Prof. B. (Tracey Billado-Lotson)

I am struck less by the hypocrisy of universities sanctioning their faculty than by their consistency. They are utterly consistent in their craven response to pollical pressure.

Search LibGen, the Pirated-Books Database That Meta Used to Train AI Millions of books and scientific papers are captured in the collection’s current iteration.

"If your books were uploaded to LibGen/fed into the LLMs, add your name to the potential class action lawsuit by tomorrow." Details:

LibDem database: www.theatlantic.com/technology/a...

Attorney form: www.lieffcabraser.com/anthropic-au...

(This information comes via a reliable Discord source.)

The Haskins Society is now on BlueSky! Look out for posts over the next few days which advertise our involvement in the @imc-leeds.bsky.social

Head over and give us a follow @haskinssociety.bsky.social

If you're a grad student or an undergrad interested in research I need to you listen to me very carefully.

You cannot learn to write good research papers if you do not read good research papers.

Stop asking LLMs to summarize papers for you.

goose-stepping Stormtroopers. Suddenly, the whole. thing looks close and familiar Alongside the viciousness of much of German politics in the Weimar years was an incongruous innocence: few people could imagine the worst possibilities. A civilized nation could not possibly vote for Hitler, some had thought. When he became chancellor nonetheless, millions expected his time in office to be short and ineffectual. Germany was a notoriously law-abiding as well as cultured land. How could a German government systematically brutalize its own people? German Jews were highly assimilated and patriotic. Many refused to leave their homeland, even as things got worse and worse. Tam German and am waiting for the Germans to come back; they have gone to ground somewhere," Victor Klemperer wrote in his diary-he was the son of a rabbi and a veteran of the First World War who chose to stay, and miraculously survived. Few Germans in 1933 could imagine Treblinka or Auschwitz, the mass shootings of Babi Yar or the death marches of the last months of the Second World War. It is hard to blame them for not foreseeing the unthinkable. Yet their innocence failed them, and they were catastroph-ially wrong about their future. We who come later have one advantage over them: we have their example before us.

This passage from @benjamincarterhett.bsky.social's book on Hitler's rise to power has long haunted me for the way it describes how so many ordinary Germans had their minds & souls gradually rewired by the changing political climate of the 1930s. Watching something similar happen here is terrifying.

In a few years (max) when people start asking why we thought AI was a good idea I am creating a record that we did NOT think it was a good idea and the main reason people were ever convinced was billions of dollars of propaganda

The Early Republic Tracker The Early Republic Tracker documents instances where the federal government is removing facts and stories essential to the public’s understanding American history from public historical sites, muse…

@oah.org Please help us! The Journal of the Early Republic has launched a "history tracker" to document how the Trump Admin is changing/hiding history. We need your help- if you've seen a change that has not (yet) made the news, please write in. More info: thepanorama.shear.org/2025/04/09/t...

Justice for Rumeysa Ozturk Dear Friends, Allies, and Supporters,

Rümeysa's legal team is coordinating a fundraiser for her and her family to help them deal with this crisis, including medical costs since ICE has kept Rümeysa from accessing all her medications. Please donate if you're able:

If you are at an event where someone on stage gives a Hitler salute and that person is not dragged off by security and kicked out, you are at a Nazi rally.

My condolences to his entire family. He will be truly missed. It is rare to find a scholar of his intellect and achievement who was also such a kind and lovely person.

In light of this deeply illegal activity at NSF and the ongoing attack on American science, I'm posting the slides from my 2017 talk at the American Physical Society about the Nazi take over of German physics/why German is no longer science's lingua franca 🧪

🧵 1/26
drive.google.com/file/d/1_MCm...

In 1935, in compliance with the Nuremburg Laws, the German military dismissed all Jews serving in its ranks.

Just sayin.

Whether it’s Obama, wearing a tan suit or Elon Musk doing Hitler salutes, both sides have engaged in incendiary behavior

What is the average professor afraid of?
- mainly: „train delays“
- the projector in the class room not working again
- being invited to things
- explaining what they do again at parties that they were regrettably invited to after all
- the continued destruction of their whole field
- Eduroam

Sign the Petition STOP The Job Cuts at the University of Northampton

I don't have further details, but proposed job cuts at Uni Northants are threatening several programmes, including their MA History. Please consider signing, please consider sharing.
chng.it/5vBRtgx2xx

Telegram sent by author Dorothy Parker to Robert Benchley on December 31st 1929. Text reads. You come right over here and explain why they are having another year.

Happy New Year from Dorothy Parker (and me).

📌

What Were the Lives of Medieval Women Like? (Gift Article) In “Poet, Mystic, Widow, Wife” the historian Hetta Howes seeks to relate to figures of the past.

"By making over these women in our own image, we lose so much of what was distinctive and beautiful about their literature."

What Were the Lives of Medieval Women Like? www.nytimes.com/2024/12/10/b...

snowball fight, italy, ca. 1400

Medieval Work, Worship, and Power: Persuasive and Silenced Voices Medieval Work, Worship, and Power: Persuasive and Silenced Voices celebrates Sharon Farmer's significant contributions to the fields of medieval European social, religious, gender, environmental, labo...

I guess the secret is out now: so pleased to be included in this collection for Sharon Farmer! Many thanks to Tanya Stabler Miller, Nancy McLoughlin and @abbydowling.bsky.social
for all their work on the volume!

This was always the goal: remove human teachers from classrooms in schools and universities, except for the very rich who will be able to afford human instruction.

This is why I have only contempt for teachers in higher ed who use AI in their courses--this is what you are actively escalating.

This is a long piece and worth your time. I’m particularly pleased by it tracing things back to Milton Friedman. I have long believed that more or less everything that is awful, stupid and cruel in the modern world can ultimately be traced back to Milton Friedman.

I will never stop being aghast that the United States built a higher education system that was literally the envy of the entire world—our bitterest political enemies nonetheless sent their children to us to be educated, it was so good—& then just decided to systematically, ruthlessly dismantle it

Please put maps in your books, especially if you mention scores of places and argue that regional connections are important.

If you need help making a map, contact the Surprised Eel Historian – @greenleejw.bsky.social

This message is brought to you by the book I’m reading, which has no maps.

Marc Bloch ❤️❤️ merci @xaviermauduit.bsky.social !

10 Free Medieval Articles from The English Historical Review - Medievalists.net Discover ten free medieval articles from The English Historical Review as the journal celebrates the milestone of its 600th issue.

10 Free Medieval Articles from The English Historical Review https://www.medievalists.net/2024/12/free-medieval-articles-english-historical-review/ - congratulations on 600 issues @enghistrev.bsky.social #historysky