iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 16h

TED LASSO and SLOW HORSES are both on Apple TV, and unless my entire childhood lied to me, that can only mean one thing. We're due for a very special crossover episode. Can't wait.

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Colette Delawalla, PhD @cdelawalla.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Everyone say it with me: AI companies are ✨extraction machines at scale✨. They are DESIGNED to sift through a million stupid ideas per second to find the next golden egg they can monetize. And they are destroying our Earth, at scale, to do this.

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Colette Delawalla, PhD @cdelawalla.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

The humanities have been calling out genAI theft since the jump, while STEM has rallied around “discovery potential”. I am *ONCE AGAIN* reminding EVERYONE that science is not the sacred cow, STEM isn’t the exception. They are going to steal our IP, too. We aren’t special.

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Nicholas Scott Baker @renhistorian.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

"There are no iron laws of history and it teaches no easy lessons either. There is no algorithm that will do this job of choosing for us, in fact, to relinquish this burden of historical choosing is to give up on the profession of history itself." Essential reading.

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Nicholas Scott Baker @renhistorian.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

I'd keep well away from a jar of instant coffee too (regardless of the brand)!

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Nicholas Scott Baker @renhistorian.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Vividly remember watching this, at what some might consider an inappropriately young age, and a little later devouring the books. The BBC made some brilliant television in the 1970s and 1980s.

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Jessica Minieri @jessicaminieri.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

My first article is out!! 🥳🥳 This article explores the role of relics in Alfonso V’s conquest of Naples. It’s OA and can be found here: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epub/10....

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Nicholas Scott Baker @renhistorian.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

"MIT researchers warned that the alarming trend is leading to 'cognitive surrender,' effectively overriding their own intellectual agency with the output of AI." I tell my students the loss of the ability to learn is the point: the tech companies want them to outsource their thinking to a machine.

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Erika Gaffney @erikagaffney.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

New from Brepols - Visual Networks of Healing in Renaissance Italy Editors: Sandra Cardarelli, Valentina Živković www.brepols.net/products/IS-... #earlymodern

A nearly square book cover, with the author and editor info presented in black text within a cream-colored square superimposed over the featured image. The image is a renaissance painting (mural?) of a half-dressed woman in a bed with a bandage wound around her right arm. Two women stand by the bed, apparently celebrating the recovery of the woman in the bed.

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Nicholas Scott Baker @renhistorian.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

There is a boardgame (nearing production) about the Italian Wars developed around some of Machiavelli's ideas and language about rulership (eg. sentiment runs from Hated to Feared). Just pre-ordered my copy. This is not a drill! www.gmtgames.com/p-1229-foxes...

gmtgames.com

Foxes and Lions: Renaissance City-States in the Age of Machiavelli

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Nicholas Scott Baker @renhistorian.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

In the Discourses, Machiavelli argues that the greatest mistake Appius Claudius made in attempting to make himself tyrant of Rome in the fifth century was thinking he no longer needed popular support (Discourses I, 40-41).

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Nicholas Scott Baker @renhistorian.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

"MOSE was designed to last 100 years, so how many years does Professor Lionello think it will still operate? 'We don't know how many. Maybe 30 years if the most dramatic sea level rise will materialise,' he said." www.abc.net.au/news/2026-09...

abc.net.au

Experts propose four options to save Venice. One is really devastating

Foreign Correspondent guest reporter Anthony Burke visits Venice to see whether this medieval wonder can survive rising sea levels.

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John Gallagher @earlymodernjohn.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

For the last nine months it's been my pleasure & privilege to be the editor of Renaissance Studies, and I think we're well overdue a romp through some fantastic articles we've published this year. See below for some of the finest new research in the interdisciplinary study of the Renaissance! 👇

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Ada Palmer @adapalmer.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

Incredibly honored to receive the Best Related Hugo, and so proud to be recognized by the Worldcon community that means so much to me! I've uploaded my acceptance speech video here, for those who weren't there to see it live!

patreon.com

2026 Hugo Acceptance Speech: Best Related Work for "Inventing the Renaissance" | Ada Palmer

The news broke in the wee hours of the morning Italy time, and late at night Los Angeles time, that Inventing the Renaissance has won the Hu

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Christine Kooi @christinekooi.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

Alas, I think this is exactly what the techbroligarchy wants.

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Nicholas Scott Baker @renhistorian.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

Tell me again how it is the Democrats who are socialists… "The U.S. government would hold a 55% share, split between equity ownership and oil production." apple.news/AsKvaohGWRBC...

apple.news

U.S. to Take Control of Much of Venezuela’s Proven Oil Reserves — The Wall Street Journal

Trump said the agreement would substantially lower gas prices for all Americans

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Nicholas Scott Baker @renhistorian.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

"If people lose confidence in the information on which public decisions depend, the consequences reach beyond the classroom to institutions, social trust, and public life." www.chronicle.com/article/we-n...

chronicle.com

Opinion | We Need to Preserve Human Writing, Before It’s Too Late

In the age of AI, colleges must be custodians of the written word.

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DigiLab, Institute for Medieval Research, ÖAW @digilab-imafo.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

As every year, we are organizing Winter School: HTR of Historical Sources! This time it is virtual (5 afternoons in November/October), with 7 language/script groups (2x Latin, Greek, Syriac, Church Slavonic, Icelandic, German). Call for applications: indico.global/e/htr-2026 . #htr #atr

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Renaissance Society of America @rsaorg.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

📣 Apply Today! RSA Fellowships support scholars at all career stages conducting research in Renaissance studies (1300–1700) across many fields. Award Amounts of $2,000, $3,000, or $3,750 depending on the fellowship type. Take a look: www.rsa.org/news/news.as... #earlymodern #RenTwitter #fellowships

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Henry Snow @henrys.now · 22/08/2026

I'm not particularly anti-AI at this point but I don't think it should play a major role in an undergraduate classroom. I don't teach Excel either. And to the extent it would be useful in historical research, students should learn those skills before they try to automate them

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William M. Cavert @williamcavert.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

My problem here is that in history "skills" are not merely tasks to perform at work. They are intrinsic to being human, who you are in the world, how you feel about your family/home/nation, how you talk to people, where you travel on scarce vacations. It's meaningless to say that AI does these.

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Nicholas Scott Baker @renhistorian.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

Thoughtful and thought provoking… "The inflection point, then, is not that AI can write a research paper. It could do that two years ago. It’s that it can now do everything we once said mattered more than the paper itself and we can’t reasonably pretend otherwise."

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Nicholas Scott Baker @renhistorian.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

Our future robot overlords are not quite ready to assume their rightful place.

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Nicholas Scott Baker @renhistorian.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

During the Renaissance, Italian cities such as Florence operated this way: taxing lower SES groups to pay interest on shares in the public debt that were owned by the wealthy. Some wealthy Florentines had net positive fiscal relationships with the government: receiving more than they paid.

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Ben Collins @bencollins.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

Avoiding AI is about to be a superpower.

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CRASSH @crasshlive.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

📣 Open for applications CIRN Intesa Sanpaolo Visiting Fellowship Are you an early career postdoctoral scholar whose research focuses on Italy? Join us for a Fellowship on the theme of 'Italian Ecologies' in Spring 2027 Find out more at bit.ly/3CfiaXi ⏳ Apply by 18 September 2026

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Ada Palmer @adapalmer.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

In the Renaissance people theorized, since the Aeneid is great, if you wrote poems made only of words & phrases from the Aeneid rearranged they should be great too, since a great source regurgitated should yield greatness. They produced NOTHING we still read. Thinking about that a lot lately.

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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshks.org · 17/08/2026

Andrew Carnegie built libraries; Jeff Bezos destroyed books. The distinction between industrial capital and tech capital.

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Nicholas Scott Baker @renhistorian.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

"Thieves took three of the five surviving panels that made up an altarpiece known as the Polittico di San Gregorio, one of the Sicilian painter’s most important works." www.theguardian.com/artanddesign...

theguardian.com

Rare Renaissance paintings by Antonello da Messina stolen from Sicilian museum

Four works were taken during public holiday, the day after Italian police recovered paintings by Cézanne, Renoir and Matisse

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Monica H Green @monicamedhist.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

Medievalists/Europeanists: if these two historic years of flooding are not already on your teaching timelines, they need to be. New narratives of the climatic & epidemiological histories of the late Middle Ages are forming, & this kind of evidence will be central. #MedievalSky #ClimateHistory 🧪🗃️

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Nicholas Scott Baker @renhistorian.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

The highjacking of the history of Europe by people who fundamentally misunderstand it. Openness, tolerance, the political neutralization of religion are the values the grew and sustained the western culture these people claim to defend. European culture was never sui generis.

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H-Net Job Guide @h-net-job-guide.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

New job: Tenure-Track Assistant Professor in History of the Mediterranean World The College of the Holy Cross jobs.h-net.org/jobs/70213

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Amanda Madden @amandamadden.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

Oooh boy. This is a great opportunity to talk about datasets and what goes into constructing a small one much less a "well structured historical dataset" in some fields. I'm a digital historian of Renaissance and Early Modern Italy and *none* of my material is digitized (1/13)

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Nicholas Scott Baker @renhistorian.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

Why historians and archival research skills matter: "One chunk of land was secured by one of Shehu’s lawyers in 2007 by presenting property officials a mistranslated Ottoman-era land record." apple.news/AppgEuTwaR3S...

apple.news

The Suspected Gangster Causing Headaches for Kushner’s Albania Deal — The Wall Street Journal

Villagers say they warned Trump’s son-in-law their beachfront land was stolen by Artur Shehu, who now faces drug-related charges, which he denies

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Renaissance Society of America @rsaorg.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

⏰ Several August deadlines approaching at the RSA! Get those submissions and applications in before it's too late: www.rsa.org/page/rsacale... #RenSA27 #earlymodern #RenTwitter 🏃‍♂️

Website screen shot of upcoming deadlines at the RSA. Those include:
August 15: RSA Philadelphia Call for Papers submission deadline
August 15: Nonprofit Governance Fellowships application deadline
August 15: Virtual Symposium submission deadline
August 17: Public Engagement Fellow application deadline
August 24: RSA Governance Nominations submission deadline

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Jesse Locker @jessemlocker.bsky.social · 05/08/2025

Leonardo da Vinci's earliest known drawing, portraying the valley of the Arno River, was done 552 years ago today on the Feast of Our Lady of the Snows. The inscription reads “Dì di s[an]ta Maria della neve / addj 5 daghossto 1473”

Leonardo da Vinci, Landscape Drawing for Santa Maria Della Neve, Pen and ink, 190 x 285 mm, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence

A pen-and-ink drawing of a valley, showing a hilly landscape and a small fortified town, and an inscription of the upperleft

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Steven Teasdale @steventeasdale.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

My latest paper "Commercial Networks, Colonialism, and Acculturation: The Genoese Lomellini Family in Lisbon, Madeira and the Canary Islands, 1420s–1550s" was published earlier this year in "Atlantic Italies: Economic Entanglements between the Americas, Africa, and the Mediterranean" #earlymodern

The first page of the article titled "Commercial Networks, Colonialism, and Acculturation: The Genoese Lomellini Family in Lisbon, Madeira and the Canary Islands, 1420s–1550s"

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Erika Gaffney @erikagaffney.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

Hearty congratulations to Rebecca Howard on the publication of her new book! Portraiture and Mnemonics in the Renaissance Modes of Connecting and Remembering in Central and Northern Italy www.routledge.com/Portraiture-... The study is published in the series Visual and Material Culture, 1300-1700.

The front cover of a book; the featured image is Bronzino’s Portrait of Ugolino Martelli.

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Nicholas Scott Baker @renhistorian.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

I'm looking for to reading this! As my students can attest, one of my most frequent comments on papers is "Be specific. History is in the details!"

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Nicholas Scott Baker @renhistorian.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

Those in the know, know that the best Spritz is a Campari Spritz. All the others are just pale imitations. I will not be taking questions.

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Nicholas Scott Baker @renhistorian.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

Today (31 July) is my last official day at Macquarie University. Thanks to the generosity of Classical Studies and the College of Arts & Sciences at the U. of Richmond, I have employment for the 26-27 academic year. After that, if anyone has need of a historian of Renaissance Italy, let me know!

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Mateusz Fafinski @calthalas.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

Half the planet is having a massive fight about how to correctly interpret an Ancient Greek poem but go ahead, close some more humanities departments.

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Jen @cassiciacum.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

Everything is awful these days but one great thing: public discourse about Homer in the midst of the Bonfire of the Humanities.

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Nicholas Scott Baker @renhistorian.bsky.social · 26/07/2026

This adaptation of The Iliad and The Odyssey was my first introduction to Homer.

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Nicholas Scott Baker @renhistorian.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

A smart, insightful take on Nolan's Odyssey as a work of reception that is (inevitably) about the contemporary moment.

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