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Timothy C. Baker @timothycbaker.bsky.social · 16h

Reading A Room with a View - for the manyeth time, but finding a perfect paragraph I'd never dwelt on before - while listening to Rickie Lee Jones for the first (genuinely) time is about as nice as an evening at work can be.

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Timothy C. Baker @timothycbaker.bsky.social · 1d

Sounds lovely!

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Timothy C. Baker @timothycbaker.bsky.social · 1d

Which one?

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Timothy C. Baker @timothycbaker.bsky.social · 1d

The fun thing about aging past Maxim de Winters over multiple rereadings of Rebecca is moving from 'patriarchal tyrant' to 'aw, he's just a wee guy!'
(Favourite detail on this reading: even Jasper's mum [the spaniel] doesn't get a name.)

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Timothy C. Baker @timothycbaker.bsky.social · 2d

Pocket universe filled only by items Evri claims to have delivered.

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Timothy C. Baker @timothycbaker.bsky.social · 5d

I’m watching Misery for the first time, and Kathy Bates is so aspirational. Cute neurodivergent literary critic who fights Trumpist patriarchal men? Sign me up!

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Reposted by Timothy C. Baker

Artologica aka Michele Banks @artologica.net · 13d

Morning walk

Wheat paste poster that says the all the world is dying and the new world struggles to be born now is the time of monsters. There's a picture of Elmo

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Timothy C. Baker @timothycbaker.bsky.social · 15d

You gotta hand it to freshers' flu. When so much in life is uncertain, here it is, late September, and I've got the sniffles again.

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Timothy C. Baker @timothycbaker.bsky.social · 15d

Honestly, the best predictor of whether or not a novel moves from the Booker longlist to shortlist is if I haven't read it yet. (I've read the Miller, which is good! And own the Choi! But that's it.)
(But anyway, Sarah Hall's Helm is the book that most should be there.)

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Timothy C. Baker @timothycbaker.bsky.social · 16d

I'm not going on a much longer rant, because I don't want to give them the outrage they desire, but I am in the UK because of the Indefinite Leave to Remain scheme and want to stress that it is a) really (and unnecessarily) arduous and expensive, and b) a very good thing to have.

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Timothy C. Baker @timothycbaker.bsky.social · 20d

I've put this as required reading for two different cohorts of students within ten minutes of reading it.

Phil Klay @philklay.bsky.social · 20d

“How did I find dignity in a book that seems so determined to strip dignity away from its characters, especially its gay characters? Where did I find affirmation in a book so enamored of the abyss?”

@garthgreenwell.bsky.social on affirmation in art

harpers.org/archive/2025...

Enamored of the Abyss, by Garth Greenwell

On the place of affirmation in art

harpers.org

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Reposted by Timothy C. Baker

Ernesto Priego @ernestopriego.com · 22d

Simply astonishing. Maybe Lecturer A should not have to mark over 100 essays in a two-week window in the first place? Invest in qualified staff and reduce impossible workloads FFS www.kcl.ac.uk/about/strate...

Screenshot. King's College London page. Examples of effective practice

The following scenarios follow the above guidelines and offer insights into ways that academic staff can use AI transparently and in an assistive capacity, always ensuring human oversight and judgment remain central.
Scenario A – Scaling feedback while maintaining quality

Lecturer A is responsible for marking over 100 essays within a two-week window.

Conscious of the limitations this workload places on the depth of individual feedback, they adopt a hybrid approach using their university’s approved or supported LLM tool, Copilot.

Without ever uploading student work directly, Lecturer A composes an anonymised summary for each student, noting which marking criteria were met and the approximate percentage achieved for each. They input this summary alongside the official rubric into Copilot, prompting it to generate supportive, criterion-referenced feedback. This feedback is then carefully reviewed, adapted, and personalised before being uploaded to the marking platform.

Students are made aware of this process in advance and shown a demonstration, reinforcing transparency and trust.

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Timothy C. Baker @timothycbaker.bsky.social · 24d

This is my 19th autumn teaching in HE, and my start-of-term jitters are just as bad as they were in 2006.

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Timothy C. Baker @timothycbaker.bsky.social · Sep 7

I’ve never liked the phrase ‘giving it 110%’, but I’m watching Grand Hotel, and Greta Garbo just acts MORE than any other human.

Close-up of Garbo, in a negligee, with subtitle reading ‘I’ve never been so tired in my life’.

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Timothy C. Baker @timothycbaker.bsky.social · Aug 30

Oh, I am THERE! (It’s a small claim to fame, but I think I was the first academic to write on her, in an issue of C21 Literature that was never digitised and that I never received a contributor copy of!)

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Timothy C. Baker @timothycbaker.bsky.social · Aug 30

Also finished the new Sarah Moss today, and remembering my idea for a ‘Sarah, Sarah, Alison, Alison’ book (Hall, Moss, Kennedy, Smith) because I think they’re such human and humane authors but also understand that what fiction does is make language happen, and that that’s a small miracle.

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Timothy C. Baker @timothycbaker.bsky.social · Aug 29

It's been a while since I read a new novel that took so much sheer joy in language as Sarah Hall's Helm.

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Reposted by Timothy C. Baker

David Pattie @davidpattie.bsky.social · Aug 29

I'll quite happily maintain that if you don't like Eleanor Morton, there's something wrong with you.

Eleanor Morton @eleanormorton.bsky.social · Aug 29

We Have AI Now

www.youtube.com/shorts/8-lgJ...

We Have AI Now

YouTube video by Eleanor Morton

www.youtube.com

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Timothy C. Baker @timothycbaker.bsky.social · Aug 28

Aberdeen's 60s are best represented by its cinemas:
1965: The Rolling Stones play the Capitol
1966: The Sound of Music plays at the Odeon for nine months, with coaches coming from Inverness
1967: Joseph Strick's Ulysses is one of the only films ever banned in the city.
@belmontcinema.bsky.social

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Timothy C. Baker @timothycbaker.bsky.social · Aug 28

New favourite Aberdeen image, from 1932.

Cover of the Aberdeen Bon-Accord and Northern Pictorial Holiday Number, showing a motorboat speeding along the Aberdeen Beach.

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Timothy C. Baker @timothycbaker.bsky.social · Aug 28

Reading a lot about UK cinema exhibition in the 1890s, and I think there's a genuine case to be made for Queen Victoria as the first British film star.

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Timothy C. Baker @timothycbaker.bsky.social · Aug 28

This is such a good statement, and ending it 'We regret that,
sadly, unanimity is not possible on this issue and kinder ground eludes us' is definitely language I want to use in the future.

Alexandra Lanes @ajlanes.bsky.social · Aug 28

This, from the Quakers, is a pretty good example of how to resist pressure from bigot lobbying groups. Effectively “we legally can allow trans people to use the loo, we morally should, and we tried it and nothing bad happened”

www.quaker.org.uk

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Timothy C. Baker @timothycbaker.bsky.social · Aug 25

Much of Tokyo Sonata hit /way/ too close to home, and it did lose its way 3/4 of the way through, but my word, that is one of the all-time best final scenes.

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Timothy C. Baker @timothycbaker.bsky.social · Aug 25

Happy leafblowers on campus season to the no one who celebrates!

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Timothy C. Baker @timothycbaker.bsky.social · Aug 20

Ooh, this is going to be great!

Karl Bell @karlbell.bsky.social · Aug 20

My recent @uophistory.bsky.social blog offers some reflections on the aims and challenges of writing The Perilous Deep - history.port.ac.uk?p=3500 @reaktionbooks.bsky.social #maritimehistory #folklore

Charting The Perilous Deep

Below, our own Karl Bell, Associate Professor in Cultural and Social History, writes about his exciting new book on the supernatural legends associated with the seafarers of the Atlantic Ocean. Ka…

history.port.ac.uk

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