Simon During

@simoncd.bsky.social

700 followers 670 following 140 posts

Bookish married English professor, living between Brisbane and Berlin. Interested in way too much, reads indiscriminately, and, cant seem to help myself, has opinions on pretty much everything.

Videos

Political science 36%

Sociology 20%

Posts Replies Media Videos

Simon During @simoncd.bsky.social · 1d

Vico: “Monarchy is the government that most conforms to human nature, in the ages when reason is the most developed.”

Reposted by Simon During

Hollis Robbins @anecdotal.bsky.social · 2d

Online asynchronous education is not going to survive the AI era. Colleges and universities that double down on small classes, expertise, and real mentorship will be the ones that flourish.
www.chronicle.com/article/coll...

College Bankruptcies Are Coming

In October, I attended a dinner in Washington, D.C., organized by the Center for Economy and Society (SNF Agora) at the Johns Hopkins University and the Niskanen Center on the subject of what American...

www.chronicle.com

Simon During @simoncd.bsky.social · Jun 8

Looks good

Simon During @simoncd.bsky.social · May 24

The cynicism, cruelty and lies that now define Israel are infectious. The US is certainly infected by them.

Reposted by Simon During

Seth Brodsky @sbrodsky.bsky.social · Apr 28

Ah god dammit. Joshua Clover wrote about both people and music as if he loved them so much he couldn’t bear it, & indeed he really did love them like this, to the joy of those he knew & shaped, & to the consternation of those who loved either less. What a loss. www.theparisreview.org/blog/2021/11...

Roadrunning: Joshua Clover in Conversation with Alex Abramovich

November 10, 2021 – Emails about rock ’n’ roll freedom, American capitalism, and automobiles.

www.theparisreview.org

Reposted by Simon During

the Juice Media @thejuicemedia.com · Apr 22

Peter Dutton made a new election ad, and it’s surprisingly honest and informative. #auspol

Honest Peter Dutton Ad

YouTube video by thejuicemedia

www.youtube.com

Simon During @simoncd.bsky.social · Apr 23

Ryan Ruby’s latest?

Simon During @simoncd.bsky.social · Apr 15

They have more power in the end

Simon During @simoncd.bsky.social · Apr 1

Palestinian paramedics shot by Israeli forces had hands tied, eyewitnesses say

Simon During @simoncd.bsky.social · Mar 3

The view from our Berlin apt just now.

Simon During @simoncd.bsky.social · Mar 3

Christopher Isherwood, The Berlin Stories: two novels (this ed 1945). This is one of the few volumes I long lusted for before I acquired it. It is such a handsome thing. Then I came across it quite by chance in Balfour Books, one of Toronto’s best used bookstores, while attending a conference there.

Simon During @simoncd.bsky.social · Mar 2

The sooner Musk gets his ass to Mars the better.

Simon During @simoncd.bsky.social · Feb 26

I believe the world’s moral compass will one day be restored.

Simon During @simoncd.bsky.social · Feb 26

Didier Eribon, Retour a Reims (1980). A famous (Bourdieuean) reflection on/theorization of the author’s life (a provincial queer working class lad’s rise up the academic ladder into the petit bourgeoisie) as triggered by a trip back to his home town upon his dad’s death. Interesting, very French.

Simon During @simoncd.bsky.social · Feb 21

Not sure how anti-authoritarian Ukraine is in the end. It is still very corrupt, billions are being siphoned off by war profiteers who will likely become the next generation of the oligarchs who originally put Zelensky into power.

Simon During @simoncd.bsky.social · Feb 21

The Ukraine situation doesnt in fact divide into a good guys v bad guys scenario and we should resist slipping back into cold war melodrama thinking.

Simon During @simoncd.bsky.social · Feb 20

The last dated Gertrud Kauders drawing we have. So cool!

Simon During @simoncd.bsky.social · Feb 20

C.P. Snow, Death under Sail (1932). Nice cover, lousy book. What a creep was C.P. Snow!

Simon During @simoncd.bsky.social · Feb 17

Italo Calvino, Our Ancestors. I have vivid memories of reading this book, astonished, on the London Northern Line in the days I worked in advertising in Hyde Park and lived on Parliament Hill. “Baron in the Trees” in particular really got to me, and it remains an ur-text.

Reposted by Simon During

TeeDixie ✊🏼 #Resist @teedixie.bsky.social · Feb 16

Ladies… this advice, written on marriage in a pamphlet by a suffragette in
1918 is still relevant today 🤣
It is currently on display at the Pontypridd Museum in Wales.

Advice on Marriage.
TO YOUNG LADIES.
1. Do not marry at all.
2. But if you must, avoid the Beauty Men, Flirts, and the Bounders, Tailor's Dummies, and the Football Enthusiasts.
3. Look for a Strong, Tame Man, a Fire-lighter, Coal-getter, Window Cleaner, and Yard Swiller.
4. Don't except too much, most men are lazy, selfish, thoughtless, lying, drunken, clumsy,
heavy-footed, rough, unmanly brutes,
and need taming.
5. All Bachelors are, and many are worse still.
6. If you want him to be happy,
Feed the Brute.
7. The same remark applies to Dogs.
8. You will be wiser not to chance it isn't worth the risk

Simon During @simoncd.bsky.social · Feb 15

My Secret Life (1966). The famous (or just once famous?) Victorian male hetero porn book which the late great Steven Marcus edited and brought back into circulation, upon which I think it became something of a bestseller. One of the more, how to put it?, perverse pathways into 19thc England.

Simon During @simoncd.bsky.social · Feb 15

A Gertrud Kauders work on paper

Simon During @simoncd.bsky.social · Feb 9

So this is what it is like

Simon During @simoncd.bsky.social · Feb 6

BCharles Jackson, The Lost Weekend (1944) I’ve vague memories of reading this bestseller in my adolescence and think I saw the movie too. If my memory is sound, the dustjacket here isn’t very appropriate. But pb publishers of the period weren’t concerned with the fit between the jacket and the work

Reposted by Simon During

New York Review Books @nyrb-imprints.bsky.social · Feb 3

Launch event for From Ted to Tom: The Illustrated Envelopes of Edward Gorey TONIGHT (6:30) at @strandbookstore

Tom Fitzharris, the recipient of these letters, will be speaking with Robert Greskovic, a noted dance critic and longtime friend of Gorey's.

www.strandbooks.com/events/event...

Simon During @simoncd.bsky.social · Jan 31

Politics is a mugs game. But we are all mugs.

Simon During @simoncd.bsky.social · Jan 31

Kirsty Bell, The Undercurrents. I enjoyed this as most people interested in Berlin will. An American art-historian’s divorce lands her with a largish building beside the Landwehr canal and she becomes obsessed by its past. Fascinating.

Simon During @simoncd.bsky.social · Jan 30

Forceful detailed essay on Germany’s profoundly disturbing failure to acknowledge what is going on in Israel

Simon During @simoncd.bsky.social · Jan 27

Can we please just put Bob Dylan out of our lives? How hard would that be? He deserves a rest.

Simon During @simoncd.bsky.social · Jan 27

Mary McCarthy, The Group Everyone read this when I was young. Before feminism, before the pill, before the ‘career woman’, it’s about a bunch of Vasser girls out of college. It’s more about class thansex and gender, even if its historical role was to intensify women’s awareness of how gender works.

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