I have been very careful about opining on what is happening in Iran right now. But omg omg omg! This is exciting and scary. I am dead afraid for these people & shudder at thinking what might happen. They must succeed & I am mot brave enough to go there & help them.

Things are escalating. Friends report mass walk outs and demonstrations, even in the “upper city” (the rich parts). Mum reporting a lot of slogan shouting.

📫 Our January #newsletter is out! ✨ Featuring recent DO posts, our 'AI and Digital Humanities' conference proceedings, and announcements. 🔗 tinyurl.com/do-Jan26

Feels like a weird time to post about this but I wanted to highlight something: So dang proud of the fact that NFL Live is up nearly *50%* with women. We have consistently grown our female audience since relaunching the show five years ago. Football is for everyone.

One small nitpick on @jvl.bsky.social's footnote re: Babbitt and assault. It's true we don't have indication of her committing any physical battery of LEOs, but she still died in the act of assaulting both the cops and the members of Congress behind them. Reasonable fear of harm is an assault.

Birkbeck is hiring a Lecturer in Medieval Studies (c.1300-1500), full-time and open-ended. They will be formally based in English but expected to be able to contribute about 0.5FTE to History, including teaching and supervision. Closing date Feb 23rd: cis7.bbk.ac.uk/vacancy/lect...

I am *always* here for historical humor in @pointsincase.com, especially when it’s this good: www.pointsincase.com/articles/thi...

“In any event, the new CBS Evening News is neither heterodox in its perspectives nor a platform for diverse debate or vox pop(ulism). Instead, as evidenced by these first outings of the new Evening News, Weiss and Dokoupil are producing state propaganda.”

DHS Warns Any Action By Americans Will Be Treated As Domestic Terrorism https://theonion.com/dhs-warns-any-action-by-americans-will-be-treated-as-domestic-terrorism/

The murderer’s name is Jonathan Ross. www.startribune.com/ice-agent-wh...

My very limited take away from the new food "guidelines" is that we don't talk about gout enough.

This Saturday, 1/10, join lead curator Theo Downes-Le Guin for an exhibition walkthough of A Larger Reality: Ursula K. Le Guin at Oregon Contemporary. The walkthough will be followed by a Q&A and community reading featuring selections from Changing Planes. www.oregoncontemporary.org/a-larger-rea...

LADY GODIVA (Palindrome) Avid ogles made no garb. I met sadness, elated a rapid idyll. A colt — eyed, untied — ordered no witness. Eyes sent, I wondered, rode it nude, yet locally did I parade.... …Tales send a stem, I brag — One damsel: Godiva.

Hey #medievalists, anyone want to join/form a session on recent scholarship on the Codex Salmasianus?

This glib statement is all the more risible when you recall how many law enforcement officers used their vehicles as weapons against protesters in 2020... and how many Republican-dominated states *sought to legalize killing protesters with vehicles* as a reaction to the demonstrations

BBC is reporting that the same ICE officer who murdered Renee Good was involved in another violent incident in June.

another argument against monarchy is how much time the king wastes grunting and straining to push rocks away while a big snake lurks behind a portcullis

The Journal of Roman Archaeology will be open access for research content from January 2026. 🌎 Global reach, 📝 higher citations and ⬇️ greater downloads are some of the benefits of #OpenAccess. Read more: https://cup.org/3X4XwmR #archaeology #romanarchaeology

Every major free speech org has said the IHRA definition suppresses constitutionally protected speech. Every major human rights group has said it suppresses legitimate advocacy. The scandal is that Adams adopted the definition, not that Mamdani rejected it. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/04/n...

Can't provide that, but can offer a picture of the 971 papyrus document for Vic, with medievalist for scale ;)

First minute of Tony Dokoupil's debut as CBS anchor is pure Trump propaganda, showing only celebration of Trump's kidnapping, plus illiterate grammar: "Commandos raiding his compound before dawn grabbing he and his wife in their pajamas." No, Tony, grabbing *him*. He's all jaw.

During Fiona Hill's testimony to Congress on Oct 14, 2019, she described how Trump and Putin discussed exchanging Ukraine for Venezuela. The quid pro quo was if Trump refuses to help Ukraine fight off a Russian invasion, Putin would not help Venezuela (a Russian ally) resist a US takeover.

Am about to lift the following from a thread I did once in the Olim Bird Place, but if I leave a legacy behind, please let it be the legacy of coining the term The Chortlemuffin effect. The Chortlemuffin Effect describes a citational chain leading to bullshit. /1

Important postscript! My question this morning was: if the 1057 document is lost, how do we know it was written on papyrus? After some more digging, I found the answer: it was copied in 1236, and the COPY begins with "Eidem privilegium in papyro conscriptum innovat et rescribit..." 🧵

Indeed worth a Nobel Prize for promoting (aeternal) Peace.. #NobelPrize #DonaldTrump #WarLord #Republicans #MakeAmericaSmall #Maga

My (free) website for learning to read from Greek manuscripts is available. Still some tweaks to be made but it’s ready with 12 lessons, tips and hints, downloadable reports if you use it for a class, and links to lots of resources. Please share and give feedback! xeirographa.com

Dean Martin, born Dino Paul Crocetti, son of Italian immigrant Gaetano Crocetti Frank Sinatra, son of Italian immigrants Antonino Sinatra and Natalina Garavanta Merry Christmas to everyone except Stephen Miller and his enablers and handlers

Merry Christmas, may all those cool gifts you got be fixable far into the future www.wired.com/story/expire...

Library purchases are purchases. They pay the press. The press counts them towards advances and royalties. And (gasp) the book is in a library!! It’s wonderful and no one should ever feel bad about getting a book through a library instead of buying it.

An interim version of the Explore Archives and Manuscripts Catalogue is now available through the BL website: searcharchives.bl.uk It contains all the catalogue data from the eve of the 2023 cyberattack, and features embedded links to all currently available digitised content within the records.

The manuscripts catalogue at the British Library is back online! www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/2025/... @ccockburn.bsky.social

Absolutely wild pink nitrogen ribbon aurora burst last night here in Iceland. There was cloud cover, and I was worried the show would stay shrouded. Voila! The purpley-pink & white ribbons are much closer to us in the atmosphere than standard green arcs, and are fast moving. #northernlights #aurora

Raqmu! (Yes, Petra is its colonial name)

Kendrick Lamar Awarded Nobel Beef Prize

It sure seems like someone got to Bari Weiss between Thursday evening (left), and then late Friday night (right) www.nytimes.com/2025/12/22/b...

Among the newly-released Epstein files. This Justice Dept email from Jan 2020 'I wanted to let you know that the flight records we received yesterday reflect that Donald Trump traveled on Epstein's private jet many more times than previously has been reported"

Reading about Ethel #Voynich (1864-1960) today for some writing and wow, what a life! Her father George Boole developed the idea of Boolean Logic. Her mother Mary was the librarian at Queen's College London. Four sisters, all math geniuses.

Making #bookhistory

NYT shows how Bari Weiss really screwed this up. She didn't attend any of the 5 screenings of the story, which began on Dec. 12. She only first weighed in on Thursday, and the show incorporated her suggestions. She then waited until weekend to ask for more edits. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/22/b...

Just 8 more days to watch Mr. Robot on Netflix. Visually stunning, emotionally compelling, and amazingly prescient about the modern world of surveillance capitalism, conspiracy theorists & anti-democratic nationalism. (It ran 2015-2019.) 94% on Rotten Tomatoes. www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/mr_robot

At best, an AI summary might approach the value of a Wikipedia page -- a fine place to start, but never to be accepted at face value without digging into the sources. However, AI refuses to show you its sources. We already have Wikipedia, which not only requires sources but lets you view talk pages

This makes a lot of sense! Even if you're an introvert, knowledge-making puts you in conversations that can go many different ways. People can point you to what you are missing. LLM sycophancy is a social problem because it cannot be critical.

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.

Hwæt wuldras ðu on yfelnesse, þu þe mihtig eart on unrihtwisnesse? Can I just say how much I love the way ne-se is split over TA-TE in the last line? And the ðu over RIS, for that matter. A glossator well trained in analyzing Latin morphemes, as one would expect from the grammar curriculum.

File under: treasures I hadn't realized were online. Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Bibliothek 64 Weiss. is a palimpsest with Isidore in a very challenging 8c North Italian cursive on top and, inter alia, a fragment of Ulfilas' Gothic translation of Romans below. Here's part of that section, f256r. 🧵

Bernard's toupee ballets pastel bidets. (Iambic pentameter in American English, but trochaic pentameter in British English)

Remember the DNC/RNC bomber from January 5th/6th? Trump's DOJ went suddenly silent about him after he told the FBI he was a Trump supporter looking to help the January 6th mob. Don't let them bury it. talkingpointsmemo.com/morning-memo...

please take a moment to appreciate Tesla's epic accomplishment of coming dead last in the auto industry in reliability, despite making relatively expensive cars with a tiny fraction of the moving parts www.consumerreports.org/cars/which-b...