iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Mackenzie Cooley @mackenziecooley.bsky.social · 29/04/2026

A must-read post by @ResObscura on whether vintage LLMs mark the beginning of a new humanistic field. Certainly they are changing the way we must think about archiving and collective voices accessible from past documents. resobscura.substack.com/p/are-vintag...

resobscura.substack.com

Are "Vintage LLMs" the start of a new humanistic field?

Thoughts on Historical Language Models and Talkie-1930

700

Mackenzie Cooley @mackenziecooley.bsky.social · 28/04/2026

Very excited about work by Nick Levine, Alec Radford, and David Duvenaud on "talkie" - a vintage LLM. Here's their post introducing it: talkie-lm.com/introducing-...

talkie-lm.com

Introducing talkie: a 13B vintage language model from 1930

000

Mackenzie Cooley @mackenziecooley.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

So often in awe of the way that people in the past were prescient - but sometimes it's fair to think "they thought WHAT?" contingentmagazine.org/2026/04/16/t...

contingentmagazine.org

They Thought What?

Unpacking the history (and present) of science

000

Mackenzie Cooley @mackenziecooley.bsky.social · 25/03/2026

weird research encounter of the day: someone looked at the alphabet and thought, “great, but it needs more goblins.” honestly, correct. sammlungenonline.albertina.at/objects/1064...

021

Mackenzie Cooley @mackenziecooley.bsky.social · 09/03/2026

The Carletti book is out (www.hup.harvard.edu/books/978067...), and with it my very raunchy article. Here reviewed in the Corriere Fiorentino (Corriere della Sera)! Enjoy (but not too much!).

000

Mackenzie Cooley @mackenziecooley.bsky.social · 05/02/2026

Doing research using pharmacopeias, drugs, or the history of medicine? Tomorrow's First Fridays Pharmacopeias features Stuart Anderson about his recent book, Pharmacopeias, Drug Regulation, and Empires: Making Medicines Official in Britain's Imperial World, 1618-1968. dm mcooley@hamilton.edu to join

000

Reposted by Mackenzie Cooley

Daphna Oren @daphnao.bsky.social · 22/01/2026

Competition for the best essay focusing on early science, medicine, technology, and other forms of natural knowledge across the globe before 1800. #EarlyModern 🗃️

Cambridge Early Modern Science and Medicine Essay Prize
2026 Competition

For the fourth year, Early Science and Medicine and the Early Sciences Forum of the History of Science Society are joining together to run a prize competition for the best essay focusing on early science, medicine, technology, and other forms of natural knowledge across the globe before 1800. We welcome submissions from early career research and also from more senior scholars. The author of the winning essay will receive a $200 award and the piece will be published as an article in Early Science and Medicine subject to peer review; the committee will provide mentorship throughout the process. The winner will be strongly encouraged to attend the 2026 History of Science Society Conference in Edinburgh on July 13-16, 2026 as the prize will be awarded at the Early Sciences Forum Meeting. The prize is sponsored by the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge.

We invite you to submit unpublished essays between 6,000 and 10,000 words in English that are not under consideration at another journal. Please follow the ESM style guide and make sure that your paper has been anonymized. ESM publishes images in color and black-and-white; the author will handle permissions. Please submit essays via email to earlysciencesforum@gmail.com by February 15, 2026 with a cover letter stating your name and the title of the article; the winner will be notified in the spring of 2026, in plenty of time to arrange for travel.

031

Mackenzie Cooley @mackenziecooley.bsky.social · 21/01/2026

spreading the news about the Cambridge Early Modern Science and Medicine Essay Prize 2026 Competition! Early Science and Medicine and the Early Sciences Forum of the History of Science Society's prize competition for the best essay...

124

Mackenzie Cooley @mackenziecooley.bsky.social · 03/09/2025

Join the Historical Pharmacopeias community for our monthly conversation - “First Friday Pharmacopeias.” Conducting research on materia medica? Interested in HP (dalme.org/collections/...)?

hopp.uwpress.org

111

Reposted by Mackenzie Cooley

Liverpool Distribution Services at Liverpool University Press @lupdistribution.bsky.social · 25/08/2025

A new week means a brilliant selection of new titles from our distributed presses. First up, "Knowing an Empire: Early Modern Chinese and Spanish Worlds in Dialogue" from Lever Press's ASIANetwork Books collection. Find it here: bit.ly/3Vcoc47 @leverpress.bsky.social @mackenziecooley.bsky.social

Promotional graphic for "Knowing an Empire: Early Modern Chinese and Spanish Worlds in Dialogue". The graphic shows the book's forest green cover on the far left, flanked on the right by a summarising paragraph which says: "A comparative study showing how early modern China and Spain built and balanced their empires through parallel systems of local knowledge, governance, and global exchange."

087

Mackenzie Cooley @mackenziecooley.bsky.social · 17/08/2025

A mini-intro to the first part of our book, "Knowing an Empire" with @leverpress.bsky.social services.publishing.umich.edu/Books/K/Know...

136

Mackenzie Cooley @mackenziecooley.bsky.social · 14/08/2025

"Knowing an Empire: Early Modern Chinese and Spanish Worlds in Dialogue" unveils how these two vast empires developed comparable systems to gather, order, and wield knowledge about their local worlds in the process of empire-building. services.publishing.umich.edu/Books/K/Know...

101

Reposted by Mackenzie Cooley

Lever Press @leverpress.bsky.social · 13/08/2025

KNOWING AN EMPIRE by @mackenziecooley.bsky.social & Huiyi Wu is now available! This ASIANetwork Books collection reveals the dynamic dialogues between early modern China and Latin America through a new methodology. Start reading: services.publishing.umich.edu/Books/K/Know...

295

Reposted by Mackenzie Cooley

Dan David Prize @dandavidprize.org · 10/06/2025

Announcing the winners of the 2025 Dan David Prize – the world's largest history prize. Winners receive $300,000 each in recognition of their contribution to the study of the past and to support their future endeavors. Congratulations to this year's winners 👏 dandavidprize.org/winners

Image with the photos of the nine winners of the 2025 Dan David Prize. From left to right and top to bottom, they are Mackenzie Cooley, Bar Kribus, Fred Kuwornu, Dmitri Levitin, Beth Lew-Williams, Abidemi Babatunde Babalola, Hannah Marcus, Caroline Sturdy Colls, Alina Șerban.

1112

Mackenzie Cooley @mackenziecooley.bsky.social · 03/03/2025

Knowing the Empire: Early Modern Chinese and Spanish Worlds in Dialogue with @leverpress.bsky.social is now in proofs. The big work is already done. Now we just need to make sure the is are dotted, the ts crossed, and tails pinned to the now-extinct Iberian cebros!

031

Reposted by Mackenzie Cooley

Roz Foster @rozfoster.bsky.social · 20/02/2025

Join @drsurekhadavies.bsky.social on Zoom tomorrow, Feb 21, 12pm EST for her book talk on "Humans: A Monstrous History" sponsored by Hamilton College's History, Medieval & Renaissance Studies Department! ➡️ hamilton.zoom.us/j/98320370360 @ucpress.bsky.social @mackenziecooley.bsky.social

044

Reposted by Mackenzie Cooley

Dr Surekha Davies, Historical Monster Consultant (she/her) @drsurekhadavies.bsky.social · 10/02/2025

Another virtual book talk for my new book, HUMANS: A MONSTROUS HISTORY from @ucpress.bsky.social ! Hamilton College, Feb 21, 12 noon / 5pm GMT. Click on the link in the poster, or copy the link below: hamilton.zoom.us/j/98320370360 💙📚 🗃 #medieval #earlymodern #artsky #histsci #histmed 1/🧵

42912

Mackenzie Cooley @mackenziecooley.bsky.social · 01/02/2025

Impressed by Emily Beck's thoughtful oral history work on this website "Plant People," "celebrating the proliferation of plant & land-based health practices in and around Mnísota Maǩóčé" z.umn.edu/plantpeople

z.umn.edu

Plant/People

Celebrating the proliferation of plant & land-based health practices in and around Mnísota Maǩóčé

001

Mackenzie Cooley @mackenziecooley.bsky.social · 01/02/2025

Good morning, bsky folks. It's time to read about old things again. Speculation? Check. Alchemy? Check. Shoot me an email if you'd like to join this workshop with Wenrui Zhao and Vera Keller on February 24th.

000

Mackenzie Cooley @mackenziecooley.bsky.social · 04/12/2024

It's finally coming! I have a chapter on environmental change throughout the Spanish empire in the relaciones corpus here. Get ready to learn about some extinct horses running around Iberia...

011

Reposted by Mackenzie Cooley

Monica H Green @monicamedhist.bsky.social · 20/11/2024

Horse genetics: "illustrates the spread of horses of Oriental origin via the Iberian Peninsula after the Middle Ages .. Our survey also revealed a second major historical dissemination of horses from Western Asia, attributed to the expansion of the Ottoman Empire." www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

pnas.org

The global spread of Oriental Horses in the past 1,500 years through the lens of the Y chromosome | PNAS

Since their domestication, horses have accompanied mankind, and humans have constantly shaped horses according to their needs through stallion-cent...

34112