Claude Willan @claudewillan.bsky.social · 13/10/2026It is striking that by comparison to what is coming, what you have endured thus far is no longer classed as "pain"x 120
Claude Willan @claudewillan.bsky.social · 09/10/2026I think Rutter saw what Classic FM saw, 10-15 years earlier. But I think about eg Gaelic Blessing and it owes more to Brian Wilson than to Howells. 010
Claude Willan @claudewillan.bsky.social · 09/10/2026Thankfully he had not percolated up to Oxford, but a prep school was saturated with it. Public school had some. The Victoriana of Harris-Dyson-C V Stanford (and later Howells) had Oxford in a chokehold relieved mostly by Byrd at one end and Langlais at the other 010
Claude Willan @claudewillan.bsky.social · 09/10/2026I grew up singing a fair amount of Rutter in the 90s, a kind of Lloyd Webber of Protestantism; I think he is a devious and skilful hack who debased the choral popular imagination and set the mould for eg Whitacre 000
Claude Willan @claudewillan.bsky.social · 08/10/2026you know what you make a good point here are you sure the committee saw this in time 110
Claude Willan @claudewillan.bsky.social · 08/10/2026There's a piece in float about the artist who cuts holes in buildings -- and Joan of Arc -- and Zeus -- and Wally -- and gloves -- she reaches more deeply into a very particularly-shaped ideational space than any poet writing today. 140
Claude Willan @claudewillan.bsky.social · 08/10/2026My Anne Carson post is that there really are some new forms, in Nox and Float especially; she finds spaces in material and materiality that are not otherwise, to my knowledge accessible. I never thought that this would happen and I'm so very very pleased it did. 290
Claude Willan @claudewillan.bsky.social · 08/10/2026Please, Peter! We are incentivising transformable deliverables-first partnerships with the military and AI sectors for all humanities scholars* ... what else do you understand by "education"? *this is not made up 011
Claude Willan @claudewillan.bsky.social · 08/10/2026Given that, as an old-fashioned sort of place we have tended to believe that "writing is a technology that structures consciousness", it seems a bit counterintuitive really to make it impossible for students to learn how to structure their consciousnesses. 040
Claude Willan @claudewillan.bsky.social · 08/10/2026My university appears to be rolling out compulsory AI which is ... I'm going to say it is bad. 4130
Claude Willan @claudewillan.bsky.social · 08/10/2026I gave mine away to a student who loved it, and I kind of wish I hadn't! 010
Claude Willan @claudewillan.bsky.social · 07/10/2026I remember this! I gave up running events and they were mad. 010
Claude Willan @claudewillan.bsky.social · 07/10/2026It is a wild ride that has stayed with me and has had a huge influence on my critical practice. Enjoy! 120
Claude Willan @claudewillan.bsky.social · 06/10/2026Gosh. "Turn left at the Picasso" was always my mother's anecdote about him. A spent force in the real world, one hopes, but much intangible damage to be held to account for in the past nonetheless. 000
Claude Willan @claudewillan.bsky.social · 06/10/2026Some such I imagine they are happier to hit "file" on than others. 010
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 · 27/09/2026Should have done so! Just dropped my brand new phone and it shattered. Plus ça change. 110
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. 030
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. 7491179
Claude Willan @claudewillan.bsky.social · 21/09/2026presumably "the year before i started to make all that money", right? 010
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 · 21/09/2026"This couple, a butterfly astronaut and a copperplate engraver, have only $880,000 to spend on their dream Brooklyn co-op... is a doorman a _must_?" 0120
Claude Willan @claudewillan.bsky.social · 16/09/2026Oof. That's been true for a while but it cuts more and more deeply. 130
Claude Willan @claudewillan.bsky.social · 11/09/2026I'm very excited about this! How do you find it? 030
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 take them outside sometimes. Apparently the experience of being rained on does some things for plants, esp cacti, that watering doesn't replicate. 020
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 · 20/08/2026My son's beaver troop clear half an acre on the banks of the Wear. Horrible stuff. 020
Claude Willan @claudewillan.bsky.social · 20/08/2026You need the ram of a small HPC cluster to load those 010
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 · 13/08/2026I found myself opening a window at the height of the eclipse to hear if they had, again. 010
Claude Willan @claudewillan.bsky.social · 13/08/2026Very distinctly. A hot summer afternoon in Belgium suddenly felt like Alpine twilight. 100
Claude Willan @claudewillan.bsky.social · 12/08/2026A pinhole projector is still an amazing piece of technology. 1142