iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Jeff VanderMeer @jeffvandermeer.bsky.social · 20h

They quoted me in this New Yorker piece about AI today. www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

“Let’s say there’s a world or time line I exist in where A.I. has been subject to regulation. It is ethical. It has no footprint environmentally,” the novelist Jeff VanderMeer, a prominent critic of A.I., told me over the phone. “With those guardrails in place, would I read an A.I. book? All I can say is no. And the reason is, in part, because I want to read something coming from a particular mind.” Using A.I., he said, “feels like a betrayal of the whole point of why you’re a writer.”

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Hannah Vardit @hannahvardit.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

you will encounter more opportunities in life to change the batteries on a smoke alarm than you will to run into a burning building and no one gives a shit you changed those batteries but it is still very important and why are you waiting on a burning building, know what i’m saying, it’s a metaphor

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Hannah Vardit @hannahvardit.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

i worry that men think being A Good Guy is dramatically and heroically intervening on behalf of an endangered woman and then being publicly rewarded on a grand scale when actually being A Good Guy is just usually saying, “hey man that’s not funny” or “wow that’s fucked up” and there is no reward

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BeijingPalmer @beijingpalmer.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

I'm gonna need a dozen guys and some motorbikes.

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Ryan Cordell @ryancordell.org · 25/09/2026

My colleague Carson Koepke has been laser-cutting different woods for printing the full deck of this late-medieval tarot set @skeuomorphpress.org Today we tested a small plate for an upcoming event @illinoisrbml.bsky.social, printing on our Book Beetle—from @josefbeery.bsky.social—it looks great!

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Sonja Drimmer @sonjadrimmer.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

I’ve been writing and speaking on this topic for years, and I’m glad that news media are finally drawing attention to it. www.salon.com/2026/07/28/t...

It may be tempting to see value in projects such as the Schmidt Foundation — that’s Eric Schmidt of Google — funding a fellowship in AI at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, or the Musk Foundation’s support of the Scroll Prize to use AI in reconstructing ancient texts in the burnt scrolls of Herculaneum. But these projects are simply two among countless others that have been seeding AI into museums and historical research for well over a decade. Even more egregious is the case of AI companies buying and destroying rare books en masse in the process of scanning them for data. In the context of the dire austerity we are witnessing, the juggernaut of tech money seems impossible to resist.

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Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies @sims-mss.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

On Monday we held our second History of Text Technologies workshop - writing with quills! We looked at manuscripts, mostly in Carolingian script, and talked about paleography, ink, and scribal practice. Then we tried it on our own! Find out more about the HTT series here: bit.ly/4rglCcE

Photo of two students writing with quills!

Photo of a sheet of paper with fancy writing on it. The first few lines have a few random words and letters written on them. Next is written "The Quick Brown Fox Jumped Over The Lazy Dog" and the next four lines read "Andrew Duncan Donuts" "Jeff Joehnk" "Rosie Kins" and "Bonnie Kins"

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scott b. weingart @scottbot.net · 22/09/2026

Join my team! Help us figure out how to be as careful stewards of today's born-digital archives of state as we've been for physical archives over the last 200 years. Seeking experience in digital archives/collections/preservation, or related cultural heritage work. Due 10/6. Up to $91k.

jobs.virginia.gov

Born-Digital Collections Coordinator #00220 - Richmond, Virginia, United States

Title: Born-Digital Collections Coordinator #00220 State Role Title: Library Specialist III Hiring Range: Commensurate with experience up to $91,080 Pay Band: 5 Agency: The Library of Virginia Locatio...

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Lisa Fagin Davis @lisafdavis.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

This is a great opportunity to apply for funding to attend @rarebookschool.bsky.social! You might even apply for a scholarship to attend my Fragmentology class next summer...

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The Price Lab @pricelab.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Next Monday at our Digital Humanities Seminar series: @leoba.bsky.social will speak about how #DHMakes has inspired the work she's doing with @sims-mss.bsky.social in the Vitale II Lab for Book History and Digital Humanities. Lunch will be served!

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Dot Porter @leoba.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

If you are in or around Philly, come hear me talk about the work I'm doing at @sims-mss.bsky.social , inspired by #DHMakes! Free lunch! Don't miss it - next week at @pricelab.bsky.social on Tuesday, 12pm-1:30pm. pricelab.sas.upenn.edu/events/dot-p...

pricelab.sas.upenn.edu

Price Lab for Digital Humanities

The Price Lab is the University of Pennsylvania's center for innovative uses of technology in the study and teaching of history, art, and culture.

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Lisa Fagin Davis @lisafdavis.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Are you #TeamScroll or #TeamCodex when it comes to texts with genealogical diagrams? Join me and @leoba.bsky.social on Thursday as we resolve this burning question once and for all! (hint: read my recent article if you want to know which team I'm on! muse.jhu.edu/pub/56/artic...)

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Max Kennerly @maxkennerly.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

If you're a Dem who thinks you'll gain something by going anti-trans, look at Gallup's "most important problem" and Fox News' "most important issue" polling and see where trans issues rank. Whoever told you going anti-trans is a savvy or necessary move spends too much time on X and should be fired.

Gallup polling. "LGBTQ rights" moves between 0 and 1%.

Fox news polling. Wokeness/transgender issues at 0%.

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Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies @sims-mss.bsky.social · 19/09/2025

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY, September 19, 1984, Former U. S. President Gerald Ford was stuck in an elevator in the Van Pelt Library at UPenn. Was there a medieval manuscript stuck in the elevator with him? Probably not, but we can dream. #medievalsky

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Ennius @enniusredloeb.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Yom Kippur in 2026 begins at sunset on 20th September. Here is Jonah being swallowed by the fish, at the text of Jonah, the haftarah for the afternoon service of Yom Kippur. Bodleian Library, MS Kennicott 1; 'The Kennicott Bible'; 1476 CE; La Coruña, Spain; f.305r @bodleian.ox.ac.uk

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Patrick’s Rare Books @patricksrarebooks.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Build your own home data center. Fight artificial intelligence with real intelligence.

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lisa wright @gunnstreetgrrl.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Come work with us!

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Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies @sims-mss.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

If you missed yesterday's #CWAC with this lovely illuminated maḥazor, you can watch it now on YouTube youtu.be/qeF--fwyG_w

youtu.be

Coffee with a Codex: Illuminated Maḥazor (CAJS Rar Ms 382)

YouTube video by SchoenbergInstitute

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Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies @sims-mss.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

This week we held our first History of Text Technologies workshop of the season! We made our own illuminated initials, after looking at several illuminated medieval manuscripts from our collections for inspiration. One of our favorite ongoing workshops!

A group of students sits around a large table, which is covered by arts and crafts supplies.

A photo of an illuminated initial N, it has a gold background and small amounts of color in the letter

Photo of a student painting a red A inside a gold background

A Photo of two students coloring in their illuminated initials

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Girton College, University of Cambridge @girtoncollege.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

📚 A medieval mystery solved nearly a century later. Girton Fellow Dr James Wade and Dr Katie Walter of @sussex.ac.uk have reunited six lost pages of a medieval bestseller with its manuscript, now held 3,500 miles away at Yale. Read the full story: 🔎 🔗 www.girton.cam.ac.uk/news/reunite...

girton.cam.ac.uk

Girton Fellow helps reunite lost pages of a medieval bestseller after nearly a century

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burn it all down @russbengtson.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

*suspicious lobster wife* where did you get that shrimp *still confused lobster* you're never gonna believe this

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Dr. Paula R. Curtis @paularcurtis.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

SO EXCITED ABOUT THIS! Love to see a bestie's work you've been following for years come to fruition. 🥹 Anyone interested in medieval environment, theology, empire, and more should definitely order themselves a physical copy! ✨🌳✨

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Tim Sherratt @wragge.hcommons.social.ap.brid.gy · 17/09/2026

New #openAccess book – *Embedded Pedagogies: Digital Humanities Teaching and the Infrastructure of Change* by Brandon Walsh. www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10… #digitalHumanities

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Moby Dick @mobydickatsea.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

They are fighting Quakers; they are Quakers with a vengeance.

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Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies @sims-mss.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Join us for #CoffeeWithACodex on Thursday at noon EST (on Zoom), Judaica Special Collections Cataloging Librarian Louis Meiselman will show us an illuminated maḥazor (a Hebrew prayer book) #medievalsky libcal.library.upenn.edu/event/17479615

libcal.library.upenn.edu

Coffee with a Codex: Illuminated Maḥazor

An informal lunch or coffee time to meet virtually with Kislak curators and talk about one of the manuscripts from Penn's collections. Each week we'll feature a different...

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Kate Elliott @kateelliottsff.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

I am not first and will be far from the last to say this: I have purchased so many books because I saw them recommended or publicized here on bsky. I cannot urge you all enough to KEEP TALKING ABOUT BOOKS. I know it's easier to talk up someone else's book, but this also means you, the shy author.

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Karin Wulf @kawulf.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

After reading some of the recent pubs and discourse around US higher ed.… I should just stop right here. But here are the three major fallacies of much of what’s out there, three contexts that are missing, and the one big thing that is driving me around the bend (actually already there, but). 1/

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Dr. Emily Friedman @ecfriedman.com · 13/09/2026

This thread of examples is the start of someone’s rabbit hole into the intersections between book arts and roleplaying games. Altered books! Journaling games in the hands of scrapbookers!

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Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

“The contraction of used book stock & the inflation of used book prices is happening simultaneous with the reduction of library collections, the defunding of physical archives, & the enshittification of digital archives, & all are at least partially caused by pressures from frontier developers.”

open.substack.com

Guillotining Books Is Not Quite Guillotining Humanities Scholars. Not Quite.

Booksellers are benefitting from AI developers destructively scanning print books, but the activity is not victimless.

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Dr. Barry Torch @barrytorch.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Everyone who works with medieval books needs to run, not walk, to read @themedievaldrk.bsky.social’s “Illuminating Media.” Her knowledge of the making of books, the use of design technology and illustration, and her argument of illumination as media is SO good! www.concordia.ca/press/illumi...

concordia.ca

Illuminating Media | Concordia University Press - Concordia University

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Dot Porter @leoba.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Meet my friends Eenie, Meenie, Miney and Moe. They live in the catering kitchen and make me laugh every day. They would be great friends with the chair, if they were given the chance.

A photo of four warming ovens, two up and two down. Their knobs look like googly eyes and the icon stickers look like mouths.

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Matthew J Kuiper @matthewjkuiper.bsky.social · 16/12/2025

Seriously, genAI is easy to use (& frankly addictive) by design. No one needs universities to teach students *how* to use it, much less gear their educational programs toward it.

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Dr Bryony Coombs @bryonycoombs.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Working out the structure of our three case studies for this project & I have come across @leoba.bsky.social amazing resource: VCEditor for making collation diagrams/ codex visualisations. I am so excited about this. It does everything you might want & more! Just such a fantastic MS resource! 📖

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Ben Miller @extinctmonsters.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

The internet was absolutely a mistake but this is one of like five admissible pieces of evidence that it’s good actually

What I'm doing with my life
sometimes sheets can be propped up to be a cave but other times they lie flat like a ground. why is that
I'm looking for
• poposable thumbs
• Tall as counter
• Understanding of locks
• Warms
The first things people usually notice about me i am small enough to use pieces of furniture in different ways that are surprising to humans eg edge of the bed is actually a tiny step for me to use like a borrower
The six things I could never do without cold chickens, heated chickens, small dry pellet chickkens, chickens from a can with picture of cat on it, chickens from the sea (also in can but missing cat picutre on can), chicken from larger animals like beef
The most private thing I'm willing to admit iwill climb on top of you in the night and settle like a tiny rain cloud

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nick @vossbrink.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

A good thread which honestly applies to more than history. AI in the classroom is a sign of prioritizing the final result over the process. Any good teaching is going to be heavily "show your work/thinking" and this is even more important now that AI exists as a shortcut.

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Priyantha Wijesinghe @elaphrornis.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

Curator of Insects and Arachnids at Royal Ontario Museum. CLOSE DATE: September 25, 2026.

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Ennius @enniusredloeb.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

Duck or rabbit creature in the initial-word panel which marks the beginning of Torah portion Vayelech (וַיֵּלֶךְ). #ParashahPictures BL Or 2696; Torah, Five Scrolls & Hafṭarot with masorah & Rashi's commentary; 14th c; Germany, S; f.411r @blmedieval.bsky.social

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Emily Higgs Kopin @ehkopin.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

Corollary: if someone is “brilliant” but an asshole to women and junior colleagues, they are not brilliant. They are bad at their job and should be treated as such

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Dot Porter @leoba.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

I see the popularity of my hands-on workshops and interest in the materiality of manuscripts among students and non students as a direct reaction against AI. I know for certain that my own creative work is a reaction against it.

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Shannon McSheffrey @medievalmcsheff.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

JOB!! The Department of History at the University of Ottawa invites applications for a position in medieval and/or transregional history, 7th-16th centuries. French or English, bilingualism an asset. universityaffairs.ca/search-jobs/...

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Prof. Allie Alvis 🌷 @book-historia.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

Oh my god, @magic.wizards.com is back at it again with the #PopBibluography for the upcoming reality fracture set!! This one takes place at an ~evil~ version of Strixhaven college, featuring an ~evil~ version of Codie the talking codex

A round book with an eye in the middle and fangs, emanating pink lightning. Everyone knows that round is the most evil shape for a book

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Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

I have seven invitations from student groups to talk about A.I. They know what I think about A.I. That's why they asked me. They aren't feeling it, y'all.

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Adam Koszary @adamkoszary.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

people underestimate the power of the curators. they can just pick up, like, a baked bean and put it in the collection. bean will be there for forever. bean will have a label.

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