant to this. https://bsky.app/profile/jameselder.bsky.social/post/3lx7ibanot224
It’s striking that, as far as I know, no one from the AI Safety community (i.e. those who write very speculatively about the longterm existential risks to humanity from all-powerful AI) is speaking about this, a real-world, contemporary issue with horrific consequences.
What this says to me is that you’ve never listened to the Today programme. To which I respond: well done you. Well done indeed. Time well spent.
Years ago, I was at a friend’s barbecue and accidentally poured myself a Pimm’s from the wrong jug - the one that had the neat Pimm’s in it.
I will say that Mia Sara is every bit as beautiful as she was at the time of Ferris Bueller and Legend.
Not sure why The Life of Chuck seems to be disappearing from a lot of screens after only a week - maybe it’s off to streaming. Glad I caught it though. It’s one of Stephen King’s fables, in a similar register to Shawshank and Stand By Me. If possible, see it without knowing any more than that.
Listening to the audiobook of Kate Crawford’s Atlas of AI. Equal parts engaged/fascinated and infuriated by it. It’s really good at unpicking the human and environmental costs which underlie eg mining and shipping, but kind of neglects *why* we collectively accept it. It makes stuff cheaper!
What I don’t get is why my unruly eyebrow hairs always emerge in exactly the same place.
Often think of this interview where he was so articulate about the Scorsese comments on comic book movies not being cinema. At the end, you can just hear Simon Mayo say 'Wakanda Forever'; apparently in the studio this prompted a fist bump from Chadwick Boseman. He (Mayo) often talks about it.
Helen Castor's 'Blood and Roses' is the best history I've read of the Wars of the Roses because (being based on the Paston letters) it shows how the disruption caused by the repeated regime changes could lead to social mobility for some. I didn't get on with Dan Jones's book on the period at all.
Third Amendment to get its moment in the sun?
It’s taken me too long to realise that Jan in Only Murders In The Building and Beadie in The Wire are both played by the same actor, Amy Ryan.
Wasn’t creatine a big thing about 30 years ago? I remember discussion about elite rowers taking it when I was at university. Has it come round again?
Live blogs as the lead item on news websites remain infuriating - always impossible to find the post that gives more detail to the headline.
There's no better poster child for the mess the UK is now in than the fact that the Financial Times - home to the "how to spend it" supplement on luxury geegaws - is now one of the most left-wing media channels in the country simply because it's still interested in reality.
I am once again immersed in 1980s corporate films. Today's selection includes voiceovers by Paul Vaughan and Patrick Allen, strongly associated in my mind with Threads and Protect & Survive respectively. I am now nervously waiting for the Attack Warning to sound.
Have DMed you.
Not necessarily but it *does* need to be documented before it’s all gone.
It might sound silly, but the architecture of coal-fired power generation really is at risk. Historic England has been doing quite a bit of work documenting it, and rightly so imv.
I would argue Nation. It’s standalone and it’s among his very best work - his last hurrah before the dementia started encumbering his writing.
Except of course for the genre of literary fiction which is proper art and therefore must be taken seriously.
Let’s be honest here: they were hoping the anti-refugee protests turned ugly because then there would be sexy telegenic violence. The reason that the progressive protests aren’t news is because they don’t. Which shows the warped priorities of our tv news coverage and is not a great signal to send.
Going through old pieces in my Safari Reading List and got to this piece by Emily Bender, which is both a fairly brutal takedown of AI Safety, and a good primer on AI Ethics. Definitely worth a read if you hadn’t realised that ‘AI Safety’ and ‘AI Ethics’ are two very different things.
Fair point. Like Bryony I’d missed that. I do think though that the point stands that, as so often, an article about archives talks to historians but not archivists (recognising of course that in this case the Written Archives staff themselves wouldn’t be able to speak freely).
I had a few thoughts on this (short thread). As Bryony Hooper says in reply to my first post, it’s disappointing that the archivists themselves aren’t actually mentioned at all. Would have been even better to get a quote from an archivist (a consultant, freelancer or retiree perhaps) or the ARA.
Now waiting for replies from my historian followers.
We need more, trained and adequately paid archivists to make materials universally available and not just by request/on a case-by-case basis.
And personally if I had a collection where a large amount was closed pending a review my member of staff, all things being equal, I think I’d probably prioritise reviewing blocs of material in a managed way leading to regular releases.
It does slightly remind me of the articles about TNA service reductions post-lockdown, which didn’t recognise either resources or the welfare of staff as factors worthy of mention.
I know nothing about any organisational politics, and I totally get historians’ concerns, but my personal Occam’s Razor when it comes to archive service changes is that it’s probably down to a lack of staff and money. Archives are always trying to do a lot with a little.
I honestly don’t know what to think about this. It’s interesting that the author of this article and David Kynaston, quoted, recognise that at bottom it’s a resourcing issue - which is an awareness that seemed conspicuous by its absence in the open letter.
This is Prestel erasure.
Couldn’t agree more. It’s intensely elitist, and also a sign of someone far too online. I believe it originated on 4Chan/8Chan/WhateverChan? Over here, Dominic Cummings frequently uses it, which is pretty telling.
In Oslo, these aren’t exactly leftfield suggestions but the Fram Museum and the Vigeland sculpture park are both excellent.
Thanks, now I’ve seen Iain’s profile pic and can recall that I disagreed profoundly with something else he posted, but have no idea what. That’s going to bug me all afternoon.
OED is generally more helpful on this sort of thing because it gives citations which help track the etymology.
This howl of despair from Marie is very much where I am, mentally, and I really hate being there.
It’s still common usage in the UK.
It’s a British/US English thing I think. Similarly ‘table’ in a meeting/issue context gets confusing as US and British meanings are essentially opposite aiui. OED (which is better than Merriam-Webster on etymology - and thanks to my local library card I have access) has this.
![22:56 Fri 22 Aug VPN / • 25% 0 oed.com Revised 2002 (entry history) moot - ADJECTIVE - More entries for moot := Browse entry < Share 66 Cite • Contribute Factsheet Etymology Meaning & use Pronunciation Compounds & derived words Nearby entries Single page Forms Frequency Tabbed 1. Originally in Law, of a case, issue, etc.: proposed for discussion at a moot (moot n. 4). Later also gen.: open to argument, debatable; uncertain, doubtful; unable to be firmly resolved. Frequently in moot case, moot point. 1563- 1563 1577 a1650 1658-9 1732-3 1779 1797 1808 1876 1899 That they be not forced to sue the lawe, wrapped with so infinite crickes and moot poyntes. L. Humphrey, Nobles or of Nobilitye sig. Vvi The like question [sc. whether 'fish' or 'flesh'] may be mooued of the sell [= seal], and if it were well canuassed, it would be found at the least wyse a moote case. R. Stanyhurst, Treatise contayning Description of Irelande ii. f. 9/2, in R. Holinshed, Chronicles vol. | I was scarce come into commons, but..l was set at work, arguing a moot-point or law-case on Thursday night after supper. S. D'Ewes, Autobiography & Correspondence (1845) (modernized text) vol. I. 240 ••• Jersey is part of France; so it is a moot point whether a habeas corpus lies. in T. Burton, Diary (1828) vol. III. 46 'My lords and gentlemen', says he, 'it is a very moot point to which of those causes we may ascribe the universal dulness of the Irish. Sir C. Wogan in J. Swift, Works (1824) vol. XVII. 460 ... The policy of our arming slaves is in my opinion a moot point, unless the enemy set the example. G. Washington, Letter 20 March in Writings (1840) vol. VI. ii. 204 Particular times are appointed for the arguing moot-cases. Encyclopœdia Britannica vol. XII. 271/2 ••• If a statute of the United States were to adopt a common law phrase, in the creation of an offence, no common law consequences would follow, because we have no common law. But this is a moot point. Rep. Trials Col. A. Burr vol. II. 78 It remains a moot problem to be guessed at. A. D. Murray, Charnwood 110 Those who are already well informed in essentials and quite prepared to discuss](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:barwgjd2bjjqacm3uinp3a4h/bafkreicrd4vwrgkkmx5pyfe2rtmhs472fmgqzsg6iyqtdpgm35qyywaikm@jpeg "Click to view full size")
I made a silly joke on Twitter about special national archives agents bursting in and holding up badges showing two crossed 2B pencils and an acid-free box, with the slogan ‘Respect des Fonds’. It was retweeted by loads of historians and archivists and we all had a good giggle. Seems so long ago.
I remember when it became clear that NARA was involved in the Mar-a-Lago raid (because Trump was in violation of the Presidential Records Act) it was a joyous moment to be an archivist.
Hoping for their sake that National Archives & Records Administration staff don’t get instructed to join this action against Bolton, which is clearly just another example of Trump exacting vengeance.
I’m wondering whether the National Archives & Records Association will be corralled into this somehow. I think Rubio is still interim head there? But afaik NARA hasn’t had a huge staff purge yet (thankfully) and I can’t imagine the specialists there will relish being dragged into this mess.
Quite a lot of local authority library services have a fair number of subscriptions to online services that are accessible to those a library card number. Wandsworth and City of London (the two cards I have) both have access to OED, ODNB, lots of Oxford reference books, Who’s Who and Who Was Who…
What website is that? Looks useful, alongside an OED login (thankyou Wandsworth Libraries).
Trying to think of how many MPs have been poached by another legislature or vice versa?
BBC continues to have a persistent editorial problem in hyping & exaggerating scale of asylum protests (even at odds with its own reporting) How can a report quoting the police saying "about 150 people attended" a protest and counter-protest have the headline "hundreds join asylum hotel demo"
fundamentally the problem is that if you think "hotels are where I stay on holiday and I like being on holiday so living in a hotel must be fun and it's not fair others get to do it and not me" then you have the intellectual reasoning of a little child and it's going to be hard to engage with you