Okay, this made me really laugh aloud:

Elle Cordova@ellecordova.bsky.social · yesterday

Rough Draft vs Final Draft

Enthralling readers is the only sine qua non of this chain. Knowledge discovery without enthralling readers is mere pedantry. But how do you enthrall readers? Evidently that's my weakness.

Ellen Muehlberger@emuehlbe.bsky.social · 2d ago

"Did you know you can get good in an area by reading a bunch of stuff, then find a source that you use as a lens to find out more about that topic, then craft a story about it that will enthrall readers *and* teach them new things at the same time?!?"

Does anyone know where the idea originated that #Islam is divided into three denominations, #Sunnis, #Shiites, and #Sufis? Most of my students don't have any background knowledge about Islam (which is ok), but of those who do, almost all "know" Sufism is parallel to Shiism (instead of overlapping).

I stopped using Google Maps in 2025 when it relabeled the Gulf of Mexico at the behest of a certain loudmouth bully. While he probably can give instructions as to what the executive branch calls geographic features, he cannot mandate the names used by anyone else.

The New York Times@nytimes.com · 5d ago

Google Maps has updated to label Lake Ontario as Lake America for users in the U.S., following an executive order signed by President Trump last week amid an escalating trade war with Canada. trib.al/5axpigr

A receipt for 65 sheep, issued in Greek and Arabic by Emir Abdullah bin Jabir, just months after the Muslim conquest of Egypt.

I always enjoy a good feminist legal history but sometimes I think medieval scholars overrate mere access to institutions as a metric for knowledge and understanding of legal systems, especially when the evidence is women’s access to those institutions was heavily filtered through male intercessors

I should also say two things: 1) I welcome suggestions to improve my teaching! If you have other ideas, or concerns about this approach, please share! 2) I don't know how much of my approach depends on the fact that I teach a widely misrepresented field of history, though I suspect it generalizes.

Thomas A. Carlson@medievalmiddleeast.bsky.social · last wk.

Since I fully agree with the majority view that LLMs/generative "AI" causes brain rot and is bad for teaching humanities, but I disagree with the response "then everything must be handwritten in class," I thought I'd post a thread on my response (which I think preserves accessibility but YMMV): 1+

Since I fully agree with the majority view that LLMs/generative "AI" causes brain rot and is bad for teaching humanities, but I disagree with the response "then everything must be handwritten in class," I thought I'd post a thread on my response (which I think preserves accessibility but YMMV): 1+

I love making medieval Middle East connections, just sayin'.

And if you’re in or near Stillwater Oklahoma in October, come on out and hear some thoughts related to this book and more!

A bit too true to be funny www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/our...

Our University Does Not Require Books, Paper, or Human Knowledge

“Such a radical shakeup in learning has never happened before, as far as I know. Is there even a way to learn about whether or not something has happened bef...

mcsweeneys.net

We have written a statement in support of Ghent Uni's decision to suspend Nathan Cofnas. We resist attempts to frame this as a punishment for "whistleblowing" or censorship of "controversial research". We invite all academics who share our views to sign our letter. forms.gle/qwN8xzEM5C7Q...

Open letter on the suspension of Nathan Cofnas at Ghent University

We, colleagues of Nathan Cofnas - supported by many colleagues internationally - want to respond to the negative and incorrect framing of Ghent University’s decision to suspend Nathan Cofnas. With th...

forms.gle

A notice to scientists doing paleosciences: please #TalkToALibrarian about the bibliographic traditions in History. Science databases are virtually worthless for finding scholarship in history. You cannot cite a book review you found in a science journal in lieu of actually reading the history BOOK.

I am very tired of academics and feel compelled to spend the day looking at cool manuscripts. The undertext here is John 14–15 in Christian Palestinian Aramaic (~700 CE), a dialect similar to Jewish Palestinian Aramaic written in a script resembling Syriac. The overtext is Hebrew poetry copied ~900.

These two pages are the Hebrew book of Numbers written in Arabic script (~11th century). You read that right: it's Hebrew language transliterated using the Arabic alphabet for Arabic-speaking Jews. Manuscripts like this have proven vital to reconstructing medieval Hebrew pronunciation traditions.

"Mafiosos in MAGAstan" is a fabulous choice of words which I will have to remember.

Bunkerhunter@bunkerhunter.bsky.social · 2w ago

Wer genauer verstehen will, was da genau zwischen Kanada und den Mafiosos in MAGAstan passiert ist, wieso es massive Auswirkungen hat und in welcher prekären Gesamtlage sich MAGAstan derzeit befindet, für den habe ich hier eine gute Beschreibung. In diesem Fall lohnt sich das Lesen des langen Text.

I almost want to produce an edited volume, "The Life of a History Professor," where professors who don't teach at fancy schools talk about what it's really like trying to be a history professor. It might be eye-opening for many constituencies.

I can put seven words on a cardboard sign and stand beside a busy intersection in my small city for one hour and have ~2,000 drivers read those words, and I'm afraid academia is not successfully persuading me that any writing I have done is any more impactful than putting words on a sign.

Cofnas was not doing the thing he was hired to do. Academic freedom does not cover ”not doing your job.”

roterote@roterote.bsky.social · 2w ago

Here is the full suspension letter from UGent that was sent to Nathan Cofnas, it shows ample reason for his suspension and potential termination. Including breach of contract, using the University of Ghent’s name and legitimacy to promote his racial supremacist views and causing reputational damage.

It’s been a couple of years of tech bros and influencers telling us ‘AI is progressing so fast, your [insert sector] is SO cooked’ and honestly the only thing worrying about it so far is how easily managers in all walks of work have been duped by this slop.

This is all true, and we absolutely should celebrate others' successes, but that also should not stop us from interrogating the structures and systems which lead to "some people have all the luck."

John Scalzi@scalzi.com · 2w ago

The flip side of understanding how much of one's career is luck is that it helps tamp down envy when friends catch luck. I have friends with movies and TV series! Other friends with ten times my sales! Good for them. It's nice when people you like get that break. They deserve it, as much as anyone.

In case you are an academic who is currently being gaslit into believing that you're a caveman who wants their students to be jobless if you resist allowing AI in your classrooms... I present to you Berkeley Law's response, which can be summarized as "Fuck off directly into the sun."

Artificial Intelligence Policy

Effective Summer 2026 Purpose Future lawyers may need to use artificial intelligence (“AI”) fluently. But the current state of the technology requires that AI use be coupled with the cognitive […]

law.berkeley.edu

So we know AI helped a negligible number of students. But how many did it harm? I've crunched the raw data provided by the lead researcher, and what I've found is that ~9,500 students using AI studied less than even the *least* studious, non-AI using student. This should shock the conscience.

Benjamin Riley@benjaminjriley.bsky.social · 2w ago

Both the Economist and others suggest this study demonstrates that AI can help students. So I contacted the lead researcher to figure out how many. Answer: Out of ~26,000 kids, a total of 20. And five months after starting to use AI, only four continued to spend 65 minutes on homework. Four.

For those starting a new semester teaching on Islamic history, Jewish-Christian-Muslim relations, Intro to Religion etc.: Here is a handout I made awhile ago with early Sunnī and Shīʿī ḥadīth on prayer in Jewish/Christian buildings. Useful for class discussions www.academia.edu/50857162/Ear...

Early Islamic Sources on Prayer within Jewish and Christian Buildings

Early Islamic Sources on Prayer within Jewish and Christian Buildings

academia.edu

This is probably an excellent book! It is also yet another example of how #Medieval / #MiddleAges with no geographical scope means Western Europe only, not even #Byzantium, to say nothing of Muslim-ruled lands, which sometimes made more books than Western Europe, or China, which invented printing.

Cambridge's @theul.bsky.social recently uploaded almost 1000 new images of unconserved, undescribed Cairo Genizah fragments, which means there's a good chance you can find something here that no one has read for hundreds of years: cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/search?Facet...

Maria of the Mongols https://www.wikiart.org/en/byzantine-mosaics/maria-of-the-mongols-1320

Some visually striking excerpts from a 15th century Karaite Judeo-Arabic (and that one little block of Arabic script text!) majmū'a of medical and scientific texts (SBB Ms. or. oct. 349), a reminder that I really ought to refresh my knowledge of Hebrew script:

After my time adjucting I can’t pass up a chance to remind you this is the actual crisis in higher education. “I recently heard about a student who was shocked to discover, upon dropping food off at a local pantry, that their instructor was the one picking it up.”

The Nation Magazine@thenation.com · 3w ago

There are jobs for college instructors. They do require degrees. But the pay and the benefits are abysmal. Another take on the state of the academy: