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Thony Christie

@rmathematicus.bsky.social
12K followers 666 following 4.3K posts

Aging freak who fell in love with the history of science and now resides mostly in 16th century Nürnberg.

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Reposted by Thony Christie
James A. Palmer @jamespqr77.bsky.social · 2h
In case anyone needs to hear it, making references to Simon of Trent as if the legends about him have any basis in reality puts a big red flag on you that says "antisemite." If you don't understand why that is, I recommend reading a damned history book. Like this one maybe:
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Thony Christie @rmathematicus.bsky.social · 9h
Lutheran university professor, mathematician, Copernican astronomer and Kepler's teacher, Michael Mästlin, was born 30 September 1550 #histsci thonyc.wordpress.com/2018/07/11/m...
thonyc.wordpress.com
Michael Mästlin: not just Kepler’s teacher
A large number of significant but minor figures in the history of science tend to get lost in the shadows of those, whom we have raised to god like status within that history; whole hordes have bee…
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Alex Wellerstein @wellerstein.bsky.social · 8h
Quite a remarkable map, table, and diagram from a 1971 report on launch-on-warning, showing the implications of Soviet submarine launched ballistic missiles (SLBM) on detection, reaction, deliberation, and response time. All numbers are in SECONDS, which is what I find the most wild about it.
Map of the USA labeled "Soviet SLBM [Submarine Launched Ballistic Missile] Time of Flight to SAC [Strategic Air Command] Targets." Shows both "nominal" and "depressed" trajectories. Absolute best (north central USA) is between 580 and 850 seconds (9.6 – 14 min). Absolute worst (everywhere else) is between 320 and 650 seconds (5.3 – 10.8 min). The variations are based on where they assume the subs are launching from. Table: "Early Warning System Performance." Shows four different systems (BMEWS, OTHF, SLBM Net, and a not-yet-operational in 1971 Boost-Phase Detection Satellite) that indicates the time of detection after launch (varies between 55 and 150 seconds; BMEWS cannot detect launches as it is only over-the-horizon radar), the time that the US command and control system would be alerted after launch (ranges from 85 seconds for the newest system to 900 seconds for BMEWs), the probably of detection of a single launch (BMEWS is 99%, SLBM Net is 50%, none of the others have probabilities), probably of detection for a mass launch (all around 100%), and their false alarm rate (BMEWS has 1 per 7 years, OTHF is 1 per 6 months, the others are unknown). Diagram: "National Command-Warning to Response Cycle." Shows the consequences of a launch detection all the way through the US nuclear infrastructure, with "delay times" in seconds. Will be discussed in the next post in this thread.
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Helen Gittos @helengittos.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
New from Ryan Lavelle: to be published in November. Bet this'll be excellent! yalebooks.co.uk/book/9780300...
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Steve Brusatte @stevebrusatte.bsky.social · 9h
🚨Postdoc job alert: Come work with my paleontology & evolution group in Edinburgh! Researcher in Cognitive Evolution Over Deep Time. You'll study how brains & neurons have evolved over time, and predict neuron count in extinct species! www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DTC355/p...
jobs.ac.uk
Postdoctoral Research Associate in Cognitive Evolution over Deep Time at The University of Edinburgh
Apply for the Postdoctoral Research Associate in Cognitive Evolution over Deep Time role on jobs.ac.uk, the top job board for academic positions in higher education. View details and apply now.
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Thony Christie @rmathematicus.bsky.social · 9h
Lutheran university professor, mathematician, Copernican astronomer and Kepler's teacher, Michael Mästlin, was born 30 September 1550 #histsci thonyc.wordpress.com/2018/07/11/m...
thonyc.wordpress.com
Michael Mästlin: not just Kepler’s teacher
A large number of significant but minor figures in the history of science tend to get lost in the shadows of those, whom we have raised to god like status within that history; whole hordes have bee…
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Brigitte Nerlich @bnerlich.bsky.social · 13h
This issue should be of interest to everybody on Bluesky who is interested in current affairs www.tandfonline.com/toc/csac20/c...
tandfonline.com
Science as Culture
Tech Oligarchy Forum - Part 1. Volume 35, Issue 3 of Science as Culture
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How-to History @howtohistory.bsky.social · 16h
Mulberries, by Joe Saunders. Perhaps the most notable chapter in the history of the British mulberry relates to King James VI & I who sought to establish a home-grown silk industry to rival that of Italy and France. how-to-history.com/2026/09/30/m...
how-to-history.com
Mulberries
Joe Saunders Mulberries are wonderful trees bearing lovely fruit. Despite their distinctiveness these trees ‘are often overlooked and even at the height of their fruit season they can remain unnoti…
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Linda Andersson Burnett @lindaaburnett.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
The Instructing Colonial Natural History Seminar Series is back and we have a stellar line up: @sadiahqureshi.bsky.social, 6 Oct; @cberiksen.bsky.social, 28 Oct; Jim Endersby, 25 Nov; and Ma. Mercedes G. Planta, 9 Dec. All seminars are on Zoom, 15-16 CET
Poster for Instructing Colonial Natural History, Autumn Term 2026 seminar series. The design uses an 1785 watercolour by Sarah Stone showing the interior of Sir Ashton Lever’s Museum in Leicester Square, London: a dark green natural-history collection crowded with display cabinets, birds, shells, antlers and other specimens, with green curtains opening onto receding galleries and a large elephant on the right. Four online seminars are listed: Sadiah Qureshi, 6 October; Christoffer Basse Eriksen, 28 October; Jim Endersby, 25 November; and Ma. Mercedes G. Planta, 9 December. All seminars are on Zoom, 15.00–16.00 CET. Registration: instructingnaturalhistory@uu.se
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Thony Christie @rmathematicus.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Michael Servetus, the first European to discover pulmonary blood circulation and who was condemned and executed by the Calvinist for blasphemy, was born 29 September 1511 #histsci #histmed thonyc.wordpress.com/2012/09/29/n...
thonyc.wordpress.com
Not a martyr for science.
Those who still mistakenly subscribe to the White-Draper hypothesis of a war of religion against science, and these days it is mostly gnu atheists and their ilk, invariably produce lists of the mar…
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Dorothy Bishop @deevybee.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
i wish they weren’t called “settlers”. Makes them sound quite cosy. How about “invaders”?
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Daniel Bellingradt @dbellingradt.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Some do know that live-tweeting at events became a thing in mid-eighteenth century when a certain someone found his trumpet and lost his manners ... #LiveTweetingAtEvents
You see a print of 1748 titled "The Royal Assembly A Representation of the several Potentates Signing the Peace", and a messenger with a posthorn or trumpet is standing next to the Kings and Queens singing the Treaty. Source: https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1868-0808-3857
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Dr Ella Hawkins @ellamchawk.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Elizabethan playhouses were supplied by a network of tailors, merchants & craftswomen. Their names survive in records, but little is known about their lives. I’m working on new research that brings the stories of these makers & traders centre stage. Here is the project in biscuit (cookie) form. 🍪
A photograph of eight rectangular biscuits (cookies) arranged in two rows on a square white plate. The plate is framed on all sides by a trailing vine pattern in green with pops of red. The biscuits are mostly in shades of ivory, cream, yellow, and grey, with a burst of vivid red and blue in one corner of the arrangement. Moving across the top row of biscuits from left to right, the designs include: neat lines of handwritten names in an early modern parish register; a section of a hand-drawn map from 1561 featuring St Paul’s Cathedral, with street names like ‘Carter Lane’ visible in a tiny spiky font; an extract of text from a funerary monument printed in an early modern book, ending ‘So transitory is our glory’; a section of embroidery from a funeral pall featuring metallic silver armour, crossed gold keys, and two hands holding up a crown. The biscuit designs on the bottom row include: horses prancing past shopfronts on Cheapside in the mid-sixteenth century; a receipt written in early modern secretary hand, which is difficult to read; a portrait of a stern-looking women dressed in a ruff, pearls, and sober dark clothing; swirling calligraphy and dense secretary hand featuring on a will dating from 1638.
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Lisa Smith @historybeagle.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
The #EarlyModern Recipes Online Collective annual transcribathon, w/ @wellcomecollection.bsky.social & @rcpmuseum.bsky.social, is 13 Nov. Guest speakers on old age and domestic care are @emmamarshall.bsky.social and Lynn Botelho. Hope you can join us! Details here: emroc.hypotheses.org/5254 #HistMed
emroc.hypotheses.org
2026 Transcribathon Schedule Announced
Recipes through the Ages Friday, November 13, 2026 Join EMROC, Wellcome Collection, and theRoyal College of Physicians for a day of transcribing, virtual chatting, and live talks.  This year we are ex...
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Ed Zitron @edzitron.com · 29/09/2026
Reuters got some of the IPO docs. Anthropic is a total dog of a company. Spent $12.6bn to make $4.6bn in revenue in 2025, $7.33bn of which was compute costs. Operating loss of $8bn. Losses getting worse year over year. Amazing stuff www.reuters.com/business/fin...
Summary
Companies
• Anthropic IPO could value the company at more than $2
trillion
• Anthropic lost $42 billion in 2025
• Al lab spent $7.33 billion on compute and infrastructure last year
• Operating loss widened to $8.06 billion in 2025 from $2.98 billion in 2024
• Execs, industry analysts have expressed concerns over harms of Al tech
Sept 28 (Reuters) - Anthropic is making a massive bet that Al will transform the global economy more profoundly than industrialization, electricity and the internet, according to its IPO prospectus seen by Reuters.
But the cost to get there will be staggering. Anthropic reported a net loss of $42 billion in 2025, and plans to spend $518 billion on cloud, computing and infrastructure obligations in coming year, according to the
prospectus.
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Florian Urban @florianurban.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
The embodied energy figures (with sources) from our book "Form Follows Fuel" are now open access. This is a useful resource for anyone in need of simple embodied energy figures for a building design - eg steel: 10.56 kWh/kg, concrete 0.3 kWh/kg. eur01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com?url=https%3A...
eur01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com
Form Follows Fuel | 14 Buildings from Antiquity to the Oil Age | Flori
Modernists believed that “form follows function.” Form Follows Fuel shows that in fact energy has been the biggest influence on the world’s architecture
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Andrew Richards @andrewwr235.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
I think it would be helpful for the excellent article to mention what he was accused of, and what he was condemned for. Of the 38 articles of accusation, almost all were doctrinal issues, mostly to do with the Trinity and validity of infant baptism.
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Diana B. Greenwald @dbgreenwald.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
I just screen recorded a tour through Google satellite imagery of Gaza, some of which was just updated with 2026 images. This is just over 10 minutes long and goes basically north to south through Gaza. It only captures a very small fraction of the destruction. youtu.be/mpTgjAhJ78U?...
youtu.be
Google satellite imagery of the Gaza Strip
YouTube video by Diana Greenwald
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MeidasTouch @meidastouch.com · 28/09/2026
Trump: Sleepy Joe Biden, have you heard of him? *a few moments later* Trump: 😴😴😴
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Thony Christie @rmathematicus.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Michael Servetus, the first European to discover pulmonary blood circulation and who was condemned and executed by the Calvinist for blasphemy, was born 29 September 1511 #histsci #histmed thonyc.wordpress.com/2012/09/29/n...
thonyc.wordpress.com
Not a martyr for science.
Those who still mistakenly subscribe to the White-Draper hypothesis of a war of religion against science, and these days it is mostly gnu atheists and their ilk, invariably produce lists of the mar…
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Thony Christie @rmathematicus.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
The story of Jodrell Bank www.bbc.com/audio/play/w...
bbc.com
BBC Audio | Witness History | The birth of Jodrell Bank
In 1957, building finished on what was then the largest radio telescope in the world
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Thony Christie @rmathematicus.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
French astronomer, mathematician, Ismael Boulliau, who was a Keplerian and suggested the first inverse squared theory of gravity, was born 28 September 1605 #histsci thonyc.wordpress.com/2021/11/24/t...
thonyc.wordpress.com
The astronomical librarian
I’m continuing my look at the French mathematician astronomers of the seventeenth century with some of those, who were both members of Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc’s group of telescopic, as…
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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
And if anyone is interested in the book version of the #Multiverse, here is me reading the start of the Multiverse chapter from "How to Design a Universe" (the mad story I tell is 100% true) 😵‍💫 🔭 www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVQ1...
youtube.com
Chapter 7! The Multiverse
YouTube video by Astronomer Royal Scotland Prof Catherine Heymans
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Daniel Bellingradt @dbellingradt.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
A man riding a horse, holding a flaming sword, swearing and yelling, and all this on a hand-coloured etching, which was in fact larger as you see here, was a published comment about the abnormally bad weather of 1799 in Europe. Did I mention yet that the riding scene is happening on a beer tankard?
a man on a horse with a flaming sword etc. etc. follow the thread
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Universal Short Title Catalogue @universalstc.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Arthur der Weduwen, co-director of the USTC, has published 'The Last Invasion of England' investigating the Dutch Republics motives behind the daring invasion of England that led to revolution. Read about how the Dutch utilized print during the campaign at the link! www.ustc.ac.uk/news/the-pri...
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Thony Christie @rmathematicus.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
French astronomer, mathematician, Ismael Boulliau, who was a Keplerian and suggested the first inverse squared theory of gravity, was born 28 September 1605 #histsci thonyc.wordpress.com/2021/11/24/t...
thonyc.wordpress.com
The astronomical librarian
I’m continuing my look at the French mathematician astronomers of the seventeenth century with some of those, who were both members of Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc’s group of telescopic, as…
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Eileen Clancy 🧿 @clancyny.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Anyone need a thrilling science story? Right here ⤵️
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Timoer @timoer.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
More than just a history of Russia, this excellent book is also a history of Russian literature, ecology, environmentalism, etc. Recommended! Book 40 (or thereabout) of this year.
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Robert Reich @rbreich.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
The amount of Amazon workers relying on SNAP and Medicaid has nearly tripled since 2020 — while Amazon’s annual profits soared by over 550%. It’s the same story everywhere: corporate profits are at record highs, while workers’ share of the economy is at a record low. We must unrig the system.
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Greg Priest @gregpriest.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring was published OTD in 1962. “[W]e have now acquired a fateful power to alter and destroy nature. But man is a part of nature, and his war against nature is inevitably a war against himself.” 🌱🐋 # HistSTM 🧪🌎 #philsci #philsky #WomeninSTEM
Caricature of Rachel Carson by David Levine for the New York Review of Books.
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Ele Willoughby @minouette.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Happy birthday to #neuroscientist Hendrik Van der Loos (1929-1993) shown in my #linocut with his discovery (along with medical student Thomas Woolsey), of the barrel cortex, along with the mouse head & whiskers linked directly to it. 🧪🐡🧠 #histsci #histmed Some species of rodents have a region of
 linocut print on 11” x 14” cream coloured washi paper of Hendrik van der Loos in blue ink with diagrams of a mouse head and barrel cortex. The line drawing style mouse head is in a raspberry red and includes the shape of its brain and dots representing the barrel cortex. Like van der Loos it is at 3/4 and placed so that its eyes are at his eye-line. Its whiskers lead to a array of spots on its snout in a gradient of blue to red with a green strip, to match the barrel cortex diagram above. The barrel cortex above van der Loos’ head looks like five rows of obloid shapes in a gradient of red to blue with a final offset top column in green.
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Princeton University Press @princetonupress.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Wonderful to see that Helen De Cruz has won the International Society for Science & Religion's General Readership Book Prize for her work, Wonderstruck! This illuminating book reveals how wonder and awe are catalysts that can help us reclaim what makes life worth living. Learn more: buff.ly/IYNfe0Q
Wonderstruck: How Wonder and Awe Shape the Way We Think by Helen De CruzHelen De Cruz
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Liesbeth Corens @onslies.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Actually saw @celinecamps.bsky.social talk about screws! And now I will be seeing screws, hidden or not, for the next couple of weeks… Lovely to actually meet in real life, @celinecamps.bsky.social! such exciting research!
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The Well-read Naturalist @wellreadnaturalist.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
If you'd like to get nerdy today, and I mean really nerdy, you would be hard pressed to do better than this @newbooksnetwork.bsky.social History of Science podcast episode about the new book "Projecting Knowledge: The Optical Lantern and Science Communication, 1880s-1940s" (Brepols). #HistSci
podcasts.apple.com
Projecting Knowledge: The Optical Lantern and Science Communication, 1880s-1940s with Dulce da Rocha Gonçalves, Nico de Klerk and Frank Kessler (Brepols, 2026)
Podcast Episode · New Books in the History of Science · September 25 · 59m
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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
today in Stop Romanticizing Canada: Quebec’s Bill 9 has just taken effect, barring women in veils from receiving public services. Public employees include university faculty, so professors have been instructed to require veiled women to uncover their faces or be removed from the classroom.
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Karl Galle @karlgalle.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
A nice account in @nybooks.com of Jessica Riskin's new book on Lamarck: bookshop.org/p/books/the-... #HistSTM
bookshop.org
The Power of Life: The Invention of Biology and the Revolutionary Science of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck
A NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF 2026“A truly remarkable achievement.” —Jill Lepore“A gorgeous story of human nature and animal behavior—and of the way science itself evolves.” —Dava SobelThe tumultuous life...
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Thony Christie @rmathematicus.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Danish astronomer, Ole Rømer, who used the Moons of Jupiter to determine the speed of light, was born 25 September 1644 #histsci thonyc.wordpress.com/2013/09/25/t...
thonyc.wordpress.com
The speed of light, a spin off from longitude research.
When I was growing up in the dim and distant twentieth century spin-off was one of the most frequently used buzz words in the public discussion of science and technology; a spin-off being an uninte…
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M Meerkat @kackbro.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Absofreakinlutely 💯% True......
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Iwan Rhys Morus @irmorus.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
The photograph's a composite, of course. Not even Tesla took that much of a risk for his showmanship!
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Michael Marshall @mrmmarsh.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Why it is reasonable to label Nathan Cofnas’ race realism as pseudoscientific | Pieter Beck "Race realist" Nathan Cofnas claims his "hereditarianist" viewpoint is scientifically accurate - by citing pseudoscientific research and misleading rhetoric.
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Thony Christie @rmathematicus.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Danish astronomer, Ole Rømer, who used the Moons of Jupiter to determine the speed of light, was born 25 September 1644 #histsci thonyc.wordpress.com/2013/09/25/t...
thonyc.wordpress.com
The speed of light, a spin off from longitude research.
When I was growing up in the dim and distant twentieth century spin-off was one of the most frequently used buzz words in the public discussion of science and technology; a spin-off being an uninte…
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Dr Anna Clark @drannaclark.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Helicoidal staircase at Palazzo Barberini c.1630, by Francesco Borromini, great Italian Baroque architect, born in Ticino #OTD 1599. Palazzo Barberini, Rome
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Celeste Headlee @celesteheadlee.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
So, Banksy bought a used yacht, repaired it and retrofitted it to serve as a rescue boat to save migrants in the central Mediterranean. The whole project cost the artist $860,000. Since 2020, the boat has saved more than 3,800 people. londondaily.com/banksy-funds...
londondaily.com
Banksy funds refugee rescue boat operating in Mediterranean - London Daily
Exclusive: UK artist finances bright pink motor yacht that set sail in secrecy to avoid being intercepted by authorities
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Thony Christie @rmathematicus.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
From Brahmagupta to Viète: The thousand year journey of the decimal place-value number system and algebra into formal, European mathematics #histsci thonyc.wordpress.com/2026/09/24/t...
thonyc.wordpress.com
Take it to the limit one more time – a history of calculus V
We have been looking at the historical development of the method of exhaustion in Ancient Greece and China. Parallels are often drawn, not incorrectly, between the method of exhaustion and integral…
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Shannon K. Supple @mazarine.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Got to listen to this today and it was so good to hear @ewatson.bsky.social talk about her research within and inspired by her fellowship. Great work, Elise!
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David Veevers @davidveevers.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
My old boss has asked me to give his new book a social media bump, because he has wisely chosen never to set up his own account! So I’m happy to announce that ‘Britain’s Slave Traders: A Hidden History’ is available today in all good bookshops! www.penguin.co.uk/books/460026...
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Dr. Black's Medieval Remedies @winstonblack.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
So much I love here (busy nuns! soapwort marginalia! medieval people kept clean!), but the plant was called "saponaria" not "saponifera". Soapwort was used for washing, but real soap was made in many medieval homes, and imported in large quantities and many varieties.
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Thony Christie @rmathematicus.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
From Brahmagupta to Viète: The thousand year journey of the decimal place-value number system and algebra into formal, European mathematics #histsci thonyc.wordpress.com/2026/09/24/t...
thonyc.wordpress.com
Take it to the limit one more time – a history of calculus V
We have been looking at the historical development of the method of exhaustion in Ancient Greece and China. Parallels are often drawn, not incorrectly, between the method of exhaustion and integral…
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Thony Christie @rmathematicus.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
I done fucked up!!! Major error in post Take it to the limit one more time – a history of calculus Correction here thonyc.wordpress.com/2026/09/24/t...
thonyc.wordpress.com
Take it to the limit one more time – a history of calculus IVb
I done fucked up! In the last post in this series I stated that Zu Chongzhi’s determination of the value of Pi was the most accurate until the sixteenth century and the determination of  the German…
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Alex Wingate @bibliowingate.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Today an art history class came to SpecColl that was ostensibly about the Enlightenment, but since we had pulled an *Encyclopedie* vol with plates showing chemical/chymical things, I ended up explaining all the alchemical symbols and imagery! Yay for useful esoteric knowledge!
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