Merriam Christmas

anyway, when you're wondering why AI can't do the job of historians, think about this image. none of this future collection is accessible to any LLM now; perhaps five decades from now, perhaps, 1% of this might be machine-readable. perhaps.

One argument I used to make to my students about why it was important to learn history (and historical thinking) is that someone was always going to be trying to tell you things were natural or had always been this way and that you needed to be able to see that as an exercise of power.

Apprenticeship has a long history in the UK; although there is a myth of the decline of apprenticeship as a training mode historically, what instead happened was that plum placements became the purview of the wealthy while poor children were trapped in endless indentured contracts with no route out

Once again 'a copy of Newton's first publication in Germany in battered contemporary sheep' is at the top of every child's Christmas wishlist, and I'm glad to say we're the only retailer where that is available for purchase: www.abebooks.co.uk/first-editio...

Harrowing (literally). And one of the knock-on effects from this kind of curricula violence is that legitimately interesting and promising computational work—including, yes, involving AI—is inevitably tainted by association. It’s not good for anyone, except administrators.

“Spell my own name correctly in email sign offs at the end of the year” challenge (this week iterations have included “Bwth,” “Beeth,” “Brth” and /incomprehensible keyboard smash/)

Pretty pleased with what my Spotify wrapped says about me: Bach (a top 2% global fan !); Fleetwood Mac; Charli xcx; Be Good Tanyas; and Stan Rogers

🪡🧵: As a part of the Robinson special collections bequest scheme, I’m working on the diaries of Hilda Runciman, one of the first women members of parliament. In 1938, her husband, Walter, was sent to Prague to help negotiate between the Nazis and the Czech government. She went along. (1/?)

It’s the “we have no choice” that gets me. Yes you did, @womensinstitute.bsky.social. You could have chosen to fight. There was no legally binding implementation from the ruling. No, you chose the path of cowardice—have the decency to own it as a choice.

I tried Gemini on some tricky marginal annotations I'm working on. I'm not a good manuscript scholar but it took much longer than me to produce a transcription that ignored most of the manuscript and inserted a word that wasn't there. I think I'm not going to give up reading my sources just yet.

I need you all to know that when I say I’m engaging in the proud tradition of writing my conference paper on the train to the conference, it’s all me

Friendsgiving plate 2025: green bean casserole (with from scratch mushroom soup, natch); sweet potato casserole with marshmallow; macaroni & cheese; Brussels sprouts with gochujang butter & walnuts; mashed potatoes; cranberry sauce; turkey; onion gravy

St. Paul-sized Roger L’Estrange balloon at the Lord Mayor’s Day parade

TFW you’re rehearsing for the Christmas concert and the conductor shouts up to the organist “Miles, I want apocalyptic levels of organ” and you know you’re going to be able to feel it in your sternum

I am heavily invested in handwriting & historical documents. Historians need to weigh carefully whether time spent transcribing documents is “wasted,” or whether it actually helps thought processes & skills. This is not to say these tools should not be used. Just consider the cost of “time saved.”

it’s important to remember that we can trust this application of machine learning—wrapped, alas, inside a chatbot—because we who are endowed with actual intelligence can independently verify the accuracy of the transcriptions.

The Friendsgiving turkey has arrived and is looking particularly plump

JQ has met snow directly for the first time today; as with everything, he met it with bonne humeur and a desire to see if something good to eat might result

Palaeography 🧵! Or why it can take a historian a while to confirm what they already suspected must be the case and not really get any further than they were—but this time with confidence 😂 I'm working with documents that list the incomes of medieval French lordships, so a lot of it is about grain.

I do find it funny that there are two (2) kinds of special collections library job: 1. You speak 18 languages; never sleep; have worked in a library for 50 years; published the definitive work on whatever the Board thinks is Most Important; salary of a billion dollars 2. You give book ($5/hour)

Curator of Rare Books at Folger listing is live. You’d be working with some first class people! amherst.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/FSL_Em...

Interesting revelation from the Newcastle University town hall w/ VC Chris Day today; apparently Russell Group VCs all had dinner w/ Reform leadership 2 weeks ago to try and “engage” with them. Wonder if they’ve also tried to “engage” with other parties like the Greens, who are doing well in polls?

The UK government is spending nearly £40k+ a year for 4 years on me, a US citizen, to be here and get my PhD. Yet no one is talking about taking my grandmother’s earrings or seizing my bank account. How did I “earn” that, & someone else also leaving 1 country for a better future in another, not?

Nice one, Zadie Smith.

Can’t emphasize how much I want to go back in time and ask everyone doing anything I care about to not do anything important like dying or being elected to the Stationers’ Court of Assistants between January and 26 March so I don’t have to deal with calendar reconciliation

“Lest we forget,” everyone says, actively and violently forgetting

I often bring knitting with me to conferences; this project came together almost entirely during the Women & the Household conference I just attended, and is finally complete. Meet Harold Fatmus:

Great look into the comprehensiveness of EEBO and EEBO-TCP and what that means for using those tools. Highly recommend for all computational bibliographers and early modernists doing large-scale work with EEBO

The fact that the UK is continuing to ban bringing back cheese from the EU should be considered a hate crime

More sights from Antwerp: the cathedral, Bakkerij Goossens, and Elfde Geboed

Spending a dreamy morning at the Hendrik Conscience library with the conference group and @svanimpe.bsky.social, who is a walking encyclopedia

Belgium will fry anything except bicycles

Ready for day 1 to talk about women, households, and books!

So Antwerp is incredible; obsessed with Jeanne Rivière, matriarch of the Plantins

I am in Antwerp for the Women & the Household in the Early Modern Book Trade conference (I’m very excited) and I have to say, in terms of hotel art, I really won the lottery

Thinking of my family, friends, and loves on this US election day. Go vote, please. It IS worthwhile; it DOES matter, even if it’s “just” for your school board and local officials.

Brits: so is NYC next to California My American mother: I saw the Cambridge train attack on the news and was scared you might be involved despite living in Newcastle and not traveling

Happy Halloween! 🎃

Apparently this is a new policy for CUL; instead of charging £75 for the new digitisation of theses, it’s a flat rate of £35 for all theses requests now.

I think a lot about the chance we had at the start of COVID to finally become a more compassionate, collectivist nation, and how profoundly we were failed not only by the sociopathic greed of the ruling class but by each other. It doesn’t mean we won’t get there, but the lost opportunity haunts me.

The fact that Cambridge University is out here charging £35 to a current student to get a copy of an already-digitized thesis is wild to me. Unrelated, if anyone knows Dr Jennifer D Melville or has a copy of her 1999 thesis they'd be willing to send on gender and space in 17c England...

Question for people who work with British records offices/collections: what might "Fac Office" be? I have a note from a researcher (no longer with us) who cites a record of a marriage allegation in "Fac Off." I've looked around and am generally just puzzled as to where I'd find the original.

9:23am is the perfect sunshine spot time in the front room

There's a magnificent passage in "The Dispossessed" about this.

This is one of our biggest arguments: that OpenAI is vampirizing universities for the cachet and legitimacy that affiliation with higher education affords

A lovely walk yesterday through the Gosforth nature reserve; saw 3 grey herons, a red kite, a kestrel, a young roe buck, and of course a thousand wood pigeons

As a once (& future?) library worker and current @ucu.org.uk member, I stand with striking BL staff. Library, and especially special collections, workers are often told they should accept low wages because they get “a dream job:” but any job needs to put food on the table & pay rent.

British Library staff are out on strike from Monday 27 October until Sunday 9 November over pay: please do not undermine their action by attending this exhibition (or any other events at the BL) during that time. www.museumsassociation.org/museums-jour...

Every year we stray further from God’s light