Alexander Thom

This reminded me of when I heard a Lacanian argue quite convincingly that the paranoid delusions of psychosis are not the illness per se but rather the patient's attempt at self-recovery and self-comfort following a psychotic break.

Pretty majuscool.

But doesn't calling 'listening' or 'watching' 'reading' elide the interpretive work of the performer mediating the text? Not trying to catch you out, genuinely curious because this is a new vocabulary to me.

great bedtime story!

They think they're George Carlin, but they're actually court jesters.

Truly one of the greats. Nobody articulated the mixed potential of 'high' culture—both repressive and liberatory—quite like Tony. It was a particular relief to learn from his work that my teenage fascination with classics wasn't necessarily early-onset Conservativism.

Vividly kind is a wonderful epithet. You can feel that tectonic caring in his work.

Technofeudalism is here. They honour the new barons.

Matthew McConaughey says he wants a private LLM, fed only with his books, notes, journals, and aspirations, so he can ask it questions and get answers based solely on that information, without any outside influence.

this exists it is called thinking

I pity the dons forced to listen to lightly-edited AI outputs week after week.

I believe Robert Eggers has optioned the screenplay.

'“It looks awful now....says Carl Sayer, a professor of geography at UCL, who is dancing with glee around the bleak-looking, freshly dug hole. “The colonisation is so quick. Within a year, it is full of water plants. Within two years, it looks like it’s been there forever".'

But like Antigone, this is a holy crime.

Can anyone recommend good work on Renaissance conceptions of volition and/or coercion?

Looks tremendous, Randall. Reposted, in part, to remind myself to order a copy!

I've been away from social media for a while. Thanks to everybody who has followed me here despite my silence. I'll launch my first bsky post with news about my new book: Shakespeare,St Paul, and Dramatic Emancipation: disability, gender, race, ecology academic.oup.com/book/60795.

24 Aug 1572: Sir Philip Sidney views St. Bartholomew's Day massacre from the #English embassy in #Paris #otd (NPG)

This is just textbook 1930’s fascism

hoping that when they say the LLM talks like a Ph.D.-level expert, they mean "holds indecipherable decades-long academic grudges expressed largely in the form of questions that are actually more of a comment"

This book was tremendous fun to research. As an added bonus, you can try and guess which of us wrote which chapters. @euanroger.bsky.social @nejohnst.bsky.social

For a blissful moment, I thought this was satire.

Did Scooter Braun get your royalties or something?

That panicked feeling you get when you suddenly find yourself stuck in the super tight jumper you were trying to take off - 14th century, The Morgan Library & Museum, MS G.24, f. 139v

What a series! Had to end in a nail-biter!!

Good objection.

On the other hand, I hear scientists increasingly recognise that their work is dependent on an amenable cultural context. We're living through a period where culture, history, politics, and language matter massively. I think the humanities is on the brink of a painful renewal.

I'm asking that as a genuine question, I'm very torn. I also sometimes worry that we're so quick to liberalise porn and sex work from stigma that we've inadvertently also neoliberalised it—producers and consumers deserve real industry regulation and, frankly, a union.

Isn't this making the best the enemy of the good? Kids try to sneak into 18+ screenings—but I wouldn't want to declassify cinema ratings, for all their faults. Until now, we have had a fairly asymmetric approach to censorship/child protection at the expense of art/narrative.

From John Clare’s Shepherd’s Calendar

Friday #morningread
It’s 1 August, the beginning of the harvest season. We are halfway between the summer solstice and autumn equinox. Happy Lughnasadh!
& Happy Yorkshire Day!

It’s Melbourne Rare Books Fair time! 🙂

A book Walter Raleigh had with him in the Tower, anyone…?

(Maggs brought it out; I didn’t ask the price.)

rarebookfair.com