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Matt McDowell

@yorkhillyankee.bsky.social

2K followers 1.3K following 1.7K posts

Historian. Lecturer sport mgmt/policy @morayhouse.bsky.social‬. Books on football & surfing; writing one on Island Games. Events. Curling. Methods. Not an athlete. Very unfashionable. Views my own. he/him aspectaculartableau.wordpress.com

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Matt McDowell @yorkhillyankee.bsky.social · Jun 11

Today, Cambridge Scholars Publishing have released the paperback of Surfing and Modernity in the North of Scotland. The cost is £33.99. Buy it here. www.cambridgescholars.com/product/978-...

Watch me (thrillingly) read snippets of reviews of my book:

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Matt McDowell @yorkhillyankee.bsky.social · 4h

Anyway, back *on here* (I never really left anyway). Wish me luck; it's a big day today, and an even busier week next week.

Matt McDowell @yorkhillyankee.bsky.social · 4h

(Turned 43 this year, and I'm feeling old re a lot of things!)

Matt McDowell @yorkhillyankee.bsky.social · 4h

I'll always have a place in my heart for pubs, a romance that survives despite working in a pub for 6 yr (& my love must be resilient, because I saw a lot of nasty stuff there). But you probably shouldn't take my love as evidence of anything: I'm aware that I'm a dinosaur when it comes to this issue

Matt McDowell @yorkhillyankee.bsky.social · 4h

One of these other batsh*t Labour policy announcements. McSweeney brain: "ah, if we make a policy announcement that has "pubs" in it, potential Reform voters will respond to it!" (It's certainly not aimed at Gen Z.) It can't be something that's been costed where the sums are supposed to add up.

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Matt McDowell @yorkhillyankee.bsky.social · 4h

When I left the Glasgow pub biz in 2012 we had hitherto the right to apply for late licenses but didn't do it. Which regular punters would come in the pub? How much would bosses have to pay staff? Costs of leaving the lights and heat on? All of this before Brexit, covid, tariffs, war in Ukraine, etc

James Ball @jamesrball.com · 4h

There are reasons to think the claims that Gen Z “doesn’t drink” or even drink less than millennials did at their age aren’t true – it seems to be partly a Covid effect and partly some dodgy stats.

But I could easily believe they drink earlier and go home earlier. Pubs look *quiet* after 9pm now…

Rob Davies @byrobdavies.bsky.social · 4h

Pub industry folk: What do you make of this?

I'm sure it's not unwelcome but will it make much difference?

My impression is that you're struggling to fill space until 10pm, let alone 1am.

www.theguardian.com/business/202...

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Matt McDowell @yorkhillyankee.bsky.social · 12d

Right, folks. Going to check out of here for a bit again. I'll see you when I see you.

Matt McDowell @yorkhillyankee.bsky.social · 12d

Hi folks. We used to have a few good websites which were one-stop shops for conferences. Are there any good ones now? (Feels like I'm relying on folk to contact me.)

Matt McDowell @yorkhillyankee.bsky.social · 12d

A link where you can explore the whole artwork.

National Museum of Bermuda

Explore over 500 years of Bermuda history and culture. Bastions, cannons, shipwreck artifacts, water crafts, art and spectacular views are all found in Bermuda’s largest fort.

hullfilm.com

Matt McDowell @yorkhillyankee.bsky.social · 12d

Will be discussing this in a few weeks, a section from Graham Foster's Hall of History in the National Museum of Bermuda.

Cricketers in white playing on a cricket pitch, including a bowler with arms raised. Surrounded by buses, cars, food trucks, different clubs meeting, a pink pastel house, and British and Bermudian flags flying.

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Matt McDowell @yorkhillyankee.bsky.social · 13d

Wonderful stuff — congrats!

Matt McDowell @yorkhillyankee.bsky.social · 14d

If this was Twitter, we could have used polls to determine if our self-selecting group of followers believed that Andy Burnham was 1) the messiah, 2) a false prophet, 3) He Who Also Lost to Jeremy Corbyn. Alas, *our* ability to also create fake information is being restricted by this platform.

Matt McDowell @yorkhillyankee.bsky.social · 14d

Thanks for this Brian -- I don't think the girl in the corner is feeling it.

Matt McDowell @yorkhillyankee.bsky.social · 15d

Anyway, I worked hard not to be "the American guy" in the UK history of sport game, and that's not ending anytime soon. So we're probably talking about a long time into the future, when I can actually spend large periods of time in NJ (and rent a car).

Matt McDowell @yorkhillyankee.bsky.social · 15d

Think AC would definitely be getting its own place. You really would have to discuss gambling.

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Matt McDowell @yorkhillyankee.bsky.social · 15d

I was in the middle of a random thought before the outage rudely interrupted me.

Matt McDowell @yorkhillyankee.bsky.social · 15d

What time period? We should include the Lenni Lenape, but Dutch and Swedish settlement? English conquest? The coming of the Union? The Revolution? Between the Civil War and the 2nd world war? After ww2?

Matt McDowell @yorkhillyankee.bsky.social · 15d

My unfamiliarity with the academic historiography on US sport history, and NJ history full stop, is a barrier there. I'd also need some kind of justification; as I understand it, academic histories of sport in states themselves is rare: I can justify why NJ, but northern NJ? southern NJ? Central?

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Matt McDowell @yorkhillyankee.bsky.social · 15d

I sometimes have this idea that, one day, I'm going to write a book on the history of sport in New Jersey. Was going over different chapters in my head last night. This isn't happening for at least over a decade or maybe two, or possibly longer -- I've got several other projects before then.

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Matt McDowell @yorkhillyankee.bsky.social · 15d

But actually finding the space to do the kinds of research on new kinds of assessment would be hard at the moment, given that all of that kind of research is being done on evolving tech options like AI.

Matt McDowell @yorkhillyankee.bsky.social · 15d

Right now, though, it's important to note that we're all muddling through, & any solution we find is going to be imperfect & probably temporary. But I don't plan on surrendering to Tech That Doesn't Work and Steals Stuff anytime soon; I don't want degrees I teach on to be worthless.

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Matt McDowell @yorkhillyankee.bsky.social · 15d

There is some kind of future assessment that we might be able to create that combines the knowledge base-recitation you might find in an exam with secondary-source research. I like oral presentations & films, but even they're suspectible to have scripts written & fake research performed by AI.

Matt McDowell @yorkhillyankee.bsky.social · 15d

Anyone who tells you that they have obvious answers as to how to solve gen AI stuff is being dishonest with you, by the way. I note that some folk like to brag about how great their students are, & others like to tone-police other lecturers re how they respond: wHY r U bEiNg aN Ai cOp?

Matt McDowell @yorkhillyankee.bsky.social · 15d

I'm going in for abolition and (I know this isn't popular, but...) hard enforcement. At the same token, this year I am giving more opportunities to submit informal work for feedback ahead of the formal submission of written work. I hope it's the latter that encourages students to do the right thing.

Roxane Gay @roxanegay.bsky.social · 16d

I cannot tell you how grim the AI in higher ed situation is. Many of the students have completely surrendered to letting AI do their homework, badly, I might add. How do you fix this? Truly, what the hell do we do, beyond what grading can address, which isn't a solution?

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Matt McDowell @yorkhillyankee.bsky.social · 16d

domesticated manatees lol

Matt McDowell @yorkhillyankee.bsky.social · 17d

lol, I knew "unworkable" was going to be the first adjective Starmer used, he certainly can't change his tune now...

Adam Bienkov @adambienkov.bsky.social · 17d

Keir Starmer’s spokesperson asked for the PM's response to Nigel Farage’s plan to deport hundreds of thousands of people living and working completely legally in the UK, replies that he thinks it is “unworkable” and “unfunded”.

So his objection is that they’ve got their sums wrong

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