David Fearn
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davidfearn.bsky.social
David Fearn
@davidfearn.bsky.social
HoD & Professor of Greek, Classics & AH, University of Warwick
– lyric poetics esp.:
https://tinyurl.com/5bzbk5xu

Here for the intellectual serendipity.

When I can, large-format 🎞 photographer:
https://t.co/B4aSZJlSiM
Pinned
This handmade print is in a frame on an easel in my office at work.

It is there to remind me of beauty, nature & calm when the rest of the world seems like a different kind of wild outside.

Peony Argyrotype

Full details in alt text.

#believeinfilm #largeformatfilmphotography #10x8 #8x10
Oh my...!
*maximum alpha at 1.25x speed* continuously lives on in my head, unfortunately.
November 11, 2025 at 7:10 AM
Reposted by David Fearn
The reaction to the Panorama edit has been nothing short of hysterical. Yes the BBC has some impartiality problems. But its biggest isn't the one you think.

New piece from me.

open.substack.com/pub/goodalla...
The truth about impartiality at the BBC
And the hysteria of the current "crisis"
open.substack.com
November 10, 2025 at 7:22 PM
But why is govt news management so abjectly shit??
NEW: Rachel Reeves signals she intends to remove the two-child cap *in full*

"I don't think a child should be penalised because they're in a bigger family through no fault of their own," she tells BBC.
November 10, 2025 at 7:39 PM
I may be in a minority here, but today's BBC crisis could be the making of it.
November 10, 2025 at 7:19 PM
Newsagents pod rather unmissable today for reasons obvs.
November 10, 2025 at 7:16 PM
Reposted by David Fearn
A beautiful Morpho butterfly from Bolivia today - a different kind of 'Monday blues'!
November 10, 2025 at 6:22 PM
“Whenever we do something really well in this country we always rubbish it.”

Chris Patten on the BBC News just now about public-service broadcasting.
“No university wants to get put in the polytechnic box by abandoning the breadth of provision that you associate with a university” #AcademicSky #highered

Read our latest in-depth on the UK skills White Paper: https://ow.ly/6f7450XovmZ
November 10, 2025 at 6:28 PM
Want to strenghen critical thinking in the Humanities? Start by doing our jobs, not by drinking the toxic Kool-Aid.
November 10, 2025 at 6:27 PM
Reposting for those at the back.
My natural incredulity at AI’s metanarratives is now reduced to a state of enraged boredom.

Intellectual creativity is the response, but the feeling of being ensnared is difficult to escape.
November 10, 2025 at 4:34 PM
"One BILLION dollars..."
a small man with a ring on his finger
ALT: a small man with a ring on his finger
media.tenor.com
November 10, 2025 at 4:31 PM
Reposted by David Fearn
This term is so social media-brained. Coined by people who can't imagine themselves without an audience, or that anyone could genuinely want to pass time in any other form than Stare at Phone
Oh fuck off
November 10, 2025 at 11:34 AM
'...my main ocean of sympathy...'?
Royal biographers really are the pits, aren't they.
October 31, 2025 at 12:59 PM
🦐 Anna Del Conte prawn risotto is an absolute banger! 🦐
October 26, 2025 at 6:42 PM
Excellent: this has just turned up. Not available in time for my summer visit.
October 24, 2025 at 12:13 PM
My natural incredulity at AI’s metanarratives is now reduced to a state of enraged boredom.

Intellectual creativity is the response, but the feeling of being ensnared is difficult to escape.
October 21, 2025 at 5:58 AM
Currently watching Frost/Nixon (again!), to continue the theme of 70s-inspired films, post-Redford (and latterly Keaton).
"The misuse of power is the very essence of tyranny. And consider, if you will, the frightening implications of that for a free society."
O tempora, o mores etc. ad lib.
October 13, 2025 at 7:32 PM
Tbh It's the same anti-theoretical garbage take that has seemed familiar in Classics for many decades to anyone who's actually paid any attention and has noticed that historical positivism isn't the only ballgame.
Maybe this is simply a difference in the expected 'rate' of knew knowledge, but this take puzzles me, because there's quite a bit of new data and studies needing to be done that I can see pretty easily in Roman history.

Knowledge creation steady and clearly visible.
October 13, 2025 at 6:04 PM
Laughable for the stupidity and incompetence.
Tory leader Kemi Badenoch is expected to announce plans to cut the number of UK university places by about 100,000 annually by reintroducing student number controls, reports Patrick Jack #edusky
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/badenochs-number-caps-plan-would-cut-100000-university-places
October 8, 2025 at 10:24 AM
Wot no visas? And presumably they think they can just milk rich Indians who can suck up new extra charges?
And "...seeking new funding streams" 🤦‍♂️
Patronising stupidity.

Again, almost as if govt doesn't know what universities are...

This an excerpt from www.gov.uk/government/n...
October 8, 2025 at 6:10 AM
🤓🤓 Robert Redford film-watching with total camera geekery:
Spy Game 1980s Beirut section with Brad Pitt as photojournalist. Leica M6 √ but not with ?un-CLA'd Canon A1 shutter sound dubbed in! (Tbh all the camera shutter sounds are the same!) 🤓🤓
#believeinfilm
October 3, 2025 at 6:48 PM
Reposted by David Fearn
'Graeme Atherton, head of the Ruskin Institute for Social Equity (Rise) at the University of West London, said the policy “is giving with one hand and taking with another” and will “exacerbate” the problems being faced by humanities and arts departments and disadvantaged students.'
Maintenance grants only for priority courses ‘deeply concerning’
Using financial incentives to influence student choice risk undermining Labour’s widening access goals, critics fear
www.timeshighereducation.com
October 1, 2025 at 7:03 AM
Reposted by David Fearn
We are thrilled to announce that our NEW Large Language Model will be released on 11.18.25.
October 1, 2025 at 2:38 PM
Reposted by David Fearn
"single-use plastic of the mind" had me GAGGED
September 29, 2025 at 7:24 PM