iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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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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Mark Thakkar @brunellus.com · 14/09/2026

Sure: pp. 54–157. (Let me know if you need a copy.)

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Mark Thakkar @brunellus.com · 14/09/2026

PS. I did this with my Wyclif translation review (believe it or not!) and the response from a colleague in the field was gratitude that someone was finally going to say it in print. So there’s a chance that you won’t be the first to have noticed, and that you will be thanked for it in a similar way.

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Mark Thakkar @brunellus.com · 14/09/2026

Don’t pull your punches – we need to know! – but run a draft past a colleague (in a distant field if it’s a sensitive case) and ask them to be on the lookout for signs that you are an ass. Unlikely to be a real issue given that you’re asking the question in the first place. bsky.app/profile/kfdu...

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Mark Thakkar @brunellus.com · 09/09/2026

FB's algorithms had only just treated me to a reminder of this: www.facebook.com/thomaspyncho...

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Mark Thakkar @brunellus.com · 08/09/2026

Never read it, but proud to have starred in the film.

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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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Mark Thakkar @brunellus.com · 04/09/2026

Just the other day I was sent scurrying to this from Horace: “obscurata diu populo bonus eruet atque proferet in lucem speciosa vocabula rerum, quae priscis memorata Catonibus atque Cethegis nunc situs informis premit et deserta vetustas.” (Bob Hargrave: “As this is Oxford, I shall not translate.”)

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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 · 20/08/2026

I asked for an in-person exam for 6 master’s students last year and was told it would be too difficult to arrange. And lo and behold, one of them cheated very obviously on it, and I was told it would be too difficult to challenge. A spot of determination in the face of difficulty wouldn’t go amiss!

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Mark Thakkar @brunellus.com · 19/08/2026

Very nice! I remember the inside being disappointingly full of nettles and cowpats, though. Same old?

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Mark Thakkar @brunellus.com · 19/08/2026

Oh, it all makes work for the working man to do! www.iankitching.me.uk/humour/hippo...

iankitching.me.uk

The Gas Man Cometh - Flanders and Swann

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Mark Thakkar @brunellus.com · 19/08/2026

Many of the similar requests I see in my own field attract a whole pile of “Oh yes please, me too!“ follow-ups – but that’s on Facebook, and perhaps the tumbleweed engagement levels on Bluesky would be a sufficient defence!

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Mark Thakkar @brunellus.com · 19/08/2026

Libraries and educational establishments have an exception precisely for this. There is a section on fair dealing for the purpose of non-commercial research and private study that looks vague to me (IANAL) but one reading is that it’s OK unless it’ll predictably end up going to more than one person.

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Mark Thakkar @brunellus.com · 19/08/2026

Yikes! I’d assumed they were right about ALD (as in, that the relevant volume hadn’t yet been added to the database). In that case it looks like incompetent reading and/or searching. Many such cases.

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Mark Thakkar @brunellus.com · 19/08/2026

Some UK ISPs block it – apparently BT, Virgin Media, Sky, TalkTalk, EE and Plusnet – but some don’t, and of course for everything else there’s VPN. Worth remembering in this context that it would be a breach of copyright for anyone to satisfy a request like Kathleen’s via more traditional methods.

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Mark Thakkar @brunellus.com · 19/08/2026

I don’t see the point of boycotting it. Google are a bunch of nefarious wankers, and yet as a researcher you would be shooting yourself in the foot by switching to DuckDuckGo, which is nowhere near as useful. (Perhaps worth adding that if I spent any more money on books they’d have to take me away.)

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Mark Thakkar @brunellus.com · 19/08/2026

“Schum schreibt den Text Aristoteles zu. Er war jedoch nicht über die Aristoteles-Latinus Database nachzuweisen. Eventuell ein Aristoteles-Kommentar?” Tell me you don’t use Google without telling me you don’t use Google. (Ironically, in 2008 this would have thrown up, i.a., the relevant AL volume!)

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Mark Thakkar @brunellus.com · 18/08/2026

The book is on Anna's Archive, and incidentally the page range should be 1–30. (It’s his 1954 paper “War and Finance in the Anglo-Norman State” that has the page range 19–43.)

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Mark Thakkar @brunellus.com · 13/08/2026

No worries! Always satisfying when it works out.

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Mark Thakkar @brunellus.com · 13/08/2026

Oh! Belatedly spotted (still pre-coffee) that you searched for the wrong thing. Try it with the ‘t’ and see if that works. bsky.app/profile/brun...

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Mark Thakkar @brunellus.com · 13/08/2026

I can read the manuscript, thanks! And indeed could in the small hours after a long night out, which is why I didn’t go the extra mile and look for an earlier edition. No idea why Google didn’t return this result for you, but try starting at the foot of 86ra here: books.google.co.uk/books?id=k5n...

books.google.co.uk

In primum decretalium librum commentaria, doctissimorum virorum quampluribus adnotationibus illustrata ...

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Mark Thakkar @brunellus.com · 13/08/2026

Search on Google Books for “ab alienatione seu” and you’ll find your text. #verbsap

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Mark Thakkar @brunellus.com · 10/08/2026

Well, I had to do *something* while supervising my daughter in the bathroom!

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Mark Thakkar @brunellus.com · 10/08/2026

Especially since it’s survived intact for almost a century!

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Mark Thakkar @brunellus.com · 07/08/2026

Or a money shot? Idk, I didn’t click to find out.

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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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Mark Thakkar @brunellus.com · 06/08/2026

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Mark Thakkar @brunellus.com · 06/08/2026

“Mediaevalia (often misspelled as mediavevalia)” #AIoverspew

Google AI Overview for the search term “mediavevalia” (in quotation marks) beginning with the false claim quoted in my post.

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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

PS. Link here for anyone who can’t see the quoted post: www.science.org/content/arti...

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Mark Thakkar @brunellus.com · 05/08/2026

One of the many depressing aspects of l’affaire Arday was the occasional insinuation from his knee-jerk defenders that Retraction Watch was morally dubious. Those of us who care about academic integrity will have already had RW down on the side of the angels, and this new award is further proof.

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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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Mark Thakkar @brunellus.com · 03/08/2026

While we wait, a nod back in this direction for anyone who missed it: bsky.app/profile/magi...

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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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Mark Thakkar @brunellus.com · 03/08/2026

“This letter still needs a Latin or Greek source-text backfill.” Something to look forward to!

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