Louise Duckling

A necessary article. Publishing has changed out of all recognition in the 25+ years since my debut novel. A big problem is the public's perception, and far too much creative writing biz advice, believes the defunct business model where making a modest living was possible, still applies. It doesn't.

Someone on here compared AI produced material as "digital asbestos " which in a few decades' time we will have to work out how to eradicate from the fabric of research.

We had a perfectly balanced weekend of fun and rest, as demonstrated here by Benji the collie (having a lovely nap after a long play with his favourite ball).

So we're recharged and making headway on this week's projects: a business website copyedit and an academic book index. #stetpet #amediting

The Women Writers Network have arrived! You can catch up with their author interview with Anne Hamilton which took place earlier this evening. Scroll through their timeline for the Q&A. #WomenWritersNet

This course gave me a lot more tools for working with memoirists. I came away with a lot more questions to apply to manuscripts and frameworks for understanding how the genre works – highly recommend!

I think it’s worth noting this piece generated the most unsubscribes I’ve seen in a while, and the newsletter version had the lowest open rate in many months. These horrors persist in part because too many people go to great pains to avoid them.

Hello Sonia, the CFP has now closed unfortunately, but you might be able to squeeze a spot at one of the scheduled seminars being held by @wsguk.bsky.social

A reimagining of William Hogarth’s ‘A Rake’s Progress’ with Trump as the titular rake. Plates 1 to 4.

Non-academics: if you see an interesting academic paper on here and you can’t access it due to a paywall just email the author and (depending on the state of their inbox 😜) they will generally be thrilled you are interested in their work and send you a copy.

I have just finished Hallie Rubenhold's Story of a Murder, which is impressive and moving (as you would expect!)

Two eel ships on the Thames, between Paulus Warfe and Qeen Hythe, from Hollar's 1647 "Long View of London." You know they're the eel ships because they're labeled "the Eel Ships." This is a rather long thread, and so the alt-text will be greatly diminished today. It takes a while to write narrative alt-text, and I don't have it in me to do a 14-post thread. I'd have to plan ahead for that, and I certainly am not that guy.

It's Tuesday. You're dragging yourself through the world, one cup of coffee at a time. Can nothing liven up this day?

How 'bout a thread of eel ships on maps? These maps are what got me into eels in the first place!

"Cool!" you say. "But wait...what's an eel ship?"

Well...
1/14

the amount of people who still don’t understand this utterly foundational fact is staggering

Just over a week until all #EarlyModern ists descend upon Bristol!! Find out who’s joining us at #RenSoc25 and start those conversations ahead of our gathering in person:
go.bsky.app/DVyFCxt #SkyStorians

Related: if you don't want to learn, don't be a student

Or let’s try a bigger idea: we give proper support public libraries doing their best to provide research access and databases to the *entire* reading public? Not just private institutions and the current/former academic class 🤷🏻‍♀️

I briefly mentioned that I’ve started a PhD with Greenwich Uni where I’ll be looking at female gardeners and environmentalists in the long 19th century. Who are the best people to follow here into that topic? Any ideas? #history #victorian #19C #gardening #gardeners #environment 🌱

Amazing, look forward to reading this!

A hand soaked with sweat, in a plastic glove, caught in the act while doing a digital scan of a broadside for a Munich based library. Source: https://www.digitale-sammlungen.de/de/view/bsb10811151?page=6,7

Say hi. This is an example of how human labor will be remembered when all books are digitized and we all work with digital copies only. And maybe, hand on heart, this hand was intentionally raised to greet us from the past. #skystorians #bookhistory #digitalhumanities

Are you a researcher, archivist, curator, student or librarian who wants to develop their skills with reading early modern English handwriting? ✒️

Look no further than our 2-week, online short course, with bursaries available. Next running 16-27 June: imemsdurhamlearn.com/early-modern... 💻

A contributor has had to withdraw from something I'm editing, late in the day. I'm looking for a sprightly 10,000 book historical words on the broad theme of 'consumers/consumption' and the period 1450-1650 (not necessarily all of it).

How Authors are Thinking About AI (Survey of 1,200+ Authors) We surveyed more than 1,200 authors to learn how they're thinking about generative AI as it relates to their work. Here's what they had to say.

In a survey of 1200+ authors by BookBub, 45% currently use generative AI for a wide range of tasks. 74% of this group do not disclose their AI use to their readers.

A common fear among all surveyed was the "devaluing of art and artists".
insights.bookbub.com/how-authors-...

The people refusing to use AI Worried about the environment and the loss of skills, some people are resisting the rise of AI.

I'm also refusing to make a martini with Drano.

One of my favourite places to visit in my local town. It always takes my breath away.

Research | Documentation Detectives: Transcribing Accession Registers | Zooniverse - People-powered research Transcribe Birmingham Museum's object accession registers to help us build an accessible collections database.

Become a Documentation Detective! Explore and transcribe #Birmingham Museums collection records online
New uploads released every three weeks - new uploads today!

Congratulations, Pilar! This sounds amazing!

This is a great opportunity for doctoral students or ECRs to test out their work in a collegial and supportive environment. WSG call for papers - deadline 30 April

Do you live near a women's suffrage memorial? Help researchers at Aix-Marseille uni to map it alongside hundreds of others.
Celebrate and value global histories of democracy and feminist activism - a powerful message given ebbing support in the twenty-first century
framacarte.org/fr/map/sites...

But their defense also hinges on the argument that the individual books themselves are, essentially, worthless—one expert witness for Meta describes that the influence of a single book in LLM pretraining “adjusted its performance by less than 0.06% on industry standard benchmarks, a meaningless change no different from noise.” Furthermore, Meta says, that while the company “has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in LLM development,” they see no market in paying authors to license their books because “for there to be a market, there must be something of value to exchange, but none of Plaintiffs works has economic value, individually, as training data.” (An argument essential to fair use, but that also sounds like a scaled up version of a scenario in which the New York Philharmonic board argues against paying individual members of the orchestra because the organization spent a lot of money on the upkeep of David Geffen Hall, and also, a solo bassoon cannot play every part in “The Rite of Spring.”)

Nasty work. www.vanityfair.com/news/story/m...

Even accepting the premise that AI produces useful writing (which no one should), using AI in education is like using a forklift at the gym. The weights do not actually need to be moved from place to place. That is not the work. The work is what happens within you.

Hello Bluesky! This is the official account of the Society for Reformation Studies. We meet each April in Cambridge for our annual conference and our journal is Reformation and Renaissance Review.

We are keen to engage with anyone interested in Reformation studies!

#earlymodern #skystorians