iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Will Clement

if i take a walk in my little walkable neighborhood to buy fresh flowers and crunchy nectarines and my serenity is punctured by the sound of your tesla flipping in the air, i will blow up your car with a rocket launcher

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Will Clement @historywill.bsky.social · 12h

Escape From New York For Tax Purposes

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Will Clement @historywill.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

Some kind of pokemon-esque evolution cycle I imagine. But which one came first: May or the stork?

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Will Clement @historywill.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

Looking forward to teaching about local, region, nation and borders this afternoon. I’ll be bringing along a book by the Alsatian artist Hansi and teaching with this image. Except it’s been ruined for me as someone’s pointed out that the distinctive local white stork is doing the Tory power stance

A colourful illustration of an Alsatian town square with lots of tricolour French flags, soldiers, women and children in local costume, and a giant white stork doing a power stance in a nest

Three Tory politicians doing an absurdly wide-set power stance

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Will Clement @historywill.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

Scriptwriter for historical fiction TV shows/films Still a legit pivot to escape academic precarity (because the film industry is extremely stable, right?)

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Will Clement @historywill.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

Merci! (also - I have a dissertation student working with cahiers this year who was enthusing about your THJ article!)

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Will Clement @historywill.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

The article - part of a forthcoming special issue on Dirty Data - is the most methodology-focused thing I have written and gives a sneak peek at the issues of researching the housing inspectors that feature in my book. The introduction to the special issue is also live: doi.org/10.1093/fh/c...

doi.org

Introduction: ‘dirty data’ and creative quantification

Abstract. Historical research has changed in the age of big data. But the articles in this special issue take inspiration from the quantitative approaches

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Will Clement @historywill.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

Missed opportunity by Big Gouda for the tagline “The Devil Eats Gouda”

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Kristof Smeyers @kristofsmeyers.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

my job as a historian of the nineteenth century would be made so much easier if I was able to type 'nineteenth century'

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Will Clement @historywill.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

I know exactly what you mean, writing as a historian of hosuing

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Dave Andress @davidandress.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

Only a small minority of people are active, angry, violent racists. Quite a large majority of people are empathetic, concerned, and tolerant. But we have managed to organise our media/political environment so that only the angry racists are heard.

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will pooley @willpooley.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

so sad to see our once great universities forced to such desperate measures to make money

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Dr. Nick Posegay @nposegay.northsky.social · 08/10/2026

Punching my ticket to Kalamazoo

Graphic labelled "Types of Medievalist Paper" based on xkcd.com/2456/. 12 pictures of 'papers' appear with overlaid titles:

You Won't Believe What Nuns Were Up To
HEY, I FOUND A TROVE OF OLD RECORDS! THEY DON'T TURN OUT TO BE PARTICULARLY USEFUL, BUT STILL, COOL!
The Silk Road Is Not Just A Website for Buying LSD
Niche Tax Documents in Provence, 1370-1373
Everything That Happened in Asia, 622-1914
Ships Might Be Very Important
Introducing "Spatula' The New Journal for Medieval Studies
Globalizing the Middle Ages: An Examination of England *and* France
How l Got the University to Pay for My Trip to Venice
Did You Know? Arabs Had Science and Culture Too
We Remembered Spain And It's Right Where We Left It
More Viking Shit Found in Unexpected Place

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Royal Historical Society @royalhistsoc.org · 08/10/2026

Applications to join the Society's Fellowship and Membership are welcome at any time. Our next closing date is 14 December with further details here: bit.ly/3VojFPL Our four categories of Fellowship and Membership cater for the history's professional and personal practice, in its many forms 2/2

Image of joining page for the Royal Historical Society. With text:

Join the Royal Historical Society

Closing date for next applications:
Monday 14 December 2026

The Royal Historical Society represents the interests of historical researchers in universities, libraries, archives, museums, heritage and broadcasting, as well as those engaged in public, community and family history research.

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Will Clement @historywill.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Thrilled to be one of these new Fellows!

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Will Clement @historywill.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Ha yes, this was yesterday: bsky.app/profile/hist...

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Independent Historians Network (UK) @indyhistnetwork.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Another horrible example of AI exploiting writers.

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Will Clement @historywill.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Genuinely fascinated by these AI slop book club/podcast/Meetup Community spam-scam emails. I'm getting one every other day now. Why are they doing this? Do they actually trick anyone? What was it like in the beautiful pre-genAI days? Did people receive similar email attempts in the same volume?

An email
Hi Will,

The title Inspecting the Home caught my attention because it immediately suggests looking at something we normally think of as private and familiar through a much more questioning lens. The idea of “inspecting” the home made me wonder what becomes visible when we stop treating the home as simply a place where people live and instead begin examining what it tells us about the people, structures, and experiences connected to it.

That is the kind of starting point I think can lead to a particularly interesting conversation among readers.

I’m Scott Jenkins, founder of Drunken Philosophy, a Meetup community built around thoughtful conversations, new perspectives, and bringing curious people together around ideas worth exploring.

One thing I’ve noticed is that books with something substantial to say can sometimes struggle to find the readers who would genuinely appreciate them. The book may be there, but the conversation around it has not always found its audience.

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Will Tullett @willtullett.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

PSA: if you come across a weird historical smell thing, let me know - it's the right thing to do.

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Matt Binder @mattbinder.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

the tech industry is about to invent books

Andrew Yeung
@andruyeung
X.com
We created gyms because modern day work no
longer required physical activity. Without exercise,
our muscles atrophy.
I predict we'll need gyms for our brains too, once Al
starts doing our knowledge work.
10:53 PM • 10/4/26 • 1.3M Views

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Bruno Leipold @brunoleipold.com · 06/10/2026

Paperback of Citizen Marx published today. Now available for the (slightly) more reasonable price of $29.95/£25.00 (+30% off with code PUP30) 🙂

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Will Clement @historywill.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

If you’re going to send a suspicious-reading AI book club scam email to academics… 1. Please use our titles. It’s basically all we have left 2. Don’t follow up by dropping the AI-written excessive flattery and instead behaving like someone left on read

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Plashing Vole @plashingvole.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Things do look grim but this is still on the office door.

Dafydd Iwan holding up a scarf with the words ‘yma o hyd’ - still here.

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Euronews @euronews.com · 05/10/2026

Spain's prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has decided to call an early general election after a brief period of reflection launched following Congress's rejection of two housing decree-laws promoted by his government. l.euronews.com/W7Uc

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Will Clement @historywill.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

I’m just sad that you’re *you* again and not Macron as in the days of Twitter

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Will Clement @historywill.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

P.S. just to clarify, that is not a photo of me in the quoted post

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Will Clement @historywill.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Excited to join BEMCC! I’m just leaving a conference Paris exploring the “cloaques” in history. These “cesspits” (tho that’s an imperfect translation — I suggested “shitholes”) had a marked impact on the bodies of urban inhabitants. Also feat @manonraffard.bsky.social of @uomsalc.bsky.social

A poster for an academic conference showing a black and white image of a man in a fetid alleyway. The title of the conference was Le cloaque, in bad-fond d’un autre genre à explorer

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Will Clement @historywill.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Such excellent news — congratulations and hope the start of term goes well!

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Will Clement @historywill.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Nothing like seeing the reference request numbers at the Archives nationales to help you feel small (I assume these are all-time rather than the place of my requests in a current queue, otherwise my plans to squeeze half a day in the archives around a two-day conference are looking slim...)

A table of 'Request No.' then a list of five numbers above 102 million

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Will Clement @historywill.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Just arrived in Paris (for the first time in over ten years!) and got irrationally excited by seeing the words “Napoléon III”, having written them myself so many times in the last decade

A French sign at a train station including the words Esplanade Napoléon III

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Will Clement @historywill.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

I always pictured her being more involved later, in the Napoleonic blockade runner

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Will Clement @historywill.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Have just found the perfect* way to introduce the three estates to my revolution class next week *perfect for me, an enjoyer of Star Wars

A screenshot of a quote tweet. The original tweet by user @LavenderGhast reads: Watching Andor and realizing all the higher up's in the Rebellion are all wealthy and/or royalty who lost their power after the rise of the Empire and don't want to make something new but just reclaim their own power base by restoring the o...

The quote tweet by @parasociality reads:

Star Wars has always been reactionary with a veneer of progressivism.
It's about Second Estate nobles (Princess Leia) and First Estate clerics (the Jedi), in alliance with lumpenprole scoundrels (Han), trying to reverse the "New Order" and restore the ancien régime.

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Will Clement @historywill.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

If copilot is so amazing, then why can't it realise I don't want to inform people of 'All the bets' in every other email I send

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Will Clement @historywill.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Looking forward to this! I’ll be talking about drains and cesspits and overflowing latrines. Delightful!

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John Gallagher @earlymodernjohn.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

I will always remember fondly the student who finished an essay with the line "In conclusion, the early modern period marked a massive shit in European history."

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Will Clement @historywill.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

I did just have to use a guillotine in the print room to cut these up…

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Will Clement @historywill.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Every week during the three hour class I use these role cards to help students build on the core reading/events of the Revolution as it goes through. If nothing else, it’s been a fun icebreaker and gets people talking every week. 2/2

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Will Clement @historywill.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Another Welcome Week means another time printing out my character role cards for my Level 3. I’ve done this for three years now — each (plus a few not pictured here) come with an info paragraph on the back plus short, additional primary sources from each role’s perspective for each topic 1/2

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Bodies, Emotions and Material Culture Collective @bemccollective.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

We're excited to welcome @drhollyfletcher.bsky.social (@ucl.ac.uk) back to Manchester to speak about her new project, ‘The Fats of Life in the Early Modern World: Matter in Multispecies Medicine’ (funded by @wellcometrust.bsky.social). Join us on Weds 30th Sept, 13:00, to hear more! Details linked:

sites.manchester.ac.uk

Holly Fletcher (UCL), 'The Fats of Life in the Early Modern World: Matter in Multispecies Medicine'

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Will Clement @historywill.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Problem is, I can’t listen to it without hearing this version youtu.be/dBM7i84BThE?... Also can’t watch any of the moments sliced from the films for this without humming the song

youtu.be

Star Wars Call Me Maybe

YouTube video by James Covenant

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