If you are outside the UK and would like to apply for funding to receive training in Linked Open Data and ARIADNE, you have three days left to get in your application! Details below 👇

Review copy has arrived...

I put together some *very detailed* notes about six years of running a successful newsletter — including thoughts on churn, paywall placement, how to avoid getting sick of your own voice, cadence, and so much more www.patreon.com/posts/very-d...

A really true-to-the-books Peter Wimsey with full PTSD. I feel like both adaptations took aspects of the character (Carmichael went for the mystery, Petherbridge went for the romance) but not the whole man.

House on the Highway (1/18)

Oh, no reason.

damn is this beautiful.

Yes, we are spoiling you: have a link to my huge romp through the history of French food in Britain featuring copious amounts of snails, cassoulet and tarte tatin.

There is a new, open access 🚨 📖 book tracing the global history of Zoroastrianism from antiquity (6th century BCE-7th century CE) to the Middle Ages—and then into modernity. My friend & top Manichaeism scholar @babelalexandria.bsky.social has a chapter as well. www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edi...

Faculty: libraries and librarians need your advocacy BEFORE our collections are shuttered and our workers are fired. Whether you think your library is in trouble, and it almost definitely is, write to your provost and tell them how essential the library and library staff are to your work. Right now.

One of my favorites. Every Sayers book is a little different. This one feels so personal with vivid characters and a great hook. It really draws you in.

Just finished reading Gaudy Night, a 1935 mystery novel which was new to me. It’s set in a women’s college at Oxford, stuffed with fascinating women characters, academic life at that time, and reflections on what it means to be a woman thinker and whether that is possible within marriage. Loved it.

This is an amazing little guy, but I want to talk about the Hamin Mangha site in northeastern China where he was found. CW: the story centers around a small building containing the burnt remains of 97 villagers who died 5,000 years ago. I include images of their excavated remains (skeletons).

To bring a smile to your face A 2,000 year-old figurine of two ‘Dancing Dogs’ 🐾❤️ Blackware ceramic, Colima, West Mexico, 200 BC - 200 AD. 📷 Princeton University Art Museum #Archaeology

RDW Glass is offering an exciting Stained Glass Residency, taking place over 3 weeks in September 2026. This unique opportunity,led by glass artists Keira McLean and Rich Welsh, invites artists of all backgrounds to explore stained glass as a storytelling medium. #stainedglass #glasgowart #glasgow

HMML is hiring a "Cataloger, West African Manuscripts," a full-time, benefits-eligible, remote position. Details: https://bit.ly/4njwcgW The Cataloger will participate in HMML's effort to catalog Islamic manuscripts recently digitized in Mali. This is a one-year, grant-funded position. #LibraryJobs

Only a month to go - and available for pre-order now! uk.bookshop.org/p/books/huma...

A detail I didn’t know: “The Herald entered the Epstein series for a Pulitzer Prize that year, but it was not a finalist. Alan Dershowitz … who helped broker Epstein’s original deal, wrote a letter to the Pulitzer committee that year, urging them not to honor Brown’s work.” share.inquirer.com/THMiUZ

🪄Historical Sea Routing is now much quicker to load, reload, and compute seasonally-plausible sailing routes, thanks to some behind-the-scenes browser magic. Find a 6500-mile return trip in under 1 second! 🛟 Do you have historical voyage data which might help with calibration? [1/3]

A new study of Sasanian brass dictates that artisans working with the metal at late antique Merv and Nineveh were experimenting with brass for military use. TL; DR: Have some respect for this allot & it’s craftspeople! It’s not all about bronze and iron, y’all. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

✉️ Explore 145,000 medieval merchant letters as a live map: the correspondence network of Francesco di Marco Datini (c.1363–1412), spanning Florence to Barcelona to North Africa. Visualise routes, travel times & seasonality. docuracy.github.io/datini/ #DigitalHumanities #MedievalHistory

BY ACCIDENT I FOUND THIS HOW

asked my boss if i could work from home but he said i don’t even work from work

#FindsFriday This fabulous little figurine of a woman was found in Egypt from ~3000BC But based on the pose she was probably carved in Mesopotamia Buuuut she's made from Lapis Lazuli from Afghanistan! Quite a journey! #archaeology #photooftheday 📍Seen in the Fitzwilliam museum in Cambridge🏺

A personal favourite for my first #MosaicMonday on Bluesky: late Roman mosaic with pastoral Anubis guarding the Egyptian wildlife (a possible Sphinx included). City Museum, Rimini. 📸 my own.

"Recent Discoveries at Cheops’ Red Sea Port in Wadi al-Jarf." An April 30th lecture by Pierre Tallet, with online attendance possible. Exciting! #Egyptology #AncientBlueSky www.oeaw.ac.at/en/oeai/even...

@chrislhayes.bsky.social ICYMI, a piece that reminded me of Twilight Of The Elites, for obvious reasons. "a world with universal basic income is more meritocratic than a world without one" www.scottsantens.com/the-angine-d...

Peg Bracken’s “Pardon me, you’re stepping on my status symbol“ should be required reading for internet users

Last week to register for the LMS Colloquium on Saturday, 2nd May! Co-organised with CREMS and taking place in person at Queen Mary University of London. We can't wait! 😁🎉

Very cool and an interesting topic!

Just a few more days to apply to this year’s Take Your Research Public course - an introduction to public writing, social media, podcasting and more for academics new to this work. Guests include @drsurekhadavies.bsky.social and @estelleprnq.bsky.social. Free, online, over four Tuesdays in June.

Woohoo, here's my essay with my fav co-author on 30,000 fellowship wins across the Guggenheim, Stanford CASBS, NAEd, National Humanities Center, RSF visiting scholar, and Harvard Radcliffe. Spoiler: it's the people working at prestigious universities www.publicbooks.org/who-gets-gug...

This book about dogs is almost out

"I grew up across the street from a public library, and it was the only place my mom would let me go on my own. It was my second home, and I read everything that I could get." ~ Tracy Chapman Chapman by Nicholas Albrecht #Booksky

But shall this crazed old man be tamely suffered to drag a whole ship’s company down to doom with him?

MUPPET TRENT REZNOR: what have I become / my swedish friend? SWEDISH CHEF: ervie wurr ye durr gurrs awerre en de ern

Bye bye, archaeology funding. 🧪🏺😢

The problem with trying to be nuanced and accurate about the capabilities of LLMs (especially consumer LLM products, ESPECIALLY chatbots) is that to the extent that they are good at solving problems they are even better at convincing you that a problem was solved

"Among young American men, the strongest predictor of support for the tradwife lifestyle was not gallantry but hostility towards women" Apparently this is not what researchers "expected". Which makes one wonder: had these researchers thought about it for 30 seconds? www.thetimes.com/life-style/s...

A long read about the AI targeting software and kill chain failings that caused the Minab atrocity where Iranian primary school kids were blown to bits www.theguardian.com/news/2026/ma...

So sad my schedule means I couldn't speak at this, sure it will be a great event!

More proofs! This one is about Dutch ghost stories from and about 19th-century Batavia (Jakarta) and how they mix European and Southeast Asian supernatural elements in working through the varied anxieties of the colonial experience. Coming out soon I hope.

We were crucified nearby… how often can you say that?

#MedievalSky I received a very important announcement today. Feminae, the bibliographical database on medieval women created and run by Margaret Schaus for the past couple of decades, is going offline as of 1 April. Download as much as you can ASAP: inpress.lib.uiowa.edu/Feminae/Adva...

So, um... this is bad. Really bad. I looked at the letters that were translated by the AI, and the very first one I found was almost entirely hallucination. Thread:

We should reconsider the term „energy crisis“ when speaking about the effects of the Iran war. This is very specifically a crisis of fossil fuels and their single point of failure. Fossil fuels are no longer synonymous with „energy“. We have other, better options.

These folks do excellent work. Absolutely worth the yearly subscription.