Blogging At The End Of The (Twitter) World

I have been on Twitter since 2009. It was a very different place in those days. There was no retweet button, but retweets existed, in the form of copy-and-pasting somebody’s tweet with the words “RT @[their username]” beforehand. You couldn’t upload pictures, either; you’d have to upload them to TweetPic and include a link. The …

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The Early Modern Irish For “Stress Relief”

(Disclaimer so that nobody gets their hopes up: I don’t think there is an early modern Irish phrase for “stress relief”. If there is, I haven’t yet encountered it. This blog post will not give you that information. I apologise if that’s why you’re here.) At the weekend I resumed one of my most niche …

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Pronouns and the Twelfth-Century Werewolf Renaissance

Below is the text of a thread I tweeted on 17th May 2023. I’ve copied it here for a few reasons: firstly, because I know that Twitter threads are not the most accessible format but I would rather people don’t use third-party Thread Reader apps which will monetise my content with their ads; secondly, because …

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Lament, Protest, and Letting Men Cry

This Wednesday, I attended a symposium about Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire, ‘The Lament for Art O’Leary’. Even if you don’t know much else about early modern Irish literature, you might be familiar with this lament if you’ve read A Ghost in the Throat, which revolves around the act of translating it. Before this week, that …

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