iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Dave Andress @davidandress.bsky.social · 16/06/2026

He took the hand of a trembling teenager beside him, and told him not to worry, "It doesn't hurt." Vive la France. Vive l'humanité.

marxists.org

Homage to Marc Bloch By Georges Altman 1945

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Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

The AAUP chapters at Vanderbilt & Wash U have issued a joint statement denouncing the “State of Scholarship” report commissioned by their chancellors. Please, let’s make this as widely read as the gaslighting to which it responds.

Joint Statement on the "State of Scholarship" Report
The Vanderbilt University and Washington University chapters of the American Association of University Professors express our profound disagreement with the "State of Scholarship" report commissioned by our universities' chancellors. The report distorts the state of humanistic and social scientific scholarship at our universities and in the academy overall. Worse, it proposes a shocking intrusion of university administration into faculty governance and portends greater threats to academic freedom that should concern all faculty.
The report currently appears on Vanderbilt's website under the insignia of both Vanderbilt and Washington Universities. It is already receiving public condemnation. As the American Council of Learned Societies makes clear, the report is founded on false premises and anecdotal evidence and thus does nothing to "ensure deeper and more meaningful relations among scholars and members of the public." No doubt more rebuttals from scholars, departments, and professional societies will follow. It suffices for us to say that the report falls far short of the standards of political neutrality and disinterested inquiry it claims to champion. Historians, literary scholars, and anthropologists are singled out for caricature while the authors fail to acknowledge their own public biases against scholarship performed in the name of social justice. Nor does the report divulge its source of funding or conflicts of interest that may entail - standard practice for any work of humanistic or social scientific scholarship. In sum, the report is itself a clear example of "politicized" research that its authors attempt to decry.
What is most alarming is the guidance the report offers to its intended audience of university chancellors and presidents. By falsely arguing that humanities and social science departments are in the throes of an epistemological crisis, the authors lay the groundwork for university adminis…

Weakening faculty governance does nothing to solve the real challenges facing our universities, and undermines our ability to effectively address society's most profound problems and challenges, from the inequalities of wealth and white supremacy to the political consequences of climate change.
Indeed, the direst threats to public trust in higher education are not philosophical debates about the nature of truth. Currently, the federal government is dramatically cutting funding for the humanities and social sciences as well as for the natural sciences, engineering, medicine, public health, and the arts. In response, university administrations have instituted austerity measures, even as administrative salaries and administrative positions have taken up an increasing share of decreasing budgets.
The best way for scholars to cultivate diverse opinions and advance knowledge is by strengthening academic freedom. Political threats to higher education have degraded, and will continue to degrade, the quality of all fields of our universities' research, to the detriment of America's global standing.
We note that the organizations now working most actively and successfully to defend academic free inquiry from politicized federal interference are not university leaders but the American Council of Learned Societies, the Modern Language Association, and the American Historical Association - professional societies of the very disciplines chastised by the report.
We call on our chancellors to rescind the report and affirm their commitment to the intellectual autonomy of faculty, academic departments, and governing faculty bodies. Administrative interference into academic departments, as licensed by this report, is a violation of the standards of academic freedom that have made American universities the envy of the world. Rather than undermining these bedrock principles, administrators should vigorously and publicly defend them.
Vanderbilt University AAUP
vanderbiltaaup@gmail.com
Wa…

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Stephen Hopkins @phil-lol-ogist.bsky.social · 25/05/2026

Biggest comeback in history? 999: Icelanders convert to Christianity & ditch Norse myth↩️ 1200's: Snorri Sturluson uses the power of euhemerism to make Norse myth biblical↩️ 1930's: a very Catholic Norse scholar pilfers the edda for character names↩️ 2026: Pope quotes a character called Gandalf 🇮🇸👑

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Monica H Green @monicamedhist.bsky.social · 10/05/2026

I'm just going to juxtapose these two amazing posts, so I have them back-to-back. With so much crushing disrespect & defunding the Humanities have endured since 2008, I need to bask in this (fleeting?) moment of glory. 1/2 bsky.app/profile/paul...

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Katie Hodges-Kluck, PhD @klhkhistorian.bsky.social · 24/04/2026

I'm excited to finally be able to show off what our RBS comms team has been working on for the past several months! The site was built by openbox9, and Kim Curtis & I oversaw the process from RBS's end, but this truly was a team effort. Thanks to all who helped us get from concept to launch!

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Joanna L. Pearce, Ph.D. @jlphistory.bsky.social · 08/04/2026

Good morning. I wish I could express clearly to my students that the students who write poorly-expressed papers with gramatical errors and misunderstandings are doing so much better and learning so much more than students who ask a LLM to analyze an article for them.

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 22/03/2026

Another university getting rid of things you could only ever do at a university and replacing them with stuff a 13-year-old can do on a phone

Post from Andrew A.N. Deloucas
@aandeloucas.com:

In line with discussion about the job market, the latest majors being closed at Syracuse University:

Nine majors "sunsetting":
• Classical civilization
• Classics (Greek and Latin)
• Digital humanities
• Fine arts
• German
• Latino-Latin American studies
• Middle Eastern studies
• Modern Jewish studies
• Russian
ALT

The First University in the Nation to Build a Center Dedicated to the Creator Economy
Syracuse University is creating something that doesn't exist anywhere else in higher education.
The Center for the Creator Economy is the first academic center of its kind on a U.S. college campus. Led jointly by the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications and the Martin).
Whitman School of Management, the center reinforces Syracuse University's commitment to bold, forward-looking academic leadership.
By aligning strengths in entrepreneurship, media, communications, athletics and digital infrastructure, the University is charting how higher education can prepare students for the 21st-century economy.

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Howard Eissenstat @heissenstat.bsky.social · 14/09/2025

I am struck less by the hypocrisy of universities sanctioning their faculty than by their consistency. They are utterly consistent in their craven response to pollical pressure.

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Ruth EJ Booth (she/they) @ruthejbooth.bsky.social · 14/08/2025

"If your books were uploaded to LibGen/fed into the LLMs, add your name to the potential class action lawsuit by tomorrow." Details: LibDem database: www.theatlantic.com/technology/a... Attorney form: www.lieffcabraser.com/anthropic-au... (This information comes via a reliable Discord source.)

theatlantic.com

Search LibGen, the Pirated-Books Database That Meta Used to Train AI

Millions of books and scientific papers are captured in the collection’s current iteration.

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Charlie Rozier @rozierhistorian.bsky.social · 05/07/2025

The Haskins Society is now on BlueSky! Look out for posts over the next few days which advertise our involvement in the @imc-leeds.bsky.social Head over and give us a follow @haskinssociety.bsky.social

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Rua M. Williams @fractalecho.bsky.social · 03/05/2025

If you're a grad student or an undergrad interested in research I need to you listen to me very carefully. You cannot learn to write good research papers if you do not read good research papers. Stop asking LLMs to summarize papers for you.

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Seth Cotlar @sethcotlar.bsky.social · 30/04/2025

This passage from @benjamincarterhett.bsky.social's book on Hitler's rise to power has long haunted me for the way it describes how so many ordinary Germans had their minds & souls gradually rewired by the changing political climate of the 1930s. Watching something similar happen here is terrifying.

goose-stepping Stormtroopers. Suddenly, the whole. thing looks close and familiar Alongside the viciousness of much of German politics in the Weimar years was an incongruous innocence: few people could imagine the worst possibilities. A civilized nation could not possibly vote for Hitler, some had thought. When he became chancellor nonetheless, millions expected his time in office to be short and ineffectual. Germany was a notoriously law-abiding as well as cultured land. How could a German government systematically brutalize its own people? German Jews were highly assimilated and patriotic. Many refused to leave their homeland, even as things got worse and worse.
Tam German and am waiting for the Germans to come back; they have gone to ground somewhere," Victor Klemperer wrote in his diary-he was the son of a rabbi and a veteran of the First World War who chose to stay, and miraculously survived.
Few Germans in 1933 could imagine Treblinka or Auschwitz, the mass shootings of Babi Yar or the death marches of the last months of the Second World War. It is hard to blame them for not foreseeing the unthinkable. Yet their innocence failed them, and they were catastroph-ially wrong about their future. We who come later have one advantage over them: we have their example before us.

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Kat Tenbarge @kattenbarge.bsky.social · 29/04/2025

In a few years (max) when people start asking why we thought AI was a good idea I am creating a record that we did NOT think it was a good idea and the main reason people were ever convinced was billions of dollars of propaganda

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Anna Meier @annameier.bsky.social · 30/03/2025

Rümeysa's legal team is coordinating a fundraiser for her and her family to help them deal with this crisis, including medical costs since ICE has kept Rümeysa from accessing all her medications. Please donate if you're able:

chuffed.org

Justice for Rumeysa Ozturk

Dear Friends, Allies, and Supporters,

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Merien ten Houten @merien.com · 21/02/2025

If you are at an event where someone on stage gives a Hitler salute and that person is not dragged off by security and kicked out, you are at a Nazi rally.

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Prof. B. (Tracey Billado-Lotson) @billadot.bsky.social · 06/02/2025

My condolences to his entire family. He will be truly missed. It is rare to find a scholar of his intellect and achievement who was also such a kind and lovely person.

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Chanda Prescod-Weinstein 🌌 @chanda.blacksky.app · 31/01/2025

In light of this deeply illegal activity at NSF and the ongoing attack on American science, I'm posting the slides from my 2017 talk at the American Physical Society about the Nazi take over of German physics/why German is no longer science's lingua franca 🧪 🧵 1/26 drive.google.com/file/d/1_MCm...

nazi germany & physics
Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, PhD
Department of Physics,University of Washington, Seattle
APS April Meeting, January 2017
Dismantling the (Nazi) German Nuclear Reactor (Pile) at Haigerloch, 50 km SW of Stuttgart, in April 1945

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Waitman Wade Beorn, PhD, FRHistS @waitmanwbeorn.com · 28/01/2025

In 1935, in compliance with the Nuremburg Laws, the German military dismissed all Jews serving in its ranks. Just sayin.

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NY Times Pitchbot @nytpitchbot.bsky.social · 21/01/2025

Whether it’s Obama, wearing a tan suit or Elon Musk doing Hitler salutes, both sides have engaged in incendiary behavior

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Dr. Sabrina Mittermeier @smittermeier.bsky.social · 14/01/2025

What is the average professor afraid of? - mainly: „train delays“ - the projector in the class room not working again - being invited to things - explaining what they do again at parties that they were regrettably invited to after all - the continued destruction of their whole field - Eduroam

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Katherine Weikert @kateweikert.bsky.social · 09/01/2025

I don't have further details, but proposed job cuts at Uni Northants are threatening several programmes, including their MA History. Please consider signing, please consider sharing. chng.it/5vBRtgx2xx

chng.it

Sign the Petition

STOP The Job Cuts at the University of Northampton

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Nadine Whitney @nadinewhitney.bsky.social · 31/12/2024

Happy New Year from Dorothy Parker (and me).

Telegram sent by author Dorothy Parker to Robert Benchley on December 31st 1929.

Text reads.

You come right over here and explain why they are having another year.

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Elizabeth Boyle @thecelticist.bsky.social · 28/12/2024

"By making over these women in our own image, we lose so much of what was distinctive and beautiful about their literature." What Were the Lives of Medieval Women Like? www.nytimes.com/2024/12/10/b...

nytimes.com

What Were the Lives of Medieval Women Like? (Gift Article)

In “Poet, Mystic, Widow, Wife” the historian Hetta Howes seeks to relate to figures of the past.

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weird medieval guys @weirdmedieval.bsky.social · 23/12/2024

snowball fight, italy, ca. 1400

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Aparna Nair @disabilitystor1.bsky.social · 19/12/2024

This was always the goal: remove human teachers from classrooms in schools and universities, except for the very rich who will be able to afford human instruction. This is why I have only contempt for teachers in higher ed who use AI in their courses--this is what you are actively escalating.

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Alex von Tunzelmann @alexvont.bsky.social · 18/12/2024

This is a long piece and worth your time. I’m particularly pleased by it tracing things back to Milton Friedman. I have long believed that more or less everything that is awful, stupid and cruel in the modern world can ultimately be traced back to Milton Friedman.

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Ryan Cordell @ryancordell.org · 16/12/2024

I will never stop being aghast that the United States built a higher education system that was literally the envy of the entire world—our bitterest political enemies nonetheless sent their children to us to be educated, it was so good—& then just decided to systematically, ruthlessly dismantle it

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Kenneth F. Duggan 🇨🇦 @kfduggan.bsky.social · 12/12/2024

Please put maps in your books, especially if you mention scores of places and argue that regional connections are important. If you need help making a map, contact the Surprised Eel Historian – @greenleejw.bsky.social This message is brought to you by the book I’m reading, which has no maps.

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Mando_histoire @mando-histoire.bsky.social · 09/12/2024

Marc Bloch ❤️❤️ merci @xaviermauduit.bsky.social !

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Monica H Green @monicamedhist.bsky.social · 07/12/2024

Okay, the France24 feed is live now. They are doing interviews and showing people arrive: www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSRE... #NotreDame #MedievalSky

youtube.com

🔴 LIVE - Notre-Dame de Paris: follow the reopening ceremony with FRANCE 24 • FRANCE 24 English

YouTube video by FRANCE 24 English

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Mateusz Fafinski @calthalas.bsky.social · 06/12/2024

Sometimes, because parchment undulates, even in digital facsimile we can see medieval illuminations as they would have looked with an indirect light source. Light and shadow made the page come alive every time it was used, for example, in a liturgical context. BSB Clm 22311, late 9th century

A richly decorated manuscript page with many applications in gold that are well visible because of the uneven surface of the parchment. Light reflects from these letter.

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Sara Ellis-Nilsson (she/her), PhD 🕊️ @ellisnilsson.bsky.social · 06/12/2024

The open-access digital research and educational resource, 'Mapping Saints', has now been officially launched! Check it out here: saints.dh.gu.se

Screenshot of the Mapping Saints public interface

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Prof. B. (Tracey Billado-Lotson) @billadot.bsky.social · 06/12/2024

Great talk today by @rachelschine.bsky.social on her new book that you should check out and that will somehow get into my next medieval syllabus!

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Laura Morreale @lauramorreale.bsky.social · 03/12/2024

Are you teaching a course this semester and have students who need some extra credit? Why not encourage them to cast their votes in the Middle Ages for Educators Sweet 16 Competition, which is now open! #medievalsky middleagesforeducators.princeton.edu/sweet-16-oar...

middleagesforeducators.princeton.edu

Sweet 16 OAR Competition Begins!

Welcome to the Middle Ages for Educators Sweet 16 Open Access Resource Competition, and thanks for stopping by! The public-facing tournament is now open, and will take place as follows:ROUND 1, onlin...

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Surprised Eel Historian, PhD @greenleejw.bsky.social · 02/12/2024

Every now & again, it's useful to say why I do all these eel history tweets. Mostly, it's because eels need our help. They're critically endangered, seeing a c.90% drop in population in the last decades. But it's hard to get people to care! 'Cause...eels are gross & slimy. 1/2 🗃️🧪

Meme. Photograph of an eel underwater. The eel is yellow in color, with a piercing eye and adorable nostril horns. You can just see one of its fins at the edge of the picture. The eel looks to be smiling, but not a jovial smile. It's the uncertain but hopeful smile of a man meeting a blind date at a biker bar. The eel is swimming low in the water, just above a sandy-looking bottom. It's shadow looms just below it, a negative-spaced eel that reminds you of the fragility of meaning and the patience of the following dark.

Imagine, if you will, that this is the last eel in the world. And *you* have to break the news to it. How would you feel? Wouldn't it be better if you could tell it that a renewed focus on eels in human history has led to a revival of the species?

Let's do that.

Meme text reads:
"Have you seen my friends?
I'm lonely"

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Kenneth F. Duggan 🇨🇦 @kfduggan.bsky.social · 30/11/2024

Women couldn't be outlawed in 13th-century England because they were never put in law. Instead, women accused of crimes were ordered to be waived if they failed to appear at trial. The consequence of waivery was the same as outlawry's: execution (often immediately and without trial). 🧵1/4

A woman in blue at the top of a castle is striking a man in red on the head with her sword. He seems to fall from the ladder he was climbing as is it enters his skull. The woman has a look on her face that says "Don't mess with me."
Reference: The Smithfield Decretals, BL Royal 10 E. IV (14th C)

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Elizabeth Boyle @thecelticist.bsky.social · 29/11/2024

"Shock of hope" is actually a great way of understanding medieval ecclesiastical architecture. Welcome back, Notre Dame! www.theguardian.com/world/2024/n...

theguardian.com

Notre Dame reopening offers ‘shock of hope’, says Emmanuel Macron

French president tours medieval cathedral in Paris to view restoration after devastating 2019 fire

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Prof. B. (Tracey Billado-Lotson) @billadot.bsky.social · 29/11/2024

An 8th grade trip to Salem, MA where I saw the life size wax tableau of Giles Corey’s death by pressing.

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