Come listen to an episode about how regular guys in history could suck too! Godwin was a parish priest and Thomas was a monk, but they both kinda felt like they deserved something better than they got in life. So naturally, they went and invented blood libel.

NEW TGS EPISODE: I am joined by the wonderful Elise Wang @elisewang.bsky.social to discuss Godwin Sturt and Thomas of Monmouth — two guys you’ve probably never heard of, but you’ve almost definitely encountered the conspiracy theory they invented.

THIS THURSDAY ON TGS: @elisewang.bsky.social gives me the lowdown on the medieval origins of one of the world’s darkest and most damaging conspiracy theories. Also we don’t know what they looked like so this is the first official appearance of the Generic Guy Who Sucked.

Your institution will not love you back

In the latest episode of “America discovers that other countries have their own thoughts, media”

"sorry about the whole concentration camp thing. if you come back we pinky swear we'll be normal"

Your institution will not love you back

One day, nearly 2000 years ago, a cat dashed across some drying tiles, somewhere near Hadrian's Wall. It's immortality of a kind, isn't it?

I shouldn't be shocked, but I'm still always brought up short to realize how many people think "civility" means "white people speaking in relatively calm voices" no matter what vile shit they say.

To echo a post I saw months ago, now would be an amazing time for one of the most popular musicians currently going to make an absolute banger about jury nullification and get it in regular rotation for the next 8 to 12 months.

It’s race and class solidarity. Klein rightly recognizes that he has far more in common with Kirk than lower class or female or nonwhite democrats who share more of his political positions.

This is a really good point. TT faculty can’t protect NTT faculty, so the idea that if push comes to shove “good” TT faculty can just intervene is a fiction by which management divides the academic workforce. I’m in a union, can you tell

A lot to say about this, but one thing is that the Professor in question was a lecturer, and thus did not have tenure. The destruction of academic freedom is inextricably linked to the loss of worker protection in the university.

In the fine medieval tradition of Christ’s wound/vulva

To put this into context, the judicial warrant for the search at the Hyundai plant named just four people. Relying on that warrant, ICE detained nearly 500 people. DHS admitted that included U.S. citizens, permanent residents, and people lawfully here on visas.

Beautiful medieval floor tiles at Titchfield Abbey in Hampshire. After the dissolution of the monasteries, the building was converted into a mansion by Thomas Wriothesley (of ‘Call-Me Risley’ fame for fans of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall trilogy).

“You stood on your tiptoes and wanted me to see if you were taller than the night before. At bedtime, you asked if I would be there when you turn one-hundred years old.”

As a native of the Second City, I have notes on this joke: 1. In a city known for pizza, you went for Dominos? Tailor your jokes for the local crowd. 2. Getting “between him and his open doors” makes no physical sense. Where are you standing, where is he standing, where’s the door? Tighten it up.

The Medieval Scriptorium is now available in paperback! 😊 reaktionbooks.co.uk/work/the-med... #bookhistory #medievalsky #skystorians #medievalmanuscripts @reaktionbooks.bsky.social

One of the classes that convinced me to be a medievalist began on the first day with a 30-minute monologue on how people cut down old growth trees before blast furnace steel.

My academic grandmother, Barbara Harvey, died earlier this month; there's a short tribute to her from @somervillecollege.bsky.social here: www.some.ox.ac.uk/news/barbara...

This failed because a local jury decided not to indict. We tend to think juries should be blank slates, impartial and uninformed. But when the jury began it was trusted specifically because it was informed and partial. A medieval story time on the jury!

What is in the air? Why is this the week to provoke the historians? Bad timing: it’s the first weeks of school and we’re all tired and snippy and we bite

1. Modeling data does not a historical argument make. 2. Lefebvre might have written an early classic, but his sources are not the complete 'archive' of Great Fear rumors. 1/n

I am old enough to remember the first Dark Age panic on the Other Site! P.S. The Dark Age panic is not really about history: it is about the inability of neoliberal politics to stop the rise of authoritarianism and therefore using the past to excuse the mistakes of the present.

Interesting find at the back of this book: two #medieval manuscript fragments cut into shape and sewn together with white cord and two small patches. They form an L-shape, with the end of the longer piece rounded and reinforced. Used as a bookmark? A reading aid? What do you think #skystorians?

This failed because a local jury decided not to indict. We tend to think juries should be blank slates, impartial and uninformed. But when the jury began it was trusted specifically because it was informed and partial. A medieval story time on the jury!

Water was famously not invented until 1450

Seeing a lot of critical responses from medievalists about this BBC 1066 thing. As an early modernist, just to say that I'm happy to confirm that medieval people were indeed covered in dirt all the time and did all sound like they were in the Wurzels.

It’s almost as if the legitimate conversation about this period is taking place in specialized journals by experts but is subject to wild misinterpretation by non-experts who think they know more than they do. Sounds kind of familiar! Now we just need a “Dark Ages” TikTok like the MAHA one

Support your local medievalist and buy their books! (who said that)

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about this piece by @jasminmuj.bsky.social, about Milosevic’s rise to power and how ridiculous he seemed to the educated class, which prevented them from believing war was coming until it was there:

What memo went out to Dems to tell them to spin every move of Trump as a “cover up” of his failures? Do they think this is a normal presidency that cares about polls and cost of living and the economy? That would be wild, if they thought that.

"Honey, I don't have much time. I've been arrested by ICE and they are sending me to a detainment center. I love you and the kids, I will be OK, please call our attorney" -- John Shin, DACA resident, speaking to his wife last week. She hasn't heard from him since www.fox13now.com/news/local-n...

At the first Nazi-run faculty meeting at the first university they took over (the nation’s most liberal and most illustrious), everyone expected the most liberal professor to stand up. But just asked the Nazi position on funding in his area.

PLEASE REPOST 🥺🙏 The Canadian Letters & Images Project is an online digital archive of Canadians’ experience during wartime at home & in battle. It contains thousands of personal letters & photos that reveal people’s experience through their own words & eyes. www.canadianletters.ca/content/abou...

Later on today I shall be watching #KingAndConqueror for various reasons. Given they have the moustache on the wrong man, I am neither optimistic, nor looking forward to this. Maths Half: 'Will you take notes, or will it be easier just to record your swearing?'.

Avelo's phone number is 346-616-9500 if anyone feels compelled to ask why the fuck they're letting people put children in shackles on their planes

Hey, you survived another week. Buy yourself a few books.

The media loved that Vance lied about Haitians eating cats and dogs so much that they told him he can use their live broadcasts whenever he wants to tell any lie he can think of and they’ll help him spread the word

I’ve had the same convo and we also got stuck here. I think AI has been sold even to its creators as having the potential to reach beyond human capability in the humanities, which they might buy because that’s not their area of expertise. Then it’s genuinely surprising that it never has.

If you read carefully, Dietrich mentions he’s mad about the Hispanic-owned business bc he had wanted to open a business on the same property. Something I write about is how conspiracy theory “belief” is not belief so much as leverage to settle scores. Believing that everyone brown is “illegal”

Something that’s lost in the disc of “small majors.” I majored in religion bc I loved the subject, but a huge part was that it was a tiny major where I could know all the profs and they could know me. For a first gen student who was completely overwhelmed in college I needed this, desperately.

Ok but are the bills in the hongbao numbered only with 8, 2, 6, and 9’s like my grandma’s or is she an amateur

The thing is, corruption and self-dealing is becoming so normalized that I almost understand the mistake. It’s like being at a party that’s clearly getting rowdy—there’s a right time to start dancing on the tables, and there’s a just-a-smidge-too-early time. Greco just jumped the gun.

Speaking as a Chinese person, in the Chinese culture, money is often given to others in a gesture of bribery.

I think this is a great idea and it’s such a great idea that all current ICE and DHS officers should be deployed to paint it by hand

“Cmty colleges, in all their diversity + inclusion, were the hubs of economic mobility. ‘We are situated more than any other institution in 🇺🇸 to deliver on the promises in our original founding documents that everybody deserves a good life.’” Again, I’d say they stand with public libraries here :)

Thoughtful piece on the death penalty by an incarcerated journalist

“Fondly do we hope—fervently do we pray—that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid