Prof Ian Pace @drianpace

Unzipped is a surreal architectural installation by British artist Alex Chinneck, created for Milan Design Week 2019 in Milan, Italy.

The Stupid Age

S Sebag Montefiore @simonmontefiore

a day ago

Historical figures ‘too divisive’ for banknotes thetimes.com/article/c97106…

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According to the official body representing Muslim police officers in Britain, pointing out that Hamas beheaded and raped people on October 7 makes you Islamophobic. That's the position laid out in a since-deleted policy paper by the National Association of Muslim Police, which defended Hamas against "unverified stories about acts of violence" and claimed the reports "significantly contributed to increasing hatred towards Islam." NAMP is affiliated to 16 of Britain's 43 police forces. The College of Policing calls them "an important part of policing" that plays "a crucial role in supporting our workforce." The same paper, written by NAMP's then vice-president, describes the IDF as a "Zionist terrorist group" and brands Zionism as "one of the manifestations of anti-Muslim hatred." This is legitimately terrifying.

Demi Moore at Tower Records, 1977. She is holding a Jean Luc Ponty LP titled Imaginary Voyage. Cool historical photos: bit.ly/4cFoZT1

Here's a quote from Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America (1835, 1840). It's from a section of the book called “The Power Exercised by the Majority in America over Thought." Does this still ring true today? "I know no country in which, speaking generally, there is less independence of mind and true freedom of discussion than in America. . . . In America the majority has enclosed thought within a formidable fence. A writer is free inside that area, but woe to the man who goes beyond it. . . . Before he goes into print, he believes he has supporters; but he feels that he has them no more once he stands revealed to all, for those who condemn him express their views loudly, while those who think as he does, but without his courage, retreat into silence as if ashamed of having told the truth. . . . Hence the majority lives in a state of perpetual self-adoration; only strangers or experience may be able to bring certain truths to the Americans’ attention."

The piano coda of “Layla” in GOODFELLAS (1990) is one of Scorsese’s greatest needle drops. A beautiful piece of music playing over the discovery of bodies across New York turns the aftermath of the Lufthansa heist into something unforgettable.

cinesthetic. @TheCinesthetic

a day ago

What song will you always associate with a scene from a movie or tv?

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@_K_Stiles @DrCarlHindy Nonsense. Sometimes the case, yes. But I’ve known plenty of men who would be so much happier and would get on more if they finally ditched the toxic women they are married to, and project onto them their own frustrations and insecurities. Some have done so and not looked back.

I'll be on the @bbcworldservice Weekend Programme from 0630 BST surveying the week's big stories and talking about my new book: Reds: A Global History of Communism 📻🌎🌍🌏

Mel Brooks reminisces how Alfred Hitchcock reacted after seeing the premiere of 'High Anxiety' (1977): "'High Anxiety' (1977) premiered on December 25, 1977. At that premiere screening, Hitch sat right next to me. I had my own high anxiety awaiting his re- action. He didn’t laugh. He just sat and he watched. He only broke up once. When the birds let go and plastered me with their droppings, then I could see his shoulders shaking. When the film was over, he got up and walked out. He didn’t say he liked the picture. He didn’t say he hated the picture. He didn’t say anything. He just left. I was devastated. And really worried. Not long after, when I came into the office, there on my desk was a huge box covered with silver paper and red ribbon. I tore the paper open and underneath was an impressive wooden case with a label that read: CHATEAU HAUT BRION 1961. I opened it to see six big, beautiful magnums of Chateau Haut Brion 1961. A priceless gift of one of the finest wines ever made. There was a note: "My dear Mel, What a splendid entertainment, one that should give you no anxieties of any kind. I thank you most humbly for your dedication and I offer you further thanks on behalf of the Golden Gate Bridge. With kindest regards and again my warmest congratulations. --- Hitch" Needless to say, all my worries disappeared. If there was one person in the world I really wanted to like the picture, it was Alfred Hitchcock, and god bless him, he did. And as a thrilling bonus, I could now refer to him as “Hitch.” Hitch knew something not everyone knew—that I had become a devotee of fine wines and had a wine cellar featuring some really classic vintages. I don’t know a lot, but I do know a lot about wine. (I’m not bragging. It’s just a fact.) ('All About Me - My remarkable life in Show Business", Mel Brooks, 2021)

#jokeoftheday When we say practicing is never done, this is what it means! #music

Seven part sequence of Marian Motets by Josquin, Vultum Tuum Deprecabuntur. It’s collectively a sort of flood of polyphony (many-voiced writing). & Josquin is so skillful that when you listen to all seven parts, the impact is stunning. Try the whole thing youtu.be/0E6dZE-GXxQ?si…

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and an unidentified friend.

This is one reason we focus on ideological viewpoint diversity in particular. The issues over which we’re most polarized are arguably those that most demand rigorous scholarly understanding so we can better navigate them. Tragically, they’re also the issues an academy of Merton’s Insiders is least equipped to help us understand.

Jesse Smith @jessesmithsoc

10 months ago

Damned if Robert Merton didn’t correctly diagnose the state of social science in 2025…back in 1972.

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I agree with @sndurlauf. Over the years at Penn, I have observed developments that deeply concern me. There is, of course, outstanding scholarship being produced across the humanities. Indeed, few economists are likely to hold the humanities in higher regard than I do, both for their intellectual value and for their essential role in a university. At the same time, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that some work has become increasingly oriented toward political advocacy rather than scholarly inquiry. When that happens, the distinction between academic research and activism becomes blurred in ways that are not healthy for either the humanities or the university more broadly.

Steven N. Durlauf @sndurlauf

2 days ago

I strongly endorse this outstanding report, commissioned by Daniel Diermeier, Chancellor of Vanderbilt University, and Andrew Martin, Chancellor of Washington University on the State of Scholarship. It is a cri de couer about the state of the humanities and the interpretive

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Discover the world of Emily Brontë's wild imagination and irrepressible spirit like never before. This Dark Night, the first full biography of her life in over twenty years, is out now.

We've urged the Government to review religious exemptions to knife laws following the murder of a young man with a ceremonial dagger. secularism.org.uk/news/2026/06/n…

I warn you. This will make your blood boil. The bit that stood out for me was her saying: At Nottingham girls high school she says they have replaced “controversial” books by “white male authors” such as Of Mice and Men and Boy in the Striped Pyjamas (a book about the Holocaust) She says the whole point of “decolonising the curriculum

Yes but: hepi.ac.uk/2026/06/01/mis…

Austin Williams @Future_Cities

a day ago

A devastating critique of academic collapse by Stephan Collini @LRB "In the past 10-15 years, even cash-strapped universities seem to have found the resources to build shiny new monuments to ancillary services while cutting back on teaching & research" linkedin.com/safety/go/?url…

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From here, the report argues that 1) relativism is appealing because it allows you to reject views without evidence, and 2) it's been used to critique injustices (colonizers claimed objectivity), but 3) ultimately its self-undermining.

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We then get a long list of quotes from scholars from different disciplines all asserting some form of relativism: —"Feminist epistemologists, in common with many other strands of contemporary epistemology, no longer regard knowledge as a neutral transparent reflection of an independently existing reality..." (philosophy) —"For the relativist there is no sense attached to the idea that some standards or beliefs are really rational as distinct from merely locally accepted as such." (sociology) —"all knowledge claims are produced in a political context; notions of objectivity that ignore or deny these facilitating conditions take on a de facto political positioning of their own, made more blatant and unavoidable by the very disavowal." (anthropology) —"the academy has to accept, at least in principle, that all research is ideological and that claims to neutrality in research are nonsensical." (amusingly, animal studies)

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