Just published this piece about oath-taking in Visigothic Spain in a @brepols.net volume on... oaths in late antiquity and the early middle ages.

I am amused at the idea put here, by someone that I can only assume has never before gone through the herding-cats process that is putting together an edited volume, that the absence of an article on runes in our edited volume was a deliberate choice because they were too politically inconvenient.

Somewhat hard to overstate for those who don’t know the field what an extraordinary loss this is.

Rory Naismith@rorynaismith.bsky.social · 4d ago

(Shared from various people on FB) RIP Chris Wickham

This isn’t the only instance of this I’ve seen. AI is also being used to churn out plagiarised YouTube videos on historical subjects. The end result of the combination of AI and the monetised Clickbait/influencer economy.

Alex Harvey@alexharvv.bsky.social · 5d ago

Oh this can just fuck off An AI-'written' complete copy of my own book is now on Amazon; same title, more-or-less the same blurb, and exactly the same impetus. Reviewers of Amazon, I urge you to absolutely dive-bomb this plagiaristic piece of shit: www.amazon.co.uk/FORGOTTEN-VI...

Oh this can just fuck off An AI-'written' complete copy of my own book is now on Amazon; same title, more-or-less the same blurb, and exactly the same impetus. Reviewers of Amazon, I urge you to absolutely dive-bomb this plagiaristic piece of shit: www.amazon.co.uk/FORGOTTEN-VI...

again, really hope working mathematicians put the pieces together and realize the fundamental threat from ai companies has little to do with transforming practices or modes of mentorship. they want a death grip on funding and employment in the discipline. it's what they want with everything

singular locus sarah@scgriffith.bsky.social · last mo.

killing me seeing mathematicians respond to the ai situation by talking about its effect on lines of inquiry or mentorship, & refusing to acknowledge all this hinges on redefining how money and power operate in mathematics. not my place to tell them what to do, but i naively expected something more

Back safely from our ancient history tour to Venetia et Histria. Day 9: a last minute panic over a lost document, the filing if a police report and a manic race through Venice airport to catch our flight. It’s never dull travelling with students 😉

Wasn't going to let a little old broken ankle stop me from enjoying our marvellous departmental excursion to Venetia and Istria.

The BCDSS invites applications for Heinz Heinen Fellowships 2027/2028, open to doctoral, postdoctoral and senior scholars and Alternative Knowledge Producers. Proposals on the period before 1900. Deadline: 10 January 2027. buff.ly/q7D1TvA @unibonn.bsky.social @dfg.de

Warsaw Late Antique Seminar: Winter Semester 2026/7: lateantiqueseminar.historia.uw.edu.pl

Catching up with the lads.

when the only reason you agree to do reviews is the financial incentive of getting your friends’ books

#Barocktheorie

Wannabe Apparatchik@apparatchikwannabe.bsky.social · 2w ago

specifically, it’s the absurd dissonance between their constant appeals to pre-modern moralities, ideas, and hierarchies, and the incredibly modern hyper-individualism which they place all of these alleged values at the service of

Totally unrelated but Hitler fell in with the Nazis because he was sent in to spy on the DAP by the German army. i mention this for no reason

"Oh you're a posh public school boy who joined the army and got medically discharged for a relatively minor injury? Then you got in with a bad crowd which led to a vague substantial-but-doable prison term? After which you immediately became close to the most notorious far-right agitator in the UK?"

I still absolutely don't believe it but Danny Tommo having an almost perfect background for an intelligence asset is so funny

A previously unknown early medieval church from the Norse period found by archaeologists on Greenland! www.nrk.no/vestland/uib...

UiB med på sensasjonelt funn på Grønland: Avslørte ukjend kyrkjeruin frå norrøn tid

Eit beinfunn under ei utgraving på Sør-Grønland stadfestar oppdaginga av ei norrøn kyrkje frå mellomalderen. Funnet kan gi nye svar på kvifor vikingane til slutt reiste frå øya.

nrk.no

The old line that analytic philosophy is answering questions that come naturally to toddlers via methods that come naturally to lawyers remains undefeated.

noam@noamchompers.bsky.social · 3w ago

It is sorta a funny thing about philosophy that the questions are inherently fascinating and exciting—there’s a reason people wind up talking about this stuff in dorm rooms—and the best methods we have for investigating them involve being as tedious and pedantic and boring as possible

Not a bad climb for a man currently on crutches, imho.

FT asking the big questions here - could Anthropic maintain its growth trajectory if AI destroys humanity? www.ft.com/content/96d0...

Alter. 21627 Einreichungen auf ein Fellowship-Programm. Wer soll das alles begutachten? 😶‍🌫️ Wer jetzt nicht für mehr Grundförderung und weniger Drittmittel argumentiert, der ist doch nicht gescheit.

There remains nowhere near enough attention given to this study onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

What on earth is happening?

Nicola Kelly@nicolakellywrites.bsky.social · 4w ago

I have spent weeks shadowing the RNLI and I can tell you, they do it out of nothing more than compassion. Wrote about the heroes I've met over the years in this free-to-read post. nicolakelly.substack.com/p/the-rnli-a...

Timnit Gebru argues that AI companies are stoking fears of extinction to avoid discussing actual harms, like autonomous weapons. www.wired.com/story/one-of...

One of AI’s Fiercest Critics Says All the Doom Talk Is ‘Meant to Distract Us’

Timnit Gebru argues that AI companies are stoking fears of extinction to avoid discussing actual harms, like autonomous weapons.

wired.com

Once again, the median pay for an adjunct professor in the United States of America is $3,500 per course. Not per month, per course.

Jed Brown@jedbrown.org · 4w ago

Oh. That's a heck of a subsidy.

How do we think about the "Fall" of Rome today? What can we do to frame it in a more productive way? Our new open access article tries to tackle these questions and offer a new view of the scholarly narrative of the end of Rome. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Towards and beyond the ‘Fall’: rethinking Rome’s end | The Journal of Roman Studies | Cambridge Core

Towards and beyond the ‘Fall’: rethinking Rome’s end

cambridge.org

It's not Caturday, but here's a #medieval description of "cattys mynte" (catnip), from the Middle English #herbal of Henry Daniel, written ca.1380: “cattes louyn it souerynly, in so mykel þat þey walwen hem þat ar yn & þeron, & eten it by þe grounde, but if þer be þe more plente of....

Catnip Kitty Enjoys Catnip

ALT: Catnip Kitty Enjoys Catnip

static.klipy.com

BREAKING: Boston University's English department (my dept) recently voted to approve new learning outcomes for the English major, including an anti-AI provision that requires students to “craft and revise writing that is sustained, original, and generated without the assistance of AI."

BIG NEWS for any pedestrians fuming at e-bike riders Lime have permanently banned a rider caught cycling on the pavement. City of London police says:

i really want to know what it was about this one instance that made them look into this

Henry Mance@henrymance.ft.com · 4w ago

BIG NEWS for any pedestrians fuming at e-bike riders Lime have permanently banned a rider caught cycling on the pavement. City of London police says: