The Irish 18th century, never knowingly undramatic. www.dib.ie/biography/an... James Annesley, whose life was probably the model for part of Smollet's The adventures of Peregrine Pickle (1751) and for the rather more famous Kidnapped! (1886) by Robert Louis Stevenson.

Trying out the features in Claude for education. Join me as I see how it "helps" me write a research paper. My chosen topic: "AI and education". /1

History rhymes. This echoes post Seven Years War, where GB tried to remake alliances in Europe but failed, partially though attitude and partially because what had happened in previous alliances. There was even a period, 1762 to 1770 inclusive with 5 PMs (ie start & end dates between those years).

Tom Hayes@tomhayes.bsky.social · 9h ago

Yet another UK attempt to have the benefits of EU membership without the obligations. It has zero chance of going anywhere. It would seem that the British will never learn. Like Sisyphus, they are doomed to forever roll a rock up the European hill, never reaching the summit before it rolls down.

Note how they write about this software as if it has beliefs and volition. This is false, and very bad.

Hetan Shah@hetanshah.bsky.social · 11h ago

One interesting insight is that when the task prompt was configured in a way that made it sound near impossible this may have prompted more creative / transgressive behaviour from the model

Fairly sober testing report from the AI Security Institute: they gave internet access and removed some guardrails from latest AI models and found without them they were capable of potentially harmful activity directed at real people and organisations www.aisi.gov.uk/blog/inciden...

Big fan of reading Frances Power Cobbe as a philosopher!

Anna Ezekiel@annaezekiel.bsky.social · 19h ago

A little while ago, Alison Stone wrote a lovely guest blog on the philosophy of Frances Power Cobbe - check it out for free here: acezekiel.com/2022/08/04/w... Subscribe for free to "Trail of Crumbs" for occasional little gems like this to hit your inbox.

"Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice." - Dietrich Bonhoeffer, On Stupidity.

Heading to the West Cork History Festival? Three Royal Irish Academy authors will be appearing at Inish Beg this weekend. Gabriel Cooney MRIA, author of 'Death in Irish prehistory' explores the boundary between life and death in prehistoric Ireland.

📅 What's on at Collins Barracks this August? 🎨 Children's Craft Workshop 🎼 Harp Talk & Performance 🤲 Hands-on History Session 🏛️ Guided Museum Tours 🧩 Sensory-Friendly Quiet Hour Plus a full programme of Heritage Week events from 15-23 August. www.museum.ie/en-IE/Museum...

“There are, I hazard, saints of art who have simply waited mutely all their lives rather than profane the purity of a single page with anything less than what is perfectly appropriate and beautiful, that is to say, with anything less than what is true.” — @irismurdoch.bsky.social, ‘The Black Prince’

Ursula K. Le Guin Bot@leguinbot.bsky.social · yesterday

A writer is a person who cares what words mean, what they say, how they say it. Writers know words are their way towards truth and freedom, and so they use them with care, with thought, with fear, with delight. By using words well they strengthen their souls.

Can't quote tweet the latest striking example, but it is wild watching the 18th century insistence on vigilance and virtue to protect freedoms being rediscovered in these benighted times.

The most terrifying enshittification I've discovered has been learning that Microsoft Word documents no longer auto-save if you are not saving them to one of their own proprietary cloud services. I'm slapping control-S like it's 1999.

3 Aug 1495 : Edward Poynings breaks the pretender Perkin Warbeck's siege of #Waterford #otd (JHinde)

Kant believed in free will because he didn’t have modern neuroscience to tell him that our desires are often shaped by factors outside our introspective awareness

The Journey To A Vision - August Tour A Guided Afternoon Tour of the WB Yeats Exhibition 📅 Tues, 11 August at 1pm: https://www.nli.ie/exhibitions-events/journey-vision-august-tour Discover the two decade long project that WB Yeats pursued and what drove him to create 'A Vision'.

The Journey To A Vision - August Tour

A Guided Afternoon Tour of the WB Yeats Exhibition

nli.ie

The relationship between the bore and the fascist, by lifelong anti-fascist Derek Raymond; a great description of the boring fascism we're currently being subjected to worldwide. I'll be writing about this book in the Patreon soon enough: www.patreon.com/c/weirdandco...

Our latest emerging scholar blog is now online. Thanks to @susancurleymeyer.bsky.social for a fascinating glimpse into her research. womenshistoryassociation.com/whai-emergin...

Market women in Dublin: A snippet of my PhD research (Dr Susan Curley Meyer’s)

Documentary textual sources that signify the presence of market women and their role in Dublin’s secondary economies are scant, yet a wide range of visual media confirms their presence and place in…

womenshistoryassociation.com

Do you want to read about the last known trial by combat held in the middle of Dublin during the sixteenth century? Great. Here you go open.substack.com/pub/medieval...

Blood in the Castle Yard

The last recorded trial by combat in Ireland took place in Dublin Castle between two O’ Connors of Offaly. What does it tell us about the Tudor conquest of Ireland?

open.substack.com

Beautiful and intriguing painting, thought by many to depict the philosopher Anne Conway (her inquiring spaniel is one piece of evidence for the identification.) projectvox.org/methods/

Dr. Peter Paul Rubens@peterpaulrubens.bsky.social · 3d ago

Fascinating perspective view with woman reading letter, 1665. And her dog, saying 'what are you doing here?' By Samuel van Hoogstraten, #BTD 1627.

'I am now writing on Saturday, 2nd of August, seated quietly in Mr Curran’s bookroom in his rural retreat, 4 miles from Dublin… ' My co-authored piece on William Godwin’s six-week visit to Ireland in the summer of 1800, hosted by the Irish Patriot lawyer John Philpot Curran, is now on open access:

‘A nation in its last moments’: William Godwin’s visit to Ireland, 1800 - History Ireland

Godwin’s letters have left us an eyewitness account of aspects of Irish social and political life at a critical moment in the country’s history. In June 1800 the Irish ‘patriot’ MP and barrister John ...

historyireland.com

Terrific piece from Liam Tunney on the fleadh organisers' inclusion of loyalist bands and this quote from Derek Moore of Londonderry Bands Forum: “A lot of young people nowadays aren’t hung up on the stuff that their parents were hung up on."

Belfast marching bands prepare for landmark Fleadh role: ‘Festival had to include Ulster-British identity’

Marching bands to build on Derry success 13 years ago

belfasttelegraph.co.uk

Belfast's first ever chance to host the Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann's since it started in 1951 is not just a major moment for NI, but for many southerners for whom NI is almost a foreign land. It has cross-party backing, with the DUP & UUP firmly in support.

Fleadh’s arrival in Belfast is a breakthrough for southerners who see Northern Ireland as foreign

Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann is to bring 800,000 visitors to Belfast, mixing Irish and British traditions and reshaping cross-border ties.

belfasttelegraph.co.uk

...all at once he saw through Uncle Andrew's grand words. "All it means," he said to himself, "is that he thinks he can do anything he likes to get anything he wants." The Magician's Nephew by C.S.Lewis looking as though it's a prophetic word for today. Still.

You can read about London’s Albion Mill, which inspired William Blake’s “dark satanic mills” here en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albion_...

Marcus Chown@marcuschown.bsky.social · 4d ago

The “dark satanic mills” of Blake’s “Jerusalem“ were not inspired by northern mills but by Albion Mill, a steam-powered flour mill near London’s Blackfriars Bridge which was attacked by Luddites in 1791.

A timely chapter and sadly likely to become more timely by publication date

Paul Bernal@paulbernal.bsky.social · 3d ago

One of the chapters in my forthcoming book, “Privacy in Crisis” (probably out next year, to be published by Hart) is “Truth in Crisis”, which covers this kind of thing.

I know it’s an old and hackneyed point but I always go back to it. Suffragettes fought *against* the notion of sex based rights; sex based rights were the ones men had and women didn’t. It was seen as appalling to deny people rights based on their biology.

Silentbob@si1entb0b.bsky.social · 4d ago

Reality check: "Women's hard won rights": - did NOT include defining women by biology, the slogan was "biology is not destiny!" - did NOT seek sex segregation, they fought for inclusion of women - did NOT advocate "sex-based rights", they fought AGAINST that and FOR equality regardless of sex

Peace for #Stunday As a history nerd, have a bit of medieval St. Patrick for your Sunday. #EastCoastKin #ECK #photography #medieval #StPatrick #Oxford #UniversityofOxford #sculpture (iPhone camera)

I can totally get on board with solving the biodiversity crisis by making more zombie films.

Skionar@skionar.bsky.social · 6d ago

Orchids revived, the corpse ambulant and a poetic ruined abbey. These are the news stories I want to read.

“There’s this general mindset that says, ‘Let’s go ahead and claim certain abilities, because eventually that might become true anyway.’ And my sense is: That’s not science. That is investment.” Do Large Reasoning Models (specially trained cousins of LLMs) actually reason?

Quanta Magazine@quantamagazine.org · 5d ago

From this week’s Qualia column: “I’ll just say it: What the hell is going on with AI ‘reasoning’?” www.quantamagazine.org/is-ai-reason...

Surprisingly moving to see the envelope that carried the first BCG vaccine to Ireland - turning the tide on TB in Ireland. 🥲@tcdlibrary 👀📺 Trinity's Treasures @rte.ie