Leah-thais
@leah-thais.bsky.social
Anglo-German. Italy/France. Talk to me about your favourite novels, teaching English, women’s basketball, living, working & travelling in Europe, early medieval history (including elephants & camels!) good food & wine.
Pinned
Leah-thais
@leah-thais.bsky.social
· Aug 21
New here & wanting to show off that not only do I have a jar of sensible biscuits, but it is still full!
#adulting
#adulting
Reposted by Leah-thais
Great power hegemony is something that has been going through my mind recently for obvious topical reasons.
Historically it’s something that only a handful of empires have managed to achieve for more than a couple of generations (imperial Rome, Ming China etc), because it’s very hard to do 🧵
Historically it’s something that only a handful of empires have managed to achieve for more than a couple of generations (imperial Rome, Ming China etc), because it’s very hard to do 🧵
January 6, 2026 at 4:20 PM
Great power hegemony is something that has been going through my mind recently for obvious topical reasons.
Historically it’s something that only a handful of empires have managed to achieve for more than a couple of generations (imperial Rome, Ming China etc), because it’s very hard to do 🧵
Historically it’s something that only a handful of empires have managed to achieve for more than a couple of generations (imperial Rome, Ming China etc), because it’s very hard to do 🧵
Reposted by Leah-thais
If you're not watching the cheetah cub cam, what are you even doing?
Cheetah Cub Cam
The Cheetah Cub Cam streams live from the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute in Front Royal, Virginia.
nationalzoo.si.edu
December 31, 2025 at 10:06 AM
If you're not watching the cheetah cub cam, what are you even doing?
Reposted by Leah-thais
I used to be very dismissive of round-robin letters at Christmas but this year I thought I would send one myself.
So, anyway, here’s my lookback at 2025!
So, anyway, here’s my lookback at 2025!
December 24, 2025 at 3:57 PM
I used to be very dismissive of round-robin letters at Christmas but this year I thought I would send one myself.
So, anyway, here’s my lookback at 2025!
So, anyway, here’s my lookback at 2025!
Accurate!
'My year end reading statistics' (originally for @theguardian.com books).
p.s There's still time to pick up new book Physics for Cats at good bookshops and online www.tomgauld.com/comic-books-v2
p.s There's still time to pick up new book Physics for Cats at good bookshops and online www.tomgauld.com/comic-books-v2
December 19, 2025 at 7:35 AM
Accurate!
Want this book so much!
December 18, 2025 at 11:04 AM
Want this book so much!
Reposted by Leah-thais
this is not behavior becoming of a FIFA Peace Prize recipient.
December 15, 2025 at 8:18 PM
this is not behavior becoming of a FIFA Peace Prize recipient.
December 11, 2025 at 12:12 PM
Reposted by Leah-thais
📢 Introducing CHEPA: a free, easy-to-use tool for #schools and local authorities! Calculate how a #HEPAfilter would affect your classroom #AirQuality and energy use. 🍎
✔️ Easy-to-use
✔️ Evidence-based
✔️ Classroom-specific results
Try the #CHEPAcalculator today: www.coschools.org.uk/CHEPAcalcula...
✔️ Easy-to-use
✔️ Evidence-based
✔️ Classroom-specific results
Try the #CHEPAcalculator today: www.coschools.org.uk/CHEPAcalcula...
Menu
www.coschools.org.uk
December 9, 2025 at 8:36 AM
📢 Introducing CHEPA: a free, easy-to-use tool for #schools and local authorities! Calculate how a #HEPAfilter would affect your classroom #AirQuality and energy use. 🍎
✔️ Easy-to-use
✔️ Evidence-based
✔️ Classroom-specific results
Try the #CHEPAcalculator today: www.coschools.org.uk/CHEPAcalcula...
✔️ Easy-to-use
✔️ Evidence-based
✔️ Classroom-specific results
Try the #CHEPAcalculator today: www.coschools.org.uk/CHEPAcalcula...
Reposted by Leah-thais
This is shameful. The University of Cambridge has a duty to stand against the disgraceful anti-intellectualism of the right.
www.varsity.co.uk/news/30787
www.varsity.co.uk/news/30787
Cambridge cosies up to Reform UK
Leaked recordings of a University Council meeting, obtained by Varsity and The Sunday Times, show the VC fearful of Trump-style recriminations if Reform were to win power
www.varsity.co.uk
December 1, 2025 at 9:40 AM
This is shameful. The University of Cambridge has a duty to stand against the disgraceful anti-intellectualism of the right.
www.varsity.co.uk/news/30787
www.varsity.co.uk/news/30787
Why does this matter? Read this engaging post & find out!
Today on the blog, I have a taste of scholarly humility and try to work out who exactly the early medieval Vascones were (spoiler alert - it’s complicated). #medievalsky
salutemmundo.wordpress.com/2025/11/13/w...
salutemmundo.wordpress.com/2025/11/13/w...
Who were the Vascones?
Contrary to legend, when Charlemagne invaded the Iberian Peninsula in 778, he didn’t fight many Arabs. Instead, the Royal Frankish Annals inform us that as his armies crossed the Pyrenees, he ‘subj…
salutemmundo.wordpress.com
November 14, 2025 at 6:42 AM
Why does this matter? Read this engaging post & find out!
Reposted by Leah-thais
@samottewillsoulsby.bsky.social's The Emperor and the Elephant is a new history of Christian-Muslim relations in the Carolingian period that provides a fresh account of events by drawing on Arabic as well as western sources.
Now in #paperback! Read a free sample: press.princeton.edu/books/paperb...
Now in #paperback! Read a free sample: press.princeton.edu/books/paperb...
November 3, 2025 at 8:20 PM
@samottewillsoulsby.bsky.social's The Emperor and the Elephant is a new history of Christian-Muslim relations in the Carolingian period that provides a fresh account of events by drawing on Arabic as well as western sources.
Now in #paperback! Read a free sample: press.princeton.edu/books/paperb...
Now in #paperback! Read a free sample: press.princeton.edu/books/paperb...
Reposted by Leah-thais
Today on the blog, we descend into a dark, dangerous underworld to answer the question, is Charlemagne in hell? #medievalsky
salutemmundo.wordpress.com/2025/10/30/t...
salutemmundo.wordpress.com/2025/10/30/t...
The Fire and the Worms: Infernal Affairs at the Carolingian Court
“If I can save 7,000 people a week from getting killed, that’s pretty good. I want to try and get to heaven, if possible. I’m hearing I’m not doing well. I am really at the bottom of the totem pole…
salutemmundo.wordpress.com
October 30, 2025 at 2:58 PM
Today on the blog, we descend into a dark, dangerous underworld to answer the question, is Charlemagne in hell? #medievalsky
salutemmundo.wordpress.com/2025/10/30/t...
salutemmundo.wordpress.com/2025/10/30/t...
🤦♀️
October 12, 2025 at 12:48 PM
🤦♀️
Reposted by Leah-thais
Today is a day when arts degrees are worthless, but the product of those degrees is so valuable it would kill an entire industry if they were made to pay for it.
Nick Clegg says asking artists for use permission would ‘kill’ the AI industry
Nick Clegg says asking artists for use permission would ‘kill’ the AI industry
Paul McCartne, Elton John and others signed an open letter.
buff.ly
October 8, 2025 at 10:29 AM
Today is a day when arts degrees are worthless, but the product of those degrees is so valuable it would kill an entire industry if they were made to pay for it.
Makes me think of K M Peyton’s Marion’s Angels.
🚴John Betjeman said that it was worth cycling 40 miles in a headwind to see them.
🪽The early C16th Angel Roof at St Wendreda in Cambs is adorned with over 100 oaken angels.
🪽The early C16th Angel Roof at St Wendreda in Cambs is adorned with over 100 oaken angels.
October 7, 2025 at 8:05 AM
Makes me think of K M Peyton’s Marion’s Angels.
Actually, I think there is a problem with this & it is that whoever controls the shopping doesn’t buy & cook the foods they don’t like (I know I didn’t when I was cooking for my kids) so it’s hardly fair to accuse children of being fussy if served something they don’t like.
October 6, 2025 at 8:51 AM
Actually, I think there is a problem with this & it is that whoever controls the shopping doesn’t buy & cook the foods they don’t like (I know I didn’t when I was cooking for my kids) so it’s hardly fair to accuse children of being fussy if served something they don’t like.
You couldn’t make it up.
Shameless.
Shameless.
In case you missed it:
The Manchester organiser of the #FlyTheFlag campaign is a convicted people smuggler who spent time in jail for attempting to illegally bring Vietnamese nationals into the UK.
sources:
www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater...
The Manchester organiser of the #FlyTheFlag campaign is a convicted people smuggler who spent time in jail for attempting to illegally bring Vietnamese nationals into the UK.
sources:
www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater...
October 6, 2025 at 8:42 AM
You couldn’t make it up.
Shameless.
Shameless.
What I’m here for!
Six weeks ago, I picked up a year-old tawny owl with a broken leg off the main road near our home and dropped him off at our nearest vet.
After a few days, I received one of the most bizarre phone calls I’ve ever had, asking “So when are you coming to pick up your owl?” 🧵
After a few days, I received one of the most bizarre phone calls I’ve ever had, asking “So when are you coming to pick up your owl?” 🧵
October 5, 2025 at 5:07 PM
What I’m here for!
Reposted by Leah-thais
A brilliant, angry, beautiful poem.
‘I don’t ask why, because it is mostly the same.
Wars happen because the ones who start them
think they can win.’
‘I don’t ask why, because it is mostly the same.
Wars happen because the ones who start them
think they can win.’
I tend to think every nerdy trans woman should read Margaret Atwood's The Loneliness of the Military Historian and sit with it for a moment no matter what it is exactly she's nerdy about, but that goes double for you www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47788/...
The Loneliness of the Military Historian
This is why few people ask me to dinner, though Lord knows I don’t go out of my way to be scary. If I roll my eyes and mutter, if I clutch at my heart and scream in horror like a third-rate actress ch...
www.poetryfoundation.org
October 2, 2025 at 7:22 PM
A brilliant, angry, beautiful poem.
‘I don’t ask why, because it is mostly the same.
Wars happen because the ones who start them
think they can win.’
‘I don’t ask why, because it is mostly the same.
Wars happen because the ones who start them
think they can win.’
Wtaf
"The joke of Tommy Robinson using the work of a homosexual black artist as apparently representative of their movement”
- Labi Siffre
www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...
- Labi Siffre
www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...
Something inside so wrong: Labi Siffre tells Tommy Robinson to stop using anti-apartheid anthem
Exclusive: UK singer, 80, says it is ‘absurd’ as a ‘positive atheist, homosexual black artist’ for far right to claim his work
www.theguardian.com
September 28, 2025 at 8:21 AM
Wtaf
Reposted by Leah-thais
Today on the blog, I celebrate the forthcoming paperback release of The Emperor and the Elephant by looking at elephant diplomacy in the twenty-first century. #elephant #diplomacy @princetonupress.bsky.social
salutemmundo.wordpress.com/2025/09/18/p...
salutemmundo.wordpress.com/2025/09/18/p...
Pachyderm Presents: Elephant Diplomacy in the Twenty-First Century
I’m delighted to be able to announce that my book, The Emperor and the Elephant: Christians and Muslims in the Age of Charlemagne, is coming out in paperback on 23 September 2025![1] In addition to…
salutemmundo.wordpress.com
September 18, 2025 at 1:55 PM
Today on the blog, I celebrate the forthcoming paperback release of The Emperor and the Elephant by looking at elephant diplomacy in the twenty-first century. #elephant #diplomacy @princetonupress.bsky.social
salutemmundo.wordpress.com/2025/09/18/p...
salutemmundo.wordpress.com/2025/09/18/p...
The good news we all need:
News from Finland. A 9-year-old lost an especially good stick he’d had since he was 2. He hung up 20 posters. A few days later it was returned. It had been found by a 2-year-old, who wanted to keep it for herself, but her mother made her return it. She got toys, flowers and candy as a reward.
September 13, 2025 at 3:06 PM
The good news we all need:
Reposted by Leah-thais
September 10, 2025 at 12:01 PM