Last minute Christmas gift in 1530: an illuminating dove.

We are sharing crazy archive stories? When my work in Cologne, in the Historisches Archiv der Stadt Köln, was finished, about a week later the archive building collapsed. In Amsterdam, in the GAA, someone very nice showed me an uncatalogued source - that substantially helped making my third book.

I posted this👇 to a claim that genAI is better than Ctl+F to search historical docs. @tristanpalmgren.bsky.social replied with a genAI summary of my document and @bookllyfr.bsky.social asked if it was accurate. It turns out that it did exactly what genAI does: made stuff up & got stuff wrong.🧵

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗕𝘂𝗿𝗴𝗲𝗼𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗘𝘂𝗿𝗼𝗽𝗲𝗮𝗻 𝗣𝗿𝗶𝗻𝘁 𝗧𝗿𝗮𝗱𝗲 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗗𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗯𝘂𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗼𝗳 𝗣𝗿𝗶𝗻𝘁𝘀 𝘃𝗶𝗮 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗣𝗹𝗮𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗻-𝗠𝗼𝗿𝗲𝘁𝘂𝘀 𝗣𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝗔𝗻𝘁𝘄𝗲𝗿𝗽 Karen Bowen, Dirk Imhof Sample Pages Available More Info: bit.ly/4j8Yx7K #BookHistory #EarlyModern #Antwerp #History #Printing

🎵 “Last Christmas, I gave you my golden giant W, this year …” 🎵

If you are giving away 📚 these days as presents, why not do it like Sigismund Meisterin (left) in 1457? The Augsburg-based monk gave his book - a history of #Augsburg - to Sigismund Gossembrot (right), maybe through a giant golden Initial, surely making an impression. #bookhistory #booksky

Encouraging undergraduates to *start* with AI, robs them of the skills they need to begin learning how to be a history detective. And when you move up to the graduate level, AI doesn't have access to actual archives. And it cannot produce new knowledge. *YOU* have to do that.

The part of "the" library catalogue dealing with journal articles just aggregates info from various article databases (because journal articles are usually not registered in the actual catalogue). In theory, these dbs should vet their info, but the sheer volume is massive (~1.5b title entries here).

Another way of putting this: AI is basically setting off a nuclear explosion over academic citation by injecting distrust into a system built on trust.

To clear the air here, because I am getting a lot of questions and feedback on this, we are cooked. Here is why:

An Amusing Wooden Automaton That Types a Courteous Email on Computer Keyboard When Cranked laughingsquid.com/courtesy-ema...

"Die von uns aufgedeckten Sicherheitslücken erlauben effektiv, nachträglich archivierte Web-Inhalte zu verfälschen, also über die Vergangenheit zu lügen"

"We envision a resistance that is...a repudiation of the efficiencies that automated algorithmic education falsely promises: a resistance comprising the collective force of small acts of friction." "How to Resist AI in Education" by me & @cnygren.bsky.social www.publicbooks.org/four-frictio...

We were already cooked, AI is just exposing the burns to open air.

When the light begins to return, and you all watch winter #solstice sunset images, the next summer solstice comes closer. Here is a 19c etching of Stonehenge's summer solstice, illuminated from behind by the rising sun; with a few sheep in foreground at left.

If this is already the normal procedure everywhere, i.e. a google scholar import, universities’ library catalogues will be useless tomorrow.

"Please indicate the expected impact of your research proposal" "By the end of the second project year, we expect to reach between 250 and 500 citations of non-existent papers associated with our work"

If AI isn't bothering to make up a research profile for you, are you even an academic?

Wenn ich tippen darf, dann ist heute der umsatzstärkste Tag im deutschen Buchhandel.

(also the idea that *Germany* is a place where academic freedom is defended is, uh, not supported by recent events)

The cv, the dark cv, and the hallucinated cv. Academia is on its way from announcing the work done, the failures on the way while getting work done, to listing up work that AI invented and no one has ever done. #academicchatter

Academics now need a section of their cv for heavily cited papers by them that they did not actually write.

👑

Another beer post for the evening: In 1241, Pope Gregory IX informed Archbishop Sigurd Eindridesson (r.1231-52) that children who are baptised in beer can not be considered to have been properly baptised.

One year later, and I am not even asking anymore.

Closing out my year with a journal editor shocker 🧵 Checking new manuscripts today I reviewed a paper attributing 2 papers to me I did not write. A daft thing for an author to do of course. But intrigued I web searched up one of the titles and that's when it got real weird...

I totally agree. AI-detection will be a skill.

A widely used #Christmas time special of the European past was to buy and wear a paper crown. A paper crown, #skystorians? Yes, a printed paper crown. And the tiny street seller highlighted in this #earlymodern painting is selling them. Let's have a festive 🧵

Age of paper, or Paper Age is not yet over. The thing os: we are just starting to understand what it has meant. #PaperAge

Ich ermutige weiterhin zur Promotion, aber kläre deutlich auf über die Aussicht auf und den Weg zu einer festen Stelle im deutschen Wissenschaftssystem.

I can only echo this, the jobs are mainly gone, have never been there for long, or will be reduced soon. It is a mess, has been, and will be. #academicchatter

Me, prompting the delayed Christmas cards to all my friends and family.

👑

As an American I associate paper Christmas crowns with Christmas crackers in movies about the UK. I assumed they were a Victorian tradition or something. Turns out they’re much older and date back (at least) to the early modern. @dbellingradt.bsky.social ‘s thread has a few cool examples. Others?

"A German study published last month in Nature Communications tested lottery-first approaches, in which a draw decides who may submit a full proposal. The results showed that these systems cut costs by roughly two-thirds compared with conventional competition." *sigh*

Here is a 🧵 with random Christmas gift wishes I, apparently and evidently, posted to the blue skies during 2025:

Some beautiful books for lovers of history of science as lateChristmas gift suggestions! #histsci #books #goodreads thonyc.wordpress.com/2025/12/19/a...

🚨 History buffs of the Holy Roman Empire: We built an app to visualize rulers' itineraries between 919 and 1519 based on the Regesta Imperii. Thank you @albertwendsjo.bsky.social for all the help! Explore here: carlmc.shinyapps.io/hre-itinerar... Please let us know of any issues and feedback!

Artificial intelligence ❌ Angelic inspiration ✅

#skystorians at work in the weeks before Christmas (and in every other week, tbh). 🗃️

Don't steal pies this Christmas.

HOW WILL WE LEARNE THINGES? Uh, what about bookes, filmes, teachinge, educacioun? HOW ABOUT WE MAKE A MACHYNE THAT DOTH KNOWE STUFFE Uh, what about bookes, filmes, teachinge, educacioun? AND IT DOTH STEALE & HURT THE EARTHE Uh, what about bookes, filmes, teachinge, educacioun? YEAH THE MACHYNE

AI-assisted writing in 1716. #skystorians

„In 2022 alone, approximately 91 million metric tons of graph paper were produced. This is the type of paper mainly used for publishing purposes worldwide.“ #booksky

Me, but writing grants!

Brought to mind this wonderful book (and talk) from Anthony Grafton (@scaliger.bsky.social) as well; one for #bookhistory folks and #skystorians: www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tUC...

For decades, a cacophony of technological prophets has repeatedly proclaimed the impending end of the paper era. But here we still are, a paper-using humankind. @agnesgehbald.bsky.social and me wrote an article about paper in global book cultures. #paperhistory is #bookhistory, #globalhistory 1/3

That's me, in the process of writing my next book, thinking about how to phrase it best, and while being disturbed by incoming (e)mails ... #amwriting

Vorweihnachtszeit ist Druckfahnenzeit. Unser Tagungsband wird im Frühjahr 2026 erscheinen: "Schreibkalender der Frühen Neuzeit. Druckwerke mit Raum für handschriftliche Eintragungen (1540-1800)", open access und in Papierform, mit Text und Bild, und viel Detailliebe. #Schreibkalender