Alex Harvey

In 2026, colleges must teach students that this is not the end of the world. We must teach hope. Current undergraduates can barely remember a time before the threats of climate change and authoritarianism loomed to catastrophic scale. Since 2010, the future depicted in TV, books, and games has been dystopian or apocalyptic, so for our current students the end of the world feels more familiar and realistic than a future with hope. Now we are asking them to choose majors and life paths when the desirability, indeed the very existence, of whole sectors of employment are in question, due to the overwhelming promises of LLMs and machine learning. As young people hear daily that vocation after vocation may vanish into automation’s maw, and that democracy, liberty, land, sea, and sky are all in jeopardy, despair is growing. Despair is very emotionally tempting. It means freedom from the responsibility to shape the future. This is a terrifying turning point, but many generations before us have faced such turning points, and met them. We can offer our students perspective. Only a few dozen institutions on Earth are more than 900 years old, and the vast majority are universities. The university system is not a house of straw to buckle in this storm: We are the rocks that have sheltered the knowledge, hope, and truth through tumults which have toppled kingdoms while classrooms endured. We can endure this, and be a guiding light through it, but only by recentering, by teaching citizens, not workers; power, not PowerPoint; aspiration, not apocalypse. Despair is how we lose. The classroom is where we battle it. All other battles flow from here. Ada Palmer is an associate professor of history at the University of Chicago.

This, from Ada Palmer as part of The Chronicle's survey of 11 scholars on the future of higher ed, is what I needed to end the week.

Tremendous time chatting about inspirations and big questions!

I think about this Tony Benn speech much more than I used to

They were absolutely brilliant Steve, right in the disco space for Leeds IMC too!

My questions:

1) who earns the most money out of AI?
2) what does the average person gain from it?
3) who loses as a result of its success?
4) what will the consequences of these losses be?

Stop this nonsense

I’m going to live in a cave

Dystopian to the point of absurdity

Sounds about right

Why we should care about ChatGPT's accuracy gap I tested ChatGPT on my area of expertise. The results are a problem for future knowledge

If you teach please show your students this. If you're a student, please read this.

The answers LLMs generate are not all alike. They are more likely to hallucinate on topics we don't already know a lot about. Even answers with "sources" shouldn't be trusted.
leahbroad.substack.com/p/chatgpts-a...

comic cover for the Hogback Saga a Viking wears a helmet reflecting swords and flames

Norse warriors assembling into ranks for battle

Two feuding Norse men cease their conflict due to the presence of the Oath ring of Dublin, a sacred object associated with Thor

Hello to my new followers! On top of posting round Robins I also draw a Viking-Age comic called the Hogback Saga. Its about groups of Norse settlers that have been ousted from Dublin trying to form a new community as part of Strathclyde, the last kingdom of the North Britons.

This is cool as hell

A very interesting period of northern history to frame a narrative about community around, given Strathclyde itself basically rebranded as if it went through a PR crisis at this same time (Twitter could never)

Similar to as suggested for Sutton Hoo and other ‘princely burials’ in England: North Sea mercenaries serving farther afield than previously thought

(Gittos 2025)

A documentary film on @artede.bsky.social @artefr.bsky.social about the analysis of remedies from medieval Arabic #manuscripts in modern laboratories.
An interdisciplinary project involving historians, physicians, and biologists.
@cnrs.fr @cnrsshs.bsky.social
🧵
#histmed #medievalsky

Sign the Petition Keep the Classical Languages Major at the University of Iowa

Hi friends. As I previously noted, the U. of Iowa is planning to get rid of African American studies; Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies, & the Classical Languages major—along with others. If you wish, please sign the classics petition: www.change.org/p/keep-the-c.... I will add more as I find out.

Psychedelic Porn Crumpets

Went to a gig last night and (again) threw myself willingly into the moshpit for 2 or so hours, which is basically the closest thing you can get to an early medieval shield wall

I wrote about this parallel (+ others) for @epoch-history.bsky.social last year: www.epoch-magazine.com/post/what-ar...

medievalmusings.substack.com/p/before-eng...

Great review of LITTLE KINGDOMS by Uni of Oxford’s Holly A. Brown

‘It’s a remarkable achievement by Harvey […] perfect combination of detail and generality’

‘[…] already one of the highlights of my reading year!’

A display of the grave goods, featuring a he chainmail shirt, a helmet on a stand, a long sword, small gold ornaments, and various metal, glass, and ceramic objects, all arranged against a dark background.

The early medieval burial from Gammertingen, 6th century AD.
The high-ranking warrior died in his early 30s and was buried with a Byzantine helmet (a so-called Spangenhelm), his weapons, and his mail armour, which consisted of about 45,000 iron rings!

📷Landesmuseum Württemberg

🏺

Psychedelic Porn Crumpets

Went to a gig last night and (again) threw myself willingly into the moshpit for 2 or so hours, which is basically the closest thing you can get to an early medieval shield wall

I wrote about this parallel (+ others) for @epoch-history.bsky.social last year: www.epoch-magazine.com/post/what-ar...

The Mercian Chronicles

Yet another Max Adams book I wish I wrote

The Mercian Chronicles: King Offa & the Birth of the Anglo-Saxon State (2025) is an authoritative interdisciplinary work that unpicks the true power of everyone’s favourite Midlands kingdom, revealing key insights. As usual, Adams inspires me to write

Have we ever seen them in the same room? I don't think so... very suspicious indeed... plus they both have hair... very interesting

Made the mistake of rewatching The Thick Of It

Whilst funny, it's made me sad thinking that we used to consider all this pretty abnormal for politics

Enhanced image of palimpsested page, original writing in red; a large illuminated 'E' can be seen in bottom right quadrant.

Somehow, an 8th-c. English liturgical manuscript ended up in Mount Sinai (where it was palimpsested and written over by a Christian Arabic scribe). For more info: Michelle Brown, austriaca.at/0xc1aa5572%2...

a man in a red shirt holds a soccer ball and talks to two other men ALT: a man in a red shirt holds a soccer ball and talks to two other men

Keep an eye out for kestrels

medievalmusings.substack.com/p/before-eng...

Great review of LITTLE KINGDOMS by Uni of Oxford’s Holly A. Brown

‘It’s a remarkable achievement by Harvey […] perfect combination of detail and generality’

‘[…] already one of the highlights of my reading year!’

operation blowing up residential buildings because a dozen rich old guys got caught molesting teenagers in the 90s

Riddles of the Isle 2023

Little Kingdoms 2025

Would be interested in fellow authors chipping in here, but there's a special joy I think in somebody else noticing how you've approach research without being explicitly told

As one reader correctly assumes, it was the work on my first book that convinced me to take the same approach across the UK

Quotes: Monarchs, warriors and whales bled together in Heathfelðland, turning this place into a forever borderland, a nowhere between realities and yet, despite this, the place where it all happened, the place where England’s future was decided in a few key battles and loud, bloody moments.’ I am loving Alex Harvey’s Little Kingdoms, not least because this morning I read the chapter on my own little kingdom, Heathfelðland. Full review to come soon! Thanks again to Rebecca Batley for the recommendation. Quote from Harvey (2025: 147). Catherine Hyland 22 Jan I’m reading it too. The way he describes the inbetween places is wonderful Holly A Brown 22 Jan Doesn’t he just do them so much justice?! I am constantly delighted by new and interesting places I have never heard of being discussed in an early medieval context, where the emphasis is so often on the same big polities. It’s so refreshing! Catherine Hyland 22 Jan Yes! Think a lot of it stems from fact he comes from Axeholme so he’s unearthed the history of that area and then gone on to think, deeply, about other little kingdoms.. I want to get his Riddles of the Isle too

Delighted with this find of two readers discussing my new book LITTLE KINGDOMS out in the wild

(I say random find, but I do occasionally look for reviews of my own work, and it is like finding gold when a reader completely gets what you were aiming for! happy!) substack.com/@hollyabrown...

Every February without fail the UK is treated to a kind of 'False Spring', where you might even see folk in shorts out setting bbqs up ahead of an immediate return to the grey normality; a testament to the relentless despair of January/early Feb, and a harbinger of the good times ahead

So did I, and here I was thinking we'd seen a bit of sun recently...