I am shutting down for a while, blue skies, contemplating my job decisions in current academia. Take care.

There is a weird Protestantism that hangs about contemporary academia. We have festschrifts for retirees but absolutely no customs to manage losing SO MANY from our communities before we reach that point. There is no churching when contracts are renewed, no Placebos when careers are lost.

what a week. 2 more job rejections on my already a decade covering list of failed applications to stay within academia. the time to say goodbye is in sight.

It‘s upsetting to see the discipline of history in particular suffering so badly in so many countries.

what a week. 2 more job rejections on my already a decade covering list of failed applications to stay within academia. the time to say goodbye is in sight.

A timeline cleanse. Just images of pages of digitized old books that went wrong...

I am celebrating #ReformationDay with this sticker I spotted recently in the lovely city of Heidelberg.

About the order of authors in academic publications ...

An old post from late in my Twitter days. I'm going to have to update this in some fashion for the post-generative AI context, but in that context I think something like it remains important -- perhaps is even more so. I do not think these are skills that should be outsourced, even if they could be

A urine-doctor, holding a urine bottle, examining the urine, just like every #earlymodern urinoscopist would do. For reasons. #histmed

For another spotty-breeched Academic Macaroni by W. Hutchinson, lamenting the cutting off of his queue (pigtail) ready to take holy orders, see www.britishmuseum.org/collection/o...

Genuinely delighted to download a PhD thesis from a university repository where the author has neglected to remove the words "BITCH THIS IS YOUR THESIS" from the filename.

Consider yourself an academic? But where is your hat with tassel, the hair worn in a plait, the spotted suit and checked tights, like this fella from 1773 - called: the Academic Mac - is wearing? #academicchatter

New preprint alert! 🚨 “Let Them Eat Large Language Models: Artificial Intelligence and Austerity in the Neoliberal University”

“What do you think of AI?” “One of the best guards ever to play in the NBA. Allen Iverson is a legend.”

Historians and humanities folks have switched to the blue skies long ago, at least this is my impression. #eXit was a good thing.

🧵 Here's a behind-the-scenes look at the work that goes into lovingly repairing historic books from The Portico's 19th-century collection...

Schools in Europe were social spaces of learning and teaching, and above all, schools were a paper world: contact zones for pupils with papers of all sorts. Let's have a look at this 1670 painting by Jan Steen. A thread for #PaperHistory and #BookHistory #earlymodern #skystorians #BlueLZ 1/

Der Großteil hier dürfte noch nie ~richtig~ ein Buch aufgeschlagen haben: Uralte Bücher haben oft Scharniere, Klappen & Schlösser. Ist das Schloss weg, schlug man mit der Faust auf die Klappen & der Verschluss sprang auf. Voilà – das Buch ist aufgeschlagen! youtu.be/foh_TNfVWDc?...

Rituale. Schlüssel zur Welt hinter der Keilschrift tinyurl.com/2cwm8w49 #freeaccess

Eye glasses were the essential fashion accessorie whether thou passt the day poring o'er vseless bookes or striking a bargain with Mephistopheles! #HowToDoWithGlassesInThePast

Mockery of doctors looking very serious while staring at flasks of urine seems to have been a common imagery theme, & thanks to your thread, I just went back & confirmed there are eyeglasses as well on the physician next to Andreas Osiander in this illustration of the 1539 Nuremberg Schembart. 🙏

Also don't forget how essential eyeglasses were to the scholarly medical uniform used when examining a flask of urine while a worm-sprouting skeleton dances to a funky musical beat in front of you: digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/touch/totent... (from the Heidelberger Totentanz, ca. 1488) #HistMed

Academic swagger is a thing, and you know it #academicchatter

More of us need to be Highlander-inspired faculty, bearing unnecessary swords as signs of our obvious immortality

Die Geisteswissenschaften und die Öffentlichkeit – Szenen einer Legitimationskrise Mein Aufsatz über die Forderung, Geisteswissenschaften sollten öffentlicher sein oder sich verweigern, und über die Angst, Richard David Precht zu werden, ist erschienen (open access). brill.com/edcollchap-o...

Is this baseball I see in my timeline?

#HowToDoWithGlassesInThePast @dbellingradt.bsky.social

Nothing to see here? Well, this is a slow moving 🧵 for #skystorians and others about #eyeglasses of the past, about how to read in the past, where to buy eyeglasses, and how to do with them in general. The hashtag is #HowToDoWithGlassesInThePast Let's roll.

'By inventing a stable of fake scientists, paper mills can create a ready supply of publications and favourable peer reviews, ensuring that more of the mills’ submissions get published. This tactic increases their output and credibility for paying customers.'

Happy to see James Seth's book receive a shout out here - Musicians on ships in Early Modern Europe by Ania Upstill @folger.edu blog www.folger.edu/blogs/collat...

Bat, Frederick II, De arte venandi cum avibus, c.1310. 🦇 #Gothtober #BatWeek #31daysofhalloween

Es wird ein neuer Name für das BAföG gesucht? Wie wäre es mit *Bildungschancen und Raumfahrt*.

Ich möchte Teil einer Uhrenzurückstellbewegung sein, sangen Tocotronic bekanntlich nie.

Compare and contrast with the exquisite initial 'F'(rater) at the beginning of Jerome's letter to Paulinus in 'The Bury Bible', which is the work of Master Hugo. Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 002I; The Bury Bible; 12th century; f.1v @parkerlibcccc.bsky.social @corpuscambridge.bsky.social

For reasons too complex to explain here, I wrote an Apple II program designed for Early Modern Age Catholics to determine if they're allowed to have sex with their wife, or if it'd be a sin. Here's the video of it running.

We should be so thankful that AI-assisted writing and publishing wasn't available to 19c Privatgelehrte of German academia. As they on average overfulfilled with dozens of books, hundreds of articles, AI in their time, would have meant: 100.000 books more on every topic #academicSky #academicchatter

Really enjoyed the Hidden Cities tour in Copenhagen. Check out all the cities covered via the website historycityapps.org

Just a 1399 unicorn watermark from a paper manufacturer from Valencia to make your day. Friends of #paperhistory know that these paper sheets of around 1400 are among the first sheets of European paper to appear on the market. European #bookhistory was a different game afterwards. #skystorians

You see a 1684 reading advice: "Gedruckt zu Lesen". Printed to be read. #earlymodern #bookhistory

"EXTRA! EXTRA! Read all about it!" Catch up on the news from the @universalstc.bsky.social annual conference on 'Newspapers and Periodicals', which took place in June 2025, with our newest blog by @zbrookman.bsky.social (PhD Candidate and Research Assistant). ustc.ac.uk/news/ustc-20...

❔ Wie steht es mit der Nachhaltigkeit der #Aufklärung? Stellt sie heute noch eine #Ressource im Sinne Diderots dar? Anlässlich des 50jährigen Bestehens der DGEJ spüren 50 Aufklärungsforschende den Perspektiven und Potenzialen des europäischen Kulturerbes der Aufklärung nach. tinyurl.com/bddw6ayj

Also remember that policy primarily responds to money. So the do-everything-with-AI wave that we currently see is not open and independent research. It’s policy responding to money. Pretty grim really.

The Louvre heist reminds me of other times when cultural treasures disappeared. One story that stays with me is the loss of the Golden Horns of Gallehus, Denmark, stolen in 1802 by a goldsmith who melted them down. Engraving in Jacobæus' "Museum regium" [1696], The Swedish National Heritage Board.

Pretends to be shocked www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/...

This is how you blurb

Question for #medievalsky #manuscript #codicology #bookhistory folks: are there any large-scale quantitative studies of the proportions of manuscript pages over time? I remember Albert Derolez suggested such a study in the early '90s... 🧵

Enjoying some time with Jean Mabillon and his extremely approachable transcriptions of Merovingian scripts, in addition to the other joys of De re diplomatica (1681)—the work first establishing the science of paleography.

efficiency. The amount of work that goes into applying to these grants is insane -- the academics writing it, the academic colleagues commenting, the Professional Service teams finetuning and sorting out all the costings etc. Surely that time could be used more efficiently *for actual research*?