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Mark Thakkar

@brunellus.com
663 followers 86 following 472 posts

Medieval Latinist · Postdoc in the History of Maths, Logic and Philosophy, working on Cardano, the impossible and the medievals: i2erc.wordpress.com

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Reposted by Mark Thakkar
Felicity Callard @felicitycallard.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Also: Can someone clarify what they are planning to do to history at Edinburgh. Cutting intellectual history, contemporary history and medieval history looks catastrophic
School of Economics:
• Economics and Statistics (UG)
School of History, Classics and Archaeology:
• Intellectual History
• Contemporary History
• Medieval History
School of Law:
• Law and Social Policy (UG)
• Law and Social Anthropology (UG)
• Law and Sociology (UG)
• Law and Celtic (UG)
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Pieter Beullens @pieterbeullens.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
The same MS of Aristotle's Topics, with plenty of annotations, apparently ended up in a bookbinder's workshop. Plenty of bifolia were reused as pastedowns. (@ubleipzig.bsky.social, MS 376) resolver.staatsbibliothek-berlin.de/HSP000518E90...
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Jo Wolff @jowolff.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
The fallacy that University leaders pushing AI are falling into is thinking that the point of undergraduate research is to find things out. It isn't. What students find out is typically already generally known. The point of undergraduate research is to learn how to find things out.
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Pieter Beullens @pieterbeullens.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
I am finalizing the yearly update of my Supplementa of Aristoteles Latinus Codices. If you know (or own) manuscripts or fragments of Latin Aristotle texts that were not included before, now is the time to drop me a line!
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Peter Gilliver @petermgilliver.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
My book ‘The Making of the OED’ was published on 25 Aug 2016, so I have missed the exact 10th anniversary; but I don’t care. I am going to indulge myself by quoting from the wonderful series of reviews I was lucky enough to get ten years ago. (Yes, I kept a file of them, of course I did.) 1/
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Mark Thakkar @brunellus.com · 03/09/2026
Poe introducing his Marginalia (1844): “the chance and desultory comments of literary chit-chat … are not unfrequently “talk for talk’s sake,” … while the marginalia are deliberately penciled, because the mind of the reader wishes to unburthen itself of a thought”. 💯 www.google.co.uk/books/editio...
First paragraph of a piece headed ‘MARGINALIA’ from the four-volume edition of Poe’s works published by Widdleton from 1861 onwards (but retaining the 1849 copyright notice of the 1850 Redfield edition), vol. 3 p. 483:
In getting my books, I have been always solicitous of an ample margin; this is not so much through any love of the thing in itself, however agreeable, as for the facility it affords me of penciling suggested thoughts, agreements, and differences of opinion, or brief critical comments in general. Where what I have to note is too much to be included within the narrow limits of a margin, I commit it to a slip of paper, and deposit it between the leaves, taking care to secure it by an imperceptible portion of gum tragacanth paste.
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Emilie K. M. Murphy @emiliekmmurphy.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
Flashback to when I witnessed an 'eminent' Oxbridge Prof give a totally wild lecture in which they presented slides arguing that 'global history' was more popular than 'taylor swift' despite having done google searches without having put these terms in quote marks... IFYKYK.
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Mark Thakkar @brunellus.com · 21/07/2026
Lexicographer wanted at the TLL! Deadline end of August. Somewhat surprisingly, the advert doesn’t say how good your German needs to be – the TLL is based in Munich, and it’s in the nature of the job that you need to be in the office – but of course the dictionary itself is written in Latin anyway.
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Aylwyn Scally @aylwyn-scally.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
In my experience quite a few colleagues are simply finding it impossible to get their heads around the fact that a written coursework essay, the basis for assessment their entire lives, is no longer any guarantee of effort or engagement by students.
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Mark Thakkar @brunellus.com · 06/08/2026
I have all the “treat me like an adult” options turned on by default in my browser, but sometimes I do a search directly on the Google website by mistake, and the results are so bad that I don’t understand how people can still use it in “treat me like a fuckwit” mode. Still get offered slop though:
Verbatim non-AI search on Google for “cum isto casu” (with quotation marks). Above the list of genuine results is the suggestion: “Did you mean: ‘cum into cash’”
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Ketan Joshi @ketanjoshi.co · 03/06/2026
A reminder of Joshi's Workslop Postulate
JOSHI'S WORKSLOP POSTULATE
"l use Al all the time
but I always check
the outputs"
Daniel / David / James / Andrew / Robert etc
Either
LYING
Ridden with heaps
of catastrophic
errors
Definitely quicker
than doing actual
work I guess
x
Or
FOOLISH
Checked and
corrected every single
error manually
Took longer to correct
errors than just doing
the work 101
"Always check the outputs for errors" = "please re
information pollution rather than plastic pollu
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Mark Thakkar @brunellus.com · 05/08/2026
As a fraudulent professor issues a resignation letter that fails to acknowledge even one single mistake, a newly-minted PhD shows the world what it *really* looks like to care about the pursuit of truth, at a level of personal risk that doesn’t bear thinking about given the state of the job market 👏
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Retraction Watch @retractionwatch.com · 05/08/2026
"Professor Jason Arday has resigned from the University of Cambridge and Jesus College with immediate effect, Black Current News can reveal, saying years of “relentless accusations, speculation and public commentary” have taken a profound toll on him and his loved ones."
blackcurrentnews.co.uk
Exclusive | Professor Jason Arday resigns from Cambridge University, citing toll of ‘public scrutiny and personal attack’
The academic, who became the youngest Black professor in Cambridge’s history when appointed, said he had reached “the limits of what any person should reasonably be expected to endure"
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Josh Habgood-Coote @impractknow.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
Where should I be looking for solid coverage of AI changing conditions in translation work?
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Pieter Beullens @pieterbeullens.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
If you want to earn a PhD with a study of the medieval readers of the earliest MSS of Aristotle's De anima in Latin, only two days left to apply!
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Samuel Rowe @samdrowe.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
Continuing with the "someone made a horrific database of poor AI translations of early medieval letters" thing, I had a good laugh at these entirely hallucinated ones. They aren't even based on existing letters! www.lateromanletters.org/letters/epis... www.lateromanletters.org/letters/epis...
lateromanletters.org
Arioald to Pope Honorius I (c. 627 AD) | Roman Letters
Arioald, king, to the most holy Bishop…
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Rory Waterman @rorywaterman.bsky.social · 01/08/2026
Some notes by little me on recent, hugely damaging, shamefully shameless events at Cambridge University. rorywaterman.substack.com/p/notes-on-a-cambridge-debacle If you read only one article about what has happened, try the new piece by Lanre Bakare in the Guardian, linked in my blog post.
rorywaterman.substack.com
Notes on a Cambridge Debacle
I’ve written this very hastily, but there are a few things I’d like to get off my chest and the situation seems to be evolving quickly. Pleze ekscus eny leters getin in the rong plaices etc.
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Dr Jo Edge 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 @hagenilda.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
Anyway, palaeography is essential to medieval studies, as is Latin, and if we lose these from our unis we leave medieval studies to the privately-educated and independently wealthy. Medieval studies is important: everyone deserves to spend their time on this floating rock doing what they love ❤️ /FIN
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Rare Book School @rarebookschool.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
Rare Book School mourns the loss of medieval manuscripts expert and RBS emeritus faculty member Albert Derolez. "His kindness as much as his brilliance will be remembered by those who knew him," said Director Michael F. Suarez, S.J. rarebookschool.org/resources/2026/07/rbs-mourns-albert-derolez
rarebookschool.org
Rare Book School Mourns Emeritus Faculty Member Albert Derolez (1934–2026) - Rare Book School
It is with profound sadness that Rare Book School announces the death of RBS emeritus faculty member Albert Derolez on 11 July 2026, at the age of 91.
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Martin Myers @martinmyers.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
Martyn Hammersley's comments at the end of this article that Cambridge could have dealt with this from the outset are spot on - it will now be a field day for the right
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Nigel Holmes @nigelholmes.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
We finished work on the R volume of the Thesaurus months ago. The last two parts are now in print and reached us today.
The last two parts of the R volume of the Thesaurus linguae Latinae.
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Mark Thakkar @brunellus.com · 27/07/2026
“The actual epistemological crisis [is] better exemplified by the Vanderbilt report’s AI-generated analyses: automated data collection, sloppy analysis, and a growing sprawl of LLM-generated pseudo-evidence. Meanwhile the AI ensloppification of [academic publishing] continues apace” archive.is/6qf0b
archive.is
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Lewis Wade 🗃️ @wadehistory.bsky.social · 25/07/2026
Academics who discreetly email journals to inform them of academic malpractice are doing those journals such a big favour. To see those journals shrug their shoulders in response is mystifying and unacceptable. I fear the only solution might be to call those journals out publicly
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Dr. Erika Graham-Goering @jeanneologist.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
I don't suppose there's anyone here doing some work in the Archives nationales (Paris, not Pierrefitte) right now who wouldn't mind grabbing a couple of photos for me...?
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Mark Thakkar @brunellus.com · 21/07/2026
Lexicographer wanted at the TLL! Deadline end of August. Somewhat surprisingly, the advert doesn’t say how good your German needs to be – the TLL is based in Munich, and it’s in the nature of the job that you need to be in the office – but of course the dictionary itself is written in Latin anyway.
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Lukas Licka @scholipeta.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
The intricacies of the earliest stage of the mass production of printed books (Flood 2003):
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Mark Thakkar @brunellus.com · 21/07/2026
A dark warning from a search results page with its listings upgraded from stodgy verbatim extracts to predigested robovomit. (Source: “When George Molland died in September 2002, it was a great loss to the history of medieval science and mathematics, especially of the fourteenth century.”) #progress
Screenshot of a Google search for ‘george molland’. The results list begins with a death notice by John Murdoch, which Google has auto-summarized as follows: “George Molland died in September 2002, of medieval science and mathematics, especially of the fourteenth century.”
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Mark Thakkar @brunellus.com · 21/07/2026
A dark warning from a search results page with its listings upgraded from stodgy verbatim extracts to predigested robovomit. (Source: “When George Molland died in September 2002, it was a great loss to the history of medieval science and mathematics, especially of the fourteenth century.”) #progress
Screenshot of a Google search for ‘george molland’. The results list begins with a death notice by John Murdoch, which Google has auto-summarized as follows: “George Molland died in September 2002, of medieval science and mathematics, especially of the fourteenth century.”
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Steven Van Impe @svanimpe.bsky.social · 19/07/2026
Sad news I've only just heard: Albert Derolez has left us. He was 91, and one of the foremost palaeographers and codicologists in the world.
Albert Derolez last year, holding his latest publication on the Liber Floridus, a Dutch popular science book.
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Colleen Curran @ccurran.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
I beg your finest pardon?
The Internet Archive.org description of W.M. Lindsay's Palaeographia latina labels it as having 'explicit sexual content'.
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Mark Thakkar @brunellus.com · 15/07/2026
Last summer I gritted my teeth and paid 20 € postage to buy a 21.58 € paperback from Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura. Today I see they’re charging 50 € to deliver to the UK! Happily I can get the book I want elsewhere, but this isn’t the only ludicrously prohibitive postage fee I’ve seen recently 😠
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Èvi Numen @evinumen.bsky.social · 14/07/2026
Also, in the age of deepfakes and deliberate history erasure, the only unalienable truth lies in original documents and artefacts. Our last safeguards of authenticity are preserved in museums, libraries, and archives.
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Katie Murphy @manymanyplies.bsky.social · 14/07/2026
Going to try to make this accidental 'livelihoo' on the OUP website into a thing: capricious quality of life and lifelikeness, essayistic esprit, careless brilliance.
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MedPhil Journals @medphiljournals.bsky.social · 13/07/2026
Franciscan Studies 83 (2025): among other articles, a "total study" of the recently identified Franciscan collection in MS Paris, BNF, NAL 3245; Bonaventure's reception of Avicenna's psychology; and Jean de Roquetaillade's apocalyptic alchemy. buff.ly/YHi1npO
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Logeion Greek-Latin @logeiongklat.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
Today is as good a day as any other to think about giving back to something in your life that comes free to you. Do you have special skills or interests - for instance, you know Hebrew and are proficient at typing it? The digitized Lewis and Short could use your assistance with a few words.
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MedPhil Journals @medphiljournals.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
Bulletin de Philosophie Médiévale 67 (2025): Ibn Ḥazm, Ibn Ṭumlūs, Durand on evils, Guy de l'Aumône's Sentences commentary, Jandun's commentaries, new MSS from the Paris arts faculty, Konrad Wimpina's citations, future contingents in Aurifaber. buff.ly/KhDj8Sb
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B.S.W. Barootes @barootes.bsky.social · 02/07/2026
Are you headed to the @imc-leeds.bsky.social next week? Do you like Lollards and/or rebels? How about historical documents and the people, events, and networks they help us explore? Join us on Monday, July 6 at 4.30 for "Lollards and Rebels."
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Dr Naomi Scott @drnaomiscott.bsky.social · 28/06/2026
So in summary from today’s unexpectedly viral thread: the methods and the tech here are not AI in the way that’s commonly understood right now. The methods are sound. The findings are important. HOWEVER 1/
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Eduardo Fernández @apocalypsisnova.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
Not even rare, old books are safe from AI companies
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Sonja Drimmer @sonjadrimmer.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
I understand the excitement about technology “rediscovering lost texts.” I do, & I get the media hype. But I wish people knew that there are hundreds of thousands of “lost” texts just sitting in manuscripts in libraries, which have never been published outside of those single manuscripts. 1/n
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Laura Cleaver @laurajcleaver.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
It’s not too late to book your place for the Palaeography Summer School in Birmingham in July! 📖✏️👨‍🎓👇 #MedievalSky #Skystorians #Latin palaeography.uk/study/short-...
palaeography.uk
The 49th Latin and Palaeography Summer School, 27-31 July 2026
The School, formerly the Keele Latin and Palaeography Summer School, returns for its 49th year. In 2025 The Ranulf Higden Society took over the organisation of the Latin and Palaeography Summer Sch…
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Carin Ruff @carinr.bsky.social · 14/06/2026
This looks very interesting, with a strong review from Drew Jones. We don't often get new literary studies of Medieval Latin poetry these days. Plus: Baudri! I love Baudri. www.brepols.net/products/IS-...
brepols.net
Brepols - Loire Poetics
Brepols is an international academic publisher of works in the humanities, with a particular focus in history, archaeology, history of the arts, language and literature, and critical editions of histo...
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Mark Thakkar @brunellus.com · 11/06/2026
The 25th European Symposium on Medieval Logic & Semantics will be held in the Netherlands on 23–25 June. Please email esmls25@proton.me if you’d like to attend online. The programme is as follows (on Central European Summer Time, with some titles trimmed and names omitted to fit): #medievalSky
Conference poster for XXV European Symposium on Medieval Logic and Semantics, entitled “Logic and the Sciences”, to be held at Villa Vennendal in Nunspeet from 23 to 25 June 2026. The poster image is a detail from a mid-15th-century painting of the Seven Liberal arts by Francesco Pesellino and his workshop (currently housed at the Birmingham Museum of Art, Alabama) showing Musica, Astrologia and Logica.
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Mark Thakkar @brunellus.com · 11/06/2026
The 25th European Symposium on Medieval Logic & Semantics will be held in the Netherlands on 23–25 June. Please email esmls25@proton.me if you’d like to attend online. The programme is as follows (on Central European Summer Time, with some titles trimmed and names omitted to fit): #medievalSky
Conference poster for XXV European Symposium on Medieval Logic and Semantics, entitled “Logic and the Sciences”, to be held at Villa Vennendal in Nunspeet from 23 to 25 June 2026. The poster image is a detail from a mid-15th-century painting of the Seven Liberal arts by Francesco Pesellino and his workshop (currently housed at the Birmingham Museum of Art, Alabama) showing Musica, Astrologia and Logica.
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philologistgrc.bsky.social @philologistgrc.bsky.social · 04/06/2026
thanks to Riccardo Strobino we now have the Abu Bishr Matta Arabic source for the poetics aligned at the section level to the Greek as well as the Moerbeke's Latin -- and a Greek treebank.
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Royal Historical Society @royalhistsoc.org · 29/05/2026
Ministers and university managers "have to recognise that it is in everyone’s interests to replace the current individualistic practice of lopping off random branches of the tree whenever a wind blows with a collective long-term concern for the balance and shape of the tree overall." 3/3
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Dumbarton Oaks @dumbartonoaks.bsky.social · 19/05/2026
Anthony Kaldellis just posted his latest Byzantium & Friends podcast episode, where he interviews Charles Kuper, the translator of The Menologion of Basil II, on that manuscript. He also discusses Kuper’s translation for DOML.
byzantiumandfriends.podbean.com
Byzantium & Friends | Byzantium & Friends
Conversations with experts in the history of Byzantium and surrounding fields, hosted by Anthony Kaldellis.
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Laura Cleaver @laurajcleaver.bsky.social · 25/05/2026
Do you want to learn to read old documents? Do you need to learn some Latin? The 49th Palaeography Summer School is for you! 👇 Tell all your friends. #palaeography #Skystorians #MedievalSky palaeography.uk/study/short-...
palaeography.uk
The 49th Latin and Palaeography Summer School, 27-31 July 2026
The School, formerly the Keele Latin and Palaeography Summer School, returns for its 49th year. In 2025 The Ranulf Higden Society took over the organisation of the Latin and Palaeography Summer Sch…
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Margot Finn @eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 22/05/2026
The 'stinging rebuke' is open access here. You don't need to be an historian to applaud it. #Skystorians 2/2
royalhistsoc.org
History and the humanities at the University of Hertfordshire – a statement from the Royal Historical Society - RHS
Even for those familiar with bleak times, this has been a particularly bad few weeks in UK higher education. Confirmed job losses at the University of Essex were followed by further bad news from Hert...
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Mark Thakkar @brunellus.com · 21/05/2026
PSA: Titivillus was *not* associated with scribal error in the Middle Ages. This was dismissed as a chortlemuffin in 1958 by André Vernet, who pointed the finger at the entry on scribes in Franklin’s Dictionnaire historique des arts, métiers et professions (1905): archive.org/details/dict... (1/5)
Excerpt from Vernet’s 1958 article on Titivillus, “démon des copistes” (in scare quotes): “L’étymologie proposée [barb of a wood pigeon feather] … a le tort de voir en Titivillus un “démon des lapsus, non plus *calami* mais, *pennae*”, alors que Titivillus, dans les textes médiévaux, est un démon des chantres, et non des copistes: ceux-ci apparaissent, dans l’état actuel du dossier, en 1906 seulement, sous la plume d’A. Franklin, dont s’inspire la préface de la Vie de Jeanne d’Arc par Anatole France (1908), qui a vulgarisé l’historiette. La fonction essentielle de Titivillus est de recueillir et de conserver les parcelles, les miettes de mots, thème évangélique du “Colligite fragmenta ne pereant” (Joh. VI, 12), dont les termes=clés (colligere, fragmenta) se retrouvent dans toutes les versions que résume ce vers proverbial: ‘Fragima psalmorum (verborum) Titivillus colligit horum.’”
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