Tom Rank
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tomrank.bsky.social
Tom Rank
@tomrank.bsky.social
440 followers 280 following 620 posts
Reflections on literature, education - and other ramblings. Was @literaryconnect in the other place 😀
http://www.literaryconnections.co.uk/
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Reposted by Tom Rank
shamlet.bsky.social
The teacher on holidays is pleased to report that there are still places where poets rule the land
the water tower in Milton, Halton Region (Ontario)
December 22, 2025 at 1:15 PM
Reposted by Tom Rank
lynneguist.bsky.social
My new newsletter contains more than FIFTY Words of the Year from around the world.

Those won't be the final hashtag#WotY2025, but it is the final newsletter of the year!

lynneguist.substack.com/p/2025-words...
2025 Words...so far
This time: Words of the Year and Links of the Month
lynneguist.substack.com
December 22, 2025 at 7:52 PM
Reposted by Tom Rank
dhothersall.bsky.social
This is such bollocks. You can do both. Agrivoltaics use *raised* solar on fields and contribute to *increased* yields, better moisture retention and shade for grazing livestock. There's absolutely no need to make this an either/or.
abilutangwa.bsky.social Abilu Tangwa. @abilutangwa.bsky.social · 21h
The solution is right above us. Solar panels on existing buildings, car parks, and along highways generate clean power without sacrificing farmland or wild spaces. Let's use our built world first. #Renewables #Innovation
December 22, 2025 at 4:46 PM
Reposted by Tom Rank
asylummatters.bsky.social
Sign the petition here:
you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/do...
Don’t leave refugees in limbo: Scrap the 20-year wait
Imagine living in limbo for 20 years, not knowing if you’ll be allowed to stay in the only home your children have ever known. That is the reality facing refugees under new government proposals. A…
you.38degrees.org.uk
December 22, 2025 at 4:02 PM
Reposted by Tom Rank
janezwart.bsky.social
Much gratitude to Millie Tullis and the folks who make @psalteryandlyre.bsky.social for making space for this poem, which is as close to my heart as they come.
December 22, 2025 at 2:58 PM
Reposted by Tom Rank
dankaszeta.bsky.social
Twas the night before Christmas and all through the shop, an the wicked customers were in for the chop...

The books were stacked by the table with care,
"Sell me now" they seem dare.....
December 22, 2025 at 2:52 PM
Reposted by Tom Rank
warwickmansell.bsky.social
New: Ofsted’s apparent failings on Mossbourne inspection appear part of a pattern
educationuncovered.co.uk/news/ofsteds...
Education Uncovered | News| Ofsted’s apparent failings on Mossbourne inspection appear part of a pattern
Education Uncovered investigations into six other schools repeatedly showed documentable concerns emerging, but with little acknowledgement of them in Ofsted’s published reports, or impact on their ra...
educationuncovered.co.uk
December 22, 2025 at 3:17 PM
Reposted by Tom Rank
kovesi.bsky.social
From "The Dawn of Day" by Friedrich Nietzsche - on the importance of SLOW reading. He didn't know it, but this is the opposite of LLM, AI, ChatGPT etc etc - the fast, shallow, abbreviated, inattentive slop of reading (and writing) in an online world.
Slow. Down.
From "THE DAWN OF DAY" by FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE: But, after all, why must we proclaim so loudly and with such intensity what we are, what we want, and what we do not want? Let us look at this more calmly and wisely; from a higher and more distant point of view. Let us proclaim it, as if among ourselves, in so low a tone that all the world fails to hear it and us! Above all, however, let us say it slowly.... This preface comes late, but not too late: what, after all, do five or six years matter? Such a book, and such a problem, are in no hurry; besides, we are friends of the lento, I and my book. I have not been a philologist in vain—perhaps I am one yet: a teacher of slow reading. I even come to write slowly. At present it is not only my habit, but even my taste—a perverted taste, maybe—to write nothing but what will drive to despair every one who is "in a hurry." For philology is
December 21, 2025 at 10:38 PM
Reposted by Tom Rank
katebevan.com
Lots of us are travelling for Christmas over the next few days, so here's my favourite poem, TS Eliot's Journey of the Magi. May your travels be smooth and hopeful this year.
The Journey of the Magi - TS Eliot ‘A cold coming we had of it, Just the worst time of the year For a journey, and such a long journey: The ways deep and the weather sharp, The very dead of winter.’ And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory, Lying down in the melting snow. There were times we regretted The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces, And the silken girls bringing sherbet. Then the camel men cursing and grumbling And running away, and wanting their liquor and women, And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters, And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly And the villages dirty and charging high prices: A hard time we had of it. At the end we preferred to travel all night, Sleeping in snatches, With the voices singing in our ears, saying That this was all folly. Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley, Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation; With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness, And three trees on the low sky, And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow. Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel, Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver, And feet kicking the empty wine-skins, But there was no information, and so we continued And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory. All this was a long time ago, I remember, And I would do it again, but set down This set down This: were we led all that way for Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly, We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death, But had thought they were different; this Birth was Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death. We returned to our places, these Kingdoms, But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation, With an alien people clutching their gods. I should be glad of another death.
December 22, 2025 at 10:29 AM
Reposted by Tom Rank
ottoenglish.bsky.social
Give people cheap or free renewable energy, and nimbyism will disappear in a puff. That's my wholly unresearched opinion.
December 22, 2025 at 9:48 AM
Reposted by Tom Rank
andraswf.bsky.social
"irregular migration" is still not a crime, David. They are refugees. Asylum seekers. We have had systems in place for well over seventy years know, why are y'all pretend that none of this existed before last year?

Now fuck off.
December 21, 2025 at 9:31 PM
Reposted by Tom Rank
tseliotfoundation.bsky.social
'When the short day is brightest, with frost and fire,
The brief sun flames the ice, on pond and ditches,
In windless cold that is the heart’s heat,
Reflecting in a watery mirror
A glare that is blindness in the early afternoon.'

— Little Gidding

#Wintersolstice
December 21, 2025 at 8:42 PM
Reposted by Tom Rank
jenniebatchelor.bsky.social
Today the Sunday Times discusses the decline in students studying A-level and beyond. I believe this is reversible. I believe it is necessary. And I’m glad to have some of my words on the importance of the discipline and the vibrancy of our degrees in English at York in the article.
December 21, 2025 at 10:04 AM
Reposted by Tom Rank
shamlet.bsky.social
An I had but one penny in the world, thou shouldst have it to buy gingerbread

Love's Labour's Lost, 5.1.71-72
#ShakespeareSunday
a Fremantle Dockers gingerbread man Christmas tree ornament an Ohio State football gingerbread man Christmas tree ornament
December 21, 2025 at 1:59 PM
Reposted by Tom Rank
neilmackay.bsky.social
‘Jesus was a refugee. As a child he had to go to Egypt for safety. So please: think what the message of Christmas really means’

The head of the Church of Scotland tells me Christmas is about welcoming the outsider as she speaks out against the hate growing in society

In @heraldscotland.bsky.social
The Nativity, Frew says, is about “a refugee child who had to go to Egypt for safety'
The Rt Rev Rosie Frew has composed a special Christmas reflection for Herald readers. She talks to our Writer at Large about the need to love those…
www.heraldscotland.com
December 21, 2025 at 9:28 AM
Reposted by Tom Rank
asylummatters.bsky.social
Imagine rebuilding your whole life in 28 days. Finding a home, getting a job, setting up a bank account.
Sounds impossible, right? But that's what the Government expects from newly-recognised refugees.
December 21, 2025 at 1:01 PM
Reposted by Tom Rank
ianduhig.bsky.social
TS Eliot's 'Journey of the Magi' was original in taking their point of view on the divine birth.

This year I'm thinking about the donkey's.
December 21, 2025 at 8:06 AM
Reposted by Tom Rank
drsurekhadavies.bsky.social
A forgotten Tennessee Williams horror play, written for radio as part of his University of Iowa coursework and performed on air perhaps only once, has been published in the Strand Magazine.

www.theguardian.com/culture/2025...
Unseen Tennessee Williams radio play published in literary magazine
The Strangers, a horror tale written during the playwright’s college days, appeared in the Strand magazine this week
www.theguardian.com
December 21, 2025 at 7:02 AM
Reposted by Tom Rank
kovesi.bsky.social
Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy (1621):

What a company of poets hath this year brought out... what a catalogue of new books all this year... who can read them?... we shall have a vast chaos & confusion of books, we are oppressed with them, our eyes ache with reading, our fingers with turning.
December 20, 2025 at 12:57 PM
Reposted by Tom Rank
alisontomlin.bsky.social
Finally made it to the Turner Prize exhibition. Reminds me of a far more beautiful version of the chaotic attractors in my PhD thesis (ok a stretch). I feel quite sad that #Bradford2025 is coming to an end. It really has been the most amazing year and I hope it leaves a positive legacy for the city
December 20, 2025 at 5:01 PM
Reposted by Tom Rank
stephenkb.bsky.social
At least when Keith Joseph didn't believe in the railways he had the excuse that we had had 40 years of decline under British Rail. That Rishi Sunak basically didn't believe in them because he was doing 1980s cosplay is comfortably the worst thing he did as prime minister.
dlknowles.bsky.social Daniel Knowles @dlknowles.bsky.social · 2d
Canceling the northern leg of HS2 was an act of insane self-harm
thetimes.com The Times & Sunday Times @thetimes.com · 2d
Industry insiders are concerned that fewer, shorter non-tilting trains are on order for HS2 — and that journey times will return to those of the 1990s
December 20, 2025 at 12:28 PM
Reposted by Tom Rank
dlknowles.bsky.social
Canceling the northern leg of HS2 was an act of insane self-harm
December 20, 2025 at 11:39 AM
Reposted by Tom Rank
dimitridrekonja.bsky.social
The “save our children” crowd does nothing as kids die of guns, vaccine-preventable illnesses, and poverty 🤬🤦🏻‍♂️😢
melodyschreiber.com Melody Schreiber @melodyschreiber.com · 3d
Two more children have died from the flu, the CDC says today -- bringing the total to three already this season
doritreiss.bsky.social Dorit Reiss @doritreiss.bsky.social · 3d
"Officials are urging doctors to vaccinate their patients [against flu] and provide flu antivirals ..."
As pointed out by @HelenBranswell, three children and many adults already died this year.
www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

via @melodyschreiber.com
December 20, 2025 at 4:46 AM
Reposted by Tom Rank
jenwhy.bsky.social
The Three Magi were... of Persian origin!? A fascinating exploration of the wide-ranging intercultural origins and reach of the Three Kings in this great @empirepoduk.bsky.social
empirepoduk.bsky.social Empire Podcast @empirepoduk.bsky.social · Dec 17
The Three Wisemen, the Three Kings, the Magi... who were they?

In our newest episode, we explore the true history behind the visitors from the East who brought gifts to the Nativity.

And it has more connections to empire than you may expect...

🎁🌟🎁🌟🎁🌟🎁🌟
December 21, 2024 at 11:31 AM