Tomorrow's @cecs-york.bsky.social seminar is being delivered by Dr Harrie Neil on 'The Edgeworths, Ireland's Bogs, and Improvement'.
For those of you who can make it in-person, there will be cake but you can also register to attend via zoom here:
www.york.ac.uk/eighteenth-c...
#skystorians #18thC
Whilst walking along the shore of Sandside Bay in 1797, William Thurso, school master, spotted a 'figure resembling an unclothed human female sitting on a rock' combing 'its long, thick, brown hair':
'It was only by seeing the phenomenon that I was perfectly convinced of its existence.'
This May, I'm raising money for Mermaids, the charity supporting trans young ppl & their families. I'll be swimming & walking 25 miles, with a grand finale hike with @momoulton.bsky.social.
Even better, for every £10 raised I'll drop some 18thc mermaid history!
www.justgiving.com/fundraising/...
“Belarus’s parliament adopted a new law on April 2 banning ‘propaganda’ of same-sex relationships, of “gender reassignment,’ and even of ‘childlessness.’”
LGBTQ+ folk are not “propaganda” or “ideology.” We’re people. We must continue to refuse dehumanising politics and resist laws that degrade us.
Photo of maze made of hedges from above
Yesterday, I took my 6yo to Chatsworth Hall. Loved the farm, the playground, the maze, the trees. She took one look at the Cavendish family tree in the entrance to the gardens and said, "Baba, why are they all peach?"
Yes, why do only peaches grow on English aristocratic family trees?
This Welsh cross-dressing riot tells us more about gender diversity in history than you might first think
www.wearequeeraf.com/this-welsh-c...
Just a few more days to apply to this year’s Take Your Research Public course - an introduction to public writing, social media, podcasting and more for academics new to this work. Guests include @drsurekhadavies.bsky.social and @estelleprnq.bsky.social. Free, online, over four Tuesdays in June.
Call for papers! The fourth issue of the Community Development Journal's 60th year will feature a special section that imagines how community development can
contribute to a just future.
Perhaps you could write an essay on this topic for us?
Anyone who knows immigration bureaucracy will know that people who seek asylum because they are gay undergo hostile and humiliating scrutiny. Media reports that suggest people “pretend to be gay because it’s an easy route for a visa” are missing the glaring fact there is no “easy” way to get asylum.
I can't wait to see the exhibition when I go to Stockholm (soon).
St Croix is 1 of the ports I wrote about in my book (at painstaking editing stage) on 15 Ports that made Empires through Slavery (Basic Books (US) / John Murray (UK)).
www.theguardian.com/world/2026/a...
Sorry, I'm out of date (lucky me!), what are the waiting times now and where? 🫣
Cis people: just nip over to your GP to feel a little perkier by taking some T.
Trans people: just spend 5 years on a waiting list, go through a few psychiatric assessments, and if you survive that then you might get a prescription for exactly the same HRT.
The wonderful Lavender Menace in Edinburgh are doing a fundraiser to support their operating costs! They've been able to do so much as a staffed organisation - it will be so good for queer life in Scotland if they can keep going: www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/save-laven...
In 1996, an unlikely Cornish case secured a crucial workplace right for Trans+ people.
Here’s the story behind it 👇
Glasgow colleagues affiliated with GLINTS are organising a workshop on 18 June with the title 'Trans studies at a crossroad: decolonisation, anti-gender politics and the future'. It looks like it will be fab! The CFP is here: www.gla.ac.uk/media/Media_... and the deadline for abstracts is 3 May.
Illustrations of a bottlenose whale (top) and a narwhal (bottom)
It's #NationalUnicornDay 🦄
Here's an illustration (bottom) from Cuvier's 'De l'histoire naturelle des cetaces' (1836) of the 'unicorn of the sea' - the narwhal!
Both volumes of this work (text & atlas) can be found in the rare books room in the library @thembauk.bsky.social
📖BL.95/C
Amazing!
Pesach sameach! Every year I revisit Chava Alberstein's 'Chad Gadya' (1989) every year the cycle of violence gets worse.
Next year, let's hope we will see freedom for Palestine and an end to war in Lebanon and Iran.
youtu.be/Zd8d_wN0_v0?...
A collage-style image with a baby blue background shows a bunch of pink, light blue, and white magazine cutouts of various animals and plants, including a penguin, swan, fish, lizard, snails and slugs, and a seahorse. Title page reads “Cal Academy’s Queer Ecology Reading List.”
Page titled “Queer Ecology 101” shows a bunch of similar magazine-style cutouts at the bottom of the page, all of which are tinted pink. Text reads: “Queer ecology interrogates how binary thinking influences scientific study and environmentalism. Examples include: Highlighting non-heterosexual, non-cis characteristics in nature; Breaking down human-nature divides; Studying alternative social structures.”
This #TransDayOfVisibility, we’re highlighting our favorite queer ecology reads. These books, essays, and memoirs break down binaries and explore the expansiveness of gender & identity in nature.
Seeing "trans kids given deadline to segregate themselves" and "trans women banned from yet another part of society" headlines *every single day* while everyone you know and every organization stays breathtakingly silent takes such a damn toll on your heart.
Excellent statement from @reacpolrn.bsky.social on hegemonic defeatism in academic circles regarding the resurgence of the far right
"HEPI’s Preparing for Populism is a profoundly unhelpful document that mistakes capitulation for strategy"
reacpol.net/populism-hepi/
black and white drawing of the quote American manatee Manatus americanus from life end quote.
It's #ManateeAppreciationDay and we certainly do appreciate these aquatic mammals.
Please enjoy this illustration from 'An introduction to the study of mammals living and extinct' by W.H. Flower & R. Lydekker, 1891
📖BL.95/F
![Sure. How much do you think you should pay me to use my name?
It's really important to think about attribution and think about impersonation, and so on. As an expert, you have a trade you make on the internet. The idea is that when you put content out there, myself included, you hope people use it. You want to refer to other people's content.
You want people to link to you. You really, really hope they attribute you when they do. When somebody uses your content, should they attribute you? Of course. And to attribute you, you have to use your name.
There's a different line which is, should people be able to impersonate you? And I think that is a very different standard. And we saw the lawsuit. Respectfully, we believe the claims are without merit. The idea that the feature is impersonation is quite a big stretch. Every mention was very clearly, "This is inspired not only by this person, but also inspired by a specific work from this specific person, with a clear attributed link to get back to them." It's far from that test lof impersonation].](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:x56l2n7i7babgdzqul4bd433/bafkreiap5dna6sgosil3plep24dbqaybgtbnj7himxpdgfp37wgcgx3cpu)
Sure. How much do you think you should pay me to use my name? It's really important to think about attribution and think about impersonation, and so on. As an expert, you have a trade you make on the internet. The idea is that when you put content out there, myself included, you hope people use it. You want to refer to other people's content. You want people to link to you. You really, really hope they attribute you when they do. When somebody uses your content, should they attribute you? Of course. And to attribute you, you have to use your name. There's a different line which is, should people be able to impersonate you? And I think that is a very different standard. And we saw the lawsuit. Respectfully, we believe the claims are without merit. The idea that the feature is impersonation is quite a big stretch. Every mention was very clearly, "This is inspired not only by this person, but also inspired by a specific work from this specific person, with a clear attributed link to get back to them." It's far from that test lof impersonation].
Here’s my interview with Shishir Mehotra, the CEO behind Grammarly’s “expert review” feature which attributed writing advice to people - including me lol - without permission. Or, as you will hear us talk about a lot, compensation. www.theverge.com/podcast/8987...
“Every missile strike is another downpayment on a hotter, more unstable planet, and none of it makes anyone safer,” said Patrick Bigger of the Climate and Community Institute and co-author of new analysis about the climate impacts of the war on Iran, in @theguardian.com:
It's already begun: courses are being redesigned to appeal to & recruit students. In History that means less gender, more war, less empire, more national history. Being intellectually challenged is no longer the fundamental rationale of higher education & I doubt uni leaders will fight for it.
"More alignment between university and national attitudes. This includes a legitimacy observatory to track public trust and gaps between university culture and wider public attitudes."
This reads ominously, another way of stifling academic freedom to address injustices & uncomfortable truths.
Everyone should stop what you are doing and read about @notrightruth.bsky.social receiving an important award for her excellence in trans and feminist scholarship and action. Ruth has been setting the bar for years & its great to see that recognised:
www.scenemag.co.uk/trans-femini...
Staff at Sheffield Hallam University joined an ‘All staff’ call & were told the university must save £26.6m by August after disastrous London property venture
Blameworthy Vice Chancellor Chris Husbands has since moved into consultancy/advisory roles in HE
www.sheffieldtribune.co.uk/sheffield-ha...
“AI can never be AI without humans. It is not artificial intelligence. It’s African intelligence...We are training our own death. We train ChatGPT and it’s killing us slowly.”
Kenyan workers are still the underpaid labor behind AI training, moderation, and sex chatbots. Now, they're fighting back.
