Olivia Smith
@oliviasmith.bsky.social
Early modernist. Thinking with literature and science about natural history, big emotions, cognition. I like working in archives, or do I mean hiding?
Pinned
Olivia Smith
@oliviasmith.bsky.social
· Nov 12
Hello, I am a researcher of mixtures: early modern literature, big feelings, writing, the natural world, love— those sorts of things. I have a little substack to put my most casual mixtures on: ofsmith.substack.com
Have you ever seen a cooler book?
November 11, 2025 at 7:28 AM
Have you ever seen a cooler book?
Reposted by Olivia Smith
A radio programme like the Shipping Forecast but it’s called Bin Day and it just reads out every single council in the country’s bin schedule
November 10, 2025 at 11:53 PM
A radio programme like the Shipping Forecast but it’s called Bin Day and it just reads out every single council in the country’s bin schedule
Hello, my name is Olivia’s neighbour and I like standing in the street banging my silly little bin like a drum at midnight.
November 11, 2025 at 12:32 AM
Hello, my name is Olivia’s neighbour and I like standing in the street banging my silly little bin like a drum at midnight.
Reposted by Olivia Smith
The 2018 World Chess Championships logo was something else.
November 10, 2025 at 7:27 PM
The 2018 World Chess Championships logo was something else.
Reposted by Olivia Smith
To add to our list of wonderful public lectures this term, we're delighted to announce our next Professor of #Poetry lecture by A.E. Stallings @aestallings.bsky.social
Rhyme as Experiment/ Rhyme as Alchemy
26 Nov, 5.30pm
Examination Schools, Oxford
ALL WELCOME! No booking required.
Rhyme as Experiment/ Rhyme as Alchemy
26 Nov, 5.30pm
Examination Schools, Oxford
ALL WELCOME! No booking required.
November 5, 2025 at 10:57 AM
To add to our list of wonderful public lectures this term, we're delighted to announce our next Professor of #Poetry lecture by A.E. Stallings @aestallings.bsky.social
Rhyme as Experiment/ Rhyme as Alchemy
26 Nov, 5.30pm
Examination Schools, Oxford
ALL WELCOME! No booking required.
Rhyme as Experiment/ Rhyme as Alchemy
26 Nov, 5.30pm
Examination Schools, Oxford
ALL WELCOME! No booking required.
It has been a nice year for me in which a lot of good things have happened, but my highlight is definitely my children saying I reminded them of the dad in Danny, Champion of the World.
November 1, 2025 at 7:48 PM
It has been a nice year for me in which a lot of good things have happened, but my highlight is definitely my children saying I reminded them of the dad in Danny, Champion of the World.
How ill do you have to be before people stop telling you to have a whiskey?
November 1, 2025 at 12:47 PM
How ill do you have to be before people stop telling you to have a whiskey?
Reposted by Olivia Smith
A friend told me he had been clearing out his gran’s house. The most amazing thing he found there was this knitted effigy of the man who had run off and abandoned my friend’s pregnant aunt. Into the effigy had been stuck twenty knitting needles: one for every year since the man had vanished.
October 31, 2025 at 3:27 PM
A friend told me he had been clearing out his gran’s house. The most amazing thing he found there was this knitted effigy of the man who had run off and abandoned my friend’s pregnant aunt. Into the effigy had been stuck twenty knitting needles: one for every year since the man had vanished.
It is a shame that every time I get ill the whole infrastructure of the area collapses in empathy, because it means I have to listen to diggers and drills instead of resting.
October 31, 2025 at 10:56 AM
It is a shame that every time I get ill the whole infrastructure of the area collapses in empathy, because it means I have to listen to diggers and drills instead of resting.
I once went to a wine tasting evening at an Oxford college. My answers to ‘what does it taste like?’ were wrong, I was told: the scope of appropriate vocabulary was quite small: ‘cherry, vanilla, tobacco’ and not my ‘satchel, pining, storm’. I was already seeing things other people weren’t. Then…
My four favourite facts about the cockchafer beetle:
1. It's called a cockchafer beetle.
2. It’s also sometimes known as a “billywitch”.
3. It’s unusually loud and clumsy by beetle standards and bangs into lots of things when it flies into your house by mistake.
4. It looks like this, close up.
1. It's called a cockchafer beetle.
2. It’s also sometimes known as a “billywitch”.
3. It’s unusually loud and clumsy by beetle standards and bangs into lots of things when it flies into your house by mistake.
4. It looks like this, close up.
October 29, 2025 at 8:23 AM
I once went to a wine tasting evening at an Oxford college. My answers to ‘what does it taste like?’ were wrong, I was told: the scope of appropriate vocabulary was quite small: ‘cherry, vanilla, tobacco’ and not my ‘satchel, pining, storm’. I was already seeing things other people weren’t. Then…
Enjoyable exchange from a trashy ‘if you got a PhD and left academia what do you do now?’ thread
October 20, 2025 at 8:28 AM
Enjoyable exchange from a trashy ‘if you got a PhD and left academia what do you do now?’ thread
Reposted by Olivia Smith
What might the category of brain fog (cf. trauma) open up and what might it foreclose?
Thanks @dialogueshg.bsky.social for the opportunity to respond to @davidjbissell.bsky.social's article on brain fog/'being out of it' journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
Thanks @dialogueshg.bsky.social for the opportunity to respond to @davidjbissell.bsky.social's article on brain fog/'being out of it' journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
October 17, 2025 at 4:52 PM
What might the category of brain fog (cf. trauma) open up and what might it foreclose?
Thanks @dialogueshg.bsky.social for the opportunity to respond to @davidjbissell.bsky.social's article on brain fog/'being out of it' journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
Thanks @dialogueshg.bsky.social for the opportunity to respond to @davidjbissell.bsky.social's article on brain fog/'being out of it' journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
Anyone with a USS pension, do you know what ‘retirement income builder pension credit’ means? Is this the amount you get yearly when you retire? Another inscrutable letter
October 17, 2025 at 5:00 PM
Anyone with a USS pension, do you know what ‘retirement income builder pension credit’ means? Is this the amount you get yearly when you retire? Another inscrutable letter
I love the fact that ‘sublingual’ just means literally under the tongue, and not a set of primal noises or telepathy.
October 17, 2025 at 5:50 AM
I love the fact that ‘sublingual’ just means literally under the tongue, and not a set of primal noises or telepathy.
Reposted by Olivia Smith
Writers, friends. For research for my new novel, I need to see the Marie-Antoinette exhibition at the V &A. sadly it is sold out for when I am in London except for members of V &A. I'll be in UK 19-21 Nov in case anyone can help. DM me. Mercciiiiii.
Please RT.
Please RT.
October 16, 2025 at 8:44 PM
Writers, friends. For research for my new novel, I need to see the Marie-Antoinette exhibition at the V &A. sadly it is sold out for when I am in London except for members of V &A. I'll be in UK 19-21 Nov in case anyone can help. DM me. Mercciiiiii.
Please RT.
Please RT.
Reposted by Olivia Smith
Ever wondered what stories lie behind Kew’s collections? 🌍
Today’s the day to find out – it’s #AskAnArchivist Day! Our archivists are here to answer your questions about rare books, explorers’ journals and the care of centuries-old plant records.
Ask below 👇
#AskAnArchivist #KewArchives
Today’s the day to find out – it’s #AskAnArchivist Day! Our archivists are here to answer your questions about rare books, explorers’ journals and the care of centuries-old plant records.
Ask below 👇
#AskAnArchivist #KewArchives
October 16, 2025 at 8:01 AM
Ever wondered what stories lie behind Kew’s collections? 🌍
Today’s the day to find out – it’s #AskAnArchivist Day! Our archivists are here to answer your questions about rare books, explorers’ journals and the care of centuries-old plant records.
Ask below 👇
#AskAnArchivist #KewArchives
Today’s the day to find out – it’s #AskAnArchivist Day! Our archivists are here to answer your questions about rare books, explorers’ journals and the care of centuries-old plant records.
Ask below 👇
#AskAnArchivist #KewArchives
I find this a really interesting debate in philosophy/science, and this explains some of the key positions (though it is a critical essay):
Emergence explains nothing and is bad science | John Heil
iai.tv
October 16, 2025 at 6:56 AM
I find this a really interesting debate in philosophy/science, and this explains some of the key positions (though it is a critical essay):
Reposted by Olivia Smith
looking up the types of residence cards you can get in France for a piece and HONKING at this part of the drop-down list, from the official government website (!!) www.service-public.gouv.fr/particuliers...
October 7, 2025 at 9:46 AM
looking up the types of residence cards you can get in France for a piece and HONKING at this part of the drop-down list, from the official government website (!!) www.service-public.gouv.fr/particuliers...
Recalled an email and it actually worked.
October 7, 2025 at 1:46 PM
Recalled an email and it actually worked.
I've lost track of how many people over the past years I've told to watch for Elizabeth Scott-Baumann's next book coming out, and now it's here. Proper good ideas: press.princeton.edu/books/paperb...
Sex and Style
A new literary history that places women writers at the center of poetic theory and practice in English literature of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
press.princeton.edu
October 6, 2025 at 9:28 PM
I've lost track of how many people over the past years I've told to watch for Elizabeth Scott-Baumann's next book coming out, and now it's here. Proper good ideas: press.princeton.edu/books/paperb...
Reposted by Olivia Smith
Multi-generational vulture nests hold 700 years of human artifacts.
www.popsci.com/environment/...
www.popsci.com/environment/...
Multi-generational vulture nests hold 700 years of human artifacts
Crossbow bolts, sandals, slingshots, and more.
www.popsci.com
October 4, 2025 at 3:25 PM
Multi-generational vulture nests hold 700 years of human artifacts.
www.popsci.com/environment/...
www.popsci.com/environment/...
Complained to one of my elderly neighbours about my local council gripe for so long *she* made excuses to get going. I just thought I should tell everyone that I have broken the natural order and space/time is about to collapse.
September 25, 2025 at 8:33 AM
Complained to one of my elderly neighbours about my local council gripe for so long *she* made excuses to get going. I just thought I should tell everyone that I have broken the natural order and space/time is about to collapse.
Reposted by Olivia Smith
Here is the first clear photograph of Andromeda, the closest galaxy to our Milky Way. It was taken by Welshman Isaac Roberts in 1888
#Astronomy 🔭
#Science 🧪
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
#Astronomy 🔭
#Science 🧪
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
September 14, 2025 at 12:53 PM
Here is the first clear photograph of Andromeda, the closest galaxy to our Milky Way. It was taken by Welshman Isaac Roberts in 1888
#Astronomy 🔭
#Science 🧪
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
#Astronomy 🔭
#Science 🧪
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
What on earth is a ‘coach-heir’? What a pretentious academic title, I think to myself for twenty minutes, before I see it written down.
September 10, 2025 at 12:49 PM
What on earth is a ‘coach-heir’? What a pretentious academic title, I think to myself for twenty minutes, before I see it written down.
Ah, the perfectly-chosen ending to a day like today: standing on a wasp.
September 8, 2025 at 8:00 PM
Ah, the perfectly-chosen ending to a day like today: standing on a wasp.