Volodymyr Zelenskyy, increasingly annoyed with the scrap between his military and defence ministers, picks up the phone to his former agent

The Independent@the-independent.com · 7h ago

James Bond producer shares update on 007 casting: ‘It’s got to be really different’

Can I get away with being this rude to the first years, I wonder?

Kate Watson@loreandordure.com · 6h ago

“Oh no, I don’t know what this means!” Well look it up, you lazy incurious slob. Or don’t, and just go on not understanding. 🤷‍♀️

I really hope that someone from the Leverhulme Trust (which funds this project) has had words with Exeter’s management

The Material Culture of Wills Project@materialwills.bsky.social · 9h ago

📢PROJECT UPDATE📢 You may have seen the news that the University of Exeter, home of the wills project, has placed 500 academics at risk of redundancy. The project leader Prof. Jane Whittle & project co-investigator Dr Laura Sangha are both at risk, alongside almost all of the History department. 1/

FYI, Grade 8 at Manchester Met Uni £41,064 to £47,389 (pro rata in this case). Why make you do the extra step to see the salary?

Catherine Fletcher@catherinefletcher.info · yesterday

Very short notice (deadline 18 August) but we're advertising a 0.5fte lectureship in public history for next year. Covers my 3rd year undergraduate course on public history of Rome (ancient to modern) plus some MA public history teaching.

Tasty but about a month early #climatechange

Very short notice (deadline 18 August) but we're advertising a 0.5fte lectureship in public history for next year. Covers my 3rd year undergraduate course on public history of Rome (ancient to modern) plus some MA public history teaching.

Got caught by a very sophisticated publishing scam yesterday. Used an invite from a real festival, used the name of the real festival’s real organiser. Slightly odd TOV and opening question but people do use AI to write emails and some festival organisers are a bit inexperienced.

We don’t talk about it because it’s derivative of much older work, see for example these demons from the late 15th century

Permanent impact job in my faculty, £48-56k, you may have to wrangle my impact case study but otherwise I can recommend

hey @dvbishop.com Amanda has a plot for you (you should also read her first book, which has parcel bombs)

Amanda Madden@amandamadden.bsky.social · 2d ago

Archival find of the day and likely beginning of book two. From a Venetian wanted notice posted at the Rialto in September of 1600. The story (so far) from the Proclamation posted on the Rialto (1 of 4):

Enjoyed listening to @catherinefletcher.info talking about the first gun control measures, in Renaissance Italy, on @historyextra.bsky.social: historyextra.supportingcast.fm/listen/histo...

Some helpful context about LJMU supervision practice for anyone wondering about the expectations there

Lucie Matthews-Jones@luciejones83.bsky.social · 2d ago

I just want to say as someone who works at LJMU we have to see our PhD students fortnightly for the first year and monthly afterwards. This is reported on an online systems. This has been the case for the last 10+ years. Students have yearly reviews and transfer stages.

Well they didn't learn much from that decolonial project they launched five years ago, did they?

National Gallery security staff segregated like ‘second-class citizens’, curator claims

Exclusive: Outsourced guards, largely from minority ethnic backgrounds, barred from staff hub for mainly white employees

theguardian.com

My new article on Jorvik Viking Centre and its use of smells over the last 40 years has just come out today in The Public Historian! online.ucpress.edu/tph/article-... if you can't access it and want to read it, let me know.

my high school newspaper published an anonymous column on sexual harassment c. 1992 and the headteacher’s response was not to deal with the harassment but to tell the teacher who signed it off that she shouldn’t have let us go to press

Marie Le Conte@youngvulgarian.marieleconte.com · 5d ago

hello from Britain where I'm in the pub with a group of friends and I would say we're now on minute 20 of them sharing stories about the nonce teachers they had at school

Can someone spot me $200m to make a horror film?

✨queer commie terrorist✨@britculpsapp.bsky.social · 6d ago

christ if that’s not a metaphor for our times

One for #RomanRoadsFriday! “Roman Autobahn” uncovered next to the A8 (a motorway in Southern Germany). Achaeologists have uncovered a 90m stretch of the so-called Roman Alblimes road – a key frontier route linking Rottweil (my hometown) and Heidenheim. 👉 www.tagesschau.de/inland/regio...

okay so you’re telling me my avocado toast has… gender?

UC Davis Research@ucdavisresearch.bsky.social · 7d ago

A new study led by @ucdavis.bsky.social provides a genetic explanation of why some avocados are female in the morning and male in the afternoon, while others are on the opposite schedule. @pnas.org www.ucdavis.edu/food/news/st...

Aleksander Čeferin has been elected Leader of the Avignon FIFA and taken the regnal name Clement VII.

Voted in the mayoral by-election. Feels extremely low key after the panicked 'what if Reform win' we were getting a few months back

Universities wondering where the money will come from when the number of 18-year-olds crashes could do worse than look here:

Kate Allen@kateallen.ft.com · last wk.

Am late to promoting this but here’s a piece on the joy to be found in the bountiful array of online education that is now available. Featuring a cameo appearance from me in the comments section, promoting my favourite: the Yale MOOC (do we even call them that anymore?!) www.ft.com/content/f946...

Join this year's @holbergprize.bsky.social Laureate Prof Lyndal Roper & creative practitioner Dr Kat Hill at this exciting workshop where we will experiment w/ creative approaches to historical practice through physical exercises designed to stimulate our thinking! www.history.ac.uk/news-events/...

Moving History: Creativity, Critical Thinking and Movement

IHR Research Training

history.ac.uk

Lovely to have a shout-out for The Firearm Revolution in David’s latest email - if you fancy some Renaissance crime fiction check out his excellent Cesare Aldo series

SHADOW OF MADNESS out now!@dvbishop.com · last wk.

Revealed in this week's free newsletter: How emails from readers pointing out past mistakes can be hugely helpful... dvbishop.substack.com/p/historical...

Adds ‘Henry VIII: relationships and sex ed class edition’ to my list of podcast ideas

I actually admire UKRI's tactic here. If you want to draw public attention to dubious cuts, the exact way you do it is by threatening to shut down an iconic facility that millions of people see regularly driving down the M6

Chris Lintott @chrislintott.bsky.social · last wk.

Short-sighted, stupid cuts to the UKRI budget include shutting down Jodrell Bank, the icon of British astronomy. (Many other cuts too, including 20% to our brand new @vrubinobs.bsky.social). Interesting politically to shut down a major facility in...um..Manchester 🔭 www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

that's a lot of protection money the orca mafia have extracted

Nicholas Whithorn@nickwhithorn.bsky.social · last wk.

The US Ambassador to Italy is in the middle of a 2-month voyage around various locations in the country on board his personal mega-yacht and it is costing the Italian state €115k a day in extra security expenses for a total of €5m.

If I'm going to watch the Odyssey, should I watch it on 70mm, Imax or whatever the normal cinemas are showing?

Publisher in this piece says “If an author has used AI to help support their research for a nonfiction book, that’s fine. But… that means that we now need together to apply another layer of human research to make sure that the facts are actually true.” So it’s not fine really, is it?

The new premium product: books written by people

Some publishers think AI could not only help authors but replace them

ft.com

What’s it for? It’s for money. Seriously. I started doing public history for money, after the 2008 crash, when academic jobs were thin on the ground. But people don’t like to say that (especially in Britain) because it’s vulgar.

Ted McCormick@tedmccormick.bsky.social · last wk.

but that's been said before, to no avail. which leads me to ask about all the actually existing, public-facing work drawing on academic research, and the (distinct, but related) phenomenon of academics as public figures and their careers as public stories what is it for? what has it accomplished?