Historian of capitalism, pollution, Marseille, farming, land use, plastics, climate, and economic growth; misanthrope; hockey player; expert baker; amateur gardener; works at St Anne's College at Oxford 🇨🇦; lives in York
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I used to pick every summer as a kid and then the public spots kept getting bought up by rich people wanting to build vacation homes. By the time I was 20 there were no spots left :(
Jaysus.
Best proposal I've heard in a long long time.
Google said last year almost 30 per cent of its water came from watersheds with a medium or high risk of “water depletion or scarcity”.
But wait! There's more! "In 2023, Microsoft said that 42 per cent of its water came from “areas with water stress”, while Meta said roughly 16 per cent of its water usage was derived from similar areas during the same time period.
The Great Derangement indeed: Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon and Meta plan to increase their capital expenditures to more than $300bn in 2025. IT consultancy Gartner reckons a total of $475bn will be spent on data centres this year, up 42 per cent on 2024. ig.ft.com/ai-data-cent...
Do you not have a special area for bikes and pedestrians? We have one in York. Love it. I laugh at the suckers in the long-ass queue for cars as I speedily roll up, unload my soy milk tetra packs, and then get on my way.
Got up early to write, while the husband and dog sleep in, and I have spent the 90 minutes enjoying some animal videos, eating a leisurely breakfast, reading about Arundhati Roy's new memoir, and looking at images of Girona online (gorgeous city!). I did manage to move one intertitle though.
Also, if you're vegan for animal welfare reasons (hi! it's me!), then this article has zero relevance.
It's awful that this doesn't get more media coverage, that so little is being done to get justice for these indigenous women and their loved ones. Thanks @hollyguise.bsky.social for posting this article. www.adn.com/alaska-news/...
Spring is going to be LIT.
lots of sandwich jokes about "heros" "hoagies" and so forth, but nothing about how "the SUBaltern speaks," SMDH
Amazing what is on the internet. Here is some footage of the port of Marseille in 1955! Amazing to see the Étang de Berre before it was turned into a petrochemical nightmare. fresques.ina.fr/sudorama/fic...
In this instance, yes, excludes Britain. Thank you for the titles! Very helpful.
I am so beyond bummed that this is not available in the UK :( Back to my soy nuggets ...
Breaking update: @aburass.bsky.social has come to my rescue!
Yee haw! 🙏
Oh hi. Just trying, as a total outsider, to build a reading list on the Middle East in the 20th c. without accidentally including something that is politically reprehensible. If any fine soul out there with expertise in this area would be willing to look over what I have, I'd be eternally grateful.
It's reading list time! Please send me ARTICLES on European environmental history from 1815 to 1914. Apparently I know only books for this period 🤷‍♀️
Pritzker is really turning into a hero through all of this. I still remember the video about renaming Lake Michigan. Keep it coming @govpritzker.illinois.gov !
Can't wait to read this given my obsession with insurance and climate. Anyone out there with good readings to suggest to @katemac.bsky.social and @70sbachchan.bsky.social ?
I think I'm going to have to include Fudge Kitchen in the acknowledgements of my current book ....
No, I did. I just lost the habit, and then started writing and didn't feel like anything was missing. I would also have to buy it again and if memory serves it wasn't super cheap and I no longer have a fat US research allowance. So I'm just forging ahead with minimal software assistance.
I rather liked DevonThink at one point - used it for my first book. For the second, however, I'm just going with Word and desktop files. Lord help me.
Look at that light!
I should add: Thank you.
I think we have a winner!
Bit of a rough watch for a birthday non?
Nightmare. I've noticed that the flags have emboldened more bad behaviour in my neighbourhood. I was harassed by three teenaged boys yesterday while walking my dog on one of the flag-lined streets. There is a toxic masculinity that goes with ethno-nationalism.
Author photo!!!!!!!!!!!!
Yup! Permanent job. I'll be there until I retire or until Reform leads the UK to implode!
I live in York. They are all over my neighbourhood.
Nor should you!
I try only to repost the best ones. This qualifies.
So many have sprung up in my part of town as well. It's so fucking awful.
I used to live upstairs from a Chicago Symphony violinist - and I LOVED it. So wonderful to listen to her practice.
So jealous.
Mic drop on AI from @historicaloracle.bsky.social .
Yesterday in 1953, the US and Britain carried out a brutal coup that deposed Mohammad Mosaddegh, the popular Prime Minister of Iran, beloved for his progressive and pro-worker reforms, because he sought to restore national control over the country's oil reserves.
The number of St George Cross flags that have gone up around the neighbourhood is truly alarming and depressing.
Did anyone in England get rain in the last couple of days? I feel like I read there was going to be a giant storm on the heels of the hurricane, but not a drop fell in York. I am genuinely worried about the water shortage :(
Mine didn't set well, even with the pectin. At 204F the jam was spitting so badly that I was getting spot burns all over my hands and arms. So I gave up. Tips for the spitting? I suppose I need a bigger pot and a longer spoon and some protective gear. Jam is dangerous!
As someone who just made jam for the first time (bumper plum crop this year), I eagerly await the results. I myself used pectin.
The Situationnists would be proud.
One of the best exhibits I’ve ever seen was a solo Asawa show at the Pulitzer in St Louis.
Love that book. Still remember the descriptions of the glassworks.
Ah yes - this happened to me on the regular in St. Louis. Solidarity.
Super - thank you.
Do you have a link?
Oh cool. Didn't know about that. Thanks!
Love this. The butler is just so fantastically clueless. Ishiguro really commits to the naive narrator.
Oh @rpanchasi.bsky.social ….
Non-human animal videos are saving the internet for me.
Thanks for sharing. This is close, but maybe a bit to technical in the legalities of a class action case for my first years.
Sam has done some awesome work here - and it's great that he's sharing it with everyone.
French friends - any insights for the wonderful Christina? You around @picharbonnier.bsky.social? @margotlyautey.bsky.social? @parriblue.bsky.social?
Understandable. He looks deadly. But he's a gentle giant.
A gift link! on.ft.com/4maRLiu
Hardly a surprise, but so so depressing. We have to stop plastics at the source - this is not a waste problem, it's a production problem. www.ft.com/content/f808...
The kids are alright!
Send me an email. Headed off on holiday now. I might be able to swing it when I get home!
I think the MIT piece does a good job of explaining just how hard it is to measure the environmental impact, which in turn leaves room for all kinds of wild estimates. The bottom line though is that this is very very carbon intensive.
We had a special meeting for all of our college students in history last term. This coming term I will get all of the first-years to read this stuff before their induction meeting and we'll discuss AI then. For non-Annes students, I will ask them to read it, and will discuss in first tutorial.
I'd love a piece on how AI relies on theft - so if anyone has one, I'm all ears.
4. And a great short piece on how writing is actually a tool to sharpen your thinking and without doing the writing yourself, you aren't really learning anything at all. www.hepi.ac.uk/2025/06/06/i...
3. This is the Black Mirror version of AI. amandaguinzburg.substack.com/p/diabolus-e...
2. This is a great explanation of how LLMs actually work and why they hallucinate. Bonus for being hilariously funny. garymarcus.substack.com/p/why-do-lar...
For all of the educators trying to deal with AI, I did a deep dive in early June and these are the four articles I decided to assign to my students. 1. This is the longest of the bunch, but so wonderfully comprehensive. www.technologyreview.com/2025/05/20/1...
This makes me realise I should post again with my edited list. I will do that now! I narrowed it down to four pieces that do slightly different things.
This is my favourite show in the UK. The panelists are hilarious.
Breaking update. The moths only ruined the very first plums to ripen. For the last two weeks we have been drowning in plums. Today I am stewing and jamming and making pâte de fruit and preparing bags for give away.
Oooooh. Will check it out.
Getting caught up on @thedigradio.bsky.social this summer. This episode about the United Health Care CEO assassination is a stand out. It ranges broadly over questions of political violence, class dispossession, and alienation. thedigradio.com/podcast/assa...
This is the face of a very good boy who wants to know why I am not sharing my ice cream (he's already had TWO doggie ice creams today).
Help a sister out?
If the fossil fuel companies fail to burn us alive, they'll poison us with plastic.
Yesss!!!
As a former Pentictonite it's hard for me not to root for Ogopogo. But either way, yes, the flag is definitely the lamest choice. Maybe a wild fire? Or an abandoned mine?
This is extraordinary.
Oh I don't think these are good people. Just shrewd people. People whose bottom line is too important to be clouded by the politics that usually distorts how people in power view climate change.
Back on my insurance soap box. The best way to understand climate change is to watch the insurance industry. They are paying very very close attention. www.cnbc.com/2025/08/08/c...
We should give you citizenship based on this joke alone.
This is some very niche humour, but I see what you did here.
Oh wow. Any good? I teach Paul Slack's Invention of Improvement, which covers progress a lot. It leads to good discussion, but has a pro-Britain flavour that is hard to swallow sometimes.
And what a face it is! Loki wants to know if they can be friends.
Solidarity to everyone else out there who is also working on a BA Mid-Career grant application. May the odds be ever in your favour.
Wow. So cool. I also hear that there is now a bike lane on Granville Bridge.
This pain is so real. I too am getting them to reverse outline essays - the first 2-3 pages of 'The Touble with Wilderness' works well. The discussion we have afterwards is fantastic - they can see the transitional sentences, how the paragraph coheres, etc. Can they mimic it? Nope. But it's a start.
I have been researching plastic non-stop for the last 6 weeks. It is 100% as bad as climate change, and actually, you can't pull them apart given that it's all the some companies.
No worries! I'm the foreigner spouting off about your homeland :)
I live in York.
I think I might be en route to becoming 'the older person' 🤣 as I try to make eye contact and venture a 'hiya' when passing people on the pavement. And I've had great chats with neighbours once they realise I'm open for business. It's just the first step that Brits seem less willing to initiate.
