what's funny about this is that monks were perfectly delighted with the printing press, the myth that the late medieval church resisted printing is false, you can actually embellish printed books and people did, illuminators and scribes are not the same people, and simon should read more.

Simon Evans@sevans.bsky.social · 19h ago

Academic BlueSky is becoming an echo chamber about AI. Like a monastery chuckling about how the printing press can’t embellish a letter with gold leaf.

HAPPY ANTHROPIC SETTLEMENT EFFECTIVE DAY FOR ALL WHO CELEBRATE!!!!!

I've been playing a lot of Rusty Lake lately and this beautiful photo absolutely sent me.

Mabel Logan@mabellogan.bsky.social · yesterday

Duntrune Castle, Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

#medievalsky: Do you work on #hagiography? Are you interested in #digitalhumanities? It's not too late to submit a proposal to "The Digital Humanities and the Study of Hagiography" at ICMS 2027, sponsored by The Hagiography Society. See the CFP below: icms.confex.com/icms/2027/pr...

A small, used bookstore in Lunenburg #NovaScotia is getting more attention for one unique reason. It opens in the evening and doesn't close until customers stop coming, even if that means keeping the lights on into the early morning. www.cbc.ca/player/play/...

Why this Lunenburg bookstore stays open late into the night

A small, used bookstore in Lunenburg, N.S., is getting more attention for one unique reason. It opens in the evening and doesn't close until customers stop coming, even if that means keeping the light...

cbc.ca

Teachers rushing to make everything digital in 2020 and now rushing to make everything analog again 🤪

My latest books cartoon for @theguardian.com

Romance writers rule. www.halifaxexaminer.ca/local-news/a...

Author Rachel Reid donates $300,000 to Annapolis Valley Regional Library - Halifax Examiner

"Reid’s gift complements, but does not replace, the critical need for an increase in the stable annual public funding and strong municipal and provincial partnerships needed to sustain library service...

halifaxexaminer.ca

Happy Black Cat Appreciation Day to all the ghoulies celebrating! Illustration from a 13th-century Bestiary, now @bodleian.ox.ac.uk MS Bodl. 533, f. 13r 🐈‍⬛🖤

Cutting A**zon from our lives. The world's largest bookstore (and store of anything) is blatantly and gleefully (dinosaur logo WTF) destroying old books to feed the slop machine. This will be harder than other boycotts, since A**zon has a piece of nearly every business on earth. Going to try.

Joseph Cox@josephcox.bsky.social · 4d ago

New from 404 Media: we solved which AI company is buying massive shipments of rare books, scanning and destroying them to train AI. We put an Apple AirTag in a rare book, followed it. It ended up at an Amazon facility. Its logo is a dinosaur ripping through a book www.404media.co/we-tracked-a...

Destroying books for AI slop feeding is akin to Nazi book burning. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

Given the state of things re books, predatory corporations, etc... it is more imperative than ever to buy your books from indie bookstores and their online sites. Exclusively.

An amazing later medieval Danse Macabre in Slovenia. But I don't think the artist is really selling the threat of death. Those skeletons are having a grand old time. But they're all have fun together all on equal terms, which I suppose is the point.

Prof Ben Pohl@benpohl.bsky.social · 4d ago

Can’t decide whether to build a church or a castle? Why not have both! And whilst you’re at it, throw in some wall paintings for good measure! Cerkev sv. Trojice, Hrastovlje.

Rest in power. www.nytimes.com/2026/08/14/u...

Mary Morello, Free Speech Activist Who Defended Explicit Lyrics, Dies at 102 (Gift Article)

An Illinois teacher — and the mother of the rock star Tom Morello — she took on Tipper Gore during culture war skirmishes over warning labels on records.

nytimes.com

Uh oh, I made a little post over breakfast and it escaped containment. Seems I hit a nerve. Glad I don't have notifications on.

Dr. Black's Medieval Remedies@winstonblack.bsky.social · last wk.

My god, what an image. Dead kings in a plastic box, carried off as the world burns.

My god, what an image. Dead kings in a plastic box, carried off as the world burns.

Reuters@reuters.com · last wk.

Spain removes remains of 11th century kings from monastery as wildfire rages reut.rs/4zAAN4r

Late summer grilling. Good way to get me and the kids to eat more veggies!

Medieval science in action for the big eclipse day: SOL (sun), LVNA (moon), "Eclipsis solis lune obiectu euenit" (An eclipse of the sun comes about by the interposition of the moon.)

Charles West@pseudo-isidore.bsky.social · last wk.

An early twelfth-century diagram of a solar eclipse (from BL MS add. 11943, a manuscript of Macrobius).

Calling anyone working on the Normans. Medieval People CFP for Leeds next year: "The Normans and their communities". Please circulate to anyone you think might be interested.

Linked: a fun post on cloves in Early Modern England. Dr Soon mentions Chaucer as an earlier example, but cloves were valued in England well before that: Henry of Huntingdon (ca.1140) wrote a poem in praise of cloves, in food and medicine, in his #herbal "Anglicanus Ortus":

Medieval and Early Modern Orients (MEMOs)@memorients.bsky.social · last wk.

Dr Emily Soon takes the tiny treasure that is the clove and examines its impact on early modern English literature in today's new blog post. memorients.com/articles/tin...

slow day in the office so we're starting beef with archaeologists

Dr Emily Soon takes the tiny treasure that is the clove and examines its impact on early modern English literature in today's new blog post. memorients.com/articles/tin...

Tiny Treasures: Cloves in Early Modern English Literature | MEMOs

This Southeast Asian spice not only sparked fierce international competition, but also featured within the literature of the Global Renaissance

memorients.com

Of bone and ivory: Eastern Atlantic sources of the medieval European walrus ivory trade discovered by ancient mitochondrial and nuclear DNA https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.08.07.743312v1

CALL FOR PAPERS  📣   Experiencing Relief in Early Modern Britain: 1500-1800   We welcome papers from ECRs, PGRs, and established scholars. For more info (e.g., how to submit a paper) please see our website: earlymodernreliefconference2027.wordpress.com #earlymodern #earlymodernists #AcademicSky

Help, funnel spiders everywhere! I’m glad they’re harmless but this is kind of disturbing.

Perfectly twee scene in the yard. Snowshoe hare by the chicken house and quince bush.

Frog and Toad went for a walk. Toad tripped over a rock. He bumped into a tree. He fell in a hole.

The Wisdom of the Universe, by Métis artist Christi Belcourt.

📢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/