New-Cleckit Dominie

Hi to folk who've recently found me via the Scottish history starter pack. If you were looking for professional historians you might wish to look elsewhere. I'm an amateur whose usual beat is the very long nineteenth century. I wrote this: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

How it works: Some lunatic in the US: Fish are all Stalinists! Well-intentioned people on this website, quote-posting the lunatic relentlessly: That's untrue because lots of seals are actually anarchists and according to science fish are birds anyway! *sigh*

That problem when the clocks change halfway through the semester: your watch is telling you it's 9pm and your body's telling you it's February.

Three photos from the last week or two, all taken purely for the sake of the light effects.

Big round thing up there tonight.

Could we rebrand "stockpile a few days' worth of essential supplies if you can" as "form a mutual aid starter pack"? Would some of you be happier then? (Yes, I get that not everyone can; maybe that's why folk who can should.)

I was actually interested in the Imperial Pickle Works in Govan, but now and again the brokenness of web search has its compensations.

I don't have a lot of time for football, but props to the bloke who was standing in his shorts on Pollokshaws Road in the rain waiting for his mates to pick him up, and who was attempting keepie-uppie in the gusts to keep himself warm. I feel the Scottish sporting energy here was very pure.

Things I have inadvertently stockpiled: • Scottish Mathematical Challenge mugs • WD40 cans with the straw missing • Uncompleted worksheets on the construction of the genitive in Gàidhlig

The clocks going back is brilliant because you get to wake up at 4.30am instead of 5.30am and get a whole extra hour of worrying done before the day begins.

Have just taken a couple of big branches off the sprawling birch outside our front window, partly for light but also to make the tree less vulnerable to the coming storm. I now feel acutely guilty and have apologised three times to the tree.

OK, I was foolish to make a facetious comment about open source on social media. I am now withdrawing support for this facetious comment due to other personal and professional commitments. No further patches or other updates will be supplied.

A glimmer of hope from Dundee following their gruelling weeks of industrial action. New Principal; possibly a new approach...?

(Last repost: the "some random guy in the Czech Republic" model is not without drawbacks, but I prefer it to the model in which all modern digital infrastructure relies on something that got bought up by nazi-backed private equity five years ago and which they will suddenly break, while giggling.)

Obligatory modified xkcd.

Will anyone else be freeing up mental space this storm season by referring to them as Austen, Busten, Custen, Dusten, Eusten and so on? Under current circs I feel it's a choice between remembering what they're called and remembering what I'm called, and on balance the latter is more useful to me.

I do not love the fact that when I do a Google image search for "nhs recovery position", this (not from the NHS) is one of the first images that shows up. WHAT IF SOMEONE COLLAPSES AND I DON'T HAVE A COFFEE TABLE HANDY?

I am currently on a Faculty committee which contains three people called Christine. Do people still circulate requests like "please send X to Christine"? Yes, they do. Do hilarious consequences result? No.

A good morning to everyone playing "is this service down because they're installing the PHP security patch, or is it down because it's Wednesday?"

Cofiwch Aberfan.

Email sent. I think I may just have picked another fight. One day I will learn the optimal number of fights to pick, but I suspect today is not that day.

Colonel Brandon has donned his flannel waistcoat. Mr Woodhouse has gleefully cancelled every engagement for the next six months. Catherine Morland is looking for a scenic ruin in which to be scared of the lightning. Fanny Price has taken no precautions because nothing could make her any wetter.

Today's top student explanation was "I couldn't submit my assignment because I went on holiday", and I really wish there were a way of embedding gifs in speech.