Flitcraft

The search effectiveness and utility of both Google Books and Scholar have been declining for years, and both may well be at risk of discontinuation in the coming years as GenAI continues to be pushed over traditional search. Not a brilliant prospect for scholarly research and teaching.

Large wooden version of a king from the Lewis chesspieces, with a stile in the background.

Stile with added chesspiece. #Lewis

This is fundamentally shite of Google, and it's a good moment to recall that archive.org holds about 900K public-domain books originally digitised by Google, and that IA's metadata may be lousy but their search is good.

On the last Sunday of the polar night, the church will hold a special preparing-for-the-sun service in the abandoned town across the fjord and, I'm sorry, but that is some folk horror shit right there.

New our blog, @jamesafox.bsky.social on Robert Burns and the how-to of barrel gauging 📏🛢📖🍺

howtobook.hypotheses.org/5697

#bookhistory #robertburns #taxes

In Scotland, James's request to the Edinburgh council to host a banquet for the departing La Mothe has caused consternation with the Kirk. They hold a kirk session today, and conclude that 'in case anie bankett sould be made ... the congregatioun sould meete upon Moonday, to fasting and prayer'. 8/

The Daily Record reporting this week that if the asking prices were achieved for the 160 properties put on sale last year by the Church of Scotland it would bring in £30.6m to the denomination.

Full story here 👇
www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/cash-st...

On trans Bluesky, there are many posts circulating describing Epstein's anti-trans views and ties to prominent transphobes.

Anti-trans politics fit neatly into all of this because the existence of trans people threatens the idea that men are naturally superior to women.

Lead Heads It would be libellous to print anything else.

"The senior sub was a smoothly silver-haired gent of the old school. One could have said of Leo what Virginia Woolf said of T. S. Eliot; that if he could, he would have worn a four-piece suit."

For Fence #26, John Banville recalls his start in the newspaper biz.

www.the-fence.com/banville-pub...

3 February 1583: An update on the remarkable case of Margery Hoare/Whitehand/Hungate from the Privy Council records. After a minor difference of opinion as to what month it is, they ask four commissioners to examine the case. The documents, they say, describe 'verie foule ... 1/
#earlymodern

There’s nothing like the AuDHD urge to catastrophize a task you have to do to such a degree that it paralyzes you for days

…only for the task to take twenty minutes to complete.

New study asks: can we measure this reliably?

The measure worked well at distinguishing burnout from depression. But does a questionnaire tell you more than simply asking someone "are you burnt out?"

Individual conversation might matter more than any tool.

Read: buff.ly/JLvgfpf

Buzzing for this new book by @graemearmstrong.bsky.social.

Remember him coming to my talk over at @glasgow.ac.uk and telling me all about it. So much time and work went into it (I've no idea how he is managing to do a PhD alongside it). But it sounded brilliant, and another cultural classic!

A huge thank you to Peter and Lynnette, from the Inverclyde Church Recorders, who took a trip 'Doon the Watter' at the weekend to document some of the items in Trinity Parish Church in Rothesay.

The church closed last year and is in the process of being converted to an "adventure and social centre"

Richard Carrington.

🚨 Exciting news! 🚨

Here is the first known picture of the 19th Century astronomer Richard Carrington – who had the largest geomagnetic storm in history named after him.

It was found by our assistant archivist Kate Bond thanks to some brilliant detective work.🕵️‍♀️ 👉️ ras.ac.uk/news-and-pre...

We’re looking forward to spending time at St Mary’s Whitekirk this week, recording the church heritage and hearing local stories

This reminds me of how Catherine Lord, speaking for the workgroup for the revision of autism in the DSM-5, said autism includes strengths but they are irrelevant for diagnosis.

Yet holistic assessment would strengthen research, understanding, and practice.
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Humans by Surekha Davies - Hardcover Scholarship is a powerful tool for changing how people think, plan, and govern. By giving voice to bright minds and bold ideas, we seek to foster understanding and drive progressive change.

Social categories are stories with which societies define who counts as truly human. Monstrify a group, and people who think of themselves as good people read this as permission to do to them what they would never consider acceptable to do to "normal" people. See my HUMANS: A MONSTROUS HISTORY:

Men aren’t born with a propensity to commit acts of sexual violence. It is socialized behavior, often learned through abuse itself. Take fraternities and hazing as one example. The slightly older students beat the younger ones and the cycle continues year after year. Sports teams, armies, the same.

Non-physical domestic violence in childhood has stronger links to adult mental health than physical violence 🏠

New study found intimidation, control & property damage more strongly assoc w PTSD, anxiety and depression than physical violence.

#MentalHealth #DomesticViolence #TraumaTherapy

🧵 THREAD

Coercive control behaviours are underrepresented in research and policy, yet they showed independent associations with mental health disorders even after accounting for other trauma.

Children need recognition as victims in their own right with appropriate support.

Read: buff.ly/UgyVhp7

the primary blocker to UBI is the puritan belief that humanity is so sinful and depraved that it should not be permitted personhood unless it becomes 'civilised'

that's how liberal social policy ended up asserting that helping people would harm them but hurting people would help them

Every child who learned to read English in New England before 1800 would have been familiar with an image of John Rogers being burned at the stake.

It was one of the main images reproduced in the New England Primer, and one of the first longer passages children learned to read independently.

John Bannerman Lecture 2026 - Professor Fiona Edmonds | School of History, Classics & Archaeology | History Classics and Archaeology 'Dál Riata and Northumbria, c. 700‒1000: Connections and comparisons'. Hybrid.

Delighted that Prof Fiona Edmonds will deliver the 2026 John Bannerman Lecture, co-hosted by the departments of Scottish History and Celtic & Scottish Studies, on 26 March. Tuilleadh fiosrachaidh 👇

hca.ed.ac.uk/john-bannerm...

Esse House UK

Are you aghast at the treatment of trans people? Wish there was something you could do? Could you afford to lose £24/year?

Donate a recurring £2/month donation to @essehouse.bsky.social, and help the UK community help itself.

www.essehouse.co.uk/donate

Maps of Glasgow The Map Collection is on Level 7 of the University Library and is the most important academic collection in Scotland. It includes an extensive coverage of Glasgow and the west of Scotland, including m...

A bit of Glasgow historical nerdery I'd not come across before. UoG's Flickr pages include an album of maps, which contains David Smith's large-scale town plan of 1822. I don't think the NLS site has anything of comparable detail between 1807 and 1857.

www.flickr.com/photos/uofgl...

1 Feb 1506: b. George Buchanan #otd at Killearn Stirlingshire #Scotland scholar & tutor to James VI (NGS)

Circular paper with a green and brown round metal handle. To the left is the narrow end which would have been slotted onto the long shaft of the spear.

#ArtDD2026
C3-C4th copper alloy spear handle-butt

From a Pictish site in Fife.

For #DrawingDiggingForBritain and #DiggingForBritain.

@saocousins.bsky.social @holnicotenh.bsky.social @andykaitken.bsky.social @stevecobbin.bsky.social @indikon.bsky.social @richardosgood.bsky.social
#archaeology

Unbelievably it would take until 2013 for the last ‘homosexual offences’ to be removed from the statute book.

On this day 45 years ago, 1st Feb 1981 Scotland partially decriminalised homosexuality, bringing to an end half a millennia of state sanctioned murder, imprisonment, hard labour & transportation for the crime of being gay.