I’ll never forget watching The Wicker Man with my outer Hebridean mum. “I just don’t know where there got all that wicker from”

‘I feel like I’m losing her’: the families torn apart by older relatives going far right It starts with a ‘back in my day’ nostalgic meme – then suddenly your elders are sharing AI-generated ‘boomerslop’ and repeating conspiracy theories …

Facebook AI nostalgia-slop seems to be doing a number on the elderly. Really interesting read

Just in case you don’t believe me. This is a thing I’m always upset about when it comes to public scholarship, which is a topic I care so deeply about. www.patreon.com/posts/900009...

The Conversation Us Inc - Nonprofit Explorer - ProPublica Since 2013, the IRS has released data culled from millions of nonprofit tax filings. Use this database to find organizations and see details like their executive compensation, revenue and expenses, as...

In 2024 The Conversation had 8.3M in revenue and 7.8M in expenses and paid $0 to writers. Is that really ok with you?

projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/o...

Golden age of idiots. 🙄

Of course a website full of humanities graduates has loads of people who have a favourite verse from the most influential work of literature ever published, come on.

AI is profoundly unpopular. A recent NBC News poll found that among 18-34 year-olds, AI's net favorability rating is -44. *Negative 44*. Those are basically serial killer numbers. It's not much better among women 18-49. (Men over 50 and upper class are the only ones who like AI, and just barely.)

Sing it!

Colleagues at the University of York tell me of increased mass recruitment in the hundreds to their programmes this year, with lecture halls unable to accommodate the number of students. Not sure that's the best "student experience".

Drought, Conflict and the Use of Historical Data and Methodologies in Interdisciplinary Palaeoclimatic Research - Climatic Change Climatic Change - A major challenge in the interdisciplinary study of past climates is ensuring that evidence and data relating to different disciplines are analysed effectively using appropriate...

History without historians is doomed to fail. With an interdisciplinary team of scholars we show how the purported link between late Roman conflicts and drought has been misunderstood. We also outline a path forward in the use of sources in paleoclimatic research.

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Late medieval illustration of astronomers viewing the Earth as a globe-sized sphere floating in space, the Sun illuminating one side while the other faces the starry night sky. The whole planet is covered with tiny houses, complete with shadows creating the illusion of three-dimensional form.

Searching for images to illustrate an upcoming Secret Project, I came across this amazing semi-allegorical depiction of the Earth from the late 15th century. I love how modern it seems — a globe floating in space, complete with 3D-rendered buildings. [from BNF, MS Fr. 134]

Apparently my family are staging an intervention. My wife bought me a back-scratcher after she noticed me rubbing my back on doorframes like a bear. Now I carry it with me everywhere and try and use the little ornate hand to open things and pat people.

I really don’t see the problem here.

So we've got a conflict between pope and emperor on our hands. Who said that medieval history isn't relevant nowadays?

Mid-afternoon today, 16 April, it is exactly 280 years since the slaughter on Culloden Moor. We should have one minute of silence for the Highlands and Islands.

I have started blocking people who refer to *choosing not to use AI in academic or pedagogical contexts* as denying or fearing “progress”

my ability to find things out, think about them, and write about them hasn’t suffered one bit

if someday there’s a global text shortage, I’ll rethink my policy

Screenshot of Axios article about AI attitudes among Gen Z: Here are three things you can do to help young people in your life tackle this shift in the most clear-eyed way: Get them using AI — now. It's a vital tool for every job at every level. Encourage them to pay $20 per month for Claude, ChatGPT or Gemini. Share Jim's letter to his kids as one possible road map. But don't just take our word for it: YouTube is loaded with free how-to videos. Lobby schools to teach basic AI ethics and techniques. It's fine for teachers to ban AI use for a specific class. But it's nuts not to equip students with the workplace skills of the future. Encourage AI awareness. This technology touches every part of work and life, in potentially great and scary ways. Don't repeat the mistakes of the phone-and-internet era. Get everyone you know to think about the ethics, healthy use and societal implications before it captures their minds and habits like their phone did.

Axios reports on Gen Z disliking AI, and instead of addressing any of their (valid) concerns basically tells educators and others to shove it down their throats despite objections. 🙄

Two doors - the ‘male’ entrance is wide and square like a door. The ‘woman’ entrance is a cutout of a very thin long haired woman in heels.

This cartoon by Naked Pastor is SO GOOD. Sums up what I’ve been saying for ages about what happens when you start gatekeeping womanhood (and spoiler alert it’s the opposite of feminism).

A very strong and clear statement from the Economic History Review on the use of AI in original articles and literature reviews.

And good to see they have at last Xited. #Skystorians

I Will Never Respect A Website If you like this piece and want to support my independent reporting and analysis, why not subscribe to my premium newsletter? It’s $70 a year, or $7 a month, and in return you get a weekly newsletter...

Today's free newsletter is about the dangers of treating AI as being more than it is - a website or app built on expensive technology, with dubious reliability and inherently unsustainable economics.

The rhetoric from AI labs has to change.

www.wheresyoured.at/i-will-never-respect-a-website/

Iconic Plague Images Are Often Not What They Seem Many images that have been traditionally used to depict the Black Death are, in fact, not images of the plague at all. Now, a group of dedicated historians are trying to correct the record.

See www.npr.org/sections/goa... #histmed #MedievalArt #MedicalImages

My uni’s marketing department: we won’t advertise your course. It’s not a ‘hero’ course.
Management: you haven’t recruited. We’re shutting you down.

Lost seal of Edward the Confessor found after being missing for 40 years An 11th-century Anglo-Saxon seal belonging to Edward the Confessor has been rediscovered more than 40 years after being declared lost. The wax impression of the ‘Saint-Denis seal’ disappeared without ...

Exciting times for the study 11thC England: the 'lost' seal of Edward the Confessor has been rediscovered in the Archives nationales de France! #SkyStorians #MedievalSky

Map of the Peak District National Park, designated 13 April 1951

Happy birthday to the Peak District National Park, designated #otd 13 April 1951. Originally 555 square miles of moor and valley, the 'great north roof of England.' It would never have happened but for one woman... 1/4

The oldest surviving Hungarian private charter, 1079.

Hungary first became integrated into the Latin Christian network in the 11th c.: in this recent EME article, Pavol Hudáček explains how this process can be traced through religious donations.
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/share/WNT5TR...

A creature that is human from the waste up and somewhat like a lizard from the waste down is standing at the top right of the left-hand page in a manuscript. He is wearing blue and firing an arrow from a bow at a similar creature at the top left of the right-hand (i.e. the opposing) page of the manuscript.

A creature that is human from the waste up and somewhat like a lizard from the waste down is standing at the top left of the right-hand page in a manuscript. He is wearing orange and firing an arrow from a crossbow at a similar creature at the top right of the left-hand (i.e. the opposing) page of the manuscript.

Two creatures firing arrows at each other on opposing pages/folios in a late 13th-century Belgian Psalter.

(Morgan Library & Museum, MS M.155, fols. 6v-7r)

The point of the university as a concept is that it's been here for a thousand years and meant to be here another thousand. Turning education over to producing what the market needed five years ago is never going to work well.

I teach around 20 students. I know them all personally. They have personalised teaching.

At an open day, applicants told us they live locally, want small cohorts as they can't cope in large groups, etc.

I wish all unis would recognise that smaller is better

You can’t really learn much if you’re having AI generate your homework, your papers, and everything else you need to complete a class, but for some reason universities keep shoving AI into the learning environment on the assumption that it’s an improvement.

One month left to apply for grants in Scottish History from the Strathmartine Trust #history #scotland

WIRECUTTER Microplastics Are Everywhere. Here's How to Avoid Eating Them.

Ok step one is to make them look less delicious