"We find that most life-years lost are among civilians... More than 1 million life-years involving children under the age of 15 years have been lost." Over 3 million life-years lost in Gaza - The Lancet www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

Happy Fenton Day to all who celebrate. Jesus Christ, fourteen years. youtu.be/3GRSbr0EYYU

From today's Chronicle of Higher Ed briefing. I am *never* an advocate of cutting programs. But I am curious to see if there will be the same type of "students aren't majoring in this, so let's cut the program" discourse around computer science as there always is for the arts and humanities.

The first thing we did as a nation to honour those people’s awful sacrifice was boo Winston Churchill like a panto villain and lurch Britain further left than has ever been thought possible since. Reframing previous generations as nostalgic conservatives is fucking ridiculous.

Interesting piece from @thelancet.com on the new arms race, the vanishing Golden Hour, and the impact on drones on every aspect on military medical care Understanding the health threats of drone warfare - The Lancet www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

Hello it’s not just the sciences. The reason we’re in this mess is because they (and I also mean universities themselves) already killed the humanities and social sciences in subservience to the basic sciences and no one has a critical thought to bless themselves with

The publisher who disowns AI will make an absolute killing - it'll be seen as the most independent, trustworthy and imaginative and will be the place to which authors and readers will flock.

“When an emergency sitting was called to (basically) nationalise a steel plant at Scunthorpe to save 2500 jobs, the [House of Commons] was packed. When about 14,000 people have left or been laid off in less than a year from one of this country’s biggest sectors, that gets a parliamentary yawn.”

Had a brief exciting moment, thinking I'd found a big data historian job. Odd for Linkedin, but you never know 🤷‍♀️ Nope... just making AI more fascist

Was looking forward to spending the day sorting out grant & Fellowship applications. Was not expecting to be punched in the stomach by Agatha Christie on the way to work... #AcademicSky

Literally nobody who wants to follow a "vocational" route is prevented from doing so in the UK today by the existence of universities. Entire networks of colleges exist to provide such routes. Many universities themselves have a wide range of "vocational" provision.

Might be wise to do a wee bit of reading up on the actual history of technology.

There is no arrogance quite like an MD treating your expertise as a hobby.

'Even when women were mentioned, the report found they were more often victims than protagonists, with the women murdered by Jack the Ripper more likely to be taught in lessons than the female code breakers at Bletchley Park during the second world war 1/2

Also it’s not a great leap to criminalising women who now take Tylenol whilst pregnant (in a similar way to which women who have miscarriages can now be prosecuted) and also continuing the dehumanising of people with autism in a way that ends very badly.

Utterly absurd that the US has gone from >125,000,000 prescriptions in a single year for opiates alone, to "maybe women shouldn't be allowed painkillers" in 18 months.

Think betting on GenAI is a brilliant PR move? Take a gander at the lovely ratio on that post and think again Delightful that they're getting roasted like this for supporting the assault on actual science & expertise by pushing GenAI-slop

I'm sorry, worldwide, irrevocable, non-exclusive, transferable permission to my voice and likeness? For what now? In any manner for any purpose??? This is in academia/.edu's new ToS, which you're prompted to agree to on login. Anyway I'll be jumping ship. You can find my stuff at hcommons.org.

Written by a doctor at St Thomas' Hospital, London after the Tommy Robinson march on 13/9.

The team at the Centre of Paediatric Blast Injury Studies at @imperialcollegeldn.bsky.social do amazing work that's more urgently needed than ever, and it's great to see them recognised today www.linkedin.com/posts/save-t...

Trying his best to smile for a picture on Ginger Cat Appreciation Day 🐈🐈

The reactions by historians to *that* Nature paper are because we are routinely consistently told by both laypeople and too many STEM colleagues that our methods are irrelevant, nonexistent or inferior, and our fields pointless. Our institutions agree. Miss me with defending STEM in this moment.

Based on one small 93 year old dataset, that was known to be iffy & unreliable in 1932, and done by someone with no training & no other sources. But "it's science, not speculation" and in Nature, so automatically more reliable & prestigious than actual historians.

Oh for... The 'inter-' in interdisciplinary should be a hint to try and actually work *with* another discipline, instead of ignoring it -Historians exist and they can do useful things! Starting with pointing that you shouldn't use ChatGPT unless you're into public humiliation

The mental health benefits of not knowing any history right now must be massive. Moving through your day with total equanimity. What happens next? Who knows? Maybe something good

No10 spokesman not prepared to criticise anything about Farage speech today. Not his description of "invasion", not his prediction that the UK on brink of civil war, not plans to pay the Taliban or Iran to take back migrants, or indeed to rule out doing so themselves.

It's not every day you see a Viking longboat cruising through central London The Saga Farmann will be at St Kat's and open to visitors for the next couple of weeks

Ok folks: what is your favorite fact that you share with people (maybe a bit too) eagerly?

Just opened the @royalhistsoc.org newsletter & invite to @jbritishstudies.bsky.social Sept seminar "How I Wrote This" Now petitioning for all Friday meeting invites to come with a playlist, cocktail & frappé recipes

ACADEMIC READING ALREADY COMES WITH A SUMMARY IT IS CALLED THE ABSTRACT

DID SCURVY & CONSUMPTION MAKE BOY KILL CATS Absurd reporting from the BBC. That "may" is doing so much work... Given he *hasn't* been diagnosed with either, you could replace adhd & autism in that sentence with literally any other condition If he had either, his lawyers would have used it

I simply do not understand why AI is being used to create massive door-high women with weird knees when a whole bunch of us out here already exist 🤷🏻‍♀️

Struggling to navigate work's HR system to buy some new glasses Turns out they'll chip in *£25* (1/3 cost of lenses), on the condition that glasses are "solely" for computer use. They may not be used for other work-related tasks such as "Reading" or "Looking at colleagues" LOOKING AT COLLEAGUES

Historians Politely Remind Nation To Check What's Happened In Past Before Making Any Big Decisions theonion.com/histori...

Looking forward to today's trip to Manchester and the LUSTRE Network's workshop on AI and gov records. Less excited about the 4.30am start...

'Oleh Bykov - who used to work as a lawyer - drove this development. Since 2014 he has been supporting the army as a volunteer. He met medics on the front line and from his conversations the magnetic extractors were created.' Fascinating developments from a horrific context. 1/2

I have never 'excelled' at a sport in my life. I've quit Couch to 5k nine times. So why is the hyper-competitive academic bit of my brain utterly convinced that with a bit of training, I'd smash a pentathlon.

For anyone with scholarship on Academia.edu you might want to check your account settings. I learned from a friend that some material is being used to auto-generate AI podcasts. Luckily there is a setting allowing you to opt out www.academia.edu/settings#ai-...

Pretty sure these records belong to the American people and their “legitimate need” to see them is for any goddam reason they like.

What I want is a TV documentary channel entirely devoted to documentaries with no quick-cut montages of everything about to happen, which don't give a fuck about keeping my attention, presented by extremely knowledgeable people in a terrible mood who have no interest in trying to make me like them.

the most basic, enduring plea from medicine: stop obsessing over tech solutions for tiny marginal returns when we haven't even mastered the basics of 19thC public health reform, let alone anything more sophisticated.

Plenty studies showing that your postcode is a better predictor of your health outcomes than your genome.

Reminds me of that training female spies were given during WW2: "Don't ask a man who works for the government what's happening. Confidently tell him something you know to be inaccurate, and he will be forced to correct you".

As someone who once cracked a history book. Going back to trench warfare willingly is fucking terrifying. taskandpurpose.com/news/navy-ma...

Very excited to have caught The Midnight Bell at Sadler's Wells before it closes this eve But really feeling for the dancers, having to do 2+ hrs in a heatwave, in full tweed suits & knitwear 🥵

Nice little rabbit hole for a Friday afternoon Glastonbury now has the facilities of a minor hospital, inc. physio, imaging, GPs and anaesthetics 82% of fatalities at music festivals are due to trauma The medicine of…music festivals - The Lancet www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

met a neuroscientist who trained an LLM on thousands of parables and was stunned by its capacity to interpret. no human could have done it, they said. a lot of ai amazement is people brushing against the humanities, being unable to imagine the scope of our work, the time it takes, the skills we have

Damn the man - save the PCC 💪 Great piece from @theguardian.com about the @princecharlescinema.com’s ongoing battles with property developers. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

I love that Vilnius University sells temporary tattoos of items from its library

Join us at the British Academy on Tue 24 – Wed 25 June, for a conference exploring ethical and political issues that can arise in the context of communicating about health and health care, bringing together experts in philosophical ethics and health practice. Book your ticket: buff.ly/NsoFDd6