Also worth noting for the ‘everything is online’ crowd that the numbers of archives being destroyed means that an increasing proportion cannot ever be online.

Very relevant article for archives in Southern Africa (including destruction by fire and other disasters)

I spoke to @apache.be about the dispute over colonial-era geological archives from Congo held in a Belgium museum. New demand for copper and other minerals has given long-neglected mining archives a new economic significance: apache.be/2026/03/03/c...

I love the conversational tone old scientific articles had. There is no chance anything like this could be reported today in this manner in a reputable journal or in a pathology report.

If you’re part of a company, institution or other body and you’re interested in sponsorships or partnerships with @histfest.bsky.social, do get in touch. We’d love to hear from you! histfest.org/contactus/

Good time for Nigeria to be planning a refinery! Especially as lot of the bauxite that Gulf companies process make aluminum comes from West Africa. www.reuters.com/business/ene...

The Gulf Cooperation Council supplies about 8% of the worlds aluminum and right now they can’t ship aluminum out or alumina in

An aluminum smelter is being shut down in Qatar due to lack of natural gas to run it. www.reuters.com/world/middle...

Just went in to Grammarly and pasted in this article that I wrote for the Globe last year about finding my mother's book in LibGen and thinking about it as training data and clicked on expert review. A thread: Grammarly chose the experts. writinghacks.substack.com/p/for-there-... /1

Israel has been dumping herbicides throughout southern Lebanon as part of a concerted ecocide campaign to render the region uninhabitable. This has been going on for months with Lebanese journalists & environmentalists regularly reporting on it. The BBC: we don’t know why the Israelis are doing it

I gave a short interview last month about my work digitising historical sources and the prospects and challenges of using AI in this work: www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZNZ...

#OtD 1 Mar 1896 Ethiopian forces decisively defeated Italian invaders at the battle of Adwa. Up to 70% of Italy's invasion force of around 6000 troops were captured or killed. Italy then gave up its claim of Ethiopia, and surrendered some of Eritrea stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/7709...

I’m in Barnsley which has beautiful buildings, a charming social history museum, a lovely art gallery, and this very moving memorial to the tragic colliery explosion of 1866 that killed nearly 400 men and boys

All Protocol Observed | Welcome to Issue 230 of The Continent. Sudan's war is spilling over its borders - and Chad's president is suddenly very nervous indeed. Download your copy here: www.thecontinent.org/_files/ugd/2...

Very interesting these days too. Thank you for sharing, and your research, @mininghistory.bsky.social #academia #academicsky #mining #MilitaryIndustrialComplex

One big difference with the present is the extent then of the overlap between government and industry. In 1918, the government established the British Metals Corporation partly financed by Rio Tinto, whose longstanding chairman was the former government minister and ambassador Auckland Geddes.

Botswana wants to reserve the word “diamond” for natural stones to protect “the clear distinction between natural diamonds and synthetics”. The problem is that synthetic and natural stones are visually and chemically identical. How will labelling be enforced?

"Modern warfare rests upon a metallic basis" Succinct and still relevant quote from 1916 in this new article on Britain's efforts to control the global supply of metals in the early 20th century: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

In today's horrible investor-state dispute settlement #ISDS news, an Emirati bauxite mining firm has filed a case against Guinea where the amount is the size of Guinea's GDP www.iareporter.com/articles/bau...

I've been going down a bit of a rabbit hole regarding lead 'pigs' for a piece of work I'm doing on silver. Some were marked 'ex arg' ('of the silver mines') which suggests there may have been some de-silvering going on in Britain. A lead thread 🧵 😉 #Archaeology 🏺

Great trip to Hannover last week for a workshop on digital humanities and AI. Lots of productive discussions on digital preservation, infrastructure, equitable collaboration and new research tools. This will be published as a paper co-authored by all 26 (!) participants.

Incredible detail in this article that the ANC raised over £1 million for its election campaign in 1994 from the public in Britain, plus another £300,000 from British trade unions: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Hey South Africa, it looks like my new book on the history of the #Lesotho Highlands #Water Project (published by @HSRCPress) is now available! Also available at other quality booksellers across the country! #LHWP #History #Apartheid Exclusive Books: exclusivebooks.co.za/products/978...

Now in the public domain (so free to read and use) thanks to @anterotesis.bsky.social:

Teaching this today. If I had an infinite budget I've always thought the best way to teach students about British archives, power and decolonisation would be to give them 1 million sheets of paper and tell them they have a week to destroy them all with no a trace. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

If Mandelson and his network were doing this to Australia - the world's largest mining economy and 14th wealthiest country - imagine what they were doing to African countries.

Just curious: is there a book in your field that absolutely blew you away? That changed the way you thought about and approached your subject?

Would anybody like to read one of my long threads about a 2.5bn year old rock, bacteria that could produce oxygen but not consume it, and tank production in wwii

Can you guess which country in the world recently completely phased out nuclear energy production? Have a try at chartle.cc

Today's bland LinkedIn message from Mopani Copper Mines telling miners to "look out for one another" comes after two people were killed in accidents at the mine last month, a fact which goes unmentioned.

Just sever all ties with academia.edu and move instead to a better service like Knowledge Commons: hcommons.org Here's my profile page for an example of what you can get with ca. 15 mins of work: hcommons.org/members/josc... Additional advantage: No more spammy, scammy e-mails!

The decline of slavery and forced labor is one of the biggest social and economic changes in history. In a new article, we provide a quantitative, bird’s-eye perspective. We show that almost all countries have ended large-scale forced labor, often surprisingly recently. ourworldindata.org/slavery

I have a long-stalled essay on all of the literature around graduate reform and why it never goes anywhere (academia is decentralized, professors are asked to do things they weren't trained to do) but this is high up there: alt-ac paths are seen as second-best frequently.

The typography is just lovely on these! 1960s NCB booklets are great. @thecommonroomgn.bsky.social

The latest from the Mining Danger Project: "Down Below Ground: Research, Memory, and Place at Springhill Mine" by Kaley MacMullin and @drheathergreen.bsky.social niche-canada.org/2026/02/03/d... #envhist #histmed #mininghistory #cdnhist #labourhistory

There has been another large landslide in mine waste / tailings at the Morowali Industrial Park in Sulawesi, Indonesia, as per the video below. One person has been killed. Reports indicate this occurred at IMIP9, which is at [-2.8622, 122.1452]. www.youtube.com/watch?v=h37u...

Immediately adding "multiple award winning" and "famously talented" to my website.

Delighted to add the first of many amazing essays from last years Compendium. The first covers Peter Laurence's fantastic research on the many WWI POW camps along the Weardale Valley, specifically played for prisoners to extract resources for industry. Link below!

When I rework my manuscript and am happy with a sentence. "For many, if not the majority, of people globally, the “informal economy” is capitalism, and has been for quite some time."

I was sceptical about this claim but I think it may be true. Oil tankers are 28% of world fleet capacity by tonnage, liquefied gas carriers are another 4% and bulk carriers (some of which carry coal) are 42%.

📣Out now on #firstview! Molly Groarke (@mollygroarke.bsky.social) (@camhistory.bsky.social) on 'Imperial Family Biographies and New Approaches to the Family in Histories of the British Empire, c.1650–c.1950' #Empire #Family #Personal #Review 📜🗃️ 👉Read open access: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Film rec

I'm in Hannover this week to participate in a workshop on digitisation, looking at developing technical standards and preservation protocols for digital material.

Hidden beauty of Zimbabwe's 2.5 billion-year-old “geological marvel”, the Great Dyke of Zimbabwe, which stretches over 550 kilometres, revealed in striking astronaut photo.

#OtD 16 Feb 1931 coal bosses in Harlan County, Kentucky cut miners' wages by 10%. Workers responded by going on strike several weeks later, kickstarting nearly a decade of often violent conflict and eventually winning union rights in the region stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/8776...

This season our goal is to reach 5,000 new readers — and you can help. Invite one or two friends to subscribe and bring this kind of reporting to more people. Read Issue 228 here: www.thecontinent.org/_files/ugd/2...

1/ Issue 228 of The Continent is out: Wagner’s info warriors, post-Prigozhin. Leaked docs reveal their influence in 22 African countries. We focus on South Africa, Mali, CAR, Niger & Angola.

New in Transactions: 'Show Me the Data: New Practices for Historical Sources', by @ruthahnert.bsky.social, Katherine McDonough & @danielwilson.bsky.social: bit.ly/460nrkM As the ecosystem of historical research data expands, how do we keep control of source materials, esp digital? #Skystorians 1/2

🤠 Indiana Jones and the Ancient Gold Mines of @imperialcollegeldn.bsky.social. 🙏 Really proud that this great #history work by Humanities Project student Ivy Gao has now surfaced! www.imperial.ac.uk/news/article... /more

I spoke to Africa Energy magazine about energy history in Central Africa and how energy scarcity has been the key constraint for smelting and refining historically, and now: www.africa-energy.com/news-centre/...