An old time-y illustration of a Honey.

Today is Octidi the 8th of Frimaire in the year 234.
Frimaire is the month of frost.
Today we celebrate honey. #JacobinDay

More information on honey

I heard a story about a female academic giving a paper at the IHR who, after receiving a long and aggressive question from a senior male professor, simply leaned back with her hands behind her head and replied “Oh, do fuck off.”

Twitter accounts are based in Russia. BlueSky accounts are based in homes with, frankly, too many books, plants, obsolete cables, and pieces of rustic pottery, that could do with a bit of a tidying up, to be honest.

Almshouse in Dorset discovers its 15th-century Flemish triptych is worth £3.5m Artwork that hung for centuries at St John’s Almshouse in Sherborne will be sold to raise funds for social housing

👀Wow! (not the price but that they just had this and who knew?)
www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

The prime minister's supporters are telling Labour MPs they should be careful what they wish for. They argue a leadership contest would plunge the party into the chaos associated with the final years of the Conservative Party's stint in office which came to an end last year, and install a leader who does not have their own mandate from the country. They are trying to convince their colleagues that a contest could destabilise the international markets too, and would jeopardise the good relationship the prime minister has established with President Trump. But others, including some ministers, fret about what they perceive to be the desperate position the government is in. "It's terrible. He [Starmer] is hated out there. It is worse than it got under Corbyn. I don't see how this is sustainable until May," one minister said. Opinion polls suggest Sir Keir is deeply unpopular, perhaps even the most unpopular British prime minister in the history of modern opinion polling. Polls also suggest the Labour Party has commanded the support of no more than a fifth of the electorate in recent months.

Truly hilarious that Starmer's best argument for saving his own skin is that ditching him as prime minister would threaten the UK's close relationship with....Donald Trump

Patti Smith saying: I just liked

Patti Smith saying: To be with my books

Monday

the right winger who was appointed to lead the BBC in the hope of appeasing right wingers has been driven out by right wingers for not appeasing right wingers enough and the BBC has the chance to do the funniest thing ever

I heard from a colleague who led their students in an exercise of what you would have to do in order to use AI responsibly.

In the end the students asked if they *had* to use AI or if they could make life easier for themselves and just do things the old fashioned way.

I feel lucky to live in a place where I can witness this beauty on a random Thursday

YouTube video by Live Life in Flux How Many of My Students are Using AI?

youtu.be/1B4NNrl-cK4?...

Two wall clocks displayed side by side

Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Untitled (Perfect Lovers), 1991 www.moma.org/collection/w...

Cover of the issue of Beeton’s where the novella appeared.

During this month in 1887, the public first learned of the investigative exploits of the amateur detective, Sherlock Holmes.

The first memoir of one of his cases, penned by his colleague Dr. John Watson, was published as A Study in Scarlet in the November 1887 Beeton’s Christmas Annual.

#BookSky

This autumnal watercolour was painter by Pre-Raphaelite artist Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale.

🍃 Autumn Fields, Condoven, Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale (1872 - 1945), c. 1897–1926. WA1988.237

Jacobitism The failure of the Stuarts to win back the English or Scottish throne changed the course of history, enabling the buildup of a highly centralized British state and, possibly, America's war for…

"The word ‘Jacobitism’ means loyalty to the exiled Stuarts, after James VII of Scotland and II of England was deposed by the English parliament in January 1689, and the Scottish parliament a couple of months later."

The Synod of Dordrecht: binding the Anglo-Dutch orthodox Republic of Letters

NEXT WEEK! Come and celebrate Halloween with us at the #LowCountries seminar with a paper on the Synod of Dort! (there's a (holy) ghost involved ok 👻) with Dirk van Miert @huygensknaw.bsky.social

FRI 31 OCT 17:30, @ihr.bsky.social or on zoom (register for link) #EarlyModern #AngloDutch #Skystorians

The Swearing of the Oath of Ratification of the Treaty of Münster, oil on copper by Gerard Terborch, 1648, depicting the settlement of the Peace of Westphalia. © Photos.com/Getty Images

377 years ago, on the 24th of October 1648, the Peace of Westphalia was signed, ending the Thirty Years' War. 109 different parties were involved. There were actually two separate treaties: one between the Holy Roman Empire and France, and one between the HRE and Sweden. #otd #history 🗃️

President Kennedy signing the Proclamation for Interdiction of the Delivery of Offensive Weapons to Cuba at the Oval Office on 23 October 1962.

63 years ago, on the 22nd of October 1962, American president Kennedy announced the discovery of nuclear missiles on Cuba by reconnaissance planes and the establishment of a naval ‘quarantine’ as a response. The Cuban Missile Crisis was eventually resolved through diplomatic means. #otd #history 🗃️

Who robbed the Louvre? Right answers only.

An old time-y illustration of a Tomatoes.

Today is Octidi the 28th of Vendémiaire in the year 234.
Vendémiaire is the month of vintage.
Today we celebrate tomatoes. #JacobinDay

More information on tomatoes

American politics has devolved into shitposting and aura farming The Frog is owning the president.

"Politics in the second Trump era can be mostly defined as people Posting adversarially in public"

- a quote that will one day make for a fantastic essay question

Monsieur and Madame Garnerin (Christoph Haller von Hallerstein [de], c. 1803)

226 years ago, on the 12th of October 1799, Jeanne Geneviève Garnerin (née Labrosse) was the first woman to parachute. She was an apprentice (and later wife) of pioneer balloonist Jacques Garnerin. She first ascended to an altidude of 900 metres in a gondala attached to a balloon. #otd #history🗃️

Don‘t threaten us with a good time.

Still waiting for an adaptation of this too...

Has anyone ever tested people in their 20s to see how much content they can recall from their GCSEs?

It's been more than a decade now since Gove insisted it was vital to have more content in GCSEs, so we could definitely test the proposition, right?

www.theguardian.com/education/20...

Claire Wilmot | Fascistic Dream Machines Part of the misunderstanding of the deepfake threat stems from the idea that it is a problem of bad information, rather...

‘As the far right’s use of deepfakes shows, fact-checking and correcting discrete lies is as unlikely to push back fascism as “stopping the boats” is to fix the NHS.’

@clairelwilmot.bsky.social on AI-generated misinformation, from the blog: www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/se...

Today’s beautiful cricket ground is Bradfield College in Berkshire

Now this is what I call "water colour"

Someone was trying to take a portrait of their two fave Chickens, and this happened.

Screenshot of a sensationalist Daily Mail article showing a group of predominantly black men rushing through shallow water on a beach, together with the headline: "Housing illegal migrants in student halls is proof young Britons like me are being robbed of our future by an incompetent, self serving political class"

Today's Daily Mail wants its readers to believe that the reason that more and more young people are being priced out of housing is - you guessed it - "illegal migrants"...