iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Charlotte Gauthier @faraiunvers.bsky.social · 22/10/2025

Looking forward to being deported for having the temerity to study at theological college (and thus briefly dropping below the earnings threshold, even though I've been a net contributor for a decade+).

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Charlotte Gauthier @faraiunvers.bsky.social · 12/10/2025

The Turkish stuff made for Turkish people is. The Turkish stuff made for tourists, on the other hand...

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Charlotte Gauthier @faraiunvers.bsky.social · 12/10/2025

Post-service takeaway is the only sensible ending to the evening.

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Charlotte Gauthier @faraiunvers.bsky.social · 12/10/2025

The people who don't like it might have unwittingly subjected themselves to the bad stuff. Can't stand the gelatinous stuff in the grocery store boxes. Fortnum's, on the other hand, is firmer, and so delightful that I only buy it at Christmas, lest massive weight gain ensue. (Not the point I know.)

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Charlotte Gauthier @faraiunvers.bsky.social · 07/10/2025

Join me next year at the #SSCLE conference in Porto, from 29 June-3 July 2025. Do please share this #CFP with anyone who studies the Later Crusades (post-1291) and would like to share their research with an enthusiastic and perceptive audience. #skystorians #medievalsky #earlymodernsky

Recent decades have seen significant advances in our understanding of the later crusades (post-1291). This session aims to showcase the latest research on this fascinating topic.
We invite proposals for 20-minute papers exploring new perspectives on the later crusades. Topics are not limited to, but might include:
Diplomacy and statecraft Crusading and Reformation Logistics, financing, recruitment, and volunteerism
Crusading in Eastern Europe, the Balkans, the Baltic, and Iberia Crusades against ‘heretics’ Intellectual history of crusading
Submit your paper title, abstract
(250 words) and a brief biography to charlotte.gauthier.2017@live.rhul.ac.uk by 25 October 2025.

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Charlotte Gauthier @faraiunvers.bsky.social · 12/09/2025

Which is, frankly, the point of the assignment. It will be salutary to give them a visceral experience (assuming they do the assignment) of AI slop falsifying records. Apologies for the sheer amount of CO2 the exercise will generate, however.

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Charlotte Gauthier @faraiunvers.bsky.social · 12/09/2025

I've just tried this with ChatGPT about a well-known event: the sinking of the Lusitania. The book references it spit out were actually real - though with the US rather than UK publishers. But it completely hallucinated all 5 of the "journal articles" it referenced. (No surprise there!)

A screenshot of a completely factitious bibliography on the sinking of the Lusitania generated by ChatGPT.

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Charlotte Gauthier @faraiunvers.bsky.social · 12/09/2025

Setting up Moodle for my digital history class this term and considering what to do for an assignment on the week I talk about AI slop and fake historical records. I've settled on a bibliography assignment. Use your favourite AI to generate a bibliography, then verify the references.

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Charlotte Gauthier @faraiunvers.bsky.social · 23/08/2025

The French don't do tea, Francis. Why do you think they fought so many wars with England?

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Charlotte Gauthier @faraiunvers.bsky.social · 23/08/2025

On this, the final weekend before what’s shaping up to be a brutal term, I’m in Hammersmith on a sort of pilgrimage.

Sign for the Dove pub, which gave its name to the Dove Press next door

Blue plaque for Thomas James Cobden-Sanderson on Dove Cottage

One of William Morris’s presses at Kelmscott House

Blue plaque for Emery Walker on his Hammersmith Terrace house

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Charlotte Gauthier @faraiunvers.bsky.social · 19/08/2025

Now Nic, tell us how you’d defend it from an attack from the sea, and then conversely how you’d besiege it. We want battle plans. 😉

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Reposted by Charlotte Gauthier

Surprised Eel Historian, PhD @greenleejw.bsky.social · 14/08/2025

A poem from this morning.

Humanities

Who needs history?
Literature? Languages?
Art? Philosophy?

These can only help
you to better understand
our humanity.

Best to let machines
read your books. And write your books.
Do your art for you.

You will never need
to think. Never need to learn.
You’ll learn to like it.

And when the end comes
you’ll have never burdened down
your soul with any growth.

Someone selling this
sees profit in destroying
your humanity.

-- John Wyatt Greenlee

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Charlotte Gauthier @faraiunvers.bsky.social · 14/08/2025

Everyone in the Middle Ages wore nothing but brown and went around permanently dirty and dishevelled. Also, there was no sunshine so even daylight had a permanently blue cast to it.

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Charlotte Gauthier @faraiunvers.bsky.social · 13/08/2025

Bland, inoffensive, and (low be it spoken) sometimes insincere niceness, designed to entice people to join a Christian community in which they can then be 'discipled'. The 'winsome' are often well-meaning, but whether 'winsomeness' brings anyone to a robust faith is a matter of some doubt.

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Charlotte Gauthier @faraiunvers.bsky.social · 13/08/2025

The NRSV is a never-ending fount of modern clangers. It's ageing just about as well as some of the 1950s/60s 'modern language' translations, some of which are now unintentionally hilarious.

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Charlotte Gauthier @faraiunvers.bsky.social · 13/08/2025

This. I wince whenever I hear any of the following: 'have a heart for' 'having a season [of/for] x' 'winsome' 'being church' 'growing younger' 'discipling' ...amongst others. Ironically, such phrases have sometimes been sold as "reducing jargon" and "speaking the "language of the people". Well... 🤷‍♀️

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Charlotte Gauthier @faraiunvers.bsky.social · 13/08/2025

This is why the comma after 'both' is so important. 😂

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Charlotte Gauthier @faraiunvers.bsky.social · 10/08/2025

Yes! When I worked in tech I never hired comp sci graduates. Musicians, historians, and physicists always made the best programmers.

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Charlotte Gauthier @faraiunvers.bsky.social · 10/08/2025

Always delighted to get in the way of such people.

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Charlotte Gauthier @faraiunvers.bsky.social · 07/08/2025

Some people obviously saw Agent Smith and were like - “Yeah, let’s build that!”

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Reposted by Charlotte Gauthier

Charlotte Lydia Riley @lottelydia.bsky.social · 05/08/2025

ACADEMIC READING ALREADY COMES WITH A SUMMARY IT IS CALLED THE ABSTRACT

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Charlotte Gauthier @faraiunvers.bsky.social · 05/08/2025

Let’s just call it “saunders” as the Victorians did, and skip the controversy altogether.

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Charlotte Gauthier @faraiunvers.bsky.social · 03/08/2025

Sod’s Law of Research Days: As soon as you request the manuscripts you want to see at the library hours away from your home, several different people will email you wanting to set up urgent meetings for that very same day.

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Charlotte Gauthier @faraiunvers.bsky.social · 03/08/2025

This is not to say that swords should be banned - that's asinine. But perpetuating myths doesn't help educate people.

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Charlotte Gauthier @faraiunvers.bsky.social · 03/08/2025

The myth of the super-heavy sword is just that: a myth. Even the absolutely enormous two-handed swords of the 1580s weigh less than 15lbs and could be lifted (but not properly used) by teens. Here's a splendid example from the Wallace Collection: wallacelive.wallacecollection.org/eMP/eMuseumP...

wallacelive.wallacecollection.org

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Charlotte Gauthier @faraiunvers.bsky.social · 03/08/2025

I wouldn’t want to tune one of those enormous 6-octave Swedish clavichords, though.

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Charlotte Gauthier @faraiunvers.bsky.social · 03/08/2025

It holds tune pretty well, especially if you attempt to keep the temperature/humidity relatively stable (i.e., by drawing the blind so that the sun isn’t shining directly on the instrument). Because it’s triple-fretted there isn’t a huge number of strings to tune, which also makes it more manageable

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Charlotte Gauthier @faraiunvers.bsky.social · 02/08/2025

If someone made reproduction Mildly Astonished Owl coffee mugs, I’d definitely purchase one.

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Charlotte Gauthier @faraiunvers.bsky.social · 02/08/2025

Mine is absolutely tiny (107cm long) rather like my flat. It’s a copy of a c. 1620 instrument in the Mirrrey collection in Edinburgh. Triple-fretted, with a short octave in the bass end. It’s perfect for me as I don’t really play music written much after 1650, but some later pieces work too.

The clavichord in question. (People worried about the plant on top of the instrument: I promise it’s fine.)

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Charlotte Gauthier @faraiunvers.bsky.social · 02/08/2025

My Saturday project is doing a bit of conservation work on two 17th-century carved panels I’ve just acquired (rather cheaply, I may add). Treated them for woodworm just in case, and now comes the polishing.

A foliage carved oak panel sitting on a piece of brown paper, with a small can of Renaissance Wax on top.

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Charlotte Gauthier @faraiunvers.bsky.social · 01/08/2025

This is a really cool collection. I now feel inadequate. I'd have to stop after a clavichord, lute, and alto recorder. (No viol, alas - haven't room for it.)

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Charlotte Gauthier @faraiunvers.bsky.social · 28/07/2025

Whoever has most recently emailed me “just to check if you’ve received my last message”.

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Charlotte Gauthier @faraiunvers.bsky.social · 27/07/2025

Macs at this point are overpriced toys aimed at people who want a certain logo to flash around. Cycles of planned obsolescence are getting ever-shorter. I am typing this on a Mac laptop - but when this dies (hopefully many years from now) I won't get a new Mac.

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Charlotte Gauthier @faraiunvers.bsky.social · 23/07/2025

All the most interesting stuff about the Tudors comes from their interaction with the Habsburgs. There, I said it.

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Reposted by Charlotte Gauthier

John McCafferty @jdmccafferty.bsky.social · 22/07/2025

22 July 1456: A thanksgiving service for the deliverance of Belgrade from the Turks held #otd at St. Frideswide's #Oxford - now Christ Church (Diliff)

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Charlotte Gauthier @faraiunvers.bsky.social · 18/07/2025

The art chosen by that journalist would not make it home from the wedding venue. I’m afraid it would find its way to a charity shop on the way to the airport for the honeymoon.

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Charlotte Gauthier @faraiunvers.bsky.social · 15/07/2025

Here are six! They’re from a couple of years ago and there are things I’d nuance differently now, but I’m still quite proud of them: youtube.com/playlist?lis...

youtube.com

The English Church in the Middle Ages - YouTube

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Charlotte Gauthier @faraiunvers.bsky.social · 03/07/2025

It’s now live! I’ve been working on this Peasants’ War project with some fabulous colleagues from @ox.ac.uk and @royalholloway.bsky.social over the past year+ and we’re delighted to share the fruits of our research.

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