iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Christopher Pittard @christopherpittard.bsky.social · 2h

Brilliant show by Rich Hall in Southsea tonight. I was the guy he referred to as "Paisley" when walking through the aisle. Also nice to see a show and be home within five minutes of walking.

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Christopher Pittard @christopherpittard.bsky.social · 11h

I was thinking the other day about how the concept of the well read or cultured person has disappeared in the last 30 years. Fortunately, the Tech Bros are about to revive that concept by demonstrating what happens when you have no cultural interests.

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Christopher Pittard @christopherpittard.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

And a script by Martin Amis... what next? Julian Barnes' *Alien*?

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Plashing Vole @plashingvole.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Great news: the School has sacked a third of its academic but we've acquired 2 new interim managers on top of the extra permanent ones. Fine work all round.

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Christopher Pittard @christopherpittard.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Today's teaching: a lecture on Book X of Plato's *Republic* and a seminar on "The Murders in the Rue Morgue."

static.klipy.com

Simpsons Dr Zeus Falls and Rolls

ALT: Simpsons Dr Zeus Falls and Rolls

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Christopher Pittard @christopherpittard.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Rereading Wilkie Collins' *The Law and the Lady*, and as always I'm amazed there's been no adaptation of it (or of Collins' work more generally) instead of yet another Jane Austen.

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Christopher Pittard @christopherpittard.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

*Peep Show* should be much higher on this list, but I suspect it's simply too British to translate overseas. I have to admit that I've never fully grasped the reaction to *Fleabag.* Is it because she talks to the camera? Did Lovejoy die in vain?

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Aidan McGlynn @aidanmcglynn.bsky.social · 14/02/2024

- 'I love Bertrand Russell.' - 'Yeah, so do I.' - 'What's your favourite Bertrand Russell book?' - 'Tough one. I think I'd have to say 'Bertrand Russell's Best'.'

A picture of Steve Coogan as Alan Partridge, wearing a black bomber jacket and in the middle of answering a question.

A screenshot of the Routledge page for the book 'Bertrand Russell's Best'.

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Christopher Pittard @christopherpittard.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

This is how the AI hype works: make an eyecatching but obviously rubbish claim at the top ("AI can feel pain") so that a sneakier claim can get through unnoticed ("oh, AI only *acts* that way and is therefore capable of acting").

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Christopher Pittard @christopherpittard.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

I rarely post photos of myself because, well, but I was going through some old documents and this one is a worthy exception. It gets additional points for being taken by @drmatthewsweet.bsky.social at Britain's most haunted house (one of them).

It's me, looking sideways in a timbered room, viewed through a circular aperture like a Victorianist James Bond.

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Christopher Pittard @christopherpittard.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Ooh, and the way that the email at the top when you open Outlook gets marked as 'read', even if it isn't. Oh, and the inability of the search function to find anything. Oh, and emails within a discussion chain constantly showing as unread, even when they're not. And the constant bleeping.

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Christopher Pittard @christopherpittard.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Received my Routledge royalties statement, and it seems that the eBook version of *Purity and Contamination in Late Victorian Detective Fiction* has paid for about three pub visits this year.

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Christopher Pittard @christopherpittard.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Much of the tech bro attack on humanities education is based on the AI bubble requiring people to not recognise misuses of figurative language. A bot isn't an 'agent', as it has no agency; it can't 'hallucinate' because there is no subject to do the hallucinating; there's no 'intelligence' in AI.

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Nicholas Grossman @nicholasgrossman.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

We must be allowed to break laws with impunity so we can birth the machine god before others, and if we can’t steal and hack and crime, then the inevitable machine god won’t have the values we want and you’ll be sorry. Sounds insane, but that’s a prevalent, influential, respected ethos today.

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Christopher Pittard @christopherpittard.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

An overlooked issue in the humanities higher education crisis is that you get spammed by jobs. ac. uk continually asking you to revise your search criteria because there have been no new posts in the last three months.

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Christopher Pittard @christopherpittard.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Wondering how many hours are wasted globally by Microsoft Outlook's search function simply not working.

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Dr Cinzia Yates 🇮🇲🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 @manxinwales.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

I kind of get it that after the 80s (just all of it really) and all the stuff with kettling etc. that Police will behave differently in different situations. I can absolutely see why they might focus on deescalation in these scenarios or avoid 'battles' like Orgreave or the Bean Field.

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Caroline Dodds Pennock @carolinepennock.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

I bet you a million pounds that it doesn’t.

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Christopher Pittard @christopherpittard.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Anyway, it's wild that two of the top news stories today are "Racist mob marches through Gosport" and "Rare first edition of *To Kill a Mockingbird* found."

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Christopher Pittard @christopherpittard.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Another south coast riot last night, with only six arrests in Gosport (after the racist mob ironically got angrier after finding out there weren't any migrants around). It does feel as if this kind of behaviour is being tolerated.

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Joanne Harris @joannechocolat.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Much as we love bookshops, they need more than love to keep going. A bookshop can be the centre of a whole community. Bookshops support authors; organize events. A thriving bookshop teaches the next generation that literacy matters. So don't just love your bookshop: actually buy books there.

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Robert Rubsam @robrubsam.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

My friend who works in education always says that we want education to solve all our society's problems, when we should see those problems as something we must solve in order to have good education

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Christopher Pittard @christopherpittard.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

You want to see Walter, the Exeter College cat, sitting just beside where Inspector Morse keels over? Course you do!

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Caroline Dodds Pennock @carolinepennock.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Ditto 30,000 roles in universities in the past three years.

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Christopher Pittard @christopherpittard.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

This is on the BBC News homepage, and I wish journalists would consider their own role in determining which parties get attention, instead of thinking of media attention as some kind of mute fact of nature, like rocks.

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Kristof Smeyers @kristofsmeyers.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

6-year fully funded research and teaching assistant job at University of Ghent in the fields of English literature/cultural theory, history/translation history, linguistics, language acquisition, communication. Own projects are welcome! Details: jobs.ugent.be/job/Ghent-As...

jobs.ugent.be

Assistant English

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Christopher Pittard @christopherpittard.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

My undergraduate module on Crime Writing starts today. Poe! Wilkie Collins! Arthur Conan Doyle! Agatha Christie! Jacques Derrida! Percival Everett!

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Christopher Pittard @christopherpittard.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Gosh, it's almost as if students go to university to learn about subjects they're interested in.

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Christopher Pittard @christopherpittard.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Had a great time teaching my Agatha Christie course for the Duke/University of North Carolina programme at Oxford @lifelong-learning.ox.ac.uk. We also discuss the packaging of Christie, including this personal favourite

A 1980s edition of *Poirot's Early Cases* where the cover is a ventriloquist dummy's face grafted on to the body of a wasp. It's either a huge wasp or a tiny dummy. In any case, this was the edition my school library had. Decades later, I wondered "did I dream that?"

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Christopher Pittard @christopherpittard.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Yesterday I saw a group photo including me, and as always I'm reminded of how bad I am at smiling. I always end up looking like about four different Mark Gatiss characters from the League of Gentlemen.

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Christopher Pittard @christopherpittard.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Yes, but I have one (1) vaguely acceptable and recent photo of myself, and you've already seen it next to this post.

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Christopher Pittard @christopherpittard.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

*Literary Illusions* is out in paperback now, but I've noticed that Blackwell's have £5 off at the moment, reducing the price to £14.99. That's almost a normal book price! blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/pro...

blackwells.co.uk

Literary Illusions

Explores the dialogue between Victorian literature and one of the nineteenth century's most popular modes of performance: conjuring.

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Joseph Rezek @rezekjoe.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

You know what gets a library perpetual access to a book??? Purchasing the physical book. I guarantee the publisher won’t come steal it back!!!

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Christopher Pittard @christopherpittard.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Relieved that someone else found the old Open University ident strangely creepy.

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Becca Petunia 🏳️‍⚧️ @tallgirlpetunia.northsky.social · 11/09/2026

and this is why it's ALWAYS an ad, not genuine fear

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Christopher Pittard @christopherpittard.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

I don't think the problem is that universities haven't thought of marketing their courses overseas, but that the government response to marauding racist mobs is "oh, those cheeky scamps."

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David Veevers @davidveevers.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Yes students want a good job after Uni but, as is the case for Humanities students anyway, their main priority during their degrees is TO ENJOY THEIR STUDIES AND LEARN. I’ve held focus groups and have the data. But all Universities care about are workplace skills like it’s the fucking Soviet Union.

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Christopher Pittard @christopherpittard.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Today I learned that Gilles Deleuze was a fellow cheese hater.

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Scarred For Life Books @scarredforlife.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

PENDA'S FEN is on proper telly tonight for the first time in years! If you've been to one of our Folk Horror shows, you've seen me and Bob Fischer banging on about how much we adore David Rudkin's astonishing play. It's on BBC Four at 10.15pm. If you've never seen it, you're in for a treat!

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Christopher Pittard @christopherpittard.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Reading Bruce Chatwin's *On The Black Hill* and finding it strangely unengaging. The writing is perfectly fine, but I'm not getting what it all adds up to.

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Christopher Pittard @christopherpittard.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Had to check I'd heard that question correctly. Absolutely bullshit framing of the Portsmouth riot.

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Christopher Pittard @christopherpittard.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Remembering the 2019 election when the useless Donna Jones was standing in Portsmouth South and put up a massive electoral poster of herself around the corner from our house. We lived in Portsmouth North at the time, though. I can't imagine Penny Mordaunt was too happy.

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Dr Katie Twomey @k2mey.eurosky.social · 03/09/2026

Is it just me or is it bad that, if you want to submit to a journal, you can only do so if you promise you'll accept all review requests for the next six months or else you'll get desk rejected for future submissions? What if you're ill or disabled or have caring responsibilities?

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