With sincere thanks to staff who helped make this live again -

Organizers for a new EU-wide Unconditional Basic Income initiative now have six months to begin a 12-month period of collecting signatures. It must gather at least one million valid statements of support from EU citizens, and also reach minimum thresholds in at least seven member states.

Alan Bold's The Penguin Book of Socialist Verse is available from @archive.org. More poems by Mao (13) than MacDiarmid (7). No longer in print, which is no great surprise.

Aberlemno work begins to unlock more secrets of 1,200-year-old Angus Pictish stone www.thecourier.co.uk/fp/news/5533...

The best accommodation isn’t always a tool. Sometimes it’s another human being who believes you the first time.

viamedia.news/2026/07/07/a... Neurodiversity and church leadership, fabulous blog from Revd Canon Dr Phil Groves, ahead of the #GeneralSynod Motion on Friday.

🗣️ The Scots Language Publication Grant is open fir applications! 🗣️ The grant exists tae support publishers tae publish and promote work scrived in the Scots leid. Send in yir applications by ⏰ 12 (noon) on Wed 2 Sept 2026 ⏰ Mair info can be found here: www.scottishbooktrust.com/writing-and-...

MANSFIELD TRAQUAIR CENTRE.—Visionary champion of forgotten masterpieces retires at 91: www.broughtonspurtle.org.uk/news/visiona... #Edinburgh #hyperlocal #news #architecture #art #history

There's absolutely nothing to be gained by appeasing those who attack minorities. They just move onto a new one or add additional targets. Look at how the same newspapers that go after trans folk, migrants and people on benefits have now specifically added ND people to their list of folk devils.

For centuries Queen Elizabeth I has been portrayed as prone to 'feminine' bouts of irrationality & rage. The emotional outbursts in her letters were a political strategy designed by Sir Francis Walsingham. Walsingham encouraged the queen to feign a hissy fit!

Here’s the latest article I contributed to in The Guardian, @theguardian.com concerning baptisms of the enslaved in England during the 18th and 19th centuries. www.theguardian.com/news/2026/ju... #MalikAlNasir #ChrisOsuh #Guardian #Slavery #Baptism #ManchesterCathederal #IndianaMundi #Enslavement

£8 million deficit this year; 70 jobs to go. It's a 4-nations crisis and, whilst respecting and working within devolution, we need to think of some UK-wide solutions, notably for research (where the funding and functioning is more joined up between the nations). Or, we could all sell our silver.

Surprises me that there's not more recognition of scapegoating as something that should be immediately discrediting and never tolerated. Nobody should be buying or believing newspapers or other media which incite moral panics against minorities. That stuff needs to be regulated out of existence.

Loch Ness mobsters

Cladh Hallah in #Uist where ancestory matters and the secrets of #RoundHouses remain

A new project looking at sowens – a heritage food made from oats and a dietary staple in bygone years – has launched, with a special event at Kirbuster Farm, Orkney, at the weekend.

An authoritative new biography of Empress Matilda from Elisabeth Van Houts. Read an extract: yalebooks.co.uk/the-legacy-o... #IMC2026

Register for 'Catholicism, Reform & the Reformation in Scotland: Renaissance to Modernity', 22 July Edinburgh We are supporting this fantastic 1 day workshop hosted by the Network for the Study of the Long Reformation & Scottish Catholic Historical Association www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/catholicis...

6 years of research: "The only trait that consistently predicted objections to remote work was narcissism—the tendency to be self-centered & entitled. The higher the opinions of themselves leaders expressed, the more they coveted power and status—& the more they favored return-to-office mandates."

New #OpenAccess article by @helenaaeberli.bsky.social on pica, a lesser-known eating disorder, and its gendered associations with pregnant women and pubescent girls in early modern England. #EarlyModern #Skystorians #GenderHistory #HistMed onlinelibrary.wiley.com/share/CYRU3R...

I’m SO proud of Dr @clodaghmurphy.bsky.social who was awarded her doctorate cum laude for her exceptional dissertation on Queen Elizabeth I. The @unileiden.bsky.social newsletter now shares some of her remarkable discoveries from our ERC Consolidator project #FEATHERS Congratulations! bit.ly/4fkiMPo

Amazing from every angle Barpa Langlais #Uist

Ness of Brodgar Re-opens for July The Ness of Brodgar will re-open tomorrow, 6 July, for a short exploratory archaeological excavation into a large circular feature which was revealed after a geophysical survey was conducted last year....

“Great cartomancer and palm reader If you want to know your entire future by the cards or the lines of your hand, come to the person who lives at 18 rue du Collège, the only vendor of AMERICAN POMMADE which will radically cure sores, hair loss and encourage growth” (Journal de Roanne, 9.12.1883)

If you've recovered from the football (or weren't paying it any attention), we have many new book reviews here: academic.oup.com/ehr/advance-...

One of the most gorgeous cameos to survive from Roman Antiquity is this one (15 BCE-25 CE), now at the British Museum. It’s likely a depiction of Paris pondering the beauty contest that would lead to the Trojan War. As a Templar knight once said—he did not choose … wisely (image is my own).

Finally we get a glimpse of the new circular feature at Ness of Brodgar that will be excavated from tomorrow. Stone circle? That central feature - a hearth? - looks interesting. Maybe a version of a square in circle monument? www.nessofbrodgar.co.uk/gpr-dig-2026...

This is a large part of why, no matter how good somebody's writing is, I wont pay for their substack. Yes some people find it helps their own access needs, but it comes at the cost of subscribers being fed hatemongering that goes directly against all the concerns with 'justice' they write about.

Calectasia narragara - Blue Tinsel Lily A species endemic to Western Australia. This low growing shrub is characterised by beautiful purplish blue star shaped flowers with stamens that start yellow then turn orange and red with age. #ozflora #wildoz #nativeplants #inaturalist #bloomscrolling 🌿

Super beautiful Hopkins rose nudibranch, tidepooling this morning at Asilomar! 🌊

If newspapers dont want fascism, they shouldn't let powerful in-groups play the victim in their pages as they persecute and scapegoat others. Imagined grievance against minorities is the bedrock of fascism. No, you cant have this one persecution as a treat. The anti-trans stuff is fascist too.

Article warning of the rise of fascism in The Herald that casually platforms a slew of hatemongers and 'bothsiders' in the comments. The same paper platforms the persecution of trans people - treating the persecutors as if they are the victims. Zero awareness that they are part of the problem

1/3 🙏Thank you to @neilmackay.bsky.social for picking up my warning, as to why we should be so worried about Blackshirt parades emerging in the cities of Scotland www.heraldscotland.com/politics/vie...

Very interesting piece on progressive politics & identity shift in the north of Ireland.

2/2 Later that day, at 7pm, I'll be chatting about my new book with the brilliant @kevinguyan.bsky.social at Edinburgh's iconic radical bookshop, @lighthousebks.bsky.social. ADVANCE COPIES WILL BE AVAILABLE! 🏳️‍🌈📚🦋🏳️‍⚧️🗃️ lighthousebookshop.com/events/darwi... #books #booksky #histsci #sts #queerhistory

Fab visit to Kilvaxter on Skye for #souterrainSaturday

This year’s ILGA Rainbow Map of Europe placed the UK near the bottom with regard to #TransRights, stating that after For Women Scotland, there is effectively no longer a legal gender recognition system in the jurisdiction. https://ow.ly/RuJm50ZiB4m

JOB ALERT Research Assistant at @unistrathclyde.bsky.social for the AHRC-funded research project “Beyond The Dear Green Place: Recovering the Lost Works & Literary Networks of Archie Hind”. Hind (1928–2008) is one of postwar Glasgow’s most significant writers www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DSD002/r...

‘Byl has opened up an almost entirely unmapped treasury of material on the prosecution of witchcraft in East-Central Europe, in a meticulous, thorough and authoritative study of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.’ My review of Vital Byl's new book: drfrancisyoung.com/2026/07/03/r... @dependencybonn.de

Wee preview of the contents page of my new book. Something for everyone with an interest in early modern Scotland...

How was the American Revolution viewed from Scotland? Our latest blog by Florence Petroff explores the deep divisions found in the heart of Edinburgh at Greyfriars Kirk: was it a struggle for liberty or a crisis of empire, loyalty and constitutional order? #americanrevolution buff.ly/XuZpQCA

free to download until c.17th July, this new volume in the Cambridge Elements in Magic is really *unmissable*: Ethan Doyle White on the Witches Sabbath since 1900 www.cambridge.org/core/element... 🧙 🗃️

What do these three Americans have in common? They all shot dead people they accused of being witches. And ended up in asylums rather than prisons. I discuss such USA witch shootings in my book "America Bewitched". This can happen again.

Looking to hear all the latest botanical news from Scotland? Check out the latest FREE issue of the BSBI's Scottish Newsletter, for articles on clubmosses, ferns, protecting Scotland's local plants, tufted saxifrage, under-recorded taxa, brambles and even the odd butterfly! bsbi.org/learn/period...

The Baptism of Christ by Douglas Strachan, c1930 in St James Episcopal church, Stonehaven. Fellow Aberdonians Strachan and Ninian Comper have plenty of glass in churches in this part of Scotland, but this is the only church I know with work by both of them.

2 July 1583: James VI, having escaped captivity, is moving with impressive assurance to stabilise his new situation. Today he holds a Privy Council meeting in St Andrews noting the due to 'greit querrellis and deidlie feidis unreconsiliat' among his nobles and his fear of violence... 1/ #earlymodern

When Autistic Interests Are Mistaken for Narcissism: Understanding Neurodiversity and Relationships | Counselling in Cornwall #monotropism www.cornwallcounsellingdirectory.co.uk/blog/when-au...

Boffins peg narcissistic leadership as the real driver behind 'return to office' demands

Just returning from a fantastic workshop with Cambridge University Library's Genizah Research Unit where I got to see a Hexapla palimpsest, Maimonides's autographs and many other treasures. The colleagues there are lovely too!

Job Opportunity! Lecturer in Modern British History (post-1800) The University of Manchester - History Department www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DSB645/l...