Dr Gillian Jack

New Journal Report: Cass Review “Echoes Fallacies Promoted By Anti-Trans Disinformation” While American lawyers pushed the anti-trans Cass Review this week, Australia’s top scholars rebuked it.

1. A new journal report in the prestigious Medical Journal of Australia eviscerates the Cass review, saying it is filled with fallacies and launders anti-trans disinformation.

It methodically goes through each problem in the review.

The latest from S. Baum.

Subscribe to support our journalism

Autumn of university strikes on the cards amidst cuts and job losses University and College Union (UCU) Scotland members at universities across Scotland are preparing for an autumn of strikes and industrial action as the funding and jobs cuts crisis in Scottish univers...

News from UCU Scotland: Autumn of university strikes on the cards amidst cuts and job losses: "... unprecedented number of universities making budget cuts, jobs being lost and a record number of universities facing industrial action ballots and strikes..." www.ucu.org.uk/article/1421...

Even those of us working in universities but on teaching-only contracts are excluded from a variety of opportunities and funding.

New! Cassetteboy vs Keir Starmer.

This took absolutely ages, so if you'd like to buy us a coffee at ko-fi.com/cassetteboy we'd really appreciate it. Thanks!

Wikipedia editors trying to fend off the onslaught of AI crap have crowdsourced some telltale signs of LLM-generated writing; it might be handy for editors and proofreaders generally. Thanks to @ellenrykers.com for pointing me to it. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikiped...

£140m cuts. 1,800 jobs at risk.
Edinburgh staff are voting again.

@drjogrady.bsky.social: “The quickest way to force their hand is a resounding YES vote.

We stand with our members at Edinburgh as they ballot to defend jobs, students, and education. ✊

✨ We’ve Moved! ✨

Thank you to the 42,890 people who have signed, shared and supported our letter so far: Not In Our Name: Women in support of the trans+ community.

🌐 NotInOurName.org.uk

First page of 'Counting the Stakes: A Reassessment of Vlad III Dracula’s Practice of Collective Impalements in Fifteenth-Century South-eastern Europe', by Denes Harai, new research article in Transactions of the Royal Historical Society. Abstract: 'Dubbed ‘the Impaler’ by his contemporaries, Vlad III Dracula (c. 1431–76), was accused of the slaughter of between 40,000 and 100,000 individuals, 20,000 of them allegedly impaled at the Wallachian capital Targovişte. Although historians have often considered these figures inflated, none of the numerous studies dedicated to the voivode of Wallachia have undertaken a methodical evaluation of the extent of this exaggeration. This article takes up this historiographical challenge by examining all available documentation. In so doing, it provides a full reassessment of the practice of impalement in fifteenth-century south-eastern Europe. Contrary to assumptions of previous scholarship, Vlad’s use of impalement was influenced simultaneously by pre-existing Hungarian and Ottoman practices. Quantitative analysis shows that only 7–10 per cent of the impalements claimed by sources can be considered plausible and proposes a new data-driven estimation of Vlad’s impaled victims. Finally, a comparison with other rulers shows that, while Vlad ordered collective impalements more frequently, the average number of victims per impalement was similar to that elsewhere in south-eastern Europe.'

Image of Vlad III Dracula from c.1488 text: Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, public domain.

'Counting the Stakes: A Reassessment of Vlad III Dracula': new in 'Transactions of the Royal Historical Society' bit.ly/46iJfIU

In this new article, Dénes Harai reconsiders the victims of 'Vlad the Impaler' (c.1431-76), the historical inspiration for Bram Stoker’s novel, Dracula #Skystorians 1/2

I get eaten alive in Italy in the summer by mosquitoes. Nighttime is particularly bad. There's good repellents available in the supermarkets- I go for the strongest DEET. Pharmacies also very good in general, but a bit more expensive.

We're starting day 4 of the strike with Jack the cat's full support. He also says that this is a manufactured crisis because there is no deficit at the University of Edinburgh. Clever cat.

Should know not to look at FB first thing. This morning, person in England explaining Scottish politics with the customary absence of understanding.

Spending the rest of the day draped in a saltire, singing 'Caledonia' while softly weeping, and framing a photo of John Swinney for the wall.

The consultative ballot response unfortunately has not given HEC a clear steer.

To inform our decision, we are asking @ucu.org.uk members' views on the questions below. If you are a UCU member in HE, we want to hear from you! Please respond to the form below by 5 pm on Friday, 29 August

Publications by Non-Tenure-Track Historians Since we began publishing in 2019, Contingent has published end-of-year lists of books and articles by non-tenure-track historians released in the past calendar year. To submit something for inclusion...

Each year, we publish lists of books, journal articles, and chapters published by historians working off the tenure track. It's never too early to start collecting, so if you or someone you know has something with a 2025 publication date to submit, have at it!

Warning from historians over government's treatment of trans people Over 350 historians and academics have urged the government to turn back on its growing attacks on trans rights in the UK.

Academic historians rarely speak up like this but have made an exception in speaking in support of trans people in the UK and against the current trans exclusionary situation over there.

Not just a few historians but hundreds signed this.

www.thepinknews.com/2025/05/02/h...

Do you run a business in the UK? Concerned about the proposed guidance on single sex spaces? Information and a letter sign www.transsolidarityalliance.com/businesses-o...

‘I’ve been spat on’: gender non-conforming women tell of toilet abuse in aftermath of supreme court ruling Support groups report that women and non-binary people are increasingly being challenged in toilets and changing facilities – but others call it scaremongering

EXACTLY as trans people predicted...

Cis women & non-binary people are being harassed & assaulted in toilets since the supreme court misjudgement. @libbybrooks.bsky.social in the Guardian.

I'm now working on a way to monitor, document and record incidents like these.

Attn @cliveefford.bsky.social

#MedievalSky #EarlyModern

If you're working on any aspect of the life-cycle (eg birth, marriage, baptism, leaving home, death, childbearing, etc) and want to present at the Life Cycles Seminar at IHR I'd be keen to hear from you! Echo chambers are never good, so it's always worth casting the net.

For years gender critical activists have called Nicola a whole range of lesbian slurs, provided rampant speculation while refusing to give her any space or privacy on the matter.

This isn't something that a gay ally does, that's the behaviour of a bigot.

What about the women and children who need protected FROM these "protests"?!

Every time someone posts about the structural and inherent limitations of LLMs there are loads of people in the replies confidently asserting AI will overcome all its current limitations, and they remind me of the people in the 1960s who were confident we would have colonised the galaxy by 1999.

“Global AI demand is projected to account for 4.2 – 6.6 billion cubic meters of water withdrawal in 2027, which is more than the total annual water withdrawal of Denmark or half of the United Kingdom.”

arxiv.org/pdf/2304.03271

AI thrives where education has been devalued | The Observer A culture that views knowledge as a means to an end invites the misuse of new technology

'It is less that AI is the cause of degradation in reading and thinking, and more that the creation of a culture that views knowledge primarily in an instrumental manner has made it easier to misuse AI.'

Even aside from all the tuition fee money thrown away at transactional external consultancies, this is the huge governance issue: it's used to further obfuscate. Nobody in the university is allowed access to the 'information' on which huge decisions are made because it's 'commercially sensitive'.

"We have to sign on to this technology or else we'll be left behind" is something I keep hearing, but where are we being left??? Where is everyone else going?? Is it the place where all the 3D TVs and wifi-enabled toasters went? Is it literal dystopia? This argument is meaningless

Edinburgh-based trans rights activist Tristan Grayford said that [[Scottish Labour]] politicians appeared to believe that “being transphobic is more important than standing up to racism”. “I think what we're seeing from Scottish Labour politicians is atrocious behaviour,” he said. “They're basically attacking our NHS for daring to have any kind of limits on whether or not someone can be unpleasant to a colleague based on transphobia.” Grayford said the issues extended beyond politicians, telling The National: “Yes, the racism is horrific, but the fact that we as a society, and especially a lot of our media, treat that kind of language to trans people as just normal, as something that should be defended and even promoted, is a horrifying indictment of how normalised transphobia has become in our media in a way that they seem capable of seeing that racism shouldn't be.”

I said what I said.

Our media is directly responsible for creating the lie that transphobic bigotry is somehow a special case where people can be awful without sanction.

It isn't. There's good reason transphobes tend to hold all kinds of other bigotries.

www.thenational.scot/news/2535084...

There are always more pens. I've just ordered lots that I very much do not need.

THIS.

So 3 times as many people marched in Trans Pride London as in the main London Pride, 200 times as many people as at the Essex racist protest but it didn't even get a mention on the BBC or right wing media

What are we to learn? That they only care if there's a riot?

4. Histories of Protestantism are still tied up in teleological ideas of progress despite increasingly strong scholarship that it encouraged regressive changes for key groups (especially women and Jews) in some (maybe many) areas.

Universal basic income works; giving homeless people a place to live works; treating the sick works; paying decent wages works; welcoming refugees works; decriminalisation of drugs and sex-work works.

All these things work in the real world. Just not in conservative imaginations.