Anyway, headed to Edinburgh this summer, history of science friends!!

Got a spam email about conference travel, which is how I learned I had been accepted to present at that conference because I never got an acceptance notification lol

www.regionalstudies.org/news/scam-em...

Amazing, thank you for the info! I'm so glad that something like this exists.

Image of Adrija Roychowdhury smiling

We're excited to welcome our new Journalist in Residence, Adrija Roychowdhury.

Adrija will work on her project "Encoding Ancient History. The Curious Case of Mathematics, #ArtificalIntelligence, and the #IndusScript" at the MPIWG. 🔍 📰

🔗 buff.ly/SBJYSPn

#SciComm
@indianexpress.com

An episode of House MD called 'Of Leaves' where he realizes that the hospital is slightly bigger on the inside than the outside.

Me, to every email from academia.edu or researchgate, asking if I'm the author of some article: "I've never written anything."

Photo of a cuneiform tablet with some dark spots on it.

We therefore learn from this learned commentary made by a Babylonian scribe over 2000 years ago, that in the Akkadian language, the word shitti means "shit"

Abstract As Al-generated images and texts proliferate, people have developed techniques for identifying them using clues like misshapen hands in images or distinctive words in text. This commentary situates these emerging practices within what Carlo Ginzburg called the “conjectural paradigm”: a mode of knowing that links contemporary Al detection to older traditions of medical symptomatology, art historical connoisseurship, and detective work. Yet unlike the stable or slowly evolving clues of earlier conjectural practices, the signifiers of Al involvement are rapidly shifting. This instability has consequences not only for how texts are read but also for how they are written. Authors now navigate a landscape of suspicion where their words may be misrecognized as machine generated. Rather than resolving into stable literacies, our efforts to recognize Al’s handiwork reveal the deeper uncertainties of authorship and interpretation.

new publication alert: a little commentary I wrote about 🔎 clues 🔎 and the detection of AI-generated material is out in American Ethnologist (paywalled at the moment, but hit me up if you can't access it): doi.org/10.1111/amet...

Okay, can we have a moment for the Interimaginary Departures Gate at Austin’s airport?

Might be the greatest opening paragraph of anything ever.

What a fucking time to be teaching a unit on discourse analysis and "space technology" in my History of Technology class...

Also what a time to live in...

We all have forests on our minds. Forests unexplored, unending. Each one of us gets lost in the forest, every night, alone.

There is no such thing as the history of science People on the internet are arguing about what ‘science’ means and what properly belongs to the ‘history of science’. (Aparna Nair’s thread on Bluesky is a good introdu…

There’s no such thing as the history of science (and this is a blog post about it)

(inspired by a great 2017 article by Lorraine Daston)

williamgpooley.wordpress.com/2026/03/25/t...

🗃️

It was such a treat to be included in this!

Also time is a social construct.

We are all dead, and we spoiled the world before we died. There is nothing left. Nothing but dreams.

Amazing, thank you!

Periodic reminder to be VERY cautious when declaiming about quipus unless you're from a Peruvian indigenous community. The tantalizing nature of mysterious, purportedly illegible quipus is a colonial legacy-quipu reading persists in local traditions, and some are only for ceremonial (not museum) use

-refused to go to the doctor for postpartum vaginal 🩸 ng because the copay was too much
-ate meals by attending on-campus events
-held multiple "full-time" jobs (w/benefits) in order to make rent

An (incomplete) list of things I've done as a precarious grad student/adjunct to survive (2016-2026):

-stole leftover toilet paper rolls from a side-gig when they were replaced in public bathrooms
-held class online because I couldn't afford public transportation fare into the city
-freelanced

Destiny in the Stars The Beginnings of the Zodiac

For anyone who might be passing through Berlin between now and January, a new exhibition on the history of the zodiac in ancient Babylonia, Egypt, and the Greco-Roman world opens at the Neues Museum today: www.smb.museum/en/museums-i... #HistSTM 🔭

...I 1000% meant to say "Assyriology" but the fact that it autocorrected to astrology is... not wrong

History of science -- particularly astronomy, mathematics, and algorithms -- in Antiquity! Also Astrology and, more broadly the history of the ancient near East and Mediterranean.

I’ve been out of the game for a while and lost track of people in the move to this place, so if you’re an adjunct/VAP/postdoc in history, can you reply and let me know what you work on? I am an editor at @contingent-mag.bsky.social and we are often looking for book reviewers etc.

On the hunt for an accountability buddy/group.

Having such trouble balancing the adjunct/freelance life and raising a toddler with getting my own stuff done.

Any suggestions/recommendations?

So glad I've reached the stage of life where I don't look young because I would like to buy a beer and I did forget my id (and wallet) at home

Sorry, I'm booked all weekend. Saturday Sunday

CfP: ANALOGUE GAMES AND THE ANCIENT & PRE-MODERN PAST - INSTITUTE OF ADVANCED STUDY, DURHAM UNIVERSITY, FRIDAY 1 MAY 2026 Organisers: Dr. Helen Roche (Durham University, UK) and Dr. Hamish Cameron (Victoria University of Wellington, NZ) Recently, analogue games have been gaining increasing attention within the context of Game Studies, Ludonarratology, Historical Game Studies and Classical Game Studies. This interdisciplinary workshop will focus on modern analogue games which engage with ancient and pre-modern pasts, with an eye to producing an edited volume which will complement existing work already in progress. The organisers are currently seeking abstracts, and welcome suggestions for 20-minute papers which engage with: • a broad range of historical periods (including games with historical elements which are not purely historical, e.g. historically-inspired fantasy and science fiction; mythical games); archaeogaming; • any analogue game genres - including, but not limited to, board games and card games, Tabletop Roleplaying Games (TTRPGs), live action games, tabletop wargames, miniature wargaming, and megagames; • analogue games which range beyond the popular (e.g. analyses of indie games as well as well-known classics); • analogue games as vectors for historical pedagogy, engagement and outreach; serious games; creative ludic research methods; • intersectional and postcolonial perspectives are especially welcome. Our primary goal is for the workshop to take place in person (though please note that we cannot guarantee funding to cover speakers' expenses, and any funding we can find will be used to facilitate attendance by ECRs and precarious speakers). However, given sufficient interest, we would consider organising a separate online workshop at a later date to accommodate those who are unable to travel to Durham in person. Please send abstracts of no more than 300 words to gaming.history.ias@gmail.com by 31 MARCH 2026.

Hey folks, CfP coming up for a Workshop on Analogue Games and the Ancient and Pre-Modern Past at Durham University hosted by cool HGS folk @drhelenroche.bsky.social and @peregrinekiwi.bsky.social. Looks great; wish I could be there!
submission email in the CfP

Photo of a cuneiform tablet fragment shaped a bit like an irregular diamond. It preserves nearly 20 incomplete lines of text separated by a horizontal ruling

There's a broken cuneiform tablet from the Old Babylonian period, nearly 4,000 years ago, which preserves a tiny portion of a dialogue between two friends.

It feels a bit like the conversations I've been having for the past week, so I wanted to share it.

Update: he just asked us what "that long country on the side" is, and he meant Chile.

Is this what people mean when they say they went to trivia??

Guy on the bus just got everyone's attention to ask us what the five great lakes are, and my little Michigan-born heart has never felt more right-place-right-time