MJ Pardon

Happy St Guinefort Day to all who celebrate.

Thanks to @pardon-mi.bsky.social for teaching me about this when I first wandered on to TikTok.

Call for Papers -- ICMS Kalamazoo 2026 Session Title: The Low Countries and Beyond This regionally-oriented session invites proposals from any disciplinary or methodological approaches that focus on the medieval Low Countries and/or Middle Dutch texts. As suggested by the “and beyond” in the title, we would welcome papers that draw comparisons to other regions or examine connections to and influences on/from the wider world. Abstracts of no more than 300 words should be submitted via the Confex portal by September 15, 2025. This session will be held in-person.

Call for Papers -- ICMS Kalamazoo 2026
Session Title: "The Low Countries and Beyond"
Abstracts due September 15!

playing dress up for summer teaching 😝

💯💯💯

I suspect that fact that the vast majority of LLM users don’t seem to have received this (really very simple!) message is because the AI companies have a vested interest in us not understanding it. “ChatGPT is smart, it just makes mistakes sometimes” is much more marketable than the truth.

you know you've made it as a medievalist in the (semi)public eye when you start getting unsolicited messages from people who claim to have deciphered the Voynich . . .

Eleanor Rykener: Trans Sex Worker of Medieval London? (feat. Dr. Mireille Pardon) Historical Homos · Episode

I was on a podcast! Always a delight to chat about Eleanor Rykener, reading medieval criminal records, and queer history 🌈

open.spotify.com/episode/1C8S...

Ahem... my first acedemic article just went live on the BMJ/STI website.

What can 'hidden' cures in handwritten family recipe books tell us about how people dealt with STIs in the long 17th century?

doi.org/10.1136/sext...

#17thC #earlymodern

"I'd crusade if the new Pope asked me to" wow, cool. What if he asked you to love and protect immigrants

Ink drawn rooster on medieval paper

Very unusual, a cheeky rooster doodled in a volume of notarial documents 🐓

Reading and writing in bed with Ferox 🐈‍⬛

panic! at the emails

This is a screenshot from microsoft word. Microsoft word's automatic AI writing helper is giving the following suggestions: "write a funny poem to wish Happy Birthday to my five-year-old sister," "create a short math quiz for a 5th grader," and "write a bedtime story for an eight-year-old about dinosaurs."

i don't want to be part of a society that gets its birthday poems and bedtime stories from a robot 😭

obsessed with this piece

A black and white cat withdraws his paw after scratching a book.

Ferox expresses a strong opinion on the book I am supposed to be reviewing