I love every word of this!

Winner of the 2025 MA Dissertation Prize We are very pleased to announce Sophie Weinberg’s ‘The Matrilineal Printing House: Recovering the Printing Lineage of Widow Stationers in the Seventeenth-Century English Book Trade’ the winne…

Delighted that Sophie Weinberg’s “The Matrilineal Printing House: Recovering the Printing Lineage of Widow Stationers in the Seventeenth-century English Book Trade” won the @womenshistnet.bsky.social 2025 MA Dissertation Prize! Go Sophie!

womenshistorynetwork.org/winner-of-th...

Wigtown Book Festival | Wigtown Spring Book Weekend 2026 Covenanters and women crime writers are two themes woven into Spring Book Weekend 2-4 May

Covenanters & women crime writers will be two of the themes woven into this year’s Wigtown Spring Book Weekend, 2–4 May. With dozens of events from author talks to guided walks, writing, photography & music workshops, the programme is now available online:
www.wigtownbookfestival.com/blog/wigtown...

At Long Last, InfoWars Is Ours By Bryce P. Tetraeder, CEO, Global Tetrahedron

We have a deal. theonion.com/at-long-last...

Oh hell yeah!

Notes from the field: New Work Using the London Stage Database

We heard about so much exciting research at this year's ASECS conference that we can't help but want to share.

Check out our latest blog post for a sneak peak into some of the projects currently putting the LSDB to use: blogs.uoregon.edu/londonstage/...

#digitalhumanities #18thc #theaterhistory

Rutgers: Edging Innovation to Impact

We are hiring 3 full-time lecturers in the English Department at University of Illinois at Chicago! 3/3 teaching load. Eligible for union membership (UICUF). Join us!

I mean, that last part there is probably very true. 😅

The Takeaway → OpenAl is committing billions of dollars years in advance to help finance data centers. → Friar last year began reporting to the head of applications instead of to Altman. → Altman has excluded her from some conversations related to financial plans. I Powered by Deep Research

Those people said Altman has excluded her from some conversations related to the company's financial plans. For instance, in recent months he left Friar out of a conversation about server spending with leaders at one of OpenAl's top investors, one of these people said. Her absence was noticeable and awkward, given that a previous conversation on the same topic included her, according to an attendee. A different person who attended a senior-level meeting at OpenAI with Altman earlier this year said it was unusual that Friar was not invited, as it involved a discussion of major financial decisions.

She told some colleagues earlier this year that she didn't believe the company would be ready to go public in 2026, because of the procedural and organizational work needed and the risks from its spending commitments, according to a person who spoke to her. She said she wasn't sure yet whether OpenAI would need to pour so much money into obtaining AI servers in the coming years or whether its revenue growth, which has been slowing, would support the commitments, said the person who spoke to her.

Incredible things happening at OpenAI per @theinformation.com. Sam Altman is rushing the company toward IPO despite his CFO’s concerns about compute spend and revenue growth. Now Sam Altman is leaving her out of financial planning for compute. Perfect!
www.theinformation.com/articles/ope...

ALL DEM! (especially the short kings)

And they even cut out my favorite ending! 😅

That "squeeeal-huh" sample at the start, tho. Throughline for so much 80s hip-hop. 🖤

<stares hard in LotR extended editions>

Not today, Satan.

Does anyone know what kind of pen Proust used

The one only sold in Queen Creek. 😝

ok, peole of Bluesky: what historical image (preferably in a line art / woodcut style) would you carve to include in a poster for a talk titled “AI Is Not Inevitable”?

My top contender for now is the “New Steam Compositor” but I’m very open to other ideas

Stephen King: submitted for the approval of the midnight society, i call this
Elon Musk: [rising from bushes] eyyy stephano king
Barker: look, steve, it's your friend ha ha
King: you say that every time clive
Barker: yeah it never gets less funny
King: yes it does clive

Isn’t it weird how “AI literacy” being pushed on students isn’t about learning how it works, the cost of how it works, learning to spot disinformation, media and tech literacy. But instead is just “employers will like it if you get it to write your emails :)”

It’s not that we are not ‘ready for AI’. We are not ready for how this mad drive to use technology that produces language without a reasoning mind is going to fuck up a generation of kids because a bunch of rich tech bros bet billions that if you made a computer big enough it would start thinking.

Also, I will say, to any of my academic friends and acquaintances, it's only been reviewed twice (in Irish University Review and ECF), so if you have access and could feel a review coming on...

A good thread with some reminders about how even "simple" articles of clothing are (still!) made by people, and LLMs are not like sewing machines. #DHmakes

"immensely unpopular but still used by billions" is neatly analogous to fossil fuels and I am so worried we're zooming deep into an era with the same "civilisation just didn't exist before we got this so there's no way to live without it" vibe

Image shows the covers of pts 1 and 2 of the new vol. 1 of The Edinburgh History of the Book in Scotland

Congratulations to the editors and all who contributed to this long-awaited first vol (2 pts) of the History of the Book in Scotland! Great achievement. Proud to be included on Esther Inglis in pt.2, with her portrait highlighting the cover of pt.1.
#bookhistory @edinburghup.bsky.social

A graphic with a title at the top and a photo of a book below. The title reads, “Tristram Shandy / The First Modern Book”. The photo shows an interior spread of an old book. The text appears typical of 18th-century books until it gets to an illustration of squiggly lines on the lefthand page. On the right, another drawing of a wandering line is labeled with letters. The text describes the line as an illustration of a character’s travels.

Coming to our Reading Room gallery, April 9 to 26: Tristram Shandy, The First Modern Book, curated by @debbiemillman.bsky.social. Learn more and plan your visit: letterformarchive.org/visit/#on-view

Pigeon on an underground subway platform walking on the yellow line as if on a mission

Just a small town bird
Living in a lonely world
They took the midnight train going anywhere

I just looked at two engraved plates (Bell's Poets of Great Britain frontispiece and engraved title page) with lettering that puts 6-point font to shame. Deciphering it felt kind of impressionistic, or like looking at one of those 3D posters. 😅

Chag samatzeach!

I know I'm weird, but I still feel like poetry matters.

Ever worry about writing a bad tight five so your comedian character can bomb during Act 2? Well fret no longer!