Hello I have made this due to a mutual having issues with some folks on here forgetting this fact and shouting at him for it. Feel free to use it as a handy PSA x
James Elder
@jameselder.bsky.social
Business archivist by day; rowing club archivist by night. So, quite a lot of 19th and 20th century British history, and grumbling about digital and A/V preservation. Not the UNICEF spokesman. Be nice, I'm trying my best.
Everyone seems to assume that because tech companies are profitable and poetry isn't, science courses must be profitable to run and poetry courses unprofitable, even though when you think about it that's highly likely to be untrue since the fees are the same
Can't be the first to say this, but (and yay UEFA - brilliant) this works equally well if you swap out "football" for maybe "water" or "a stable climate". Look at me being the revolutionary socialist. "No one has the moral authority to sell what they merely hold in trust for the next generation."
Many of our documents have decorative marbling on the covers, which we're showing off today! This is a close up of a 17th century parish register from Chesham.
I have wondered this about some of the reaction to the Jodrell Bank news.
Margot Finn@eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 6d agoWhere is the Physics & Astronomy community suggesting this funding should come from instead? How are the priorities of archaeology, chemistry, clinical research, philosophy and physics etc to be balanced? We're all suffering from incoherent political priorities. Who wants more politicisation? 2/2
I see it’s time for another round of That Thing You Like Is Rubbish.
Marcel the Shell with Shoes On is a very sweet little film.
Once again reminded how clueless a lot of tech utopians are about the realities of archival documents and digitisation. OCR has made big strides in the last few years but there’s so much which was done 10+ years ago. If it’s badly printed 19th century newspaper, it may well look like this.
New-Cleckit Dominie@ncdominie.bsky.social · last wk.This is just to say I have OCRed the text thet was in tne arch:ve and whicb yov were prabaldy seamhing for "breahtast" Fargme ms fheg mem debo:w5 sb ?mccf mmb 5c oc1b
This feels like a *very* John Finnemore thing (doesn’t show in the thumbnail, but he’s the writer of it) - each night of the week different characters are chosen to be the traitors. I don’t actually watch The Traitors, so I’m not really the target audience, but I imagine it will be a lot of fun:
The Traitors – Acts of Betrayal | West End Play | London | Official Site
Experience The Traitors – Acts of Betrayal, the bold new West End show inspired by the hit TV phenomenon. Now booking at London's Gillian Lynne Theatre from May 2027.
thetraitorsonstage.com
some discourse about the closure of bookstores and the "death" of browsing and replacement with algorithmic suggestions has hit my timeline and it's taking all my willpower to not scream LIBRARIES STILL EXIST YOU CAN STILL BROWSE LIBRARIES BONUS: THE BOOKS ARE FREE TO READ GO TO YOUR LIBRARY
This does look interesting. Available for open access download as epub and PDF via University of Michigan (good for them!)
After Disruption: A Future for Cultural Memory
The digital age is burning out our most precious resources and the future of the past is at stake. In<I> After Disruption: A Future for Cultural Memory</I>, Trevor Owens warns that our institutions of...
fulcrum.org
Trevor Owens@tjowens.bsky.social · last wk.Excited to see this generous and thoughtful review of my most recent book, After Disruption: A Future for Cultural Memory, from Lori Podolsky in The American Archivist.
All the discourse around the YouGov hypothetical gambling question has reminded me once again that a *lot* of white collar professionals inaccurately assume that pretty much all white collar professionals earn roughly as much as them.
Huge fan of how when the British results were shared, all the right wing were like “this is what is wrong with the country, unlike more entrepreneurial nations” and well
Einstürzende Neubauten's Kollaps joins Captain Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica as an album that I found interesting to listen to once but which I won't return to thankyou very much, no matter how much the cognoscenti tell me that it all starts to make sense on the ninth listen. Life's too short.
I am listening to the audiobook of Zeke Faux “Number Go Up”. A couple of hours in although Sam Bankman-Fried has barely appeared, the entire crypto scene seems to be a mix of grifters and buffoons. It is unnerving that Challenger Banks all make it frighteningly easy to transfer to crypto wallets.
Although I am extremely happy for him, and it’s totally deserved - it does make me sad that Black British actors have to go to the US and for the most part put on US (or in this case Wakandan) accents to make it really big.
Phil Lewis@phillewis.bsky.social · 2w agoBlack Panther 3 will be released December 15th, 2028. David Jonsson will star as T'Challa's son in the film.
If Burnham (and the Cabinet? )will be doing business at No 10 North on a weekly or fortnightly basis, have they said anything about how he will commute?
This 19 year old article hits hard. The White Horse Reservoir now looks like it will go ahead, larger than was planned in 2007, but won’t be complete until 2040. The EA was no doubt right about Thames Water skimping on fixing leaks but…ouch.
BBC NEWS | England | Oxfordshire | Need for reservoir 'not proven'
The controversial development near Abingdon is designed to safeguard London, Oxfordshire and Swindon's water supplies in case of a drought.
news.bbc.co.uk
I can now hear The Empire Strikes Back closing music.
Hourly Spaced@hourlyspaced.bagpuss.org · 2w ago
“You might want to check the British Newspaper Archive” never gets old.
Mark Harris@markharris.bsky.social · 2w agoI'm actually fine with sounding old.
If aging memory serves, there was a time when we were quite blithely handling a Marie Curie notebook that was discovered (possibly following the revelation re her archives in Paris?) to be radioactive wellcomecollection.org/works/cywqefw4
Notebook
Holograph note-book containing notes of experiments, etc. on radio-active substances, with rough pen-drawings of apparatus. Dated from 27 May, 1899 to 4 December, 1902. Produced in Paris.
wellcomecollection.org
Ada Palmer@adapalmer.bsky.social · 2w agoHistorian friend was reading a civil war era letter in an archive, the letter said “In this envelope I include my smallpox scabs” and sure enough there they were. Had to call CDC for a hazmat team.
Reform UK donor and Farage ally George Cottrell carried a fake Swiss passport under the name ‘Oscar Drewitt’. Cottrell was hired under the name by the future Reform treasurer Mehrtash A’zami. A’zami later vetted Cottrell’s mother's donations to Reform, now the subject of a police investigation
‘Posh George’, Two Passports, and a Fraudulent Identity: Convicted Fraudster and Nigel Farage Funder's Connections to Reform UK’s Murky Financial Structures
Why did Reform UK change from being a privately-owned company to a non-profit company limited by guarantee in 2025? Nafeez Ahmed investigates a fraudulent identity used by George Cottrell – and how hi...
bylinetimes.com
Every now and then I think about Christine Blasey Ford and hope she’s OK.
Northern PM for two days and already imposing flat caps.
Sky News@news.sky.com · 2w agoThe £2 bus fare cap in most areas of England will be reinstated from January.