Michael Munnik
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michaelmunnik.bsky.social
Michael Munnik
@michaelmunnik.bsky.social
1.4K followers 1.7K following 3.6K posts
Canadian pilgrim in Wales. Sociologist of media and religion, senior lecturer at Cardiff University, Centre for the Study of Islam in the UK. Musical side-hustle at https://michaelmunnik.ca/
Posts Replies Media Videos
Reposted by Michael Munnik
jackbern.bsky.social
I'm a regular guy, I put my trousers on the same way as everyone else: falling into them through a hole in the ceiling via a contraction operated by my long suffering dog
December 24, 2025 at 2:52 PM
michaelmunnik.bsky.social
Been in transit and without my laptop, so administering the maintenance on this new song post of mine has been a bit of a bother. But here is a blog post on my new song "Fly to Heaven", my in-between song. anearthwithoutgrammar.wordpress.com/2025/12/23/s...
SongStories: “Fly to Heaven”
At long last, some of the new music I’ve been working on is ready to release. I’ve been working on this project for a little while – same mix as my last record, with a few old songs and a few…
anearthwithoutgrammar.wordpress.com
December 23, 2025 at 10:42 PM
michaelmunnik.bsky.social
Tech support from @microsoft.com for problems with my dad's Windows account while I'm visiting from the UK is the early Christmas gift I didn't know I needed.
a young woman wearing a green jacket and a black hoodie is standing in a crowd .
Alt: a young woman wearing a green jacket and a black hoodie is standing in a crowd. She frowns at the camera and then turns it into a sarcastic smile
media.tenor.com
December 22, 2025 at 8:41 PM
michaelmunnik.bsky.social
Quote-posted this reflexively saying "Love it!" Then thought, maybe that's a little too enthusiastic about a story involving drugging horses to make them exceed their ordinary capacity for physical activity.

Instead, "Really interesting!"
merriam-webster.com Merriam-Webster @merriam-webster.com · 3d
‘Soup’ was a slang term for drugs that were injected into a horse to make it run faster.

A racehorse that was on PEDs was said to be ‘souped up.’

We now use the term to refer to anything that is enhanced.
December 22, 2025 at 7:18 PM
Reposted by Michael Munnik
billamend.bsky.social
Tonight’s dumb napkin cartoon…
December 22, 2025 at 12:43 AM
michaelmunnik.bsky.social
Grateful to be back on the West Coast of Canada to spend time with family and friends. Heading over to my mate Ira in a bit. He is the musical mind behind the crazy coda on my new song "Fly to Heaven", as well as the janky Telecaster solo. youtu.be/QweDUX6nbrE
Michael Munnik - “Fly to Heaven” (Official Video)
YouTube video by Michael Munnik
youtu.be
December 20, 2025 at 10:47 PM
Reposted by Michael Munnik
michaelmunnik.bsky.social
Friday before Christmas, just a little bit of new music for y'all. I'm releasing a new album in February, but "Fly to Heaven" is grabbable now with a preorder on Bandcamp michaelmunnik.bandcamp.com/album/if-wor...
and also with this wicked video by my daughter Isla. youtu.be/QweDUX6nbrE
Michael Munnik - “Fly to Heaven” (Official Video)
YouTube video by Michael Munnik
youtu.be
December 19, 2025 at 7:37 AM
Reposted by Michael Munnik
levostregc.bsky.social
Ich thynke but litel of a Mondaye bleake
Tuesdaye grey and Wednesdaye eke
Thursdaye Ich care nat for thee
Yet Fridaye Ich do love

Mondaye thou kanst fall awaye
Tuesdaye, Wednesdaye, myne herte slaye
No mirthe ys founde upon Thursdaye
Yet Fridaye Ich do love
December 13, 2025 at 3:54 AM
michaelmunnik.bsky.social
Friday before Christmas, just a little bit of new music for y'all. I'm releasing a new album in February, but "Fly to Heaven" is grabbable now with a preorder on Bandcamp michaelmunnik.bandcamp.com/album/if-wor...
and also with this wicked video by my daughter Isla. youtu.be/QweDUX6nbrE
Michael Munnik - “Fly to Heaven” (Official Video)
YouTube video by Michael Munnik
youtu.be
December 19, 2025 at 7:37 AM
michaelmunnik.bsky.social
On of all places SkyTrain from YVR when somebody says "they just tied the game" as I'm looking at this post.
December 19, 2025 at 4:03 AM
Reposted by Michael Munnik
themountaingoats.bsky.social
my year of using the crying-and-laughing react on 100% of the texts I receive, without exceptions, has resulted in a 40% decrease in overall texts received. Strongest recommendation
December 18, 2025 at 2:10 PM
michaelmunnik.bsky.social
I'll be flying over the Atlantic tonight and thus unable to join this event. But I'm glad it's happening and can be a point of unity at a time of so much worry. If you're in Cardiff, come if you can.

@abdulazim.bsky.social
islamukcentre.bsky.social Islam UK Centre @islamukcentre.bsky.social · 9d
With recent news of plans to attack a Cathays mosque & a Welsh Jewish Cemetery, the planned interfaith gathering seems very important.

Church in Wales & Darul Isra Mosque host a talk about Mary mother of Jesus.

18th Dec 7.30-9pm
Darul Isra Mosque
All are welcome
Sign-up: forms.gle/yEp8WxqKTDZf...
Poster for interfaith event. Who is Mary, mother of Jesus, in Islam and Christianity? Details of registering and description of theme. Photos of two speakers, Dr Abdul-Azim Ahmed and Canon Andrew Lightbown. Thursday 18 Dec at Darul Isra Mosque CF24 4BG 7:30-9:00 pm, and community logos
December 18, 2025 at 10:43 AM
michaelmunnik.bsky.social
Coming at you tomorrow... #FlyToHeaven. 🎵 👼🤘
December 18, 2025 at 10:31 AM
michaelmunnik.bsky.social
I can vouch for the bonus aspects of Edinburgh life. Truly a city that spoils you for any other.
December 16, 2025 at 7:43 PM
Reposted by Michael Munnik
lauren.rotatingsandwiches.com
HARD BOILED DETECTIVE: another cruel sunrise over the city of the damned. another corpse. another widow. another cup of black coffee to drag my sorry ass back to life- *sputtering*

ME: do you like it? it's an ethiopian washed process single origin

DETECTIVE:

ME: are you getting apricot notes
December 16, 2025 at 12:32 PM
Reposted by Michael Munnik
chanda.blacksky.app
I am losing my mind

DO ANY OF THESE JOURNALISTS KNOW THAT VENEZUELA IS NOT ON THE PACIFIC

THAT THE CARIBBEAN SEA DOES NOT TOUCH THE PACIFIC

THAT IN FACT THIS IS WHAT THE PANAMA CANAL WAS BUILT FOR

WTF IS THE EASTERN PACIFIC

PLEASE LOOK AT A MAP
December 16, 2025 at 1:00 PM
Reposted by Michael Munnik
chanda.blacksky.app
…. I tried looking up what “Eastern Pacific“ means and our media stenography situation is such that they all reported that phrase without asking ANY questions
joycewhitevance.bsky.social Joyce White Vance @joycewhitevance.bsky.social · 10d
No judge. No jury. Just the Secretary of War.
December 16, 2025 at 12:57 PM
Reposted by Michael Munnik
emilynussbaum.bsky.social
Virginia Heffernan wrote this shortly after the 2016 election and it still holds true
THIS is what makes my head spin: The president is not a moral figure in any idiom, any land, any culture, any subculture. I'm not talking about the liberal enlightenment that would make him want the country to take care of the poor and sick. I mean he has no Republican values either. He has no honor among thieves, no cosa nostra loyalty, no Southern code against cheating or lying, none of the openness of New York, rectitude of Boston, expressiveness and kindness of California, no evangelical family values, no Protestant work ethic. No Catholic moral seriousness, no sense of contrition or gratitude. No Jewish moral and intellectual precision, sense of history. He doesn't care about the life of the mind OR the life of the senses. He is not mandarin, not committed to inquiry or justice, not hospitable. He is not proper. He is not a bon vivant who loves to eat, drink, laugh. There's nothing he would die for - not American values, obviously, but not the land of Russia or his wife or young son. He has some hollow success creeds from Norman Vincent Peale, but Peale was obsessed with fair-dealing and a Presbyterian pastor; Trump has no fairness or piety. He's not sentimental; no affection for dogs or babies. No love for mothers, "the common man"" veterans. He has no sense of military valor, and is openly a coward about war. He would have sorely lacked the pagan beauty and capacity to fight required in ancient Greece. He doesn't care about his wife or wives; he is a philanderer but he's not a romantic hero with great love for women and sex. He commands loyalty and labor from his children not because he loves them, even; he seems almost to hate them — and if one of them slipped it would be terrifying. He does no philanthropy. He doesn't - in a more secular key - even seem to have a sense of his enlightened self-interest enough to shake Angela Merkel's hand. Doesn't even affect a love for the arts, like most rich New Yorkers. He doesn't live and die by aesthetics and health practices like some fascists; he's very ugly and barely mammalian. Am I missing an obscure moral system to which he so much as nods? Also are there other people, living or dead, like him?
December 16, 2025 at 4:21 AM
Reposted by Michael Munnik
gralefrit.bsky.social
I genuinely thought the LLM / AI thing would blow over as soon as anyone pointed out it was based on piracy and had no viable business plan. That we’re still talking about it, betting on it, is gobsmacking. It should be the Tamagotchi craze of our decade. It should be Pogs by now.
December 16, 2025 at 9:57 AM
michaelmunnik.bsky.social
🤣😭
lizgloyn.bsky.social Rev. Dr. Liz Gloyn @lizgloyn.bsky.social · 10d
Why Can The Youth No Longer Deploy A Semicolon Correctly: A Marking Academic's Memoir.
December 16, 2025 at 9:57 AM
michaelmunnik.bsky.social
😍🤩
islamukcentre.bsky.social Islam UK Centre @islamukcentre.bsky.social · 10d
We are a serious academic research centre, but we're not immune to celebrating a little star power. 20 years ago, folk singer Yusuf / Cat Stevens came to Cardiff to open our centre. He wasn't able to join us in September for the anniversary but sent this message of support: youtu.be/GINccE7JzLs?...
Yusuf Islam: 20 years of the Islam-UK
YouTube video by Islam UK (IUKC)
youtu.be
December 16, 2025 at 9:55 AM
michaelmunnik.bsky.social
The little details make up a big story.
bcdreyer.social Benjamin Dreyer @bcdreyer.social · 10d
Me being me:

Someone made sure that Michele Reiner's name was spelled correctly, because Lord knows he wouldn't have gotten it right, and whoever that person is will of course be joining their employer in hell when the time comes.
December 15, 2025 at 4:36 PM
Reposted by Michael Munnik
aphclarkson.bsky.social
December 15, 2025 at 10:42 AM
Reposted by Michael Munnik
chriscjackson.bsky.social
This entire weekend
in the pit
December 15, 2025 at 3:58 AM
michaelmunnik.bsky.social
Date yourself in a post. I am "there were two channels for the movie showing at the front of the plane - French and English" years old.

Same flight where I listened to Lou Reed's "Walk on the Wild Side" several times and John Bird & John Fortune's comedy sketch about sight reading. Formative stuff.
michaelmunnik.bsky.social Michael Munnik @michaelmunnik.bsky.social · 11d
I have the notes from a screening my wife and I hit, and it's a perfect testament to its excellence. My favorite film ever. Saw it on the KLM to NL when I was nearly 11, first transatlantic flight. After a few minutes, I asked my mom when they would stop speaking French. I was on the wrong channel!
(Abbreviated programme notes): HAS THE FORM OF THE ROMANTIC COMEDY ever been more perfectly expressed than in When Harry Met Sally (1989), rereleased in UK cinemas just in time for Christmas? Rob Reiner's film might not have been the first rom-com, but the dream team of director Reiner, writer Nora Ephron and stars Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal, fashioned a rom-com that to this day remains the gold standard for the genre. Ephron, operating at the top of her game, gave us a razor-sharp screenplay that sings with wit, warmth and zing, crafting characters who manage to annoy each other while simultaneously making us fall in love with them. The four-way chemistry of Reiner, Ephron, Ryan and Crystal is so perfect that it's impossible to imagine any other arrangement working half as well, but mention must also go to the supporting performances of Carrie Fisher and Bruno Kirby as Harry and Sally's long-time friends Marie and Jess, in roles that could easily have reverted to type. When Harry Met Sally is remembered for moments that are now part of the cultural zeitgeist - the 'men and women can't be friends' conversation; the last-minute New Year's Eve run; a really good sandwich - but it's the narrative and characters that connect those iconic moments that give the film its depth; Harry and Sally's decades-long loneliness is easy to miss amidst the zingy dialogue, but it rises and swells until it crashes at the film's crescendo. Harry's description of his wife telling him she never loved him is as emotionally devastating as it is hilarious in Crystal's deadpan delivery. charming in the hands of a never-better Ryan. Their journey through each whereas Sally, in all her emotionally messy fussiness, is irresistibly other's lives resonates so well that when Harry and Sally finally sleep together in a moment of emotional vulnerability, their subsequent falling out When Harry Met Sally is just as fresh, witty and warm as it was in 1989. Christopher Machell
December 15, 2025 at 9:31 AM