Oh the temptation.

🚨 #medievalsky 🚨 Middle English Dictionary update via FB: "In its 100-year history, MED has enjoyed periods of support, and periods when that support was lacking. It is about to enter on one of the latter. After this year...UMich will no longer fund ongoing editorial work and maintenance." 🧵

My manuscript notes, now an occasional series: "the article -claims- the scribe of the tipped in markers and organizing stuff with his humanist hand is likely Pieter Meghan, whom I believe is the one-eyed drunken Fleming." #medievalmanuscripts

Ah, nothing like seeing my past self make devastatingly smart observations about a manuscript, "WHY IS THERE AN ILLUMINATED BLACK GOAT on fol. 52r?" #medievalmanuscripts

Real sympathy for the Pope on this one. www.irishstar.com/news/us-news...

Go student journalists! #dailybruin on a roll recently. Also, shame on #UCLA . dailybruin.com/2026/02/26/u...

Little things. www.latimes.com/california/s...

Hey, #medievalsky - I just launched Compilatio ( oldbooks.humspace.ucla.edu/index.html ), a quick-and-dirty site that assembles completely digitized #medieval #manuscripts (mostly from UK repositories) in one convenient location. Check it out, and do let me know what you think.

Big anti-ICE rally at UCLA today. Students, staff, faculty in solidarity with the Minnesota fight back, connecting the dots btw many causes

“Then there’s the hippopotamus.” RNA in printed Renaissance books is quite an adventure. phys.org/news/2025-12...

This is a polite “fuck you” in medievalist.

College costs are soaring! www.brookings.edu/articles/wha...

Teaching #Milton today (to a likely empty room). Christopher Ricks in 1966, "A more telling exposé of the cruel falsities of a dictatorial heroism has never been written. As many critics have said, Satan’s rally is a fascist rally. But fascism will never be a thing of the past."

WE WON. I am *begging* you to take note of who did this. *Not* UCLA admin—they’re still scuttling around behind closed doors, attempting to appease—but FACULTY AND STAFF, led by AAUP.

Spent a lovely hour making boxes for the #UCLA turkey foodbox program for UCLA community members in need. Volunteering alongside students is always a joy.

Anyone have a spare few million? I’ve got my eye on a 10th C gospel written by women. news.artnet.com/art-world/me...

Furry seal skin AND tiny Icelandic manuscripts! www.sciencenorway.no/cultural-his... www.icelandreview.com/news/rare-15...

Damns straight. UC faculty, UC Faculty Associations (hi @UCLAFA ), and #AAUP pushing back against #UCOP. Universities are not corporations. www.science.org/content/arti...

Can’t believe we have to fight these fights. But here we are. dailybruin.com/2025/10/14/j...

4 out of the 9 Nobel laureates in Chemistry, Physics, and Medicine are University of California faculty (2 UCSB, 2 Cal) and one other received all their degrees from the UC system (UCLA and UCSD). So those highly funded woke liberal universities are clearly failing, eh?

Strong statement today from UC's Academic Senate:

First day of instruction at #UCLA. Amidst fucking everything, I take strength, courage, and even joy from our students. We shall see if it lasts the day, but for now, on a gray Los Angeles morning, the year begins with sharp glimmers of hope.

Not waiting for #UC leadership to sell us out.

Tomorrow the UC regents are meeting at UCSF to discuss Trump's extortion attempt. This is a defining moment for the UC system, for public education, and for the university as an institution. We demand no concession, no capitulation, no cuts.

My former student won an Emmy! Well done, Jui!

It is, I will admit, a very small relief to see the University of California making very small gestures in the right direction. #StandUpForUC t.co/7ovP018f2q

“It's like we all know, way down in our souls, that our generation is gonna witness the end of everything.”

I love my work. It may not feel the same way about me. #medieval #manuscripts

Snipers on the roof last year. My rage at #UCLA ‘s failure to protect students, and indeed how they were endangered, will never fade.

Not now, people. Never now. Shame on President Drake.

A police attack on a film screening is just one of the assaults on student freedoms that have turned UCLA into more of a fortress than a place of higher learning, write four UCLA faculty members.

Joshua Clover died. I was so very young when i met him in 1996. As was he.

And I wonder, are they one of my students? One of my friends’ students? Obviously they’re one of my colleagues’ students. How many steps removed does it take for people not to see the fucking outrage?

UPDATED: At least 83 students -- at campuses for University of California, California State University and Stanford -- have had their visas revoked as of Monday evening.

Need a project tonight and tomorrow? Check out the instructions here and consider adopting a site at risk.

Remember the 90s when everybody only hurt sometimes.

Fab work. #scribes #medieval

Go #UCLA students at the Getty. dailybruin.com/2025/03/06/g... #medieval #manuscripts

Prioress's Tale - "And hastily they for the provost sente." Yeah, if I had a singing corpse on my hands, I'd look for someone in charge pretty damn quickly too. #Chaucer #medieval

Why does 25% AfD among young men spark a thousand "what is going on with young men?" posts yet Die Linke 34% among young women generates...nothing at all? Yes, young men voting for the radical right is an important phenomenon. But so is young women going rad left *at even higher rates*.

Massive #medievalsky manuscript find in the SBB-PKB: a copy of Ranulf Higden's 'Petagogicum'—a work hitherto presumed lost—produced near the time of its composition and perhaps under Ranulf's personal supervision (according to the article). Congrats to all involved! www.spkmagazin.de/2025/der-moe...

More gloves (though not white, and not cotton, and I suspect present for Serious Scientific Reasons). #medieval #manuscripts

Cursed white gloves. #medieval #manuscripts #medievalsky bbc.com/news/article...

I love my students and colleague @devinfitz.bsky.social

Check out #googleAI getting #Chaucer wildly wrong. On the other hand, I sort of love the Man of Law/Bevis of Hamtoun mashup. Custance quietly floating along through the rivers of blood in London. #medieval #medievalsky

I know there are many, many issues with the world. But, the MIDDLE ENGLISH DICTIONARY IS DOWN. Help! #medieval #medievalsky #middleenglish

“A Geat woman too sang out in grief; with hair bound up, she unburdened herself of her worst fears, a wild litany of nightmare and lament: her nation invaded, enemies on the rampage, bodies in piles, slavery and abasement. Heaven swallowed the smoke.” -Heaney’s Beowulf

***screams in Angeleno** Pause. Shallow breaths.