Government and Media: AI is inevitable. It's the most amazing technological advancement of our lifetime! The AI:

As I tell my students, "People tend to select from history what pleases them, and I think that the historians' job is to remind them that the rest of it exists."

Government and Media: AI is inevitable. It's the most amazing technological advancement of our lifetime! The AI:

Smaller universities employ thousands, sell products to customers across the world and export British soft power. They are successful businesses, often bringing wealth to our poorer communities. Why does the government want to stop that? Why aren't more MPs fighting for them?

Art Historian's guide to early modern Islamic empires: Onion hats = Ottoman Onion domes = Mughal Neither = probably Safavid

The ultra exploitative idea of “sacrificial labour” in action

Honestly, the light rail btwn Seattle and Bellevue launched on a weekend where I was like I can’t take any more bad news. Everything is getting worse all the time. And then: people cheering as they ride a first-ever feat of human engineering, in the service of the public. We can do great things.

My brother helped make this happen and I'm so damn proud of him! Seattleites, stay tuned for more. There are so many exciting plans underway.

I already want a bagel.

As we head into the Easter weekend, you’ll likely spot a few Jesus films on TV. If you’re curious about their tropes, themes, and wider political and historical significance, revisit our episode on the Jesus film with Dr Katie Turner @katieturnerphd.com podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/e...

We‘re fucked

It's happening all over the post-92 bit of the sector. Moves are afoot in places not making headlines yet and the cover excuse is the TPS pension. The question now is will organised labour react and will this get the urgency it demands from academics in USS?

Let’s not write Jews (or Italians) out of US labor history, ok?

After Caroline Norton's husband took her kids & earnings, she fought for: + Custody of Infants Act 1839: For the first time gave married women a right to their children + Matrimonial Causes Act 1857: Deserted wives' right to own & protect property She was born #OTD in 1808. #UK #WomensHistoryMonth

Happy Sunday and Shavua tov!

Happy Sunday and Shavua tov!

and let me be clear, I think some REALLY interesting collaborative interdisciplinary work can be done but our colleagues need to think of us historians as indeed collaborators, and not effectively research assistants.

Powerful stuff from our students: "AI cannot coexist with education — it can only degrade it.... With our own university leading the charge, AI is now corrupting those few sacred spaces and leaving us with nowhere to engage in true scholarship."

My mom was an editor in academic publishing. I used to tease her when I noticed errors in books she edited. Drove her nuts. 😂 But also, she was an amazing editor! Nobody's going to catch everything. Emailing authors would've never occurred it me. It's extremely bizarre behaviour. Who does it serve?

Every year on Good Friday, a Catholic charity stages a Passion Play in Trafalgar Sq. Every year on the first night of Chanukah, the Jewish Leadership Council & the London Mayor's office host a menorah lighting in Trafalgar Sq. Both events include prayer. Both would be impacted by Farage's bigotry.

Having now read it properly, beyond the 'comply in advance' problem, striking are: absence of attention to international students, Green Party, AI's impact; failure to clarify whether HEIs should just 'track' or 'close' gap with 'public' understanding; claim to be 'Based on social science concepts'.

Follow the live stream here: youtube.com/live/BktIfz-...

Question for textile historian types: Does anybody know where I can find information about the quantity of raw material (flax, wool) needed to produce some amount of spun yarn? I have a source that talks about the labour needed to produce 2kg of wool, but doesn't mention what that translates to.

Question for textile historian types: Does anybody know where I can find information about the quantity of raw material (flax, wool) needed to produce some amount of spun yarn? I have a source that talks about the labour needed to produce 2kg of wool, but doesn't mention what that translates to.

ALT-TEXT IMPORTANT SHIT* *alt-text everything but especially important shit

"And the sorrow of the impossible is a human pain that nothing will cure and for which no comfort can be found. So, I will bear and suffer until I die and wither in the ground."

Oxford historian Lyndal Roper wins this year's £466K Holberg Prize - speaking to @timeshighered.bsky.social, she warns that the humanities are facing Thatcher-scale cuts just when we need them most www.timeshighereducation.com/news/lyndal-... via @jgro-the.bsky.social

Exciting news! I just had an article published calling out a homophobic article Novum Testamentum published last year. It’s open access and free to read thanks to my employer. Get it here doi.org/10.1163/1568.... A thread on what it’s about below:

"You know, it comes from movements in Vienna in the 1910s and 20s. Freud, psychoanalysis, Marxism, you know that sort of thing. Cosmopolitan social-" "Just say 'Jewish,' Mark, this is taking forever."

Wow is this dumb.

If a parade can get the costuming right, so can a Hollywood film. And yet…

If a parade can get the costuming right, so can a Hollywood film. And yet…

fuck me for being this person, i guess, but public universities are a civic good and shouldn’t be run like businesses. and if you’re going to insist on running them like so, at least do some market research. students like their professors; they don’t want MOOCs taught by ChatGPT.

I met with AI data labelers in Kenya who are organizing their colleagues to fight the brutal working conditions and horrible pay given to the workers at the "bottom of the AI supply chain." They believe the NDAs they've signed are unenforceable so are speaking out: www.404media.co/ai-is-africa...

We're filling up fast for Monday's celebration of Sarah Lightman and the launch of our new @uomreligion.bsky.social project, Encountering Biblical Bodies! Book your place and please share if you know folks around Manchester who have a body (biblical or otherwise) at tinyurl.com/BibWomen

How many books with male authors were produced with explicit (and extensive) help from their wives? And what of the reverse – how often did/do women rely on their husbands for "invaluable aid" with their manuscripts?

How many books with male authors were produced with explicit (and extensive) help from their wives? And what of the reverse – how often did/do women rely on their husbands for "invaluable aid" with their manuscripts?

Academia finds a whole new low into which to sink

Just a shout out to magnolias. Aren't they the most magnificent blooms?

We Need To Stop With The "Women Didn't Work" Myth youtu.be/4NWL98OiFQc?...

In an increasingly depressing world, I can't offer insightful takes on current events but I can offer mild distraction via lots of puns and silliness about the French Revolution and #FrHistory

You can pre-order now! www.ucpress.edu/books/a-womb...

Here's one such book (I'm currently reading). It compiles evidence to demonstrate that more than HALF of work done by women in the Early Modern period (1500–1800) happened outside the home. And work in the home was often still marketable (spinning, brewing, food production, etc).

Currently reading/writing about women's roles in the pre-industrial textile industry and if one more author refers to spinning as "low-skilled" I'm going to scream. Having tried to learn aspects of ancient manufacture, I can comfortably say that dyeing (male trade) is far, FAR easier than spinning.

@josephscales.bsky.social is one of the most generous scholars I know. If you, or someone you know, might be interested in this post, you/they should go for it! I cannot overstate the added benefit of working with Dr Scales.

it can't tell if the output is true because *it has no concept of truth*. The only thing it "knows" is "this output is correlated" It is structurally indifferent to truth

A prof once told me "You should never end a paragraph quoting somebody else. You should always close with your own argument." Thoughts?

In the 1790s a London woman named Eliza Denyer developed a modest reputation as a restorer of medieval manuscripts. She was forgotten by scholars and, in one case, her restorations were deliberately replaced by a man’s. I recovered her story & tracked all her known work here: tinyurl.com/2ktztx2e

Zanne is a dear friend, with whom it was my delight and honour to work at the University of Glasgow, and whose absence from academia (along with many other worthy scholars) just reinforces the poverty and myopia of the current state of affairs in British higher education.

Self-imposed "brain drain" policies (Uni fees, Brexit, austerity, anti-immigration) working predictably.