The Radical Act behind your local library: Celebrating 175 years of public libraries. blogs.bl.uk/thenewsroom/...

20 years after first reading ‘Middlemarch’, I find I like Dorothea more and Lydgate less. There’s an awful lot in the book that’s great but I find it hard understand why it’s so loved. I enjoyed more all the other Eliot fiction I’ve read in the last year or so.

'In this stupid world most people never consider that a thing is good to be done unless it is done by their own set.' George Eliot, Middlemarch

Exciting news for fans of Victorian science! @ransomcenter.bsky.social recently digitized a photo album featuring members of Maull & Polyblank's Literary & Scientific Portrait Club, including Richard Owen & Michael Faraday (seen here). ransom.center/maull-polybl... #histSTM #histsci #photosky 🗃️📜📷

A hundred and thirty years ago, here's one of the richest men on Earth fantasizing about colonizing Jupiter. No relevance at all to anybody's fantasies about colonizing Mars, obviously.

In his essay “Colonizing the Cosmos”, @irmorus1 joins the interplanetary safari that is John Jacob Astor’s A Journey in Other Worlds, a high-voltage scientific romance in which visions of imperialism haunt a supposedly “perfect” future — https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/colonizing-the-cosmos

Parents! Carers! Anyone looking after children this summer! My regular reminder of this thread of TOYS you can make with scrap materials you probably have lying around the house:

#OnThisDay in London's striking herstory, 1890: Sweet Victory! East End chocolate factory workers win their strike wp.me/p74yfw-199

Read all Elements in The Philosophy of Biology series for FREE during the ISHPSSB conference 20 - 25 July. You can find all of these Elements free to download and read here: cup.org/4kEgivL

#HPS #hpbio #evobio

So this week the CEO of NVIDIA said AI was as important as electricity, and this comparison always makes me think of mad Victorian products this ⬇️ AI *is* like electricity in the way grifters are trying to shove it in everything, and make dubious claims about its benefits.

Today in 1864, Thomas Huxley doodled this “ancient ape-man of Gibraltar” while bored in a meeting. It was inspired by the Forbes Quarry skull—a fossil his friend was puzzling over that we’d later recognize as a Neanderthal. #OnThisDay 🏺

Excited to share that the volume Lakatos @ 100 has just been published (open access)! It’s a great collection on Lakatos’s legacy. 📘 Book link: link.springer.com/book/10.1007... Grateful to the editors for including me! #Lakatos #PhilosophyOfScience #Bayes #OpenAccess

our potatoless breakfast www.irishtimes.com/news/darwin-...

99p on kindle. A no-brainer, as people used to say

Steven Rose - always an interesting and provocative thinker in science and a prominent figure in the so-called 'Darwin Wars' in the late 20th Century. www.theguardian.com/science/2025...

Latest read. It’s easy to see how this morally complex novel lends itself well to college courses and book clubs. There’s much to shock and this happens on many levels. I did, however, find the writing clunky at time - it could have been better edited. I will read more Butler.

Latest read: This isn't Gaskell's best-known work, possibly because of the amount of dialect that features. However, it's arguably her most realistic (okay, minus the usual convenient coincidences) and the final 100 pages step things up a gear and pack an emotional punch.

Born #OnThisDay 1799 Joseph Pease, Liberal MP for Durham South 1832-41, and the first Quaker to sit in the Commons. This post looks at the difficulties he encountered in taking his seat at Westminster. victoriancommons.wordpress.com/2023/10/23/q...

One of our excellent Science Communication MSc students is leading a free history of science walking tour in London. Sign up here www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/london-wal...

If you don’t do the research yourself, you don’t know what the LLMs HASN’T told you about the data it’s analyzed. You don’t know what materials are available but not accessible to the LLM. You don’t have anything close to the information you need to make a cogent argument that stands up to scrutiny.

The 1832 Reform Act received royal assent #OnThisDay 1832. This blog from our editor Philip Salmon provides an overview of the Act’s significance and legacy: victoriancommons.wordpress.com/2022/06/07/1...

Redesigning our Year 9 curriculum to include Semmelweis and Snow, and vaccinations. Explaining through causality is part of our curricular metacontent. So these models build on a culture of explaining. I explain metacontent here: cmooreanderson.wixsite.com/teachingbiol... #iTeachBio #chatbiology

Latest reads. Baldwin’s ‘The White Man’s Guilt’ is a particularly powerful essay and the short stories often make difficult reading. Highly recommended.

Electric Fish and the First Battery daily.jstor.org/electric-fis...

@mikehobbiss.bsky.social @paulclinepsy.bsky.social I’m looking forward to reading this - I’m sure I’ll learn a lot.

Top Ten Endangered Buildings 2025 Former Marine Hotel, Penarth, Glamorgan. Grade II, perhaps Samuel Dobson, c.1865 Read more: t.co/5ehdITu4gL #Wales

Gaskell’s short stories are certainly interesting, and Cousin Phillis has much that is redolent some of the themes in her longer works. However, if you’re thinking or reading (more) Gaskell, I would prioritise the latter.

'The Song of the Shirt' by Thomas Hood (1799-1845) is powerfully evocative of the 'life' of a needlewoman in the first half of the nineteenth century (c.f. Elizabeth Gaskell's 'Mary Barton' and 'Ruth'). It was an immediate success on its publication. poets.org/poem/song-sh...

‘[T]he great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us, are unconsciously controlled by it ... history is literally present in all that we do ... since it is to history that we owe our frames of reference, our identities, and our aspirations. James Baldwin

Absolutely delighted that the first episode of the podcast I’ve been making with Ubisoft and HistoryHit is now out wherever you get your podcasts! We discuss creating Victorian London in Assassin’s Creed Syndicate, featuring an interview with the lead writer ✍️ open.spotify.com/episode/0kTv...

New blog post ↓ Is "I do, we do, you do" the right vision of a lesson? #UKEd #EduSky #iTeachBio #SciTeachUK

🎉NEW BLOG SERIES🎉 Written with @paulclinepsy.bsky.social, a 4-part guide to teaching students to evaluate in #psychology hobbolog.wordpress.com/2025/04/30/q... This is the one area that I see teachers ask for help with more than any other #UKEd #Edusky

Conference⤵️ Secondary Science Festival (including #chatbiology speakers): Attendees get a free copy of "Difference Maker" 👌 #SciTeachUK #iTeachBio

SCHEDULE RELEASED #edusky Cogscisci Surrey is a month away! Here are the amazing talks we have to offer featuring: @adamboxereducation.bsky.social @drgarethbates.bsky.social @carlhendrick.substack.com @lambhearttea.bsky.social @hugheshaili.bsky.social @mrlockyer.bsky.social @mbdscience.bsky.social

I have just reread the below after a gap of many years. It’s so, so good. If you teach English and haven’t read it, I strongly suggest you do, as it’s the best sort of postmodern novel. Read this Guardian piece to know more. #greatnovels theguardian.com/books/booksb...

The best subject-specific CPD I have undertaken is writing a comprehensive set of notes for AQA's Chemistry A-level. This continues to be a valuable exercise as I repeatedly edit and refine them in light of lessons, students' queries and exam questions. www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/u8e5n...

The best subject-specific CPD I have undertaken is writing a comprehensive set of notes for AQA's Chemistry A-level. This continues to be a valuable exercise as I repeatedly edit and refine them in light of lessons, students' queries and exam questions. www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/u8e5n...

Recent reading. More on these shortly (probably).

Get GOLD🔶 for just £32.50 until Easter! app.carousel-learning.com/teacher -> MY ACCOUNT -> BUY GOLD 🎉💪

'...it is the role of the historian to uncover those details which have been obscured behind the flowers, the perfume and the cheap posies'. Felicity Hall uncovers the real stories of Victorian flower sellers. www.historyworkshop.org.uk/womens-histo...

This potentially fascinating free book isn't for the faint-hearted - I hope I have the time to read enough of it with care. 'In Their Own Words: What Scholars and Teachers Want You to Know About Why and How to Apply the Science of Learning in Your Academic Setting' www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/grtva...

'The evidence shows that prior knowledge is necessary for effective reading and critical thinking, so some educators have advocated for an emphasis on memorization of facts and information. That approach, though, is not sufficient.' This is worth reading! www.researchgate.net/publication/...

My latest read - Eliot’s first fiction is full of pathos. It’s also the subject of the final chapter in Catherine Gallagher’s ‘The Body Economic’, which focuses on Malthusian anthropology.

Teaching without slides – just diagrams and dialogue – we co-constructed these models this week: Year 7: Allen's rule Year 10: Lung ventilation IB1: Positive feedback drivers of climate change IB2: Viral evolution I explain how to teach this way in #DifferenceMaker #EnactingSystemsTheory

It's half term, which means I have a copy of Primary Reading Simplified to give away. Simply *repost* this post for your chance to win. I will choose a winner at random this Saturday (22nd February).

From next week our X account will close and be archived. We will be solely on BlueSky where we will continue to promote #history, historical practice and the humanities. Please do join us #Skystorians

Happy #DarwinDay2025! Here's something different - Darwin Online has just released the largest collection of Darwin and evolution caricatures in history. The caricatures show us how surprisingly late the creationist critiques on evolution began. darwin-online.org.uk/Caricatures.... #history

Just what did science look like 150 years ago? This new podcast from @hpsleeds.bsky.social uncovers the surprising history of the sciences, focusing on the Yorkshire College of Science - forerunner to the University of Leeds. Episode 1 out now, a new one coming every fortnight!

Interested in the British Civil Wars? If you haven’t come across this free resource yet then do check it out 👇 Lots of podcasts with leading historians; maps; timeline; teaching resources #17thCentury