“Excellence” is a treacherous word in academia, it causes wasteful competition, mental distress, and is a injurious to talent and passion, discuss” Though I have a very high regard for the idea of “very good” Maybe ethnographers could tell us the value of “very good” in healthy communities?

Here’s your “masculinity crisis,” right here. Stop blaming feminism or wokeness for creating an industry that incentivizes this shit.

Unbelievably, #DuvetKnowItsChristmas generates such good will on social media that over the years we've raised somewhere approaching a quarter of a million quid for homeless charities. If you can spare a bob or two, sling some to Centrepoint, and here's the link: www.gofundme.com/f/duvet-know...

Worth a read from Michelle Wang: www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/epdf/10..... A really useful forward thinking suggestion is the screenshot below.

I presume you know this article? onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Having these conversations are worse than useless when software folks tell us how humanities research works OR when we try to tell them how to code, and also, fuck current genAI which is aggressively marketed to students as a plagiarism generator!

GenAI is fucking worse than useless in the humanities but structurally useful for software people in their professions after they've achieved expertise. Teachers hate it because students aren't experts and thus feed us AI bullshit as both plagiarism and missing the process of learning.

Earlier I bleeted about how AI cannot do historical research for you. There's something else it can't do: write. Sure, it can follow rules and process data to string words into coherent sentences. But it cannot *write.* An excerpt from a piece I wrote for WaPo years back on biography as art.

A big part of being a historian is being a detective! Who did this? Why? Where? Why does it matter in the grand scheme of things? You have to learn how to probe, how to uncover, how to read against the grain, how to find unusual sources, how to interpret those sources. How to piece together a puzzle

So when the AHA says it's OK to use AI to summarize scholarship, the greatest risk this guideline poses isn't simply to the quality or accuracy of research; the hazard it poses is to the communal nature of the knowledge production. A pursuit that puts people across time & space into conversation 4/n

This is quite literally the job of an academic. Also, LLMs don’t do this either! It regurgitates what it statistically calculates as the most likely outcome. Stochastic parrots all the way down!

Truly a banner day for AI boosters rudely jumping into conversations, framing their arguments in a condescending and insulting way, and demanding civility from ppl who disagree.

A new essay from me on the contentious topic of the sexuality of James VI and I - an attempt to get past the old ‘did he or didn’t he’ by looking at the king’s style as read by his contemporaries and subsequent historians. King James - QAF. main--britishartstudies-29.netlify.app/issues/29/qu...

I know no-one wants to think about next term right now, but please remind students to book their places on the Latin palaeography online short courses at beginner or intermediate level taking place in February 👇 #MedievalSky 📖🧑‍💻👩‍💻👨🏽‍💻👩🏻‍💻🧑🏿‍💻🧑‍💻 📚 ies.sas.ac.uk/news-events/...

Seems like a small thing, but that’s three cohorts of undergraduates deprived of what can be a horizon-altering experience, all because of the pathetic whims of a venal chancer.

When Saving Becomes Loss - Archival Memory in the Digital Age. National Archives UK. 📜 #AnnualDigitalLecture youtu.be/aWWrrhrIdYk?...

More coverage. The Library of Virginia says 15% of patron requests are AI hallucinations. What's worse, patrons get mad & think they're lying & hiding books! Even worse yet, these are creeping into scientific and MEDICAL studies & reports. Hmm...what could go wrong? 😵 gizmodo.com/librarians-a...

The tragic reality about violence against women and girls: unless it's an issue which can be weaponised to bash trans people or migrants no one gives a fuck.

In honor of me being mad on the internet, and also needing to feel like other people share my values: Tell me about the class you didn't want to take in college that ended up bending your mind or being otherwise "useful" in your development as a person

I realized a few years ago that I will never run out of ideas; I will simply run out of time and die. What I don't have is money. I'm disabled, queer, lower income single parent with dozens of unpublished manuscripts, songs, musicals, paintings, hundreds of draft ideas. FUND PEOPLE.

This week we also published its latest article in the Society's journal 'Transactions'. 'The Historian in the Age of AI' by @chriscampbell1.bsky.social explores what it means to be a historian, and why historical skills and craft need to defended and understood bit.ly/4atErTB #Skystorians 1/2

As an author, I’ve already gotten multiple emails from people asking me for fake articles and books that I’ve supposedly written, because chatbots have told them fake references. I *cannot imagine* the frustration and time waste for librarians and especially ILL library professionals right now.

This column on Vox is the biggest pile of steaming AI crap I've seen this year. Human's aren't running out of ideas. Instead, those with power and money don't want to listen to ideas that threaten their power and money. Ideas are plentiful. Putting those ideas into action is the hard part.

My friend Eduardo Angel Cruz (KU Leuven) wrote this really cool open access article on diablados ("dances of devils") in 16th-17thC Peru for a really cool special issue on Joy as Resistance for the really cool Journal of Festive Studies. Really cool! journals.h-net.org/jfs/article/...

"RemoveWindowsAI" is a script created by zoicware, available on GitHub, that does exactly what it says: it remove every AI feature in Windows 11. Do what you wish to do with this information. I'm sharing this because some folks are forced to use Win11 at work or other places for any reasons.

We're still being asked to encourage "ethical, responsible use of GenAI" as if that's not the biggest fucking oxymoron of our times. Like okay let's also encourage eating lead-based paint in moderation. IT CAN'T BE DONE.

VC loses confidence vote:

Attention creative medievalists! Eleanor Barraclough & I are co-editing a special issue of Public Humanities entitled CREATING THE MEDIEVAL NOW! See the cfp for details: essays of 2,000-3,000 words due 1 May 2026. (Amazing artwork by @hellomizk.bsky.social). 1/ www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

The more you know about LLMs, the worse they get

Until Chat GPT pays my salary, this is not happening.

Heads up research nerds; JSTOR is running a survey that includes questions about AI use in research and your perspective about the JSTOR database. Now would be a good time to let them know what you think about AI inclusion in teaching and research #academic #history #JSTOR #AI

Edinburgh University is closing the Institute for Academic Development. Download these student resources while you can. Making notes, reading strategies, time management, dissertations and so on. CC licenses. Pdf and text only versions. #HE 🗃️ institute-academic-development.ed.ac.uk/study-hub/le...

since chatgpt has coached another young person in a mental health crisis to their death, I am yet again tapping the sign

Sign and share to support! STOP THE CUTS!

(Also @profgabriele.com and I wrote about other aspects of this trend last January and I'm glad Matt pushed me to write this with him as it's proved useful to me as a way to link disparate manifestations) slate.com/news-and-pol...

When people learn with ChatGPT instead of following their own searches, they end up knowing less, caring less, and producing worse advice, even when the facts are the same. Friction is an essential ingredient for learning! Convenience makes us shallow. academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/ar...

wtf

There is a LOOOOOOOOONG history of fascism’s love affair with Tolkien!

Tuesday’s ‘elephant done by a medieval artist that had never seen one’ - 15th century, Ghent, JPGM, Ms. Ludwig XIII 5, vol. 1, f. 55

It’s not simply this: I think universities will pivot back to valuing the arts and humanities in a way where they’ll be grabbing for painful excuses as to why that infrastructure is currently being destroyed.

Medievalismsists well positioned to contribute to scholarly dialogues around this.

Churches showing an AI Charlie Kirk telling congregants, through an artificial voice, not to let evil win is a new level of instrumentalizing the dead. When Trump goes, I think we’re going to see the same thing. Visions and AI slop will abound. Prophecies and messages from beyond the grave.

I'm sorry, but no. You cannot blame the existential threat on international students. The existential threat is because you made your country's public good wholly dependent on international students. The venues for all the rankings that reduced higher education to competition not blameless in that.

As the @thinkuhi.bsky.social graduations season continues, we would like to send huge congratulations to all our students celebrating their achievements! Our Dr @linseyhunter.bsky.social & Dr Lucy Dean had the great privilege to be part of the celebrations at UHI Perth yesterday 🎓🎉 #UHIGrad

Start by NOT standing down their REF team at the end of each assessment cycle. Current practice reduces analysis of abundant data that REF generates & leads to the loss of granular knowledge about what worked/didn't work when the next cycle gears up. Also increases the miasma of REF misinformation.

📣Save the date!📣 @uhihistory.bsky.social is celebrating the publication of two new books by our staff Dr Lucy Dean and Dr Nicola Martin. For further details on the event, bit.ly/4nXKDX4 📅Monday 27 October 2025 ⏰ 7-8pm 📍Online bit.ly/4pOGKWk #ThinkUHI

When we train people to use AI, we're "training people to explain away the inconsistencies of Large Language Models, and to assume individual responsibility for what is an innate flaw in how large language models work." Fantastic essay: www.wheresyoured.at/the-case-aga...

This is a problem.

I’ve been struck by how the British far right is using deepfake technology — less to deceive about specific events, more to tap into fascistic affects & desires. This is really frightening. My dispatch from grim corners of the Internet, for @lrb.co.uk online. www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/se...