Whew! It's been a while! Mississippi IPs are still banned from Bluesky, so I have to get as much info and connection as possible when I have access. What did I miss?

I've decided that I'm going to have my students debate who was "greater": Alexander the Great or Phillip II. I want them to be brutal! 😂😂

Slightly diminish a band: Counting Pigeons 9999 Maniacs

No cheating. Your last saved celebrity photo is your therapist. Who is it? I'm not sure this absolute unit is qualified, unfortunately.

If you were forced to bet on which university courses of study still will be relevant in 50 years, languages, literature, history, philosophy, and arts are all pretty good wagers. They have an excellent track record over the past thousand years or so.

An alert to all creatives using #WeTransfer. Basically, stop immediately! As of August, they will begin scraping everything you send for AI purposes (see the new paragraph in their Terms and Conditions below). If, like me, you’re a voice artist, they’ll clone your voice. Avoid at all costs.

POV: your new, old-school label maker doesn't have an "&" so you use a "7" to approximate a Tironian et.

It will cost you $0 to repost that SCRIPTORIUM PLAYTEST IS NOW LIVE 🎉 We’ve poured our hearts into this build, and we can’t wait to see your most magnificent medieval designs ❤️ Play for free on Steam until July 10!

Here is a little story about the #earlymodern emoticon "<3" and the complex symbolic meaning of this typographical entity that I posted yesterday. Follow me, for catholic symbolism and some #bookhistory, dear #skystorians of the blue skies. Here we go...

The semiliterate people who use chatgpt like to point to calculators as a precedent of assistive technology but the thing is: calculators actually calculate. A calculator really does let you outsource calculation. It does exactly what it is supposed to do, and marketed as doing, reproducibly.

Have you dreamed of seeing or reading books recently? Well, according to a German publication about dreams and their meaning from 1603 this means: future sadness and depression. Access the "Traumbüchlein" (VD17 39:113610Q): resolver.staatsbibliothek-berlin.de/SBB0000A4E40... #booksky #bookhistory

Quelle excellente idée d'avoir réuni les éléphants médiévaux dans une seule œuvre! www.uliwestphal.de/elephas-anth...

Ed Tech is a Trojan horse for tech elite capture of public resources. Every time.

To mark the 50th anniversary of the Journal of Medieval History we’ve asked eight distinguished historians each to use an article from the journal’s first five years as a jumping off point to discuss historiographical trends. @tandfresearch.bsky.social

I feel like people need reminding: We have acknowledged #Juneteenth here for generations, without acknowledgement from the federal gov’t or corporate sponsorship. We will continue to do so. Them folks can only gentrify our holiday if we let them. Some background: nmaahc.si.edu/explore/mome...

"i asked grok" "i asked chagpt" yeah well I asked a rare books librarian and they found things I didn’t even know I was looking for, while answering questions about provenance

I made a quill pen! There's definitely room for improvement 😂

As the coordinator of the North Regional MS History Day competition, I can genuinely say that this program changes students' lives. I volunteer my time because it matters. If you care about history education, please call your reps and make some noise!

I've updated my " #Premonstratensian Order in the Middle Ages" bibliography site. It now contains 6,250 entries & covers: — Secondary lit on the order, 1480s-2025 — 22 languages from Basque to Swedish — Array of digital & print sources — Themes, houses & individuals www.geneseo.edu/researchweb/...

I made a silent puppet film about Godzilla vs. Paul Bunyan. (thank you to @iamchubbybunny.bsky.social for Japanese translations and @okaywolf.ink for clanky piano!!)

For a little light heartedness, my friends and I are playing pick 3 fantasy conclave. Here are the rules if anyone is interested 😂 I'm going to ask about wild cards

Even accepting the premise that AI produces useful writing (which no one should), using AI in education is like using a forklift at the gym. The weights do not actually need to be moved from place to place. That is not the work. The work is what happens within you.

Someone tried to sell me anti-aging body oil, and my response was "Oh, no thanks, I'm pro-aging, thanks!" She didn't quite know how to respond. Peak middle-aged reached!!

Trump tried to bury this story on a Friday night, but it’s extremely important: He’s planning to take land on the border controlled by the Dept. of Interior and sign it over to Dept. of Defense so migrants “would have trespassed on a military installation,” resulting in harsher punishment.

In order to bring more joy into my life, I have changed my text alert to a turkey gobble (I got a new phone and so had to choose something). It's not much in the scheme of things, but maintaining my joy fends off dispair and allows me to keep moving forward. So gobble gobble, turkeys!

I think it's very important to note that when you want to run human misery like a business--a business based on rounding up people to ship them to a country they aren't from to work in forced labor camps--you're a slaver. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

We are delighted to announce the launch of The Guild of Medievalist Makers (GuMM), a community for academic and academic-adjacent practitioners of creative-critical work. Read more about us and the society on our new website: www.guildmedmak.com

A quick 🧵of the incredible sights in cities across the USA right now. Millions are on the street speaking out against Trump & Musk trampling the Constitution. Let’s start here with Salt Lake City 😳👏 #HandsOff #HandsOff2025 #FiftyFiftyOne (📸Nate Blouin)

Could anyone with experience of working at Italian archives give my tips for planning my research trip? I need access to these archives ⬇️ - Archivio Centrale dello Stato - Archivio Storico Diplomatico ​- L'Archivio dell'Ufficio Storico dello Stato Maggiore dell'Esercito All help appreciated!

This is such terrible news in a sea of terrible news

"It has come for science because it was never just about the Humanities, but about how we assess American progress through infrastructures of new knowledge and its application." scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2025/04/02/t...

Those trying to understand the tariffs as economic policy are dangerously naive. No, the tariffs are a tool to collapse our democracy. A means to compel loyalty from every business that will need to petition Trump for relief. 1/ A 🧵 to explain his plan and how we fight back.

Just some good news on the timeline! 2 of my graduating seniors got into their top grad schools, and another passed her Praxis II in Social Studies with flying colors! I love knowing when my students are off to bigger and better things 😍

My autocorrect often changes "amazing" to "snacking" and I want that to be a new slang! "Your new shoes are snacking!" Or, "Women have bodily autonomy again? That's SNACKING!!" Let's get on that

Today marks the 400th anniversary of the death of King James VI & I. He presented this spectacular copy of his writings to the University in 1619. The sumptuous velvet binding – now a little worn – carries his coat of arms in gilt leather. UL Sel.2.83. @theulspeccoll.bsky.social

Over the weekend I was one of the volunteer stitchers on this incredible memorial for the victims of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire. The banner will be displayed today during the memorial ceremony. I encourage you to take a look it www.instagram.com/share/BALT3F...

If you accept that non-citizens have no right to due process, you are accepting that citizens have no right to due process. All the government has to do is claim that you are not a citizen; without due process you have no chance to prove the contrary.

What is the man of the left doing with his body?! Nothing models better how the value of learning is in the PROCESS of coming to understand something perplexing & not in the PRODUCT of simply knowing it than my discussion with students today of this gorgeous initial from the St Albans Psalter. 1/n

never surrender

The thing about so-called generative artificial intelligence is, the intelligence isn't artificial. It's real. It's OURS. The techbros stole our intelligence (our data, our thoughts, our stories, our art) and used the software to regurgitate it and spackle it together into digital particleboard.

In today's adventures I saw this absolute unit at @themerl.bsky.social

#skystorians I'm going to see the Hereford Mappamundi tomorrow. I'M GOING TO SEE THE HEREFORD MAPPAMUNDI TOMORROW!!! This is bucket list shit, for real!

Between 1927 & 1933 four nuns at Eibingen Abbey replicated by hand the renowned manuscript of Hildegard von Bingen’s magnum opus, Scivias. When the original 12C manuscript disappeared after WWII, the replica became a facsimile-original. I tell the story of that facsimile here tinyurl.com/3mcb6vt7

This is not law. It couldn’t withstand legal scrutiny. Don’t comply in advance university presidents. General counsel, don’t panic. Do law, not vibes.

Just a lil graph showing how close we are to bringing y'all an incredible card game! We just need a few strong days! If you want: - An intense co-op game - Great Afrofuturistic art - A chance to befriend dragons Keep spreading the word! www.kickstarter.com/projects/115... #cardgame #kickstarter

I saw an owl on campus about 30 mins ago. Our mascot is the owl so it felt like a sign. Not sure what it is a sign of, but it feels positive. Go Owls!

NEW: Pregnancy became far more dangerous in Texas after the state banned abortion, according to ProPublica’s first-of-its-kind analysis, which found the sepsis rate for women hospitalized as they miscarried in the 2nd trimester shot up by more than 50%. https://propub.li/43487Tj

Update! It went really well. We watched a video about Elizabethan fashion, talked about sumptuary laws, and did some blackwork. I'll definitely add this to my repertoire going forward

When you're a bit extra and make professional-looking blackwork kits for your in-class Elizabethan fashion activity, and stitch a model with varying thicknesses. I hope my students appreciate me! 😂

I promised my students that I would teach them about Tudor fashion on Tuesday... so I need to learn about Tudor fashion (any suggestions?) 😂😭 As part of that, I'm teaching them how to do blackwork embroidery, which I do know how to do. So that's my weekend plans sorted