Wait until you hear that LLMs can only train on digitized/datafied info. Most of the FACTS scholars use are in archives/libraries. Less than 1% of archival colletions worldwide have been digitized. Also: lots of facts are not even in archives, but in the attics.

I found this listing for a Madonna and Child on Etsy. Not a huge amount of info, perhaps a clue though. www.etsy.com/au/listing/1...

I read “A. (?) Winter”. It might be difficult to find relevant information in the web, because googling the term “winter” will create lots of useless references. A top specialist on the issue is Dr Thomas Schindler, Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, Munich www.bayerisches-nationalmuseum.de/museum/team

(the timing was rather visible in the bikes they rented for the occasion...)

My grandparents bought this gorgeous nativity scene on their honeymoon (cycle trip from Munich to Vienna, in 1938) (😬). I’m curious whether anyone knows anything of the signature — next picture.

To be fair, it's the end of December, a reassurance that "time is not broken" is welcome, because time certainly doesn't make any sense this fortnight.

Citation chains are positioned as stuffy pedantry, but they can be the gift economy at work, a virtual open community, a generous pedagogy and a honest dialogue with readers. Here’s who’s in the room with us right now; here’s who I am compelled to speak with; here’s work that will blow your mind…

This is one of the reasons I remain horrified by seeing @historians.org suggest "ways to use gAI" that included this:

Yup. They’re also the only way knowledge & insight actually work: in conversation within your generation and across the generations. Citation-as-signalling and now hallucinated titles destroy context for the sake individual grandiosity.

"In an era where the authentic written word is under threat....English isn't just about reading the past--it's about understanding the power of words and narratives in the present and future and giving our students the skills to successfully navigate the world". True of all UK English programmes.

I think this post nails the actual problem, for researchers at least—AI hallucinations would simply not be a problem in academic work if we’d not normalized citation-as-signaling rather than actual engagement—you can only cite a fake paper if you’re not in the habit of reading the papers you cite

Na vandaag wordt iedere dag weer een beetje langer. Tekening: nachtelijke scene met een hond door Gesina ter Borch (Zwolle, circa 1655).

Yeah, the whole ”inevitability” narrative as well the sole vilification of the tools deflect responsibility: people made choices, including choices to delegitimate those who tried to defend a knowledge system built on trust and verification.

ICYMI yesterday: #EarlyModern #SkyStorians #NZD4Eva

Yoooo! Villa Borg! Open air archeological museum! What we need is a series of Christmas ornaments. Presto. www.villa-borg.de

Ceci n'est pas un chat

Our tribute to Natalie Zemon Davis, in the Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte. Please share widely! www.degruyterbrill.com/journal/key/...

oh! Trying to see if I could possibly do a first-year lecture on environmental history myself next term, so poking around the internet, and very charmed by this naming practice for Geoffrey Parker who's got his birthday this week :)

oh! The latest issue of Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte is a tribute to Natalie Zemon Davis 🥰 and what a wonderful-looking tribute it is: contributions from @vreinburg.bsky.social @anakroniks.bsky.social, Penny Roberts, Hilary Bernstein, @paulecohen.bsky.social, & many more! #NZD4Eva #EarlyModern

In Sweden, publishers of Swedish-language books can apply to the Swedish Arts Council for a grant to cover translation / translation and some production costs. However, “specialized scholarly works” are one of the excluded categories (along with sheet music, exhibition catalogues & hobby books).

This was what I had in mind (sorry, apparently in German only, which is weird considering. Moreover, it's apparently been discontinued): www.boersenverein.de/kultur-und-l...

There is a translation fund and series from SHARP that might be worth looking at.

I think in Germany there are awards specifically for that. Can't remember their names atm though. Also, I have no idea if it's organised the same way elsewhere or not. Will repost and put further information below if I remember where to look it up.

Hello! Who funds translations of monographs into English? Or is that a matter of batting your eyelashes very sweetly at each national academy to make an exception for an exceptional book somehow? #SkyStorians

May I interest people in a little Dispute with the Secretary of State? www.universityrankandfile.org.uk Because whoa it's bananas out there and we need an entire overhaul and focusing of minds.

The death of Dr Paul Ayris is huge loss to UCL, to @uclpress.bsky.social and to the open access/scholarly communications community more broadly. His open access Thomas Cranmer’s Register A record of archiepiscopal administration in diocese and province is published by the Press in January. 1/2

OOOO! Our latest Special Issue from BMGN is out! About Transimperialism and small-state colonisation of Congo. Do have a read, fascinating development of approaches with ramifications well beyond Congo & #LowCountries history: bmgn-lchr.nl/issue/view/1... #SkyStorians

Check out Colm Murphy's @colmpm.bsky.social latest article in Past and Present: academic.oup.com/past/advance...

when a reviewer asks you to cite their work in your revised submission and so you grudgingly insert a footnote but in no way discuss their ideas in your work, so that it’s there and you can’t be dinged for ignoring it, but also you did nothing to address it… this is called a “sightation”

Re: AI.

Heads up, #earlymodern #skystorians! Get your books in for the next SRS Book Prize. Always a marvel to see the wonderful work being produced by scholars of this period.

It somehow is always the widening participation programmes that are the ones that get cut first, that get deemed dispensable. Shame on @universityofessex.bsky.social. Transforming society for the better is #UKHE 's role, Essex's in particular. Have you forgotten what you were established for?

Dear journalists, we know the novelty has worn off, but you don’t want the next novelty of this #UKHE crisis leading to the collapse of towns. Ask politicians serious questions, AND KEEP ASKING. Their bland deflections are unacceptble.

How Catholic women in 18th-century Italy defied sexual harassment in the confessional theconversation.com/how-catholic...

I've been worried for years that UK Higher Education is on the path of Australia (not the US), just a year or two behind. But if we could get a committee like this to outline the harm caused by centralisation, reliance on external consultants, and consequent failures of prioritisation I'm all in.

please note p4 note 4 where two specific Colleges within the uni are called out for poor mangement and p5 where possible further breaches are mentioned and there is a threat of further inspections.

HEEEEEEEY guess whose employer has had official notice of contravention from the Health & Safety Executive for systematically failing to monitor and manage work place stress??? Happy xmas all! drive.google.com/file/d/1L1sl...

‼️‼️

This is the #poem I read at end of my resignation - it will be in the follow up collection to Ice Cream for a Broken Tooth , most likely called Let The Quiet Ones Rise flapjackpress.co.uk/shop/ice-cre...

Very sad that I felt I had no choice but to resign from The Infinite Monkey Cage - a victory for the transphobes and other bigots - I did it because so much of the media has chosen to believe the kind and empathetic people are a fiction - they are real and so often unrepresented.

One argument I used to make to my students about why it was important to learn history (and historical thinking) is that someone was always going to be trying to tell you things were natural or had always been this way and that you needed to be able to see that as an exercise of power.

This @universityofessex.bsky.social, by the way: www.ft.com/content/2cdd.... The university that had been established to transform the region & society, swiftly dropping the programmes for widening participation the moment finances are tight. They were in the middle in 2024, what happened?

Thinking about Tressie McMillan Cottom’s ”education gospel” and how the survival of higher education depends on our faith in it. Years of portraying universities as broken and treacherous and then crushing students with debt has fray the faith. (Though the US and UK have key differences too)

Ongoing decimation of British universities part 252: Apx. 1000 academic staff at University of Essex just received formal ‘risk of redundancy’ letters via email. Please share @ucuessex.bsky.social @ucu.org.uk

Absolutely infuriating. One of the most important research institutions of the world and its employees aren’t afforded the bare minimum, despite doing extraordinary work in awful conditions since the 2023 cyberattack.

‘A sound archivist told me he and his colleagues could earn more in the private sector but they work here for less pay because “we believe in what we do.”’ Anna Aslanyan on the picket line at the British Library, from the blog. www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/de...

One of the reasons that emergence of ‘cold spots’ of subject provision matters: 52% of 18 year olds from the most disadvantaged backgrounds (the most deprived quintile in the Indices of Multiple Deprivation) plan to live at home when they go the university www.thetimes.com/article/22cc...

Hey @ucu.org.uk, can we please have a national strategy on how to deal with these chancers? Because they're finding very gullible victims in our managers all over #UKHE, and their short-term money grabbing is causing long-term structural harm.