iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Kate Jarman @ermerlindaj.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Although I have not purchased a bargainous coffee machine, I wholeheartedly endorse this message

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Kate Jarman @ermerlindaj.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

It's always a good night out when Sputnik puts in an appearance. What an utterly magical night with @psbhq.bsky.social

View of rhe stage in the main hall at Alexandra Palace, with a crowd standing in red lighting in front of a stage of musicians. Above them is a replica of Sputnik, lit with LEDs

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Kate Jarman @ermerlindaj.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

So great to see the work of the Ethics of Medical Photography Network coming to fruition. Its been such an enjoyable and thought-provoking collaboration over the last couple of years. Join the launch to check out the new toolkit we have developed

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Robert Saunders @robertsaunders.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

A suggested statement for Andy Burnham.

‘The British public decided in the 1930s that they would not tolerate black-shirted militias marching through their streets. They would cherish robust political argument; they would not accept thuggery and intimidation. When Oswald Mosley led his Blackshirts to Cable Street, local people turned them back. A new law – introduced by a Liberal, backed by Labour and carried by a Conservative majority – banned private militias, political uniforms and ‘the use or display of physical force in promoting any political object’. The British people are as determined today as in the 1930s that they will not accept the methods of Mussolini and the Munich Beer Hall. This government will uphold the law and defend the traditions of British democracy’.

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Kate Jarman @ermerlindaj.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Obsessed with the app options on the ipad that kid 2 made at after school club. Covering all the important bases. Hair. Dress. Play. Learn. Tudor. History.

Picture of a drawing of an ipad with labelled buttons and a pair of rabbit ears

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Kate Jarman @ermerlindaj.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

@garius.bsky.social can you pre-book Sarah for a podcast when her book is published please? He would fit right in on yours

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Kate Jarman @ermerlindaj.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Devastated at how much good stuff I had to drop from my display longlist...

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Kate Jarman @ermerlindaj.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

A question for music fans and/or paper conservation types! This poster, from a memorable gig of my youth, has been below a skylight for too long and faded to match the walls (pic taken off ebay is what it used to look like). It looks a bit sad now, but would trying to recolour make it look worse?

Photo of a poster for The Coral at New Brighton, faded to blacks, whites and blues only, in a frame against a blue wall

Picture of the same poster with the original colours, including peach skin tones, oranges and reds

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Dr Sophie Michell @sophiemhistory.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

As promised, a blog that talks about human error, children (not) being transported and why AI can't do what historians do (because it can't think) sophiemhistory.substack.com/p/historians...

sophiemhistory.substack.com

Historians and AI

Sources, methodology, and lies

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Dr Vanessa @hpsvanessa.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

I emailed a library asking for a small but annoying favour, and they did me a big favour and it's provided absolutely crucial data for a new project and publication, and slopAI could never and yay for humans, and librarians and archivists in particular.

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Hetan Shah @hetanshah.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

This is a lovely site which helps remind us of much of what we take for granted in material progress ordinaryabundance.com (HT @aveek18.bsky.social)

ordinaryabundance.com

Ordinary Abundance

A walk through a modern apartment, through the eyes of the people for whom everything in it was new.

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Barts Health Archives @bharchives.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

Remember to protect your eyes during the #eclipse this evening! Make sure to wear eclipse glasses or use the pinhole technique ☀️👓😎 This London Hospital nurse is treating a patient using a lens to focus sun rays on to the face of the patient with Lupus Vulgaris (a type of tuberculosis of the skin).

Black and white photograph, c.1900, showing a Royal London Hospital nurse treating a patient in the courtyard of the hospital using a Finsen Apparatus. The apparatus' large lens focused the suns rays on to the face of the patient to treat skin complaints. This patient was being treated for Lupus Vulgaris (tuberculosis of the skin).

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Kate Jarman @ermerlindaj.bsky.social · 01/08/2026

Impeccable vibes in Preston Park. And Kylie. What a night

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Kate Jarman @ermerlindaj.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

I like to sit in a darkened store keeping the archives all to myself, wouldn't dream of responding to an enquiry... (This is the sort of BS puts people off engaging with archives, not to mention making people pay when they may not need to😡)

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Kate Jarman @ermerlindaj.bsky.social · 26/07/2026

Also featuring the best summation I have seen of the last ten years of leaders this country has endured...

Screenshot of a section of an essay by David Wingrave with the line "Every one of our prime ministers since 2016 has been *different*. Cameron, May, Truss, Sunak, Starmer, and now Burnham, seven political dwarfs of easy delineation: Chancey, Wheatey, Sleazy, Briefy, Richy, Painful, and now, Manc."

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Sean Marshall @seanyyz.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

Why I’m a fan of the Oxford comma.

TORONTO STAR
BOOK REVIEW
Sylvia Plath, a New York vigilante and Shah of Iran featured in latest historical fiction

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Kate Jarman @ermerlindaj.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

Shared a document for colleagues feedback today. "This bit is very Kate, a sentence that is a whole paragraph". Can't help it, i just love semicolons

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The Museum of English Rural Life (MERL) @themerl.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

Farewell to the extraordinary Sam Neill. Among his brilliant highlights, we'll remember him for his wonderful social media updates about his farm and his many brilliantly-named animals. www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAaK...

youtube.com

Sam Neill's farm animals have celebrity names: The Graham Norton Show 2016 - BBC

YouTube video by BBC

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Kate Jarman @ermerlindaj.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

Going to spend this evening watching imo the best Sam Neill film

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Owen Gower @owentg.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

"... since this tropical heat has enveloped me, I really have been fit for nothing - neither for working nor thinking..." Same, August 1819 Edward Jenner, same.

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American Historical Association @historians.org · 02/06/2026

In the 1920s, leaded gasoline solved the problem of noisy automobile engines—and caused a public health crisis. In #AHAPerspectives, historian @dcsackman.bsky.social asks about the risks of embracing new technology like generative AI before understanding the consequences. 🗃️

historians.org

Where Are We Driving? – AHA

Big promises are being made about how AI could revolutionize education. But what problems might it introduce?

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Ginny Dawe-Woodings @helloginnybatty.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

Find somebody who loves you the way that @ermerlindaj.bsky.social loves early modern public sanitation projects 💧

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Kate Jarman @ermerlindaj.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

The Central line, that noted cool spot of old

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Kate Jarman @ermerlindaj.bsky.social · 24/06/2026

Instant sell, looking at tickets now. (Sounds excellent, archival references notwithstanding)

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Kate Jarman @ermerlindaj.bsky.social · 23/06/2026

Intrigued to see this in my emails this morning - Freecycle as the new frontier for academic dissemination?

Screenshot of a Trash Nothing/Freecycle digest email listing items available free, including a book case shelf, baby bath, and PhD thesis

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Dave Andress @davidandress.bsky.social · 14/06/2026

Statistic vary, but somewhere between 2/3 and 3/4 of all smokers begin smoking when it is, in fact, illegal for them to do so. It is illegal for them to smoke, because it's bad for them. It's been illegal for decades. And yet, somewhere between 2/3 and 3/4 of all smokers do it.

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Chris Millard @chrismillard83.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

two of the most important things about critical fabulation (absent here) are 1) it is done only with enormous knowledge of a particular context which is understood at a very deep level and 2) in a way that is aware (self-consciously and explicitly) of what is in the archival record and what is not

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Kate Jarman @ermerlindaj.bsky.social · 06/06/2026

I did not post this but it is amongst my top gripes (and anyone who knows me knows I am 90% gripe)

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Dr Matt Mahmoudi @docmattmoudi.bsky.social · 28/05/2026

So we’ve been cooking up some thoughts on Gen AI at @amnesty.org and I’m ecstatic to finally see it out in the world! Our 🗝️ conclusion: standalone gen AI systems, built on unlawful web scraping, constitute mass invasions of privacy by design & should be prohibited www.amnesty.org/en/latest/ne...

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Kate Jarman @ermerlindaj.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

Hive mind people who know more about plants than me, what is going on here? Little buds appearing to grow out of (many of the) leaves of a ?lime tree out and about today

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Liz Anderson @lizanderson.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

This is glorious. (From the British Museum, Midsummer 1939.)

A letter to British Museum staff, written in Midsummer 1939, advising various departments not to lower their dress standards in the heat.

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Kate Jarman @ermerlindaj.bsky.social · 22/05/2026

Going to complain to the BBC that this hot mess violates the Reithian principles

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Alex von Tunzelmann @alexvont.bsky.social · 19/05/2026

This is a shocking example of one of the big reasons why, right now, there is no way I’d use AI for any of my historical work. If you don’t look at the documents yourself, and if you don’t know how the AI you’re using was coded, you have no idea what it may be leaving out – or adding in.

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Kate Jarman @ermerlindaj.bsky.social · 15/05/2026

Its a long time since I went to a gig with a pit, but I still absolutely recognised everything in this. And any article that brings together Bosch and the mosh in such beautiful prose is my kind of writing open.substack.com/pub/fugitive...

open.substack.com

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Ginny Dawe-Woodings @helloginnybatty.bsky.social · 13/05/2026

I once again refer the Guardian to the Schellenburg Dusty Archive Kitten Deaths website - "limiting stereotypes like dust...that dominate the media conversations about archives and libraries in the press, that imply irrelevance and overlook archival labor and archivists' contributions". Fucks sake.

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Kate Jarman @ermerlindaj.bsky.social · 03/05/2026

The kids have found The Lady Grace Mysteries on the telly, and I don't think anything since Cocomelon has grated on me this much😬

Screenshot of the CBBC page for The Lady Grace Mysteries, showing three young people in 'Tudor' costume, arms folded ready for anachronistic teen adventures

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Kate Jarman @ermerlindaj.bsky.social · 30/04/2026

Lots of NHS admin records in the archives this week❤️ Absolute scenes for our poor placement student trying to learn the difference between City and East London Area Health Authority (Teaching) and East London and the City Health Authority (Purchasing), and their many similarly named contemporaries

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BuffaloResearch.com @buffaloresearch.com · 30/04/2026

Yep. When you digitize old stuff, you now have to look after the original artifact *and* it's digital surrogate. "Just put everything online" is not the labor-saving flex laypeople think it is.

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Andrew Janes @cartivist.bsky.social · 30/04/2026

#WhyArchives? Because the past deserves a future & the future deserves a past. #Archive30

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Kate Jarman @ermerlindaj.bsky.social · 23/04/2026

Sentences you only hear in the #archives - "Can I move your stuff for next week's session to a less desirable trolley?"

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Kate Jarman @ermerlindaj.bsky.social · 20/04/2026

As well as the fascinating interviews, one of the things I'm really enjoying about our current oral history project is getting out to bits of east London I've never visited. So much interesting history to explore, and finally putting a place to the hospital for lots of the collections we hold

Kingsley Hall community centre, Bromley by Bow, a beautiful 1920s red brick building with ivy growing up it and two flagpoles

A blue plaque on Kingsley Hall commemorating Mahatma Gandhi's stay there in 1931

The road sign for Devons Road, location of St Andrew's Hospital, originally known as the Poplar and Stepney Sick Asylum

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Sarah Elizabeth Cox @oispooky.bsky.social · 17/04/2026

How disappointing to see one of the biggest history podcasts asking for editors to have experience using AI picture and voice generators. History media is impacted enough by slop and nonsense, and many talented artists, writers, filmmakers and designers put out of work. Awful.

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