getting ready for “demanding accurate footnotes is popery” discourse

One more reason to leave Spotify. Truly evil. Music is a great joys of being human. Music has provided the closest thing I've had to a religious experience. These fuckers want to replace it with soulless AI slop. An assault on musicians and people who love music. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

People don't long for "inconvenience." They long for permanence. And though streaming services may be convenient, people are waking up to the fact that we are paying rent-seeking middle men month after month for things we will never actually own.

One more reason to leave Spotify. Truly evil. Music is a great joys of being human. Music has provided the closest thing I've had to a religious experience. These fuckers want to replace it with soulless AI slop. An assault on musicians and people who love music. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

The part about the Chris Nolan's Odyssey adaptation that bothers me the most are the pants. All of the costumes look terrible. But pants?! For Greeks and Romans (and Han Chinese btw) pants were a marker of barbarians. I just don't get the terrible choices of costumers for history inspired works.

It's my duty as one of the literally three people on bluesky who ever post about the region to let y'all know that this dude is from Inner Mongolia

I guess my only real problem with AI is that it doesn't work, uses all the water, makes the worst people who ever slime-trailed across this green earth richer, gives monsters cover to crater organizations, destroys lives in both obvious & subtle ways & also isn't even AI. Besides that, I'm for it.

In his new encylical Pope Leo quotes Gandalf in Return of the King. It is fitting that he uses Tolkien in a work condemning AI given the terrible misuse of Tolkien's works by tech bros. As well as of course his Catholicism. Encyclical Letter of His Holiness Leo XIV Magnifica Humanitas (15 May 2026)

I am very glad that the in universe Star Wars history book "The Rise and Fall of the Galactic Empire" is written by real historian @chriskempshall.bsky.social , because it is a blast reading a Star Wars universe book in the typical historical genre of our world. chriskempshall.com/portfolio-it...

YOU’RE LISTENING TO SISYPHUS FM, THE HOME OF NON-STOP ROCK

If I’m not evolved enough to understand it, then why did they have to steal my writing to train it?

The Neo Nazi says the real problem is playing as a black samurai (based historical Yasuke), a queer character, or GASP a FEMALE! It is a clear reminder of the connection between right wing extremists and people who throw fits over video game and broader pop culture. www.pcgamer.com/games/eu-pol...

As a science fiction writer I really fucking resent tech bros for ruining the phrase "artificial intelligence." 80 years of it being all about cool androids and interesting computers destroyed by five years of "Spicy autocorrect making everything shittier for money." NEVER FORGIVE.

lmao yeah if anyone thinks Harris lost because of tRaNs pRiSoNeRs and not because of ignoring voters on Gaza and multiple other issues, they actively want us to keep losing

Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.

When I used to write for The Guardian, every time I wrote the word “meow” the editors would change it to “miaow”. It used to really get on my wick. Don’t try to make my cats sound like your upper middle class London cats, you fuckers. My cats did not go to your posh cat schools. They say “meow”.

Ok this looks cool as hell! I am always on the look out for history inspired ttrpg related books, both for the games I am in as both GM and player, but also to dream of future ones. I have seen lots of Viking inspired books, which I am down for, but a lot less Scotland, much less Picts! Buying now

Makes sense! That is why we should confiscate all of your wealth, and every other wicked billionaire parasite. Or you can realize that paying high taxes is the good option for you. Rather than the alternative that you justly deserve.

Bezos paid $2.7b in personal income taxes in 2024 There are 76,000 public school teachers in NYC if we doubled the taxes he pays, we could increase the annual salaries of every NYC schoolteacher by $35k

No, Colossal's resurrected nothing. They made designer dogs to look like Game of Thrones animal actors. And Colossal co-founder George Church? Friend of Epstein who kept the predator's genetic samples in his Harvard Medical School lab, which were pushed as priority for sequencing. Do. Not. Trust.

Cool. So glad that me and all my friends scrap tooth and nail even before this disastrous past year for higher education for a tt job, and lazy assholes who can't even check a citation get a free ride for the rest of their lives as they peddle scholarship that even they won't quality check.

This is a Terryl Whitlatch appreciation post. If you are a creature fan and don't have "The Wildlife of Star Wars" book, you need it asap! #starwars

No one taught the idiot fake history robots about the Columbian exchange it seems.

As our union election nears, we want to provide more details around the issues that our coworkers and members have expressed as important to them. #uwotc-cwa

In the richest city in the richest country in the history of the world, nobody should be going hungry. That's why we're opening five city-owned grocery stores, one in each borough, starting with The Bronx. Lower Prices. Good food. Publicly owned. Hunts Point next year. Every borough by 2029.

Mamdani: I cannot help but think of the words of our 40th president, Ronald Reagan. He famously said, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are 'I'm from the govt & I'm here to help'" I think nine more terrifying words are actually, "I worked all day and can't feed my family"

I don’t know what to tell you, man. I’m a medieval historian, and, in my field, if you don’t check your sources (and your sources’ sources) you are just asking to be taken for a ride by some bored 19th C. aristocratic English antiquarian with a penchant for inventing history.

What a fun read. Comparing diss tracks to flyting is great.

There’s a definite type of guy - and some are friends I love - who are just not comfortable venturing out into the world unless they’re wearing some kind of plaid shirt. Happy Sunday to you, plaid shirt brothers.

Chasing down citations and verifying if they are correct, and correcting them if they are not, IS scholarship. It is part of the job. And it is part of the fun! You better believe I have chased down citations in many languages. If you are replicating false information, then you are wrong. Period.

I just can't get past "What do you mean I have to check AAALLLLLLLL my citations?" Like, dude, what? My PhD advisor would have hung me by my toenails on the quad if I didn't know what one of my citations was for.

I'm sorry, what? In writing my first monograph, I spent six weeks trying to track down a citation in TWO languages I didn't know. And good thing too, because the citation was wrong. That's scholarship. That's research. You know, the thing we're trained to do?!?

How about focusing on the impact on state universities, where the aggregate effect of funding cuts is much larger, and on research that is vital but has little to do with "America's competitive edge"?

Editor: You get those photos of Steven Spielberg and E.T.? Photographer: Sure did boss, real fuckin sexy just like you asked. Editor: what

Got a notification from a medieval copyright lawyer

I don't know where this bizarre idea that China has universal health care comes from, but it very much does not by any normal standard. It has a highly tiered system that brutally discriminates against rural patients and imposes often crippling financial costs.

"If your instinct is to use AI and not go through that process. You shouldn’t be a writer. Because you’re not writing.” variety.com/2026/film/ne...

My good friends at Folkwise @folkwise.wisefolk.org are putting together a conference, on July 31! It will be all online, free, and open to all. While they focus on folkore, they are welcoming to many disciplines, including history. #history #folklore #publichistory docs.google.com/document/d/1...

There's so much weird about this bizarre simulacrum of a human being, but the obsession with windmills as a threat to all mankind has to be in the discussion. Imagine if Dwight Eisenhower denounced trains in every third public appearance, or Jimmy Carter always veered off topic to condemn toasters.

Today, the University of Maine's Vice Chancellor for Finance and Strategic AI Integration (who made $243,000 last year) sent UMaine campuses an announcement that we have partnered with OpenAI with a contract for ChatGPT Edu. I sent him the following questions:

We CANNOT abandon trans people and we CANNOT abandon immigrants. Read @transliberalism.substack.com www.liberalcurrents.com/abandoning-t... Read @quinnae.com www.liberalcurrents.com/trans-panic-... Read @polphilpod.bsky.social www.liberalcurrents.com/we-need-to-g...

Incredibly evil. Was at an event with @andreapitzer.bsky.social last week and she mentioned how the campaign against trans people has all the hallmarks of a group targeted for eventual detention in camps. And Texas is in many ways where the worst of it started, with Abbott wielding DFPS against them

My good friends at Folkwise @folkwise.wisefolk.org are putting together a conference, on July 31! It will be all online, free, and open to all. While they focus on folkore, they are welcoming to many disciplines, including history. #history #folklore #publichistory docs.google.com/document/d/1...

Gandalf the White 🔮 LOTR is probably the thing I’ve read/watched/been obsessed with the most since I was like 6 🗣️ #lotr #gandalf #tolkien #art #fantasy

I open bluesky looking to see some history posts and instead I see lots of cultural discourse about something or another that has been discussed a lot before and I close it again.

Q: Does my thesis adviser pick the snake? A: No. Your adviser just tells the guy who picks the snakes how good your thesis was.

Who is the biggest distributors of disinformation in Mongolia? We spoke with Batsugar, researcher, about the prevelance of disinformation in the country. The latest GSM episode about #Mongolia. pca.st/episode/8e3e...

Many of us are livid about Kickstarter's new "mature content" rules. Over the past day, I have looked at a decade of data to see who may be harmed. Comic artists. Gender minorities. Disabled, deaf, blind, queer, and chronically ill users. Sex workers. International creators. A data-driven look:

The Democratic default is: "We can't do that because what if xxxxxxxx happens?" The Republican default is: "Just do it because we'll win, and fuck everyone."

"For too long, the university has ignored the wisdom of the donor class and hired based on academic excellence. Regrettably, this has led to the underrepresentation of discredited viewpoints in elite higher education." www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/wer...