Matthias Ammon

Top of the league, we’re top of the league…!

"Hemp. Mead. Hemp." England playing like a wild medieval night out.

Such a great example of regular sound changes!

What are your thoughts on using Bench Boost in GW1?

We were confounded by this, too, but my usual reaction to this kind of thing is to shrug and go “Americans,eh?”.

An engraved inscription that reads: This diagram illustrates the cause of the so called Earth Tides. Also each alternate Ocean Flood, the cause of which has never yet been understood. RE EARTH TIDES: we are told that the Moon raises the solid surface of the Earth under it about 8 inches and raises the OPPOSITE SIDE 8. This I hold to be impossible. The phenomenon called EARTH TIDE IS CAUSED BY E-H’s WEIGHT PULLING … [The remainder of this stone has worn but the Geograph contributor was informed that it ended: AGAINST THE SUN’S ATTRACTION.] The water flows back when att’n over & forms a heap on opposite side of E. to balance att’n flood. There is no …

Rather amusing find (inscription on house in Scalloway, Shetland). More information here: newcleckitdominie.wordpress.com/2014/07/25/w...

It probably means the balance is exactly right!

WeTransfer just changed their TOS giving themselves permission to train AI on any content you transfer and produce derivative works based on content you transfer that they are allowed to monetize and you are not allowed payment for.

Stop using WeTransfer.

A job advert for the London Library: Library Assistant (fixed term), location: London, SW1, Salary: £27,619.20 to £2,761,920.

Careful where you put the commas in your salary range when advertising jobs...

Feministly arguing that people assigned male at birth are innately better at strategy games than those assigned female at birth. Sensational women’s rights movement you’ve got there.

Happening tomorrow!

Sign up now to join us in person or virtually for the last lecture in our Summer Series:

www.ghil.ac.uk/events/lectu...

#zeitgeschichte #nation #skystorians

Institute of Historical Research

@ihr.bsky.social has released a lovely set of videos on Youtube of interviews with eminent historians; made in the 80s and 90s, these are a lovely snapshot of titans in the field from a generation ago. www.youtube.com/@instituteof...

I think one of my main takeaways from #Bibliocon25 is that it's a fools errand trying to build sustainable research infrastructures, particularly on the national level, on the basis of projects with short-term funding and no clear idea of what happens after the end of the funding period.

Intrigued to hear at #Bibliocon25 about several cases in which "traditional" librarian roles have been replaced with media designers, in the context of library-based scholar-led OA publishing and as a research support role in a medical faculty.

At a library conference in Germany, attending my usual share of Open Research panels and I feel we’re still having the same conversations about OA and research data management that I was having 10 years ago when I started working on this at Cambridge (at least in the context of the humanities).

Weeding discourse - yet another topic that never seems to die. 🤦‍♀️ Why can people not accept that librarians know how to do our jobs and don’t just chuck stuff away for shits and giggles?

Wicked and the Divine vol 3 hardback with signed page

Wonder Woman Historia cover

Cover for The Imposition of Unneccessary Objects by Malka Older

Cover of King Sorrow by Joe Hill

It's my birthday! 🎂 To celebrate, can I invite you to check out the charity auction for trans rights that @ngjeannette.bsky.social and I are running with verrrry covetable donations by brilliant genre creators, ending 1am BST 7 June. bit.ly/genrefortrans

All price changes to happen only once per gameweek, during the post-deadline update.

Academia in 2025: For weeks I’ve been working through botched copy-edits of my monograph, outsourced by the publisher to a company I’d never heard of, until it finally dawned on me the terrible job might be AI. A quick search confirmed the company recently launched new AI software, which now means..

Congratulations to the winners and thank you for another season!

I changed from him to Sarr at the last minute. 😭

First we take the title, then we take Berlin.

YouTube video by Eurovision Song Contest Abor & Tynna – Baller (LIVE) | Germany 🇩🇪 | Second Semi-Final | Eurovision 2025

Don't know how I managed to sleep on the fact that the German #Eurovision song is an absolute banger. I shall be voting early and often tomorrow. www.youtube.com/watch?v=xF_s...

I am in this article.

One final party with Jamie Vardy.

Congratulations to Prof Helen Fulton, Prof Ad Putter & Dr Anna Havinga who have received a GW4 Generator grant! 🥳

Their project, Medieval Studies Mobilising Digital Humanities, will develop new methodologies for research in medieval studies using emerging technologies

Read more 👉 bit.ly/44DUICr

The ASNC is strong in this one.

Slightly amended so I can fit this here: I am writing to you as an immigrant who chose to make the UK my home. As someone who is now also a British citizen. And as a German-born historian who understands where the complete normalisation of the far right can end. I write to say: For shame! I first came to the UK in the 1990s for a visit with my grandmother. Objectively, much was backwards here. No mixer taps in the bathroom; awful ‘bread’; and strings had to be pulled to switch on lights. But however I felt about this, my own string had been pulled: I loved this Cool Britannia. It was quite possibly then that I decided that the UK was to be my home. When I arrived to settle here permanently, I made a choice: to contribute my skills, my knowledge—all I have to offer—to this country rather than another one. I am deeply disgusted by your comment today that immigration has done ‘incalculable damage’ to the country. This is the language of the far right. It is insulting, hateful & will fuel xenophobia. And it is just wrong. Migration is a normal part of the human existence. None of us would be where we are without it. Open your fridge and you will see migration. Immigrants help make the UK tick every single day, whether we clean toilets in our hospitals or provide care for the elderly; whether we empty our bins or carry out cancer research. We are mothers, sons-in-law, aunts and uncles, friends, neighbours and colleagues. I ask you not tell me that you do not mean me. I know that you do not—at least not primarily—mean a white woman from Europe who has a PhD. But who do you mean? And, much more importantly, who do you think those racists who were engaged in riots on our streets last summer think you mean? Anti-immigration narratives have defined UK policymaking for the best part of two decades. And fundamentally so. They were the key driver in delivering Brexit, for example, and, as such, have directly limited the rights and opportunities of British citizens.

This obsessive focus on immigration as the ‘problem’—that is the real problem. And it is consistently delivering poor outcomes for the UK. Instead of tackling this, you are choosing to consolidate it, sowing divisions along the way. You may point me to polling and tell me that this is what voters want. Do they? I am not surprised at all that over 50% of voters might say they want to see immigration reduced if that is the question they are being asked. What we need to know is what they would answer to the question: “Would you like to see immigration reduced? What this would mean for you and your local community is XYZ.” That is not how surveys can ask questions, but governments absolutely can choose to make policy using such a more informed position. Prime Minister, you continue to talk a lot about making the tough choices. But let’s be clear: setting immigrants up as the ‘other’, as a scapegoat—describing us as a threat ‘pulling the country apart’, a ‘squalid chapter’, a risk that might make the UK an ‘island of strangers’—these are not tough choices at all. These are the easy choices. They are the choices that populists make who have no solutions to the real problems a country faces. What I would like to know, Prime Minister, is what you will do when your policies lead to the implosion of the UK’s Higher Education sector. What you will tell communities when they can no longer provide any care for the elderly. The policies you announced today will not solve anything at all. They will have exclusively negative impacts. For those immediately affected; for our communities; and for our economy. Being pro-immigration—it is progressive, yes, but the much more crucial point is that it is also the most pro-UK policy approach that any politician in the country can pursue. And you are choosing to do the opposite. This, Prime Minister, is the real damage—and it will be very calculable indeed. Tanja Bueltmann

My letter to the Prime Minister. #immigration

Any voter bleating on about immigration should be forced to take the 'Life in the UK' test that immigrants must pass, and see how they get on

In the meantime, happy Eurovision week to those who celebrate! ✨🎶🌈