Joan Passey

I am genuinely dumbfounded that anybody, even for a nanosecond, might have thought that LLM simulations of human participants could provide novel insights on the human mind

I am 93% sure I saw you at Bristol temple meads the other day but wasn't sure enough so just did this for a bit 👀

I'm doing a talk in Bath! Come and join me at Komedia on the 4th November 2025 for a whistlestop tour of women in the Gothic across four delirious centuries! It will be fast, furious, and hair raising! www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/gothic-fic...

Did Victorians believe heavy drinking caused spontaneous human combustion?

Dr Pam Lock @pamplemoussepam.bsky.social is going to enlighten us on this rather unusual subject, on Thursday 16th October at Glenside Hospital Museum, and we can't wait!

Tickets here: glensidemuseum.org.uk/introducing-...

I love Amelia B Edwards, not least because 'A Thousand Miles Up the Nile' has so many euphemistic applications

THE AREA IS CALLED ST GEORGE. THE SCHOOL HAS A ST GEORGE MURAL ON IT. WE HAVE MULTIPLE ROADS CALLED SOME VARIATION OF 'DRAGON'. THE LOCAL PUB IS THE GEORGE AND DRAGON.

absolutely gobsmacked to find red and white flags painted on zebra crossings and roundabouts in my little part of bristol, ST GEORGE.

Spotted @jendeavour.bsky.social and @joanpassey.bsky.social’s books in the wild (“the wild” being The Bodies in the Bookshop in Cambridge in this instance)

Ahh yes, my favourite Jane Austen novels - The Schutzstaffel, Postage and Packaging, Member of Parliament, Electronic, Not Applicable and Phosphorous <3

a university is not for generating profit, it provides cultural enrichment via weird little gremlin people who love visigoths or haikus, and very occasionally a scientist who figures out faster than light travel

i can only imagine the casting director for the sandman was watching interview with the vampire and flew off the couch as though electrocuted. 'who is this sad beautiful man!!! i must put a cape on him and make him anguished!!!'

like. Tom Sturridge will go down in history as the Platonian ideal of brooding pouting byronic gothic antihero perfection. HOW do you cast a Dream who comes even NEAR that level of pouty brooding woeful romantic poetic despair? LOUIS DU LAC

it's been DAYS since i saw it but i still can't stop thinking of the GENIUS of casting Jacob Anderson as Daniel Hall

Young people in England’s coastal towns three times more likely to have a mental health condition They are suffering disproportionately and without help, say researchers, and unless they are given a voice, problems will continue to mount up

This is why I am sometimes grumpy when people tell me how lucky I am to live somewhere with limited public transport links and an economy built on on low paid seasonal work. Yes, it's beautiful, but that's not enough, particularly for the young.
www.theguardian.com/environment/...

And it specifically had fun with gothic tropes! Haunted houses representing the tortured mind! Uncanny doubles everywhere! Accepting the darkness rather than fighting it! Everyone is a Frankenstein's monster lab experiment gone wrong!

I’m (Lauren) pleased to announce the safe arrival of my first child, ‘The Gothic at War’, weighing 75 pounds. It was a long and difficult birth but worth the effort.

If you want to support my sweet child, why not order a copy for you library: www.uwp.co.uk/book/the-got... #AcademicChatter #Gothic

Good set pieces, a cast with great comic timing, emo underdogs and misfits. It's formulaic as anything but if you expect art house going into a Marvel movie that's a you problem. I know what I'm going to get when I eat at Wetherspoons, man

I actually loved Thunderbolts. A profoundly on the nose reflection on self loathing and loneliness where a group hug saves the day but I'm a simple creature and I love a haunted house story with found family

Met Office graphic with the heading 'DID YOU KNOW?' and an illustration of a light bulb. Text reads: '100 years ago today, the BBC broadcast the very first Shipping Forecast, produced by the Met Office on behalf of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency.' Includes the hashtag '#WhenItMatters'. On the right, a photo shows rough ocean waves under a cloudy sky.

Did you know? 100 years ago today, the BBC broadcast the #ShippingForecast for the very first time, produced by the Met Office for the Maritime and Coastguard Agency.

More than just a lifesaver, it’s become a beloved part of Britain’s cultural identity. Learn more: bit.ly/4kg877D 🛳️🌊

Wragge Labs A compilation of things I've built over the last 30 years to help people see and use the online collections of libraries, archives, and museums.

For 30 years I've been experimenting with ways to see & use the online collections of libraries, archives & museums. I've made useful things, playful things, & weird things. Here's a big list of them for you to explore! https://wraggelabs.com #GLAM #histodons #digitalHumanities

At this point I think I may be one of an incredibly small number of people to have read the second Sullivan report in detail. It is uniformly poor scholarship, containing flagrant fabrications and misrepresentations, calling into question Alice Sullivan's ability to conduct basic academic research

University of Bristol jobs at risk amid lower student numbers The university says the number of applicants to the languages course has fallen in recent years.

it’s hard to stress just how important it is for universities to provide tailored support for students for whom english is not a first language, and how counter-productive these proposed redundancies are

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

@ucu.org.uk

The first two paragraphs: "Today, a hot day when 22 Palestinians (including journalists) sat in a seafront café were murdered by one Israeli bomb, various national media outlets have contacted us (again) to ask our view of something a musician said. For 636 days now, unprecedented & insufferable horror has been recorded by the brutalised communities of Gaza and shown to us on our phone and television screens. It will not stop. No one, it seems, will stop it."

The last two paragraphs (in part): "As we all watch on aghast, every single day, shouting or typing into an echo chamber of complicity... Given the total ban by Israel on international journalists reporting from Gaza, and the simultaneous murder of hundreds of journalists in Gaza by Israeli forces, Massive Attack would urge the BBC and other media outlets to redirect their considerable news resource to reporting the truth of what is happening, daily, to the people of Gaza, and critically, to explaining the corresponding inaction of western governments (such as the UK) to their viewers.”

Massive Attack via Instagram.

Omg ofc it's a Gustin, iconic

Joe Saunders History Here to help with any historical project including genealogy, property history, problem solving, archival photography and writing up research. Joe Saunders History

Summer trips planned to a range of libraries and archives where I have some research time available. Let me know if you're in need of (paid) research in Cumbria, Yorkshire, Essex, London, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Hereford, Devon, Cornwall or the West Midlands. 🗃️ www.joesaundershistory.co.uk

I've been staring into space ever since I got home

That dress!!! Where is the dress from!!!

Hello folks, I just wanted to give you an update on our crowdfunder campaign. We hit 18% of our target in the first 24 hours! Thank you so much for all your contributions, it means a lot. Thanks for all your messages of support as well!

BBC Four is bringing us some classic #Moviedrome intros to The Wicker Man and Don't Look Now before showings of the films themselves. Thursday 10 July is the date for your diary.

7 New Trans Novels To Read This Summer 2025 has already amassed an absolutely stellar line-up of trans novels.

You should always be reading trans fiction, but now feels like an even more important time to be reading our stories and supporting our art. Good thing 2025 has already served up some absolutely incredible novels by trans authors!