Dr Penny Goodman

I know it's hard to track all the threats to democracy out there right now, but this is at the top of the list.

But more partying about putting myself on fancy locations.. This time Chatsworth house.

Track Play Pretend which will be performed tomorrow night in Leeds alongside @byronicsexandexile.bsky.social (150th gig!)

Tinyurl.com/bse150jdb

#glam #newromantic #newwave 🦇🖤🦇 #livemusic

List of reasons why we don't use AI in class

I'm constantly revising my list of reasons why we don't use AI in my class. This one is specific to a first-year writing intensive. Free to borrow/adapt! 🙂

A line drawing of a round black shield with a single spear set at an angle behind it. The shield bears a Greek letter lambda logo (identifying it as Spartan), and the word 'Spartan' is written underneath.

Yep, I agree. I just Googled "sparta spear shield", and a lot of the results look very similar to this, e.g. this one. Came to Bluesky to check whether other Classicists had clocked this, and here you are! 😉

Ministers to announce new rail link between Birmingham and Manchester [FREE TO READ] Government will reveal much-delayed plans for major new and upgraded rail links in north of England

Excl

Birmingham to Manchester is back on

as.ft.com/r/771bb6e6-4...

Old tweet that says when I was young I thought things wre bad because solutions were complicated and now I'm old and realize things are bad because solutions are simple but will inconvenience affluent people (or those who aspire to be) and religious fanatics.

I didn't save this tweet but somebody did and it feels worth resurfacing

This kind of thing does point out a real ethical dilemma: block or mute?

I understand the pressures on the BBC, but Radio 4's coverage of the Minneapolis shooting is an example of "bad balance".

It's all "the Trump regime says she was a terrorist, but Democrats say it was murder".

The BBC has the footage. It doesn't have to treat truth and falsehood as equally valid.

slide containing book covers of: A cultural history of race in antiquity, ed. Denise McCoskey (2021) Untangling blackness in Greek Antiquity, Sarah Derbew (2022) The West, a new history in fourteen lives, Naoíse Mac Sweeney (2023) Critical Ancient World Studies, eds. Mathura Umachandran and Chella Ward (2024) - open access How the world made the west (2024), Josephine Quinn Epic events, Sasha-Mae Eccleston (2024) The Routledge Hnadbook ofClassics, Colonialism, and Postcolonial theory, eds. Ben Akrigg and Katherine Blouin (2024) Classicism and Other Phobias, Dan-el Padilla Peralta (2025) The White Pedestal, how nationalists use ancient Greece and Rome to justify hate, Curtis Dozier (2026) The Cambridge Companion to Classics and Race, edited by Rosa Andujar, Elena Giusti, Jackie Murray (2026)

here's a slide with recent publications relating to race and postcoloniality in Classics. this is not exhaustive (and there are several exciting books still on the horizon), but it does represent a significant groundswell in recent years

Okay, I will preface this with the GIGANTIC disclaimer that I promise I know how this looks, and I *swear* this is not personally motivated: If you have an old #LiveJournal account, and it has things you still care about in it, download it or import it to Dreamwidth SOON. Details:

If you were personally not racist but you ran a party that contained this level of racism, you'd resign on the basis you had somehow ended up organising racists into a serious campaigning force, which had never been your intention.

On the other hand, if you *are* a racist...

Ah, thank you! Will definitely want to eat this. They've got a documentary coming out soon too.

Ask this question and its follow-up. Like Begum before him, Alaa el-Fattah is being used as a crowbar to shift reasonable people - even some progressives - into a space of thinking that full citizenship, if granted recently or dual, is retroactively conditional or attracts a lower class of rights.

My father in law has done his traditional Christmas Day Facebook post to remind us of the true meaning of the day:

Reminding us of the greatest Christmas of all, December 25th, 1989, when they shot that bastard Ceaușescu

Probably your most important role, though, will be to be a point of calm and understanding for Mr Sleigh while he processes and adjusts to it all. Thinking of both of you.

Really sorry to hear this. I have some related experience because of my Mum's brain tumour (not quite the same, but a lot of similar symptoms). With the person affected, you just have to kind of meet them where they are, really (as others have said).

Nearly a third of university 18-year-olds will live at home According to figures from Ucas, a record 89,510 18-year-olds with university offers plan to live at home when they begin their studies this autumn

One of the reasons that emergence of ‘cold spots’ of subject provision matters: 52% of 18 year olds from the most disadvantaged backgrounds (the most deprived quintile in the Indices of Multiple Deprivation) plan to live at home when they go the university
www.thetimes.com/article/22cc...

FAO @ladylugosi.bsky.social 😉

This is actually quite brilliant, up to and including the final sentence 🔥

Tony Smith on Ch4News saying international students should be limited because they’re “economically inactive”.

International students pay around £27k p.a. in fees to their universities, at least half again to landlords and they spend their parents’ hard-earned money in local shops.

Mentally replacing every "ChatGPT says..." or "we asked AI..." headline with "bold, bin-raiding raccoons may have a surprising answer."

I once asked a bookseller at a large indie store how many people would have to buy a book for it to get the attention of the store buyer and cause an additional order and they said: Three.

London's giant AI artwork to be torn down The bizarre story of why a much-talked-about creation is being torn down. Plus: Docklands Light Railway extension, giant laser stalks the night sky, and more tales of Android phone theft rejection.

It’s the exclusive everyone wanted, the story that will win next year’s Pulitzer…

I can reveal London’s giant AI generated Christmas artwork, the subject of much online mockery, is being torn down - and I honestly *genuinely* think you’ll never guess why. www.londoncentric.media/p/ai-artwork...

I really hate it when scientists keep saying that “we need to rebuild trust in science,” because it implies that scientists are to blame for the mistrust rather than the millions of dollars of dark money that have funded political attacks on science in order to advance a far right agenda.

He did the Greek bits, I did the Roman, and we learnt a lot from each other along the way! 🏛️

The front cover of the book, showing the title.

The spines of the three volumes, which cover ancient Europe, medieval and early modern, and modern and contemporary.

The title page of our chapter.

Just picked up my contributor's copy of The Cambridge Urban History of Europe, a MIGHTY three-volume tome extending from antiquity to the present day in which I am lucky enough to have a chapter co-authored with @cpdickenson.bsky.social on Zoning the City.

Hey authors! Check to see if Anthropic stole your book to train their slop generator on. You’re entitled to $1500 per stolen Work.

Look up your work, and if you’re in the database, file a claim
secure.anthropiccopyrightsettlement.com/lookup/

Think it's critical for people to realise that when we talk about accommodation of the far right undermining centre-left and centre-right parties, we're not just talking about voters defecting to the far right directly. We're also talking about voters defecting to more 'authentic' left parties.

The Danish Social Democrats are currently on course for their worst election result since at least the Second World War, despite their brand of far-right accommodationism being touted as a blueprint for other centre-left parties.

Time for a PR campaign Andrew Adonis (“Why you should stop thinking about electoral reform”, Prospect online, October) argues time spent considering reform is wasted as there is no certain route to change. Noting Nigel Farage has no interest in fair votes now that first-past-the-post (FPTP) promises to favour him, Adonis invites us to abandon hope. But the unprecedented fragmentation of British politics, with support split between more parties than ever before, should lead to the opposite conclusion. It is precisely because things are so volatile that we urgently need a better system and that a chance for reform could quickly materialise.

It is now “anyone’s guess what you get out of our electoral system”, says Professor Rob Ford. Under these conditions, FPTP delivers random, profoundly unrepresentative results where any party—even an extreme one—could win a majority on less than a third of the vote. With a record 60 per cent of the public in favour of change, it would be irresponsible to allow Britain to sleepwalk into such instability. MPs across the Commons are calling for a National Commission on Electoral Reform: a time-limited, independent process to review FPTP and alternatives and recommend a way forward. Whether its conclusions informed this government or future manifestos or governments, it is hard to argue against the merit of such a process. I would also counsel Lord Adonis against too confidently predicting what the future holds for electoral reform. British politics has had a habit of upending expectations this last decade and, thanks in no small part to the voting system, it is now less predictable than ever before. Alex Sobel MP, chair, APPG for Fair Elections

We need to move away from First Past the Post. 🗳️

#PR #ProportionalRepresentation #FairElections

Full article: https://loom.ly/ojnMd-A