Sophie Cooper

Melania is absolutely stone faced as Trump talks about how sad Steve Scalise's wife when he was shot but he "knows many wives who would not even be crying"

On left, burgundy background with text that says: Kylee-Anne Hingston, “Blindness and Irish National Identity in the Textual Afterlife of F. W. Burton’s A Blind Girl at a Holy Well,” Victorian Periodicals Review, volume 58, number 2, summer 2025. On right, The Blind Girl at the Holy Well, ca. 1869, print, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, https://lccn.loc.gov/2003674284.

In VPR 58.2, @kyleeanneh.bsky.social traces reproductions of F.W. Burton’s 1840 watercolor “A Blind Girl at A Holy Well” to consider how #periodicals deployed its sentimental depiction of blindness in mid-century debates about Irish culture and nationhood: muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/articl... @rs4vp.org

Graham Linehan My trans critics are cowards. Yes, Ardal O'Hanlon - that includes you I expected more from my friend of 25 years. But he would rather condemn me than fight for the rights of women and girls

The man’s life, ironically, is now one long hectoring, deranged harangue at the Golden Cleric Awards. “And now, we move on to liars”

The Nun Who Chose Abortion Over Her Vows It wasn’t until 8:45 a.m. on February 23, 1983, that the Sisters of Mercy in Detroit learned that Archbishop Edmund Szoka would soon hold a news conference to deliver an ultimatum: Sister of Mercy …

I'm so glad that this history of nuns and reproductive rights/access is being written about! @nursingclio.bsky.social

nursingclio.org/2025/12/12/t...

Slides from a Home Office presentation for employers on “earned settlement” — note the case studies: they explicitly play the “good migrant” versus “bad migrant” narrative. Guess which category Sarah, the American, is placed in?

When will this crisis get any attention whatsoever!? A THOUSAND ACADEMIC STAFF AT ONE INSTITUTION SERVED REDUNDANCY RISK NOTICES! And that's not counting what's surely being visited on professional services staff too. This is an economic catastrophe, to say nothing of the intellectual catastrophe!

THEY TRIED TO BURY ME BUT THEY DIDNT KNOW I WASA POTATO The Velvet Bandit

I kind of love this. And potatoes 🥔

Looking forward to presenting this paper on my current book project @irishstudiesqub.bsky.social on Monday.

Fire UK workers and start a company educating people in Kazakhstan instead?

Is that what people said when they asked for universities to be "run like businesses"?

Wow: Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention (named for Holocaust survivor Raphael Lemkin, who coined term "genocide") calls Clinton's remarks "genocide denial."

"Young people in the US are not stupid or gullible. They simply reject genocide – something the Secretary might consider doing as well."

A cynic might say the best people to know how to withhold, destroy or manage legally admissible evidence would be those involved in exacting the law itself. As the report admits, it would be ‘unlikely’ incriminatory evidence was generated or kept in the first place.

I would recommend anyone read the Kenova Report published today, especially ps 123-4 in context of the headlines stating there is no evidence of collusion between the British state and loyalist paramilitaries.

www.psni.police.uk/sites/defaul...

I mean, I'm watching it and it is enjoyable, but it is kind of annoying that when strong women are taking the lead in westerns, they lack complexity or any rationality, apparently.

The message of The Abandons seems to be, when women take power, especially through violence, there is absolutely no stopping their mad violent actions. It is up to reasonable men to try to curb their blood lust otherwise they will go mad with it.

Which is a shame with such a cast...

Folks might not know a lot of people are getting *very* upset that the materials they request are not available in the libraries/archives they're requesting from.

We're getting lots here at the Library of Virginia: requests of documents likely surfaced by large language models that *do not exist*.

Book cover of Political Undesirables: Citizenship, Denaturalization, and Reclamation in Iraq by Zainab Saleh

Political Undesirables considers the legal making and unmaking of citizenship in Iraq, focusing on the mass denaturalization and deportation of Iraqi Jews in 1950–51 and Iraqis of Iranian origin in the early 1980s.

https://ow.ly/BktL50XG3X9

I was watching Netflix with adverts and one came up - if you can't wait to watch Stranger Things 5, and haven't watched the previous series, just use Google AI to summarise some of the key past episodes so you can dip in.

Like, what is the business model here?! Surely you want people watching!

Diamond and Juba The Raucous World of 19th-Century Challenge Dancing Author: April F. Masten

Happy Pub Date to DIAMOND AND JUBA: The Raucous World of 19th-Century Challenge Dancing by @historydancer.bsky.social!
www.press.uillinois.edu/books/?id=c0...

#LinkInBio #AfricanAmericanHistory #Biography #Dance #AmericanHistory #LaborStudies #Irish

Coming soon (June 2026) as the next book in the Glucksman Irish Diaspora Series @nyupress.bsky.social @gihnyu.bsky.social A powerful reinterpretation of global Irish nationalism by @patrickjmahone1.bsky.social nyupress.org/search-resul...

How Google Maps quietly allocates survival across London’s restaurants - and how I built a dashboard to see through it I wanted a dinner recommendation and got a research agenda instead. Using 13000+ restaurants, I rebuild its ratings with machine learning and map how algorithmic visibility actually distributes power.

I wanted dinner recommendations so I scraped 13,000+ London restaurants and accidentally discovered Google Maps is running a shadow economy. Anyway here's a dashboard and a political economy thesis: open.substack.com/pub/laurenle...

It's wild that there appears to be more current concern for the Lost Library of Alexandria than for the British Library. The BL's crisis exemplifies the accelerating destruction--through apathy as much as by design--of human knowledge & learning. I'm not even being dramatic.

Best Books Of 2025 In keeping with past tradition since joining the illustrious team of historian at the Anxious Bench, I am once again sharing my best books...

Thanks so much for including Religion in the Lands That Became America!
@yalepress.bsky.social
@yalebooks.bsky.social
@patheos.com

www.patheos.com/blogs/anxiou...

After the hard work that goes into a peer-reviewed article, very pleased to be in print today! Come for the constructions of women’s sexuality in the 19th century Lords; stay for new diary source on the hidden attic from which women watched the Commons below onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....

Coming up this Thursday in Manchester! Our last Open Mic in Belfast was great fun - highly recommended event in a beautiful, historic setting - the @porticolibrary.bsky.social... #skystorians

📢📢📢📢GOOD ABORTION NEWS KLAXXON📢📢📢
Faroe Islands votes - by ONE vote - to overturn abortion ban. Now let's hope they make abortion ACCESSIBLE as well as LEGAL.

My dad abhors any negative comments about immigrants. Asked him recently why he’s so strong on it: ‘Because we’re always happy to take the rich and clever ones. Which means it’s not about disliking immigrants. It’s about disliking the poor and vulnerable. And that’s a bad human instinct.’

We had a really great catch up yesterday. Thanks again to @melissashiels.bsky.social for a fascinating talk on how Regency women dressed.

my great-grandparents arrived in the UK in the 1890s with nothing.
they sold pickles from the front room window, took in laundry, worked as tailors.
their children were nurses, teachers, salesmen.
their grandchildren were professors, designers, opticians, doctors, magistrates, entrepreneurs.

Hey everyone, here's the news, if you aren't a high earner, entrepreneur or a "skilled frontline worker" (whatever the fuck that means) the "Labour" Party says you aren't contributing, you're a taker!