iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Tom Sharpe @tomsharperocks.bsky.social · 9h

4 October 1825: back in Lyme Regis after a tour of SW England, geologist Roderick Murchison noted in his journal, 'Accompanied by Mary Anning rode to Dowlands & dismounted there'. They spent the day exploring the geology of the landslipped cliffs and foreshore to the west of Lyme.

Top left, portrait of Roderick Murchison as a young(ish) man with long sideburns; bottom left, portrait of Mary Anning in a green cloak and straw bonnet; top right, extract from Murchison's journal 'Oct 4th 1825 Accompanied by Mary Anning rode to Dowlands & dismounted there'; bottom right, extract of Henry De la Beche's geological map of Lyme Regis, showing Dowlands to the left, 4 miles west of Lyme.

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Asif Siddiqi @historyasif.bsky.social · 9h

It's October 4th -- the Sputnik satellite was flung into orbit 69 years ago today, beginning the age of space exploration. I dug into the Russian archives and got some documents on its creation. Check it out if you're interested.....

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Thony Christie @rmathematicus.bsky.social · 21h

Christen Sørensen, better known as Longomontanus, Tycho Brahe's longest serving and leading observatory assistant, was born 4 October 1562 #histsci thonyc.wordpress.com/2018/08/08/t...

thonyc.wordpress.com

Tycho’s last bastion

In the history of science, scholars who end up on the wrong side of history tend to get either forgotten and/or vilified. What do I mean by ‘end up on the wrong side of history’? This refers to sch…

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John Naylor @johncnaylor.bsky.social · 16h

Thomas Young, who was the first person to explain & demonstrate the properties of light in terms of wave motion also was first to explain that supernumerary arcs are a consequence of waves interference.

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Oliver Morton, Eater of Sun @eaterofsun.bsky.social · 17h

Stephen has used 2026 very wisely, it seems to me

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Peter Adamson @histphilosophy.bsky.social · 18h

And also in our regular slot, the next episode of the History of Chinese Philosophy, in which Karyn and I introduce the major themes of philosophy in the Han Dynasty: historyofphilosophy.net/podcast/chin... #philsky #philosophy #handynasty #chinesephilosophy

Ceramic status of a soldier and horse from the Han Dynasty

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Peter Adamson @histphilosophy.bsky.social · 18h

A feast of philosophy for you this weekend! We have the third installment of our 500th episode celebration, in which I talk to Troels Engberg-Pedersen about St Paul and the Stoics: historyofphilosophy.net/podcast/late... #philsky #newtestament #stpaul #stoicism #podcasts #hopwag

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Thony Christie @rmathematicus.bsky.social · 20h

I think that's more a case of the goalkeeper being stupid than the goal scorer being magnificent

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Dr Anna Clark @drannaclark.bsky.social · 21h

Gardener of kings & king of gardeners: André Le Nôtre (1613-1700), French landscape architect & principal gardener to Louis XIV. Pupil of Mansart, his symmetrical vistas at Vaux-le-Vicomte & Versailles informed style of Le Grand Siècle. Versailles by Pierre Platel c 1668, Château de Versailles

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Dr Anna Clark @drannaclark.bsky.social · 21h

Sublime dreams: Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Italian artist, architect & archaeologist, whose views of Rome & imaginary prisons influenced Neoclassicism & Romanticism; born #OTD 1720. Colosseum, Vedute di Roma, etching 1757 | Plate III Carceri d’Invenzione,etching 1761 Princeton University Art Museum

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Susan Klaiber @susanklaiber.bsky.social · 21h

Great opportunity for emerging scholars to do research at two excellent libraries/ research centers for #earlymodern architecture.

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Heba Gowayed هبة جويد @hebagowayed.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

When my father was faculty at Cornell he was stopped by the police chief in the street & asked who he was & where he was going. When he balked at the fact that no one but him, an Arab man, was being asked, the chief said “I’m just protecting students” Same guy failed to investigate 7 rapists.

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Thony Christie @rmathematicus.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Do android dream of electric sheep?

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John C. Baez @johncarlosbaez.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

I've been thinking about life after the ecological collapse. Many of the species we love will be extinct. But probably not liverworts. They sound kinda gross, like liver with warts. But I've come to love them. Let me tell you why.

Artistic hand-painted pictures of beautiful plants: liverworts from Ernst Haeckel's Kunstformen der Natur (1904).

From https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Assortment_of_Hepaticae_from_Kunstformen_der_Natur_(1904),_plate_82.jpg

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Oliver Morton, Eater of Sun @eaterofsun.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

DIY globalisation fable, moral of your choosing

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Ele Willoughby @minouette.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

For #spacetober_challenge day 2: galaxy - astronomer Vera Rubin (neé Cooper, ‘28-‘16) & her discovery that angular motion of galaxies deviates from predictions, 1st evidence for dark matter, now known as 5x as common as matter & the stuff which dictates dynamics of galaxies & 🧪🐡👩🏼‍🔬🔭 #histsci

My linocut portrait of astronomer Vera Rubin with short hair, glasses and resting her face in her hand in burgundy on a background of outer space with stars and galaxies in black with blue and pink splotches to mimic how dust bends light in space. At the base of the print is a large spiral galaxy with a plot of orbital velocity versus distance going out from its centre (so the distance axis is indeed distance from centre). There are two lines labelled “observed” which goes up from the origin and then is a pretty flat wavy line all the way across. This line marks the bottom of Rubin. Below it is a wide empty gap of visible white paper down to the second line labelled “predicted”. The Predicted line goes up from the origin to a peak where it diverges from the observed and falls smoothly back down in a gentle curve.

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www.slowtravelberlin.com @slowberlin.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

A history of Berlin’s transit system maps: www.slowtravelberlin.com/mapping-berl...

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Royal Historical Society @royalhistsoc.org · 29/09/2026

Submissions are now invited for the Society's 2027 First Book and Early Career Article Prizes - covering monographs and articles published in 2026 bit.ly/4z45bD8 The closing date for submissions is 14 December 2026. Judging begins in early 2027 with winners announced next July #Skystorians 1/2

bit.ly

Royal Historical Society Book and Article Prizes, 2027: submissions now invited - RHS

The Royal Historical Society invites applications for its First Book Prize, 2027 and Early Career Article Prize, 2027. The call for submissions opened on Monday 28 September 2026 and runs to Monday 14...

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Thony Christie @rmathematicus.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

I've had the Kepler on my desktop since last year!

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Dr Anna Clark @drannaclark.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

The man who changed the periodic table: Sir William Ramsay, Scottish chemist & Nobel Laureate, discovered the noble gases while Professor of Chemistry at University College London @ucl.ac.uk - born #OTD 1852; memorial at Westminster Abbey.

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Anna Cusack @annacusack.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Thrilled to see this out and open access! I was lucky enough to help Mark with some of the research for this piece. It's a fantastic read. What’s in a Name? The Inoculation of Smallpox in Early Eighteenth-Century Britain academic.oup.com/shm/article/...

academic.oup.com

What’s in a Name? The Inoculation of Smallpox in Early Eighteenth-Century Britain

Abstract. The translation of smallpox inoculation from the Ottoman Empire to Britain is typically said to have depended upon social and medical luminaries—

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Paul Byrne @theplanetaryguy.com · 02/10/2026

This will never stop blowing my mind. A 12-year sequence of real telescope images of a star 133 lightyears away. And around it, four planets slowly orbiting. Four real exoplanets, each more massive than Jupiter, imaged as they move around their host star.

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

AI or no, schools that make tablets and apps essential to class- and homework prevent parents and children from establishing norms around tech and ensure that parent-child interactions at home centre on managing Google or Apple accounts it's not relevant or exciting, it's just invasive and shitty

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B. Ricardo Brown, PhD @node801.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

"Although his work had no direct influence on the history of medicine his fate is a good example of two important frequent occurrences in the history of science, firstly discoveries get lost and secondly discoveries are very often made independently by more than one person...."

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Charles West @pseudo-isidore.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

This looks great!

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Richard Bell @richardbell.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

My new book, Imprisonment in Early Modern England: Politics, Debt and the Origins of a Carceral Society, is (sort of) out now! Currently available online for anyone with institutional access: www.cambridge.org/core/books/i...

Book cover of Richard Thomas Bell, Imprisonment in Early Modern England: Politics, Debt and the Origins of a Carceral Society

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Thony Christie @rmathematicus.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

The book that made Harari famous, Sapiens, is crap

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

🥳 New Observatory alert! (Yes, she cuts ribbons!) Huge congratulations to Dr Charles Wang and all the wonderful #Aberdeen University team who have built the brand new Anne Cruickshank Observatory! 🔭🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 ℹ️: www.abdn.ac.uk/news/26204/ 🎥: Dave Galloway NorthSound1

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Thony Christie @rmathematicus.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Book Review: thonyc.wordpress.com/2026/10/01/v...

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Peter Adamson @histphilosophy.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

BIG NEWS! I am launching a new podcast together with colleagues from the Cluster of Excellence on Cross-Cultural Philology here at the LMU in Munich. It's called Pages of History and will appear once a month, following today's initial launch with three episodes. pagesofhistorypodcast.net

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Peter Adamson @histphilosophy.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

In the first episode I talk to Lorraine Daston, one of the most popular ever guests we had on #HoPWaG, to talk about the nature of philology and its relation to science: pagesofhistorypodcast.net/1-lorraine-d...

pagesofhistorypodcast.net

1. Lorraine Daston on Philology as a Science

In this opening episode of the series, Peter talks to Lorraine Daston about the surprising parallels between philology and sciences like astronomy. Daston argues that philology is not just a science, ...

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Daniel Bellingradt @dbellingradt.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Free fallin' into this day like this fetus did in 1582.

a detail of a fetus in a womb from a 1582 German book titled: Hebãmenbuechlin (VD16 R 2846).

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Ehud @duhe.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

In 2011 I wrote a review of the new printing of Julian Huxley's Evolution: The Modern Synthesis. I included this musing which still seems relevant.

I have focused this review on some aspects of Huxley's portrayal of evolution that I
find particularly powerful for thinking about evolution and that are perhaps
underappreciated. It goes without saying that various aspects of the book have not
withstood the test of time as well as others. In particular, Huxley's discussion of
evolutionary progress, especially its relation to the future evolution of humans seems
to me to show that Huxley was fundamentally a man of his time (I find it irresistible
to mention that Huxley expressed hope for work on telepathy and extra-sensory
perception). Be that as it may, some of his arguments may offer insight, as well as
serve as a cautionary tales, to those thinking about notions of transhumanism, and
those such as Ray Kurzweil and Eliezer Yudkowsky who suggest that "the singularity
is near." The notion of “singularity,” as used by these thinkers, refers to an
“intelligence explosion” we are about to experience as result of successive
generations of intelligent machines, each able to design a next generation of even
more intelligent machines. While arguably all too optimistic about progress, Huxley concluded his book by noting that our optimism about the future progress of human
evolution "may well be tempered by reflection on the difficulties to be overcome."

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Thony Christie @rmathematicus.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Book Review: thonyc.wordpress.com/2026/10/01/v...

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Dr Anna Clark @drannaclark.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Octobre Le Palais du Louvre, Paris In a field by the Seine, a man sows seed, raked into earth by a stone-weighted harrow behind a horse; magpies & crows ignore scarecrow archer & peck stray seeds. Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry 1412-16 Musée Condé Château de Chantilly

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James A. Palmer @jamespqr77.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

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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