So sorry to read this. To be honest, it feels like so many of us in the Humanities in the UK/USA/AU/NZ are just waiting for the academic grim reaper to come knocking on our door.

Seville, 1743: the Spanish Inquisition investigates because flower-seller N. Lorenzo has a tattoo of Jesus Christ on his right arm along with word "Carajo" (trans. fu*k) written under it. Sacrilege, unfortunate juxtaposition or just poor taste?
ES.28079.AHN/1.1.11.6.1.9//INQUISICIÓN,3733,Exp.343

Glad to say this is nothing to do with me or UNE.

No one expects... the Spanish Inquisition game.

Isaac Asimov, writing in 1957, was strangely prescient about the debates regarding the impact of AI on intellectual work.

I remember reading one of his Foundations series books and feeling oddly reassured that Inter-Library Loans is still a thing many millennia from now! 😊

Galley Slave - Wikipedia

Galley Slave (1957): en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galley_...

Isaac Asimov, writing in 1957, was strangely prescient about the debates regarding the impact of AI on intellectual work.

For my sins, the FB algorithm has decided that NSW police will threaten me in Portuguese from now on.

The denunciation was recorded and filed away in the archives of the Inquisition but, as far as I can see, no further action was taken.

Another fascinating anecdote from the archives of the Portuguese Inquisition. The Inquisition and ⚽🏐

"Afraid not, Lisa, my work here is done and I'm off to be Pro-vice-Chancellor-teaching-innovation at the University of ...."

This week’s horror is our introductory module, which examines the literature, art, music, dialect, film and TV from the region 1500-2025 being forcibly replaced by an entire ‘success in HE’ module featuring two weeks on how to use AI.

I designed my module to incorporate proper study skills…

Wow, that's impressively illegible! But at least you have the whole document! 😜

A big shout out to the scholars of medieval and early modern European paleography who not only mastered difficult scripts but then wrote instruction manuals for their successors. Real heroes! In my case Borges Nunes and their 1981 Abreviaturas Paleográficas Portuguesas. archive.org/details/nune...

A big shout out to the scholars of medieval and early modern European paleography who not only mastered difficult scripts but then wrote instruction manuals for their successors. Real heroes! In my case Borges Nunes and their 1981 Abreviaturas Paleográficas Portuguesas. archive.org/details/nune...

Post from Andrew A.N. Deloucas @aandeloucas.com: In line with discussion about the job market, the latest majors being closed at Syracuse University: Nine majors "sunsetting": • Classical civilization • Classics (Greek and Latin) • Digital humanities • Fine arts • German • Latino-Latin American studies • Middle Eastern studies • Modern Jewish studies • Russian ALT

The First University in the Nation to Build a Center Dedicated to the Creator Economy Syracuse University is creating something that doesn't exist anywhere else in higher education. The Center for the Creator Economy is the first academic center of its kind on a U.S. college campus. Led jointly by the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications and the Martin). Whitman School of Management, the center reinforces Syracuse University's commitment to bold, forward-looking academic leadership. By aligning strengths in entrepreneurship, media, communications, athletics and digital infrastructure, the University is charting how higher education can prepare students for the 21st-century economy.

Another university getting rid of things you could only ever do at a university and replacing them with stuff a 13-year-old can do on a phone

Australia does dramatic sunrises very well (Armidale, NSW).

I do like the fact that a Spanish archivist's unfortunate error means that it is a matter of record that the Spanish Inquisition was arresting people from Molong in regional New South Wales, Australia, over a decade before the arrival of the First Fleet.

I do like the fact that a Spanish archivist's unfortunate error means that it is a matter of record that the Spanish Inquisition was arresting people from Molong in regional New South Wales, Australia, over a decade before the arrival of the First Fleet.

Students Pay $368m Extra; Unis Get $813m Less Under JRG New figures shed light on the true cost of the hated Job Ready Graduates fee scheme - with the IRU suggesting a new approach to replacing it.

Meanwhile in Australia: Students paid up to $368 million extra in 2024 under the Job Ready Graduates Scheme but universities received $813 million less to teach and support students, due to reductions in funding under the policy. futurecampus.com.au/2026/03/13/s...

Cover of book with text in yellow reading: The Firearm Revolution: From Renaissance Italy to the European Empires, overlaid on an image of an angel in seventeenth-century dress with wings and a long gun.

Hello Bluesky! My new book, THE FIREARM REVOLUTION, is out on 14 April. It’s about how a new technology changed society, and how hard it was to control. Here’s a little thread of what’s inside:

Sunrise Down Under. This morning at 6:30.

François Soyer, "Imperfect Sodomy: The Lisbon Inquisition and the Repression of Heterosexual Anal Intercourse in Portugal, 1580–1800." Journal of the History of Sexuality 35, no. 1 (2026), pp. 1-27. muse.jhu.edu/pub/15/artic...

François Soyer, "Imperfect Sodomy: The Lisbon Inquisition and the Repression of Heterosexual Anal Intercourse in Portugal, 1580–1800." Journal of the History of Sexuality 35, no. 1 (2026), pp. 1-27. muse.jhu.edu/pub/15/artic...

Hey! Scholars! If you're using someone's work in your class, sometimes it's nice to email them and tell them, because then they might feel good about their research instead of entirely crushed by the academic humanities' ongoing descent into the grave

NEW: This - on the signalling system that crossed Anatolia from Loulon to Constantinople -by @chrysoboullon.bsky.social is v cool. A 'trip wire' to alert Constantinople to the start of the Abbasid campaigning season. Tantalising hints that it 'employs knowledge of the longitudinal circumference... 👇

September 1550: some outraged Lisbon residents denounced some visiting Englishmen for roasting a duck on a fasting day. In the margin of the denunciation, the inquisitor wrote "concerning the Englishmen's duck" (do pato dos ingresses).

In the UK academic recession, you will be at one of these stages since many unis buy the same cuts model from the same consultancies. It is always the same process:
*Talk of belt-tightening
*Incidental savings (e.g. printing, refreshments)
*Travel budgets cut
*Promotion freeze (1/4)

Screenshot of Prism - I asked it to create a methods, participants, results, and discussion seconds. It did so within 54 seconds...

OpenAI just released Prism, a LaTeX editor with embedded ChatGPT for free.
Writing a paper has never been easier.
Clogging the scientific publishing pipeline has never been easier.
It took me 54 seconds to write up an experiment I did not actually conduct.

prism.openai.com