Oliver Clarke

The BBC audio adaptions in the late 90s/early 2000s probably the last hurrah?

Think this is the only place online where you can find a couple of songs performed by a distant cousin, who was reasonably famous in his day www.georgeformby.co.uk/hw/140914.html

(With apologies to @guy-normal.bsky.social, who did the much wittier original version)

[High Street Bank advert voice]
Here's to the time of sweary gift cards, to the platitudes of instagram bards - here's to the culture of pastel cartoons and "witty" reworkings of all the same damn tunes.

The twee/avoidance of being serious will be the shorthand in future cultural works for "you are looking at/reading about the 2010s/2020s"

Never ask postdocs what they'll be doing next year, that's considered terribly offensive in their culture.

This happened within a couple of hours of us arriving on the Oregon Pacific coast (we're staying high up and the forecast here looks to be pretty low)

Tom Lehrer was simply the funniest man, and I'm forever grateful for the chain of passing down appreciating his songs from my grandmother to my mother to me.

Anyone who makes it over to San Pietro di Castello is doing Venice in proper depth. (Obviously San Marco is one of the world's great buildings, but Santa Maria Assunta out atTorcello is one of the finest places to stand and feel the depth of history)

Apologies if my reply came across as aggressive, that was not my intention at all

I don't think either Thea (whose thesis on socio-cultural identities in archaic and classical western Sicily drew heavily on defixiones etc.) or Jonathan, the PI for I.Sicily, are aiming for that!

Some of the coolest work in the field being done by @tsommerschield.bsky.social and others!

Amazing productivity gains for researchers.

One of those properly disorienting/humbling places - thousands of hours of the thought and labour of an entire society, about which we now know the barest details.

bsky.app/profile/anti... Fascinating site, which I'd never come across before

Deep within the Andes, a rough drive from Popayán, lies one of the pre-Colombian Americas’ most fascinating and least known sites - the hypogea of Tierradentro.

Here mysterious chambers are scattered through a remote valley, plundered by grave robbers but only properly excavated in the 1930s… /1

Collections: Life, Work, Death and the Peasant, Part II: Starting at the End This is the second part of our series (I) discussing the basic contours of life – birth, marriage, labor, subsistence, death – of pre-modern peasants and their families. As we’ve …

@bretdevereaux.bsky.social 's most recent blog was a very fine discussion on this reality acoup.blog/2025/07/18/c...

Absolutely not. (Their followers and imitators yes, but no art movement survives the second raters and second generation)

Officially Dr Clarke

(Also my idea of this game of "you have 24 hours to gather information" is that you are also sprinting round the city with a camera to capture as much as possible)

There's loads to learn about the operation of Roman power on that day! The riot is quelled by the magistrate saying they're at risk of punishment from above!

Fun thought prompted by this: the most useful single time and place you could travel to in order to learn the maximum about Greco-Roman antiquity in just one day is to get yourself to Ephesus on the day that Demetrius the silversmith stirs up a riot against the preaching of Paul

I know this thanks to the third word - first attested use in English is by King James VI and I

That's a faked photo - it was made to sell to tourists as a postcard afterwards

Needs two more panels where Persia holds out a couple of large sacks of silver and they immediately return to fighting

Once again forgetting that Ben Stokes is actually a main character of the universe and will bend reality to his whim

I'm filling out my bazball apology form

(Possible that my thinking is currently a little too driven by 1) rereading Plutarch's Lives 2) visiting Hughenden last weekend)

and I also can't shake the idea that though he is ambitious, it's in a way a limited ambition that shies away from the full-blown "here is how I want to reshape the country I lead, this is what Starmer's ideal Britain looks like"

As you rightly say, no PM is going to care deeply about everything, but then that seems to me to lead to in some ways a more pertinent criticism "why have you not appointed ministers who cover for your blindspots?/do you not think these areas are important even if they don't interest you?"

Somewhat a feature of Decisive Campaigns: Barbarossa, where there are superiors to answer to (who make mad and evil requests and will fire you if you're too independent ) and subordinates to coordinate around logistics, and you may end up at a War Crimes Tribunal.