Mary Shelley: I subtitled my book The Modern Prometheus as a cautionary tale Tech company: At long last,

New issue of Manuscript Studies: A Journal of the @sims-mss.bsky.social Vol. 10, No. 2 (2025) muse.jhu.edu/issue/55895 #openaccess @pennpress.bsky.social @projectmuse.bsky.social @lisafdavis.bsky.social @borizzle.bsky.social @teachingcodex.bsky.social

Please believe me when I say that this meaningless, historically suspect slogan is being used to sell "AI." Here it is in the just-released November 2025 report on AI by Microsoft. www.microsoft.com/en-us/resear...

“AI” is truly the perfect crime Plausibly presenting a magic slave to consumers, businesses and investors when it depends on criminal and unethical behavior to create and operate and is ultimately irretrievably broken and can never work as you promise (and you know it). It’s fascinating and scary.

Hold up

Congratulations to @rachelschine.bsky.social for winning the Best Book Award from the Middle East Medievalists association for her book, Black Knights: Arabic Epic and the Making of Medieval Race! Brava!!! 🍾🍾🍾 Here's the link, if you haven't already read it: press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...

We could solve like half the problems in education with smaller class sizes (like 15 instead of 30 kids crushed in a room). Including that it would be easier to find teachers b/c they wouldn’t get so burnt out.

I cannot wait to see this film, & this is a cool preview. #apocrypha

Now is a great time to order some translations of #apocrypha in the Westar Tools & Translations series, including my translations of The Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew and the Nativity of Mary! wipfandstock.com/search-resul... Get 50% off plus free shipping (if you choose media mail) with code CONFSHIP.

Another year, another SBL annual meeting. Here is my usual list of all the Christian apocrypha papers on this year's program (including my own session on the Apocrypha of Symeon Metaphrastes). www.apocryphicity.ca/2025/11/12/c...

New version of Girl Yelling In Guy's Ear at Concert Dropped:

It's pretty cool to be able to see a medieval person's own writing in their own hand in a manuscript like this. And it looks like Willibrord had a rather nice style!

This is the feast–in all the churches!–of Willibrord, Apostle to the Frisians, d. 739. 🕯️ First up: the Calendar of Willibrord, BNF lat 10837, an early-8c manuscript written on the Continent, probably at Echternach, mainly in Insular majuscule. #medievalsky 🧵 portail.biblissima.fr/en/ark:/4309...

Ooohhh a manuscript mystery! I love a good "unidentified" text.

This is such an exciting story! BUT I do want to quibble with one statement in the news release: "Documents and books from the Middle Ages are rare." In reality, however, dozens of thousands of medieval manuscripts survive--in fact, so many that we don't even have accurate counts.

So interesting to learn about this: a manuscript bound in seal skin, with eight surviving pages, possibly among the earliest surviving books written in Norway. www.sciencenorway.no/cultural-his...

Academics in Assyria in the 7th c BC complain that admin is preventing them from doing research and teaching

Join us Friday for the November 2025 First Friday workshop with Ivan Miroshnikov (University of Helsinki). Register at the email in the image below for the pre-circulated paper and Zoom link.

My book is now available open access on project muse, with OAPen launch coming soon. Hard copies should start going out this week (if they have not already): you can get yours for 50% off with code SAR50.

Eleven #Manuscripts from the #Vatican this week www.wiglaf.org/vatican/2025... Includes a text on the Barberini Lyre, more papal writings, Caesar's Wars (several), some Neo-Latin, a catalogue of printed books... and more! #MedievalSky #Skystorians

The Tanner Bede is on Digital Bodleian! #MedievalSky 📜 digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/6285...

For All Saints' Day, a reminder that ALL THE SAINTS I've posted so far—9 months' worth to date—are on this page at my website: ruffnotes.org/saints/ Entries include links to the posts here on BlueSky and directly to the digitized manuscripts used in those posts. #medievalsky 🕯️

Here's a thread of the Apocrypals Halloween episodes -- there's some pretty good ones in there, covering a wide variety of topics, from early Christian apocrypha to Jewish folktales to evangelical comic strips to a Christian found footage horror movie

If you want a good laugh, you will find Reuters' AI assistant pop up the minute you click on this link from Reuters about how AI assistants make widespread errors about the news

Happy Carrie Fisher's birthday

(But also so so so bad that all of our LMS stuff is through Amazon?!?)

Does this mean my college will push back the submission due date for midterm grades (this Wednesday), or will I need to make up for it once Blackboard is back up? We have yet to see!

38 new #Manuscripts this week from the #Vatican www.wiglaf.org/vatican/2025... Includes an oration by Ubaldi, a part of an Atlantic Bible, some crazy heraldry, Cassian on Monks, Ethiopic, Classics and more #MedievalSky #Skystorians

The temporal drag of techno-bubbles: speedy hype, slow harm

In about three years the entire university pivot to AI curricula and schools and programs is going to be so deeply embarrassing. We will all pretend it never happened and I will be standing there, looking at people with a mirror in my eyes. This is all so embarrassing.

New issue of Early Christianity Vol. 16, No. 3 (2025) www.mohrsiebeck.com/en/issue/ear... @mohrsiebeck.bsky.social @megannutzman.bsky.social

Hell is other people('s AI decisions)

Ivor (3) was watching me charge something up using a USB C cable, and he asked if he could plug it in, and I said sure, and he asked which way up it goes, and I was able to proudly say “IVOR IT DOES NOT MATTER WHICH WAY UP IT GOES AND THAT IS AN EXAMPLE OF HUMAN PROGRESS”

To be candid, I want the bubble to burst. Because it will eventually and inevitably, but the longer the current charade goes on the more our planet and communities are decimated— and the more dependent we become on the few powerful people left who control those resources.

It’s a material reality that right now the AI tech bubble is holding up the empire. It increasingly powers all commerce, and is central to the most invasive surveillance apparatus the world has ever seen. Predictive analytics trained on our data have allowed billionaires to track us like wildlife.

It makes sense, because libraries are about providing access to sources and AI is about their enclosure

The law of the Internet has been called!

Sooo in that speech by RFK Jr. talking about the "pregnant woman at 8 months pregnant... gobbling Tylenol with her baby in her placenta..." he says women "overwhelm millions of years of maternal instinct." Does that mean he's admitting that the earth is not ~6,000 years old & evolution happened?

Papers from the @ria.ie @ceilteachomn.bsky.social @scs-dias.bsky.social conference on the Book of Lecan, which took place last week, are now available to listen to on SoundCloud. Enjoy! #MedievalSky #SpéirGhorm www.ria.ie/audio/the-bo...

Ooohhh shiny!

Did you know that Bookshop has free shipping today? (Lots of authors have good books on that site!) And two of my books on #apocrypha are there on sale right now! bookshop.org/beta-search...

Why do so many French words end in a silent x? ‘Cheveux’, ‘voix’, ‘paix’, ‘deux’, ‘mieux’, ‘faux’, ‘doux’ – the list is endless. There’s a fascinating story behind this x’s – or actually two stories. Click and zoom in on my new graphic to read about medieval abbreviations and imitating Latin:

I'm supposed to travel to Chicago next week for a medieval studies conference, & I'm starting to think... perhaps I will not & try to shift to an online presentation, if possible....

#histmed #MedievalSky Minji Lee's book, The Medieval Womb: Hildegard of Bingen’s Views on the Female Reproductive Body, has just been released #OpenAccess: library.oapen.org/handle/20.50...

I'm equally excited by the presence of 14th-century music notation in the margin. Cambridge University Library's own article here: www.cam.ac.uk/stories/merl...

Added to e-Clavis: Christian apocrypha ~ the Questions of Mary. www.nasscal.com/e-clavis-chr...

MLGB is back!! Delighted that Medieval Libraries of Great Britain @bodleian.ox.ac.uk is now back online. We are also working had on plans for the next phase of the resource, enhancing & adding data & functionality. HUGE thanks to my colleagues for their hard & clever work mlgb.bodleian.ox.ac.uk

Dr. Jane Goodall filmed an interview with Netflix in March 2025 that she understood would only be released after her death.