I'm pleased to share the news that I have recently begun a term as co-editor of the British Journal for the History of Science (BJHS), working together with the now editor-in-chief, the brilliant Amanda Rees @amandarees.bsky.social.

Still going cheap. Hurry - it can’t last!

And if you happened to leave some nice reviews, I wouldn't mind at all!

Oh, and there's a bridge in Brooklyn we'd like to sell you, too.

UK readers: if you want to buy a hardback HTVTUTTM at a paperback price, Amazon currently have it at a whopping 68% off. Worth it for the amazing dust-jacket alone:

Entirely agree.

UK readers: if you want to buy a hardback HTVTUTTM at a paperback price, Amazon currently have it at a whopping 68% off. Worth it for the amazing dust-jacket alone:

Fascinating Aberystwyth connection to this story:

Rage, horror, despair, anguish, and ghastly smiles, united their hideous expressions in the murderer's face, surpassing far the wildest representations of a Fuseli or a Kean. That's Matthew Clydesdale's corpse being electrified by Andrew Ure in 1818!

Which history departments in particular? The ones being closed at a terrifying and unstoppable rate, the ones losing their funding or…?

This is a massive fail. "We made errors here" does not begin to cover it. www.techdirt.com/2025/09/02/w...

Old but still relevant - possibly even more so now. I should update this.

“Why tradwives aren’t trad”. Delighted to feature in @prospectmagazine.co.uk today. Read online here: www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/society/hist... #Economica #womenwealthpower

Well I've voted calcite. I don't think David Brewster's ghost would forgive me if I didn't.

Ok who the fork thinks our job is to product “ideological…foot-soldiers”?

I spent some of the morning being interviewed about Harry Grindell Matthews, Death Ray inventor. Surprisingly (or unsurprisingly) topical as it turns out. So watch this space.

I was always awe-struck whenever I met him on the few occasions I was on a IOT panel. Difficult to imagine who could replace him.

Why Ai can't write my book. It's sycophantic, can't break with pattern recognition, flat, sad, it can't simulate emotional acuity, personality or experience on the ground. on.ft.com/47k2y5v

History courses available to book through Aberystwyth University Lifelong Learning www.aber.ac.uk/en/lifelong-... I'm teaching Twentieth Century Family History.

Now published! For anyone with an interest in solitary waves, steam carriages, canals, the British Association for the Advancement of Science, the contest for the Chair of Mathematics at the University of Edinburgh in 1838, or late-Georgian shenanigans generally: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Very very good letter in the FT magazine this morning pinpointing what humans definitely do when we “learn” and why machine LLM “learning” isn’t that. (And also why LLMs take up so much more energy than we do for thinking.)

@networkgender.bsky.social (FGEN)’s statement about Newnham College excluding trans women from its scholarships.

AI is not meaningfully intelligent. It certainly isn’t sentient. This isn’t a question, let alone an ‘unsettling’ one.

I suppose this is the point when I should say again that: the amount of money the videogames industry brings into the UK economy every year is *more than double* the value of the fishing and steel industries *combined* what this country is really good at is producing culture

I think we’ve stumbled onto the lost city of R’lyeh!

It seems Pepper’s Ghost is alive and kicking.

13th August 1831 📅 Richard Lewis (Dic Penderyn) was publicly executed at Cardiff Gaol for the part he played in the Merthyr Rising 🚩 His last words were: "O Arglwydd, dyma gamwedd." - "Oh Lord, here is iniquity." biography.wales/article/s-LE... #Wales #History

At the Eisteddfod last week. Talking about how thinking about the future needs to start with history.

‘We’re the party of ambition’: Plaid Cymru sets out to topple Labour

Dydd Llun yn Eisteddfod Genedlaethol Wrecsam! Ymunwch â ni yn y pentref Gwyddoniaeth a Thechnoleg i ddathlu degawd o gyfrolau cyfres Gwyddonwyr Cymru, yng nghwmni @elinrhys.bsky.social, Gareth Ffowc Roberts, @irmorus.bsky.social a Deri Tomos. Manylion isod, croeso cynnes i bawb! #Steddfod2025

Dewch yn llu/Come along! Dathlu degawd o'r gyfres Gwydonwyr Cymru/Celebrating a decade of the Scientists of Wales series. Os fyddwch chi yn yr Eisteddfod ddydd Llun, dyma'r lle i fod/If you're at the Eisteddfod on Monday, here's where you should be:

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

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.

The chillies are doing OK.

I should add that this is not a criticism of the report, or of the importance of institutions continuing to do this work, just a comment on the suggestion that this questions rather than *reinforces* Edinburgh's leading role in the Enlightenment www.theguardian.com/education/20...

We’re here. And guess who else is here too!

Paperback publication day! Have a good read. Things changing far too slowly for #womeninSTEM

Cornwall Council has voted in favour of the motion calling on the Government to formally recognise Cornwall as the UK’s fifth nation, and to reach a devolution settlement that properly reflects Cornish national identity.

The Tories are on the brink of annihilation in Wales – and it holds a lesson for Westminster politicians | Will Hayward

#BastilleDay 🇫🇷 #OTD 1790 • Rev Dr Richard Price attended a dinner held at the Crown and Anchor Tavern to celebrate the first anniversary of the Revolution. #History

Cat enjoying the sunshine - and no, that’s not one of the best kept bits of the garden!

Penblwydd Hapus William Robert Grove - 214 years old today. Abertawe born natural philosopher, lawyer, judge. Spearheaded reforms of the Royal Society; wrote the Correlation of Physical Forces; invented the fuel cell.

This is just ….. perfect!

And if you can't read it, you can at least listen to it!

🥳 Huge congratulations to Degrees' Chair Oliver Morton (@eaterofsun.bsky.social)‬ for winning the @absw.bsky.social award for Opinion Piece or Editorial of the Year for his article 'A place to talk about cooling the Earth' in @economist.com: www.economist.com/the-world-ah...

dammit you know one's brain has been eaten by a certain kind of Jewy Americanness when one cannot find a satisfactory synonym for "hold by" and it's not even in a reference to whether or not one uh, holds a particular position on Jewish law

I'm glad to see that this is out at last - my lecture on Richard Price to the American Philosophical Society on his 300th anniversary. I'm not sure how many of you will be able to access it (I can't!) but for those of you who can, enjoy: muse.jhu.edu/pub/56/artic...