A wild week beckons, with 'Yde and Olive' in Leamington Spa on Tues and Edinburgh on Fri. I'm teaching it on my Queer Medieval module too, so my students will likely give me new ideas for the performances! Leamington: daisyblack.uk/event/storyt... Edinburgh: daisyblack.uk/event/yde-an...

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Great news! JSTOR now have a free account with an Independent Researcher category. You can access 100 documents per month www.jstor.org/action/showL...

News | Science Museum launches Space gallery – new permanent exhibition is part of a wider project to rework the ground floor of the London museum

Y'all know this already but this is neither how trans people nor medieval currency nor alchemy work and also I'd hoped (foolishly, it would seem!) we'd moved beyond the traffic in women as an organizing social principle.

we have gone from a world in which we were told not to cite wikipedia because it was unreliable to a world where wikipedia might be the only reliable source left on the internet and we all owe a lot to the pedantic nerds who got us there

Shot, chaser Young men more likely to vote Green than Reform. Young men second most progressive group of any demographic. Combined right-wing vote barely bigger than Green vote alone for young men

We want robust, enormous research that is SUCH good research, you already know how important and right and insightful it is before you even start it. We want research so predeterminedly world-changing that there is hardly any point actually doing the research at all.

Just a reminder to check for your name in this list of books that OpenAI trained from. If your name is there, they probably owe you several thousand dollars. OpenAI cried that if everyone eligible author files, the company will go bankrupt, so I'm alerting every author I have ever spoken to.

BREAKING 🚨 The updated EHRC Code of Practice has now been sent to the Government. The Code is just as bad as we feared. It would mean a mandatory trans bathroom ban, and trans people's exclusion from public life. The impact would be devastating. But politicians still have time to stop this.

Rayner is gone so where is the media outrage at Farage and his taxing dodging scams? Home bought in his partners name avoiding stamp duty, GB News pay via a company to avoid 40% tax rate on his 92k pay from them.

Yes, but he’s Nigel. If he were Angela, he’d be toast. As he’s Nigel, he’s toasted.

Another day, yet ANOTHER stupid, pointless announcement on immigration from this stupid pointless government. Today: you are a student - we're going to write you a stern letter about how you better not be thinking of staying! Insanity. Racist, cowardly, insanity. #r4today

I want to explain a few things and then it might be clearer why UK trans people are upset. In 2001 I married my wife, Sylvia. In 2005 I started medical transition. (1/13)

need people to understand that the idea that “regular people” can’t understand trans people is inherently transphobic framing. #1: we are regular people. demographically, we are less wealthy than cis people on the whole because of employment discrimination, housing discrimination, and the wage gap

I hate to say it, but this feels like a horribly-targeted attack on trans healthcare, which so many people are being forced to seek privately because access via the NHS is so dire. Please do respond to the consultation if you can (the GCs will be all over this 😭) www.gov.uk/government/c...

having thought about this for three days, my current status is: what the FUCK are we doing trying to ban social media for kids and not banning AI use? we are literally telling them not to use the computer to talk to their real friends but instead to the imaginary technology monetisable 'friends'.

For all of the educators trying to deal with AI, I did a deep dive in early June and these are the four articles I decided to assign to my students. 1. This is the longest of the bunch, but so wonderfully comprehensive. www.technologyreview.com/2025/05/20/1...

Stop offloading cognitive tasks to "generative AI." Stop using systems w/ "AI" features either inextricably woven through them or prominently displayed at the top to nudge you into their use. Stop *Designing* "AI" tools & integrations that way. Stop building or using "AI" like this. Fucking Stop it.

can you imagine trying to convince the average skepti-dude in the year 2010 that this is what summer europe will look like in 2025

A cognitively impaired New Jersey man grew infatuated with a Meta chatbot originally created in partnership with celebrity influencer Kendall Jenner. His fatal attraction shines a light on Meta's guidelines for its AI chatbots reut.rs/45DQIRj @jeffhorwitz.bsky.social

Dame Stephanie Shirley has died aged 91. She adopted the name "Steve" in correspondence as letters signed Stephanie went unanswered. Despite such thoroughly ingrained sexism in computing, she built an astonishing tech career and did all huge amount to support other women in tech #histsci #histtech

Good morning hello how are you GUESS WHAT? We are launching a BRAND NEW PROJECT within @aat-transcribes.bsky.social, on a mission to help course creators and membership owners to be more accessible. We're kicking off with a webinar on Tues 19 August @ 7.30PM BST. Join us? Sign up here:

those damned outdoor pigs can't keep getting away with this

My book, Love and anti-Judaism in medieval English romance: Typologies of violence and desire, with @manchesterup.bsky.social, is coming out next month! I would be delighted if you might consider ordering a copy for your libraries 💚

- 400 jobs to go at Lancaster University - 1 in 4 people will be made redundant But where's the financial evidence for this extreme action? Please read 👇 Sign the petition 👇 chng.it/7F52bThYqn

Right, I’m writing job descriptions for SALES, MARKETING, ADMIN and OPERATIONS roles for @aat-transcribes.bsky.social today — 5-10 hours per week, remote, flexible, freelance, disabled-majority team. Do you love chatting to ppl online? Building rapport? Writing great copy? Operationalising systems?

Playmobil hog confirmed

First up, a translation & edition of an anonymous vita of Saint Knud Rex of Denmark, which has been largely neglected since 1912. I was co-editor of this volume & contributed with two articles. The book is open access: download.museumodense.dk/files/publik.... (2/n)

Sheesh this is mental. Here’s a list of Open Source alternatives. alternativeto.net/software/wet...

Ah yes. The best article title ever

I’m looking for FIVE researchers, podcasters, vloggers or course creators looking for top-notch transcripts or captions/subtitles who want to avoid the risk of their data or content being used to train someone’s AI (ahem WeTransfer ahem). Drop me a DM or follow the link below!

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.

🚨attn heritage institutions 🚨

F F S

Decades of mechanistic talk about university degrees as if they were bundles of 'skills' and 'prep' are about to be proved completely wrong (obviously). Want to get a real boost? Do History or English.

Incontrovertible evidence, now, of *police* investigating families supporting their kids with gender affirming healthcare in the UK. For trying to do the best for your child, following best practice in most of the world, here you get a visit from the police. Thank you, Wes Streeting.

Do you still have funds unallocated as we approach the academic year end? We accept advance payment for researchers who risk losing funding if it's not spent before July 31st. Don't let hard-won grants slip through your fingers! Tell us about your needs at academicaudiotranscription.com today

I’m no expert but I would’ve got a person to do it.

Georgia is fab, great to see everyone at UWP reception last night. Thank you to all our guests

Our fabulous collaborator Georgia from @uniwalespress.bsky.social, showing off the newest additions to the Medieval Animals series at #IMC2025: Vered Tohar’s translation of the Hebrew Physiologus, and _Introducing Medieval Animal Names_ by Ben Parsons.

This might also be a good opportunity to share my poem 'Medieval Mystic Margery Kempe in Tesco', published last year in The London Magazine (thank you!). It has a flavour of the medieval/modern mash-up that I enjoy! #gms2025 #teammargery thelondonmagazine.org/poetry-medie...

This is a big deal. Stephen Fry is difficult to dismiss as a fringe figure. He's as middle-of-the-road establishment as they come - with the politics and long silence on this issue to match. JKR and her fan club won't just be able to shrug this off. www.standard.co.uk/showbiz/step...

There's so much in here that historians can tear apart, but I'd like to point to just one bit of specious comparison: a brief reference to indexing.

Hi everyone I was denied entry, detained, and deported from the USA over the last 48 hours because of my reporting on the Columbia student protests I arrived back in Melbourne hours ago and had my phone handed back to me upon landing

As the debate continues about the value of humanities, arts and social sciences degrees, we have published a new toolkit that captures the vital contributions of SHAPE graduates to society, culture and the economy. It's covered here on WonkHE: buff.ly/pB45bCX Dive in here: buff.ly/WU6xBzT

Welcome to the archives.

The EHRC Guidance is a wicked exercise in removing rights from trans people - and is bad too for employers and service providers, those outside gender norms, people with disabilities and the economy. We've created a tool to make it easy to respond. Please use and share. goodlaw.social/9e59e9