Venus Bivar

If you need vegan/vegetarian recs, I'm all over it. There is a nice little spot on Friars Entry (weird little back street) called Organic Cafe and Deli that has amazing vegan croissants.

I should also add that there are TWO Gardeners Arms. You want the one on Plantation Road, which might also be the cutest street in Oxford. Be forewarned, the pub food is all vegetarian/vegan. Might not be for everyone. But the garden is truly lovely and there is often a husky hanging around.

Different editors now - had they been the same, I would have done as you did.

Oh yeah - the current editors are not the ones who rejected my work.

I am currently peer reviewing an article for a journal whose editors have turned me down THREE times without even sending out for peer review. When I accepted the request I thought, "I'll be the bigger person," but now that I'm doing the work I'm all like, "Seriously? Three flat-out rejections?"

If you’re feeling spendy Arbequina is phenomenal. The Vaults is great for the Radcliffe view. Ditto the outside tables in front of the Kings Arms. Botanical garden is a good stroll. Blackwells to get lost in.

The museums arefree. Pitt Rivers is my fave - old school anthro meets cabinet of curiosities. I second the Branca rec. Fave pub is Gardeners Arms - nice garden out back. Chiang Mai is excellent Thai. Christ Church Meadow for a nice walk. Evensong is cool if it happens in summer.

Glen is so so right about this.

I’m so sorry. ❤️

reading recommendations, please! looking for scholarly accounts of the use of the phrase 'concentration camp' in pre-1937 British (NOT GERMAN!) media and novels. How was the phrase being used? What was it understood to mean?

For those in need of some good news for a change.

Screenshot of document: “ according to Arendt, totalitarian regimes employ the following strategies to achieve and maintain power that ‘works from within,’ meaning on an individual, psychological level: 1. denial of economic realities / promotion of ‘classless’ society and conversion of social / economic classes into masses, or mobs 2. propaganda and suppression of the media 3. terror, which becomes an “essential function of government” 4. imposed statelessness, by which regimes decree who does and does not count as “citizens” 4. supplanting intellectuals and creatives: “The consistent persecution of every higher form of intellectual activity by the new mass leaders springs from more than their natural resentment against everything they cannot understand … Totalitarianism [] invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty” (377). 5. the imperial boomerang, or the idea that governments that develop repressive techniques to control colonial territories will eventually deploy those same techniques domestically against their own citizens. 6. fake government functions, organizations, or agencies 7. loneliness”

Checking off lots of items on Arendt’s list today

I'm grateful to be represented by one of the only MPs to speak out in support of Palestinians. Thank you @rachaelmaskell.bsky.social !

History and photograph people, I need your help: does ‘British Official Photograph’ stamped on the back of a photograph (of a wind turbine) and a serial number suggest a particular provenance? It’s a surprise to me and the archivist to see it there, and it raises some potential copyright questions.

I feel like I should add, so people know what they're getting themselves into, that the book is in large part about child abuse, and the portrayal of the abuser, and the abused, is very sympathetic. This is 'I have no idea what to think' part.

Has anyone read The Bone People? I just finished it and I have no idea what to think. The prose sucked me in and had me in a trance. I could not put it down. But holy hell the violence. The cruelty.

Call for papers: "New Directions in Taiwan History" workshop to be held at University of Washington, Seattle, on February 26-27, 2026. Deadline to apply is October 10, 2025. Please share widely! For application instructions: jsis.washington.edu/taiwan/works...

In the UK they are INTERCHANGEABLE and it breaks my brain every. single. time. I have to mark an essay not correct this according to the American standard.

This is beyond scary. I am so genuinely concerned about AI and the future of knowledge production.

Holy effing hell. Abominable.

a man with long hair and a beard is giving a thumbs up and saying `` many thanks '' . ALT: a man with long hair and a beard is giving a thumbs up and saying `` many thanks '' .

Woo hoo!

How the Benzene Tree Polluted the World The organic compounds that enabled industrialization are having unintended consequences for the planet’s life.

Anyone out there with access to the Atlantic who could gift me this pretty please?

www.theatlantic.com/science/arch...

I feel you. We talk about this weekly.

💯

I’ve just figured out that our plum tree has suffered a fruit fly infestation and every single plum I just opened is full of larvae poop and maggots. Effing gardening. It’s a soul crushing business.

Oh no! So sorry that Rocket has gone missing. I hope he turns up soon.

a cartoon of flintstone with the words the math ain 't mathing ALT: a cartoon of flintstone with the words the math ain 't mathing

I bought two giant slabs of fudge to fuel me through some grant application edits and people, I am one slab down and only a quarter of the way through the work. The maths do not add up.

Hi. I can see the post, but as a non-IG user I can't get to the profile with the additional info. Any other options?

THERE IS TOO MUCH CONTENT. I cannot keep up. Everyone please stop producing and go sit on a park bench for a few hours.