Fascinated that In Our Time is one of the BBC’s most popular podcasts among under 35s. The young people demand three academics and a peer discussing Demosthenes, apparently. And they’re right to do so.
Lecturer in Heritage @phaisessex.bsky.social . ‘Flooded Pasts: UNESCO, Nubia, and the Recolonization of Archaeology’ out now with Cornell UP. Fellow, RHistS. https://williamcarruthers.co.uk // williamcarruthers.wordpress.com
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Fascinated that In Our Time is one of the BBC’s most popular podcasts among under 35s. The young people demand three academics and a peer discussing Demosthenes, apparently. And they’re right to do so.
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This is helpful (especially if, like me, you’re constantly confused by the rules and end up just bumbling along trying to do the work)
Students? British universities are largely poorly managed, but they're also anchor institutions. Which ones do you think that local residents are happy to see shrink? (I am anticipating the hilarious jokes from UCL graduates about King's and finding none of them funny.)
UNESCO has form here…
If the X website is so broken that its complaints system is *routinely* defending unlawful racist abuse of "go home p__" then it urgently needs an EHRC intervention, and should be threatened with being shut down until Elon Musk is willing to operate his website *within* the laws of our country.
Something I didn't get to say yesterday: We heard over and over during the event about "human-centered" approaches to "AI". But if refusal is not on the table (at every level: individual students and teachers right up through UNESCO) then we have in fact centered the technology, not the people.
this is right. Nobody, least of all anyone on the radical Left, should be pleased about the police - the *police* - having to sort this stuff out
one of the most baffling things about all this is that I really can't understand why nobody in government seems to be saying "guys the strategy isn't working"
Just to be very clear, because the news outlets are not: Graham Linehan was arrested for actively and specifically inciting violence. He said on twitter that if you met a trans woman in women's toilets you should punch her in the genitalia.
The traditional ‘pissing down with rain on the first day back at school’ morning
One of the key points I make in "Heritage and Healing in Syria and Iraq" is about the roles and ethical responsibilities of archaeological and heritage organisations in conflict areas. In the following skeets is the text of my acceptance speech 1/n
To clarify, Britain isn’t North Korea
In the absence of any news to the contrary, I assume the White House press conference involves Trump slowly and shakily taking off some glasses, ordering everyone out of the room except Keitel, Krebs, and Jodl, before reminding them that Steiner's counterattack was ein Befehl.
This is just the saddest news. A really good man and a really good bookseller.
The Economist's UK newsletter, Blighty, this week
Every time I think I write short, the footnotes do for me
Redundancies and closures mooted at the University of Leicester in Schools of Education, Chemistry and Geography, Geology and the Environment plus disciplines of Modern Languages, Film Studies and History. Shrinking HE provision shrinks opportunity and exacerbates regional inequality.
Oh come off it
How this govt. doesn’t have control over any narrative a year after winning a landslide beggars belief
Spotted in Southwark
Mel Brooks put it best: m.youtube.com/watch?v=czaS...
Memorably c. 2011 I wrote ‘real risk of political instability’ on a risk assessment to go to Egypt and no one batted an eyelid
No way?
That’s true
I look on enviously at my wife’s job (small charity) where the instructions seem to be ‘within reason, use our credit card’
I know it’s more accessible, but I gave up on anything online ages ago for this reason
I think it’s the closest I’ve cone to really losing it with someone tbh. I ended up having to put down that there was a serious risk of terrorism or something.
None of it is worth the effort, which is precisely why people end up paying for things themselves. Even on one grant I had to do this: it paid travel but not accommodation.
I always remember, just after travel got going again, being told to do a risk assessment to go to Paris (!) with a) no other instructions that was b) sent back to me because an admin said it wasn’t detailed enough. It took hours.
‘The Children of Nut and Other Myths’: Re-imagining Ancient Egyptian Tales Published by Takween in 2024, Egyptian novelist Muhamad A. Jamal's أبناء نوت وأساطير أخرى : حكايات مصرية عتيقة (The Children of Nut and Other Myths: Ancient Egyptian Tales) promises to blow up your understanding of Egyptian…
Think I had an A-level anxiety dream. That’s the news for you.
As you say later, even… but that is basically Britain today
Amongst other things, after all, huge proportions of the population are enforcing the norm on a daily basis simply because they’re in relationships or families or friendships that don’t adhere to racist boundaries at all.
An anthropologist I know once said ‘they just want people to sit in the library and read Jane Austen’ and—as unfair as that is—there’s an element of truth in terms of cost
Think there’s a truth here
… ‘global’ research but don’t want anyone to actually do it unless they have grants
Argh! Sorry. Cannot believe they wanted you to pay the deductible also. Frankly my life was made a lot easier by the arrival of Airbnb (long trips possible) but if insurance doesn’t allow booking it it’s a real problem. My hunch is that universities are very interested in academics doing…
Amazed THE would publish it
Amongst other things here, I bought my own travel insurance for years until a university really mandated that I used theirs.
'universities are not companies...their leaders do not play a direct role in fulfilling the academic mission. Their role is twofold: to ensure the financial solvency of the institution, and to create the conditions in which academic staff and students can pursue excellence. Both are essential.' 1/2
Pleasing to think about, however
Now wondering if it is in fact Momus in disguise
*Too*
That Open AI satellite archaeology story has really made me angry.
It happens here to, but there’s definitely a US version of it…
Is Kemi like one of those people mistaking someone in the US being polite (you should totally come visit!’/‘apply to Stanford!’) as really being serious?
He is really, really digging a hole that doesn’t need to be dug
Some other questions here, now that I think about it: what does it mean to do this work at a distance, behind a screen? How does such work elide the agency of the people doing it? What does that elision make possible?
Not at all surprising that this also seems to be full of AI-generated art: far easier to blame it on a machine
You’re not really selling me on it…
I just can’t face moving to another one
I’m on research leave until January and utterly overwhelmed by the number of new books I should be reading
Don’t get her started
Also fair
Correct. It’s obviously utter BS; anyone can see that.
Each day you should wake up thinking "how can I spend more time in TEAMS?" and "can the TEAMS app open up any faster when I start my computer??" or "is there a way TEAMS can be connected to every surface of my life? My food? Air? And love-making?????"
Tropic of Ruislip
One opened shortly afterwards
Same person claimed that they didn’t have an accent
… in Cairo, that is
Reminded of an American I knew in Cairo who consistently complained that there was no Mexican food
Don't worry academics, it's still only August 32nd. Still plenty of time!
Think—as the article basically states—that this is the next-step in the already extremely problematic use of satellites in archaeology. People really need to take a look at themselves. ‘Archaeology isn’t colonial’, they said…
Now imagining QoS, the HBO series
Too far, Stephen
The 30 hour policy extension is the continuation of a huge shift in government funding in the early years, from what had been a much greater focus on supporting lower income children's development, to money going to better off families for childcare. www.theguardian.com/money/2025/s...
And post-WW2, too
Badenoch exhibiting the age-old English practice of being unable to get over your A-levels, I see.
"Eugenics was rooted in rational modern science then" needs re-stating. Far too many people describe eugenics as a "pseudoscience", but it wasn't to those who studied it, wrote books and papers, formed societies and argued its benefits.
!!!
‘Person moves house’
Think—as the article basically states—that this is the next-step in the already extremely problematic use of satellites in archaeology. People really need to take a look at themselves. ‘Archaeology isn’t colonial’, they said…
I was going to say it’s the new satellite archaeology then read it and … grr. This is really idiotic.
FFS
And today the African Association has been closed and the building, seized. A sad day.
Really wonder what will happen to anything from that era now
How could it not be there… (I grew up not so far away)
Absolutely delighted that Dan Briggs, son of the BBC's first official historian Asa Briggs, has written to The Observer supporting the need for on-request vetting to re-instated at the BBC Written Archives Centre (p.29; not I think online). Letter's wording is in the .alt element. #waccampaign
Wrong kind of historical memory...
Makes sense—I’d like to think that there is actually a reason!
So what precisely do the right want to do about the white working classes? Certainly not go to university, as they want numbers down. Nor to have a unionised manufacturing job, as they don't want unions. No, they just want pawns as part of their culture wars. They don't give a toss.
I’m just not sure they were originally measured here?
That I can believe
My (US) wife learnt to read a whose year later than our kids (and me) and got a PhD… I’m not really sure what the British reasoning is for a lot of education policy other than vibes tbh
This is how I feel every time I talk to someone about these cuts and feel this implicit expectation that I have to convince them by defending the importance of language learning. Just because the world has gone mad doesn’t mean I’m the one who has some explaining to do.
I’d love it if the UAE found a pretext to prosecute for this (obviously, it won’t)
Why?
I meant age (i.e. 4)
4
I’m not reposting them but someone with some actual power needs to do something about the increasingly appallingly racist pundits commenting on the UK. It’s terrifying that they’re this emboldened (although I know they all now live abroad).
Does anyone know what the historical reason for British schooling starting earlier than many other countries is?
Some of the brightest lights I’ve known have been forced to eat shit repeatedly in their careers. And they were the “lucky” ones—in that they were able to stay in the game. Many more just got completely pushed out and we never know about them except as faceless statistics.
Many things being said about this. Most of them correct. But what seems key to me is that this simply is not going to happen. And it's therefore displacement activity more than anything else.
Experts warn against lending the Bayeux tapestry to the UK because of its fragile state www.theguardian.com/world/2025/a...
JFC
Really?!
One of the things that really annoys me is the idea that this doesn’t all somehow take years of practice, actually
And yes, agreed
Adam Chapman 