Claude Willan @claudewillan.bsky.social · 28/09/2026Deep truths in my WhatsApp this evening, in response to my asking how in earth I afforded so much alcohol as a young person 040
Claude Willan @claudewillan.bsky.social · 27/09/2026Since arriving in the UK my American children have tried every Mac and cheese available for purchase in the country. The only ones they approve are those made by Dominos and, I discover this evening ... Waitrose. 020
Claude Willan @claudewillan.bsky.social · 23/09/2026Just another Wednesday afternoon in my mouth. See if you can spot the massive hole. 310
Reposted by Claude WillanCaroline Dodds Pennock @carolinepennock.bsky.social · 22/09/2026Ditto 30,000 roles in universities in the past three years. 7491180
Claude Willan @claudewillan.bsky.social · 21/09/2026If you could freeze the internet at one point in time, and you had to take all the losses and gains that that involved, no hybridisation etc, what year would you pick? I'll start: 1997 230
Claude Willan @claudewillan.bsky.social · 10/09/2026I have this postit note on my desk that says "LINK ROT" but I don't remember why 010
Claude Willan @claudewillan.bsky.social · 03/09/2026I am convening an MA course in Qualitative DH and I would love to offer students a reading that sketched out what the emerging community and conversation was like in and around the Other Site we don't use any more, during its halcyon days (12-19?). Does anyone know of a piece that does this? 010
Claude Willan @claudewillan.bsky.social · 29/08/2026Why would you get married... in the cricket season? they wheeze 010
Claude Willan @claudewillan.bsky.social · 29/08/2026It's striking, listening to Phil Tufnell, how many tricks he has to hide how very clever he is. 030
Claude Willan @claudewillan.bsky.social · 29/08/2026Hmm, muses Jonathan Agnew, is this a squall? Or merely a sea-fret? 010
Claude Willan @claudewillan.bsky.social · 28/08/2026I know I'm not Australian because it makes me rather sad to see Pakistan having such a rough time of it today. 010
Claude Willan @claudewillan.bsky.social · 28/08/2026Unsurprisingly, this message will not reach command-and-control UK universities like my own. But I don't see another route that allows our degree-granting institutions to retain any credibility at the moment: www.highereddive.com/news/ai-can-...highereddive.comAI can complete ‘almost’ all written assignments for MIT undergrads, report saysTo adapt, faculty must be able to quickly update their curriculum without “multi-committee, year-long review processes,” a university committee said. 000
Claude Willan @claudewillan.bsky.social · 20/08/2026If theres a more strangely humiliating life stage than sellotaping over the snick in the plastic of a brand new half gallon of milk, please dont tell me 050
Claude Willan @claudewillan.bsky.social · 15/08/2026My best, most-ungiveable, advice to young people would be that, when your heart is getting broken over and over for a period, as it will, do it around music you'll have no particular interest in twenty years' time. 091
Claude Willan @claudewillan.bsky.social · 14/08/2026The greatness of Danny Elfman's performance as Skeleton Jack owes to his decision to cast Jacques Brel in the role of King of Undead with absolute sincerity. 000
Claude Willan @claudewillan.bsky.social · 14/08/2026Autocomplete is the self-playing video of text. There is a simple joy to typing in a field with no autocomplete. 000
Claude Willan @claudewillan.bsky.social · 12/08/2026A pinhole projector is still an amazing piece of technology. 1142
Claude Willan @claudewillan.bsky.social · 11/08/2026I could not more decisevely signal being in my 40s than by putting on Modern Life is Rubbish, which came out when I was 10, and cleaning the bathroom. 000
Claude Willan @claudewillan.bsky.social · 02/08/2026Has anyone written the essay about The Fold in Tristram Shandy? Surely someone has, right? 010
Claude Willan @claudewillan.bsky.social · 09/07/2026Discovering, for the third time, Glenn Gould's recording Brahms' Intermezzos. I find it really moving to hear Brahms thinking so carefully and penetratingly about ideas and their embedding, or being ironised in, other structures. And his ideas are often so beautiful. 040
Claude Willan @claudewillan.bsky.social · 01/07/2026There are two types of people on this earth; people who have never read Russell Hoban, and people who are _begging_ you to read Russell Hoban. 294
Claude Willan @claudewillan.bsky.social · 29/06/2026Because I slightly know myself, I am not a gambler. But if I were, I'd put a big chunk of disposable income on Harry Brook being next Captain of the England Test side. 🧵 100
Claude Willan @claudewillan.bsky.social · 27/06/2026New bookshop in Durham! Verdigris Books in Covered Market. I don't really have any money. But everyone wants new local indie shops to stick around, and that takes money. But they have a phenomenal selection, as you can see. 2100
Claude Willan @claudewillan.bsky.social · 22/06/2026Rumbling through Jerusalem as i do the dishes tonight, allergies taken my tenor to a baritone. It's insane that Blake's poem became institutionalised as it did. Probably because Parry inflected Blake's rage with nostalgia; perfect accompaniment for -- description of -- self-pity in a dying empire. 120
Claude Willan @claudewillan.bsky.social · 20/06/2026You can learn a lot about a certain, precious fraying thread of English character by listening to the BBC's coverage of an England test match. You hear your team get methodically crushed, while seasoned, lifelong pros tell you all about it. Not for minutes, or hours, or a day, but for five days. 193
Claude Willan @claudewillan.bsky.social · 20/06/2026Has the Beinecke flogged its digitised mss to Sage? Am I having a stroke here? 020
Claude Willan @claudewillan.bsky.social · 19/06/2026Hearing the TMS try to contain their laughter at Zaltzman is so lovely. 000
Reposted by Claude WillanSiobhan Thompson @vornietom.bsky.social · 15/06/2026Ah, the humble mashed banana. Nature’s jam, they call it 112259
Claude Willan @claudewillan.bsky.social · 14/06/2026My 5 y.o. has a new category system for understanding bad guys: "probably funny actually" and the irredeemable "too tough to hug" 0121
Claude Willan @claudewillan.bsky.social · 11/06/2026I can't with the world some days, man. My seven y.o. downloaded pokemon go to the family tablet literally last night. He is so excited about it. 230
Claude Willan @claudewillan.bsky.social · 11/06/2026"Epithalamium To Our New Critical Freedoms" (derogatory) 020
Claude Willan @claudewillan.bsky.social · 07/06/2026Just remembered that Ian Dury played DeFlores in a 1998 film of _The Changeling_ and that he wore ?eight thimbles? on his fingers, which he would tap grotesquely during his soliloquys. Thanks, the 90s. You were, in some ways, a wonderful place. 040
Claude Willan @claudewillan.bsky.social · 07/06/2026New hair-slice just splintered: exam scripts from students who have used AI that they "genuinely" write like it, but who did actually write their own exams 010
Claude Willan @claudewillan.bsky.social · 06/06/2026It is absolutely wild, given his overall career (which is, whatever you think of him, ... striking) that Stanley Fish's most durable legacy is, and should be, as an interpreter of Milton 020
Reposted by Claude WillanGooseberry (ready for Spring 🌷) @eisforenkidu.bsky.social · 06/06/2026Yes people who can't get medicated for ADHD for whatever reason often either turn to cigarettes or just drink exorbitant amounts of coffee. 011
Claude Willan @claudewillan.bsky.social · 04/06/2026Nothing like the great marking crisis of 2026 to make me go through and eat every expired yoghurt in the fridge 140
Reposted by Claude WillanLRB Bookshop @londonreviewbookshop.co.uk · 03/06/2026eavesdropping on a couple of english lit academics in st. john, i overheard confirmation of what is surely going to be the biggest literary news story of the year 9866307
Claude Willan @claudewillan.bsky.social · 02/06/2026Is anyone running oral exams in English Literature courses, and how has it gone for you? I'm now halfway through marking, and it is an utter bloodbath. I can't do this again, or, I need to believe that alternatives to this broken metric are possible. 4131
Claude Willan @claudewillan.bsky.social · 01/06/2026I mean, surely the reason that there's good conservative art but that MAGA hasn't made any is that pound eliot etc are still fundementally propositional? MAGA adherents don't have anything to propose; they aren't "conservative"; just _being_ in MAGA is doing what artwork would do otherwise 120
Reposted by Claude Willanmelanie newport @melanienewport.bsky.social · 31/05/2026not entirely surprised that the person leading this effort has also been a hard driver of the AHA’s anti-Palestine politics 2195
Claude Willan @claudewillan.bsky.social · 30/05/2026new gasp of horror unlocked students writing "premium" to mean inaccessible 090
Claude Willan @claudewillan.bsky.social · 28/05/2026As a people, we are not tremendously gifted at heat. Likewise, something tells me that the norms of UK journalism are ill-adapted to high-density periods of ill-considered swimming. There's something achingly English in a sweet, lame, L. P. Hartley way about "getting into difficulties". 010
Claude Willan @claudewillan.bsky.social · 28/05/2026If you don't work in the academy and want to know why academics in the UK are all so bloody miserable -- apart from AI! -- you should really read Collini's piece. It's a service for him to have laid out the structural crisis as clearly and succinctly as he has here. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...lrb.co.ukStefan Collini · Squadrons of Pigs: Bonfire of the UniversitiesThe problems with Britain’s universities are systemic and deep-rooted, not just local or contingent. Yet political and... 040
Claude Willan @claudewillan.bsky.social · 25/05/2026A strong irony here is that the descriptive text for this study is itself slop. 041
Claude Willan @claudewillan.bsky.social · 25/05/2026Half-term. Kid asks to watch tv, runs off to pee. I move from my marking stack of slop exams to turn it on. Al-Jazeera. I watch a woman crawl along the ground in the dirt and then get blown up. I switch on Pokemon. My kid comes back in. Parenting in 2026. 060
Claude Willan @claudewillan.bsky.social · 25/05/2026I think I wish that the university worked the way students think that it works. Where professors can take actions, for instance. 2112
Claude Willan @claudewillan.bsky.social · 24/05/2026The very best scripts on this module I'm moderating were, I'm fairly sure, written by humans, and it is poignant to think that exciting, subtle, risk-taking, thoughtful and masterly work like this is going to be, quite sensibly, foreclosed, quite soon. 21-yr-olds won't get to do that anymore. 050