iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Rachel Midura @rmidura.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Just an idle observation, but as I put together an all-public domain reading packet for my Reformation course, I’m struck by how much more available the treatise is than any other form of text. I wonder about the downstream effect for AI, for history or otherwise 🗃️ #reformazing

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BOO! k HistoriAAAH 🎃 @book-historia.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Happy Spooky Season from the most horrifying ledger book I’ve ever come across 😱

Allie’s hand holding a book bound in disturbingly wrinkled parchment

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Heather Thornton @drhdt.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

This is incredible

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Rachel Midura @rmidura.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

hot tip: instead of reading a thousand pages of commentary on Tacitus, you can read the censor's report and get all the juicy bits and sick #earlymodern burns 👀 🫖

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Erin Rowe @erinkathleenrowe.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

🚨🚨 Job Alert: Johns Hopkins Dept of History is accepting applications in Mediev European and/or Mediterranean History, 400-1500, associate or advanced assistant rank: apply.interfolio.com/193938. 🚨🚨

apply.interfolio.com

Apply - Interfolio {{$ctrl.$state.data.pageTitle}} - Apply - Interfolio

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Andrew Defty @adefty.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

I have a pile of reading for the new term but the last of the summer reading was Elizabeth Goldring’s gorgeous Holbein: Renaissance Master. It seems likely that Holbein, like many other court painters, carried out intelligence missions for his powerful sponsors. #ArtofSpying

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Rachel Midura @rmidura.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Currently Sneeboer Bulb Dibbers

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sephirAmy @sephiramy.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

how about some good news: new cat just dropped!!!!

a photo of a small, spotted wild cat, with orange fur and brown circular markings, staring up with big golden eyes.

Meet the First New Cat Species Discovered in 100 Years

A small, spotted tiger cat from Bolivia may just be the beginning of a wave of new small cat species.

This 10-year-old male tiger cat is the first of his species (named Leopardus tilcayo) known to science. He is approximately 18 inches from head to end of body and weighs only 3 pounds, making him smaller than the average domestic cat. This video was captured at the Senda Verde Animal Refuge in Bolivia’s Yungas region, where he currently resides.

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Matt Gabriele @profgabriele.com · 03/09/2026

I like this bit especially because it's true

Our tendency to see religion as a matter of personal, interiorized belief has led us to view its study as intellectually niche—or, to put it in neoliberal corporate speak—as a “low-skill” distraction. This is true of how we view the Humanities in general, of course—that, as Lauren Horn Griffin has so well explained, they’re seen as little more than “personal enrichment.” But that, she continues, is a right-wing act of controlling unruly ideas, of pushing to the margins disciplines that ask difficult questions of “invisible” power structures—say they’re irrelevant, deny them resources, call them “unprofitable,” make them disappear. But faculty, especially but not exclusively in Religion and other Humanities disciplines, often work directly against these forces. Because the discipline of Religion is attuned to issues of (presumed) interiority as well as actions in the public sphere, it’s these faculty who are some of the best situated to ask uncomfortable questions of those in power—be they federal policymakers or university administrators.

At (regional) public universities like ours, this means highlighting a population that is quite different by class, race, gender, and sexuality than found at, for example, the Ivies. Humanities education, including Religious Studies, helps inure students to authoritarian thinking. At their best, the Humanities are attentive to the frictions that create lived experiences—particularly those that are oftentimes marginalized. The Humanities explain how things have been different, could have been different, could be different now, and may be different in the future. They are about possible worlds.

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Caroline Dodds Pennock @carolinepennock.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

In which fearless LGBTQ+ and women’s-rights advocate, BLM-supporting, vaccine-funding, literacy activist Dolly Parton is propagandised as ‘neutral’.

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Stacy Fahrenthold @sfahrenthold.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

The American Historical Association hired a lobbying firm to help silence member advocacy on Palestine. In this essay, Adam Rzepka covers @historians.org's relationship w/ Thorn Run Partners, its deep ethical conflicts, & the advocacy crisis AHA has thrust upon us. www.chronicle.com/article/a-sc...

chronicle.com

Opinion | A Scholarly Association’s Secret Washington Playbook

Did the American Historical Association ask a corporate lobbying firm for advice on how to silence its members?

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Rachel Midura @rmidura.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

Anyone here familiar with the parliamentary archives of Toulouse? I have a peeved Venetian who claims he entered some letters into the parliamentary registers/archives in 1613. Guessing this would now be in the Departmental Archives of Haute-Garonne, but am totally unfamiliar with 🇫🇷 #earlymodern 🗃️

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Mikyung Shin @mshin77.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

📢TextAnalysisR is now on CRAN: an R package + Shiny app for text mining: topic models (STM/BERTopic), sentiment, and semantic networks. #rstats #NLP #LLM install.packages("TextAnalysisR") App: textanalysisr.org Doc: mshin77.github.io/TextAnalysisR/

textanalysisr.org

TextAnalysisRTextAnalysisR

TextAnalysisR: A text mining workflow tool

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Amalia S. Levi, PhD @amaliasl.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

📢 Once more for the people in the back: - Most [more than 95%] of archives have not been digitized. - Most of humanity's knowledge and memory is *not* reachable by LLMs. - Believing that AI can provid you with comprehensive, definitive, "intelligent" results is folly.

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Early Modern Digital Itineraries (EMDigIt) @emdigit.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

Matching early modern place names is challenging! EMDigIt provide us with clues, including journey bearing and distance from the last stop. "Le buisson" seems like a great match for Le Haute Buisson," but we can even guess the Italian author may have meant "Dartford" where they wrote "dole(f)ort."

A screenshot of the EMDigIt ArcGIS WebApp interface showing a red, transparent dot on a journey mapped in northern France.

A screenshot of the EMDigIt ArcGIS WebApp interface showing a red, transparent dot on a map in southern England.

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Rachel Midura @rmidura.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

Very excited to announce this, nearly ten years after I first conceived of this project. I've picked up a job and even tenure along the way. The brief hiatus in question was occasioned by a very cute and very time-consuming baby boy 👶 #earlymodern #digitalhumanities 🗃️

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Dr. Peter Paul Rubens @peterpaulrubens.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

Letter rack packed w/ exciting items: pistol, pocket violin (!), comb (natch), hunting horn, letters, almanac, spare picture frame, you name it, Cornelis Gijsbrechts has pretended that it's here. Today is his day..

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David Kaib @davidkaib.bsky.social · 24/06/2026

We don’t talk enough about how denaturalization (what ending birthright citizenship would do) is a historical prelude to genocide.

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Bridgette Werner | Developmental Editor @drbwerner.bsky.social · 10/03/2026

I had the *immense* honour of working on two of the RSA's 2025 Award-winners! My congrats to @rmidura.bsky.social and @smunozar.bsky.social !! www.rsa.org/news/721395/... www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501... www.dukeupress.edu/the-new-king...

rsa.org

Awards & Prizes Winners - Renaissance Society of America

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Liesbeth Corens @onslies.bsky.social · 08/03/2026

#BookHistory gang, I *need* you to act. There had been one of an entire #ItsyBitsyGutenberg shop in 2022 and we didn't get it to the required number of votes 😭

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Christine Kooi @christinekooi.bsky.social · 06/03/2026

Academic history colleagues, list all the different courses you teach. 🗃️ Mine are: 1. Reformation 2. Renaissance 3. Early Modern Low Countries 4. Women in Early Modern Europe 5. Europe and the World 1400-1700 6. Early Modern Europe 7. Western Civilization to 1500 8. Grad Seminar in Ren and Ref

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Rachel Midura @rmidura.bsky.social · 16/02/2026

This is a beautifully written piece- delighted to be a part of it!

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Istituto Storico Germanico | German Historical Institute Rome @dhiroma.bsky.social · 12/01/2026

#CfA Our institute journal #QFIAB covers a wide range of historical periods, from #medievalstudies to #ContemporaryHistory. #ItalianHistory, #MusicHistory Deadline for the next volume 106 (2026), is 31 January 2026 - more information: dhi-roma.it/index.php?id.... #skytorians @rmidura.bsky.social

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Jana Byars @janalena.bsky.social · 11/01/2026

@rmidura.bsky.social joins me on @newbooksnetwork.bsky.social to talk about her @cornellupress.bsky.social release #Postal Intelligence: The Tassis Family and #Communications Revolution in #EarlyModern Europe #skystorians #BookSky 📚💙 newbooksnetwork.com/postal-intel...

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Erin Grievances @erinbartram.bsky.social · 22/12/2025

When we say "no, everything hasn't been digitized," I need you to understand that we really mean is that virtually nothing has been digitized. This is because the realm of primary sources that historians use is incomprehensibly large.

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Rachel Midura @rmidura.bsky.social · 02/12/2025

In some personal news, I've got a new project debuting in January 😁

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Ryan Randall @www.ryanpatrickrandall.com · 18/11/2025

This storyline has been old for decades, yet it seems like every day there's another new installment.

The Donnie Dark I made a new friend meme, altered to be about technology and eugenics. Donnie is in image 1 captioned I made a new technology. His psychologist asks New or eugenics again? Donnie ruefully confesses Eugenics again.

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keerthi sridharan🌻🇵🇸 @copperkeerthi.bsky.social · 06/11/2025

hey y'all! my questionnaire on player experience in historical videogames is now LIVE! if you play videogames about the past, we want to hear from you! edu.nl/7w3yn

a poster with a blue background and an isometric pattern of green hexes with a blue and red decoration. the text reads CALLING ALL HISTORICAL GAMERS: Playful Time Machines is an NWO-funded research project investigating what historical video gameplay means to players. We are looking for survey respondents aged 18 and up who play grand strategy, action/ adventure, and shooter games about the past! Fill in our survey at edu.nl/7w3yn!

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Frank Cvetkovic (from comics) @gofrankgo.bsky.social · 28/10/2025

When cats are confused by or upset about something, they just smack the shit out of whatever it is that's frustrating them and I think that's beautiful.

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Christian Callisen @ctcallisen.bsky.social · 12/10/2025

A (long) thread of (anglophone) #StarterPacks and #feeds of interest to #EarlyModern #skystorians. The first two posts list a sample of hashtags for which Bluesky feeds currently exist. The following forty-two(!) posts list starter packs for scholars of various aspects of early modern history.

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Dr Laura Sangha @lsangha.bsky.social · 14/10/2025

If you want to know more about our use of handwritten text recognition software (Transkribus) on the wills project, tune in on Zoom next week 👇 All welcome (not just postdocs!). #EarlyModern 🗃️ #DigitalHumanities #HTR #CitizenScience

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Rachel Midura @rmidura.bsky.social · 08/10/2025

Sharing a great new video for our (funded!) History MA here at Virginia Tech. Feel free to reach out to me with any questions or info for students who may be interested: #academicsky www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzZl...

youtube.com

Inside the Master of History Program at Virginia Tech

YouTube video by Virginia Tech College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences

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Michael Hobbes @michaelhobbes.bsky.social · 04/10/2025

Being a podcaster costs $40 for a decent mic and $18 per month for hosting. The hard part is having something interesting to say. Get a degree in that!

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Rachel Midura @rmidura.bsky.social · 04/10/2025

Had a lovely brief visit back in the Bay! Great fun discussing #17thcentury conspiracies with groups at Stanford and Berkeley 🕵️‍♀️

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Katie McDonough @kmcdono.bsky.social · 28/08/2025

1. Modeling data does not a historical argument make. 2. Lefebvre might have written an early classic, but his sources are not the complete 'archive' of Great Fear rumors. 1/n

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William Shakespeare @shakespeare.lol · 03/07/2025

The evil that men do lives after them

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Rachel Midura @rmidura.bsky.social · 24/05/2025

Finally got to do the secret itinerary tour of the Palazzo Ducale! It was amazing. Friend described the vibe perfectly as “classy torture bureaucracy.” 🗃️

A false cabinet in an opulent room opens to a secret passage

A rope hangs from a tall wooden ceiling in the center of a room over a pedestal

A small prison cell with no light and visible graffiti

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Rachel Midura @rmidura.bsky.social · 22/05/2025

Just saw that my article "The Black Chamber: Opening Europe’s Post" is now up on @historytoday.com ! 📯🕵️🗃️ www.historytoday.com/archive/feat...

historytoday.com

The Black Chamber: Opening Europe’s Post

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Rachel Midura @rmidura.bsky.social · 21/05/2025

1,425 photographs at the archive today, that might be a personal best. RIP my shoulders though ☠️

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Rachel Midura @rmidura.bsky.social · 14/05/2025

Yay, just got word that the Historical Games in Research and Teaching roundtable has been accepted for #aha2026! Looking forward to talking about the pedagogy keeping me sane during AI-ification and all the rest. This hopefully means the linked panel and creative session will be appearing as well 🤞🗃️

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