iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Rob Priest @rdpriest.bsky.social · 16h

Love this. My son once parked his bike in the "dock" of a tree's roots in the local park.

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Rob Priest @rdpriest.bsky.social · 16h

Boycotting the jab and getting shingles is the only reasonable response to how they have done you here.

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Rob Priest @rdpriest.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Jean-Claude Bonnet reflects: "One may legitimately dream with this phrase far beyond its literal meaning, for Mercier ... does announce that there is now something to be read on screens, and that the image is displacing the written word." (1995)

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Rob Priest @rdpriest.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

"In Paris hardly anyone reads any work that has more than two volumes. ... Our worthy forebears read novels in sixteen volumes and still they were not too long for their evenings. ... As for us, soon we will only be reading from screens." Louis-Sébastien Mercier, 1783 (He meant fire screens, but!)

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Rob Priest @rdpriest.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Yes, I thought this too! Yet, since it is indeed a pattern, we might wonder if there is a common motivation. And I don't think it is too hard to speculate what the underlying drives might be for people seeking to gotcha women's childhood achievements in a pursuit culturally coded as 'clever'.

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Rob Priest @rdpriest.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

I used to use Freecycle a lot until people drove me mental (mainly no-shows). I once took a complaint phone call a week after I'd given away my old hoover, where the new owner ranted how disappointed she was in its bad condition. The worst bit was that, out of habit, I initially started apologising!

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David Klemperer @dmk1793.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

If you are around central London on Monday evening, I’ll be speaking at the IHR French History Seminar in Senate House about once-democratic socialists who saw progressive potential in Nazism. Do come along!

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Rob Priest @rdpriest.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

As I said, it's been a while. How can you be sure*? *[sher]

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Rob Priest @rdpriest.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

I didn't want to leap to conclusions. It's been a while.

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Rob Priest @rdpriest.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

My estimate from squinting at the programme is that this conference now has closer to 150-200 papers or contributions.

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Rob Priest @rdpriest.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

In an essay I was just skimming, Pamela Pilbeam writes that Alfred Cobban was "known in North America from his visits to universities and conferences, such as that of the Society for French Historical Studies, where he gave one of the eight papers at its first conference in 1958." Eight!

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Andrew WM Smith @smidbob.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Looking forward to welcoming @dmk1793.bsky.social to the @ihr.bsky.social Modern French History seminar this Monday 5 October at 17h30. David will be giving a paper on 'Collaborationist Socialism in Nazi-Occupied France.' Please do join us or sign up online: www.history.ac.uk/news-events/... 🗃️

history.ac.uk

Collaborationist Socialism in Nazi-Occupied France

IHR Modern French History

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Katherine McDonald @katherinemcdon.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Work on the assumption that your institutional website will either (a) delete you without trace the day you leave or (b) somehow keep implying you work there forever, give people a non-functional email address to contact you on, and never update your achievements past 2015.

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Rob Priest @rdpriest.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

I am trying to keep to constructive posting which is hard with this subject. Please respect that I withheld all of my hot takes on the many, many, oh god so many bad articles on Ed Sheeran and culture wars last week.

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Rob Priest @rdpriest.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

A frontal engagement with the politics of who gets to label what as 'culture', 'cultural issues' and 'culture wars', why, and with what effects.

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Rob Priest @rdpriest.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Thanks, Bacon is on blazing form. Rare these days to hear that argument that labelling an issue 'cultural' is itself political. And it remains odd to live in a world where anything important might be dismissed as 'merely cultural' (Judith Butler) and yet culture incessantly drags people into 'wars'.

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Emile Chabal @emile-chabal.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Crisis, what crisis? www.the-tls.com/regular-feat...

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Rob Priest @rdpriest.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Pretty sure it closed earlier this year. Sad!

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Rob Priest @rdpriest.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

"I love road work; I almost love it more than when the road works." It's just genuinely brilliant.

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Rob Priest @rdpriest.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

You need to move the kid onto Aesop Rock's kid stuff (no I'm not making this up, yes it's infectious and amazing -- also on Spotify): youtu.be/jRHqjDnEFiE?...

youtu.be

Aesop Rock - Roadwork Rappin' (Official Video)

YouTube video by Rhymesayers Entertainment

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Rob Priest @rdpriest.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Lambeth accepts them at RRCs, so you can either hope your borough does as well or move to Lambeth (both good options).

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Rob Priest @rdpriest.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Useful review! Will check out the book.

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Rob Priest @rdpriest.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Two of them got it right! Don't tell the betting odds...

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Rob Priest @rdpriest.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

And though I haven't gone back to the texts since not teaching my intellectuals course in recent years, my memory is that really all the later meditations from Sartre, Foucault, etc. were rooted in thinking back through that Dreyfusard genealogy.

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Rob Priest @rdpriest.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

I was curious about yours and Will's mid-20th-century genealogy. Much French literature on intellectuals would/does start in 1898 with the Dreyfus Affair. The model of the intellectual was defined precisely by public moral judgement. 'J'accuse!' was after all a cry of moral outrage.

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Rob Priest @rdpriest.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Some generative critiques here, e.g. "It gives us a phenomenology of contemporary politics, but not a logic. A book that did that couldn’t be so short or so sexy: it would have to look in great detail at why there is this uneven and combined development of civil society."

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Rob Priest @rdpriest.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Is this how you divided things with WILL "Ebola" Pooley? Because you are clearly Will POOLEY. (The serious answer is you don't need a system. As so often in oral communication, context cues do more work than you could easily quantify!)

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Rob Priest @rdpriest.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

I sometimes think about this because I have three Uncle Tonys (true story), but we just know which one we are talking about.

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Rob Priest @rdpriest.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

I actually allow what such students describe in my module policies (*ducks*)

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Rob Priest @rdpriest.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Surely it *is* bumpf! I am not ready to accept this.

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Rob Priest @rdpriest.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

I found even odder that the comparative charts also suggested that it isn't much of a phenomenon in London, anyway, compared to pretty much all of the other examples.

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Rob Priest @rdpriest.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Much as I sympathise with the OP's general point, even that enquête was not the most significant publication in France in 1863, which was -- clearly -- Ernest Renan's Vie de Jésus: something that should indeed be common knowledge and will require large-scale purchases of my book on the matter.

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Euan Huey @euan-huey.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

I'm really happy to share that my article is now out in the Journal of Early Modern History and is open access!

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Rob Priest @rdpriest.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

I think about this a lot: www.instagram.com/reel/DbQcp_d...

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Rob Priest @rdpriest.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

An underappreciated book I always mention in my lecture on recent European history. A lot of writers on 'European integration' are either inside baseball, very zoomed-in, and/or operate with a postwar or at best twentieth-century frame of reference. Zielonka not the only wider view but a useful one.

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Jan-Werner Mueller @jwmueller-pu.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

How strong are the connections between democracy and what Joan Scott once called “a complicated idea with limited application” -- i.e. academic freedom?

verfassungsblog.de

Two Democratic Cheers for the University

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Rob Priest @rdpriest.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Have genuinely wondered since if it being the weekend was actually important here. Rush-hour commute probably more solo travellers with earbuds in who would keep to themselves (other than the ones blasting from speakers, of course). This was more like a... community occasion.

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Rob Priest @rdpriest.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Few months ago on the bus made the mistake of backing someone up in a row over phones. What I didn't expect: it pulled in most of the bottom deck. All ages, classes, genders jabbing fingers, swearing. One prob. had issues; not the rest. Sunday lunchtime. Proper "that escalated quickly!" experience.

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Charles West @pseudo-isidore.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Fascinating comparative graphic here: shows the UK's emphasis on early modern history especially. (no, I am not clear on the methodology)

bar chart comparing history publications by historians in Germany, France, UK and Netherlands

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Rob Priest @rdpriest.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Looking forward. Excited by your chronology. I hope I can review it!

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Rob Priest @rdpriest.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

He's only bloody read this thread: bsky.app/profile/bold...

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Rob Priest @rdpriest.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

I am not used to being cited in the first decade or two after publication. Writing something that social scientists rather than historians read is odd. They do not seem to realise that there is a second round of ageing in the bottles.

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Rob Priest @rdpriest.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Miloš Broćić and Galen Watts introduce a new special issue of IJPCS which debates how far "culture war" theories can describe new cultural conflicts. They wrestle with similar theoretical questions to my HWJ piece but in a very contemporary and empirical direction. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

link.springer.com

After Culture Wars—Rethinking Cultural Conflict in the Twenty-first Century: Introduction to the Special Issue - International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society

In this introductory essay, we argue that James Davidson Hunter’s classic text, Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America, although highly generative in its time, no longer provides an adequate gui...

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Rob Priest @rdpriest.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Conflict of interest given the Macron sponsorship.

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Rob Priest @rdpriest.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Interesting! I guess like any "people don't talk enough about" generalisation, it depends on what you read. I feel like I've read a lot of "of course it will never happen, but isn't it alarming that..?" takes, which always remind me of certain other events people looked at polls and said that about.

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Rob Priest @rdpriest.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Possible. It is one of the areas of London with bilingual French private schools, too.

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Rob Priest @rdpriest.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

I agreed with what you said re. fragmentation vs polarisation btw. Nice interview as usual!

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Rob Priest @rdpriest.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

The alternative case - that a majority will NOT develop for a more popular alternative - has never been more plausible. That is not the same as me making a prediction! Only that people seem to assume previous experience is a guide to what comes next, when that is the thing it will never be. 2/2

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Rob Priest @rdpriest.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

My thoughts are too long for this format so I'll cut to the chase: Don't you think that, if anything, people are UNDERpricing the possibility of an RN victory? The base case seems to be: too early to say, scenarios too abstract until we have the candidates, etc. Don't disagree with that, BUT... 1/2

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Rob Priest @rdpriest.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Well, Romanian is the third most spoken Main Language in the entire country and by quite a substantial margin, so without further context I would expect to see it separately listed more than, well, any of the other languages on that chart. It's a funny one! www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopula...

ons.gov.uk

Language, England and Wales - Office for National Statistics

Main language, English language proficiency, and household language in England and Wales, Census 2021 data.

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