Dr John Plus Dr Mary

After a lot of Seven Years War/French & Indian War purchases, this one seeks to trap up the story of the French Atlantic in the subsequent era. Alan Forrest is a Revolutionary/Napoleonic Wars legend. This will be good! 📚 🇫🇷 🇬🇧 🇺🇸 #histbookchat

Thousands upon thousands of kids in the bush are scrambling to access courses ect they could do online for free. Dance troupes that rely on YouTube live to practise together. Ect ect.
Now there are no safe regulated sites and kid rating will get removed and we are all fed to AI predators.

Ancient Egyptian pleasure boat found by archaeologists off Alexandria coast First-century luxury vessel matches description by the Greek historian Strabo, who visited city around 29-25BC

📰 Ancient Egyptian royal "pleasure boat", matching a description by the Greek historian Strabo, found off the coast of Alexandria

🏺 #ArchaeologyNews via @theguardian.com

www.theguardian.com/world/2025/d...

Bubble reading: 'Suggest 10 compelling titles for Gp 2 attendance 2025.xlsx'

things Copilot has tried desperately to help me with this morning: a thread

1) suggesting '10 compelling titles' for a spreadsheet I use to log student attendance

On my way to Bamberg...

I have already been quoted and referenced with hallucinated literature, and you all will be too. It’s a growing mess.

Just did a face scan to verify my age on Bluesky

As a little treat for you, here's an #ArabicBible Advent calendar 🧵. Every day I'll post a verse from the Christmas story from one of the oldest Arabic Gospel lectionaries, Sinai ar. 72, dated 897 CE (and a few other texts in between). [2nd attempt, I won't be offended if you point out my nonsense.]

A recent scientific paper explored the impact of mass SARS-CoV-2 infections on Lymphocytes (crucial to the body’s immune system).

I noticed the authors had shared the data behind their charts in the Appendix Supplementary materials, so I built a quick dataviz project to explore.
🧵

More Than Words A veteran writing teacher makes a “moving” (Rick Wormeli) argument that writing is a form of thinking and feeling and shows why it can’t be...

Students desire engaging, meaningful learning experiences, but school is often not oriented around those things. This doesn't mean we can't change, though. Rather than rushing headlong into the arms of AI we have to focus on what matters as humans. www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/john-...

AI is Destroying the University and Learning Itself Students use AI to write papers, professors use AI to grade them, degrees become meaningless, and tech companies make fortunes. Welcome to the death of higher education.

Worth reading for lots of reasons, but particularly because it closes with something I see in my work and travels speaking on writing and AI. Many, maybe most students do not want AI-mediated schooling or lives. We can offer them something better. www.currentaffairs.org/news/ai-is-d...

Welcome to Itiner-e – The Digital Atlas of Ancient Roads- the most detailed open digital dataset of roads in the entire Roman Empire ... Itiner-e allows you to view, query and download roads. itiner-e.org #skystorians 🗃️#roman

Our new website and brand has launched across the web! We would really appreciate some help testing the site so please let me know if you have any problems. Also claim 20% off your order with code: NEWWEBSITE

The Avalon Hill International Kriegspiel Society was founded to provide a forum within which an internationally useable play by mail system could be utilized, encourage the spread of wargaming outside the USA, and provide members with mature opponents who would complete games promptly & fairly.

Why One Man Is Fighting for Our Right to Control Our Garage Door Openers

This article on “smart” garage door openers could have been about hundreds of other products.

Conclusion?“Always opt for the “dumb” devices — the refrigerators, dishwashers, exercise bikes and coffee makers that lack a Wi-Fi connection or screen.”

Gift article

Do early medieval historians look at stories about the late 15th century and go "pfft that's practically contemporary history". (I mean it pretty much is.)

Thirsty work: how the rise of massive datacentres strains Australia’s drinking water supply The demand for use in cooling in Sydney alone is expected to exceed the volume of Canberra’s total drinking water within the next decade

Sydney Water has estimated up to 250 megalitres a day will be needed to service datacentres planned by 2035, more than Canberra's entire drinking water.

Second feature with @petrastock.bsky.social

www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Deep blue glass vessel shaped like a stylized animal with four legs, a pointed snout, and decorative ridges along its back, resembling a whimsical pig.

One of my most favourite glass vessels: A marvellous Roman vessel in the form of a pig, made of blue glass. It was used to hold ointment or perfume.
Found in a burial in Cologne. Dating late 2nd/early 3rd century AD

📷 Römisch-Germanisches Museum Köln

🏺 #archaeology

Sweet, AI is going to try and turn an entire generation of young men into porn addicted incels, all so that we don’t get “left behind.” If only we moved to embrace any other “advancements” as fast as this - we would have green energy and women and minorities in equal places of power as white men.🤦🏻‍♂️

“The plan notably rejects the mandatory protective guardrails that were included in a standalone artificial intelligence act proposed by former industry minister Ed Husic.“

#Auspol

So, is this tge right time to remind Tasmanians that the AI centres courted by Launceston council require continuous, enormous water resources?

Yes. Yes it is...

#auspol #politas #priorities

Datacentres – why are they so thirsty? Let’s ask a shark! | First Dog on the Moon Do we even want or need all these datacentres? That is apparently none of your business * Sign up here to get an email whenever First Dog cartoons are published * Get all your needs met at the First Dog shop if what you need is First Dog merchandise and prints Continue reading...

Datacentres – why are they so thirsty? Let’s ask a shark! | First Dog on the Moon

The Derveni Papyrus A Conversation with Richard Janko, Professor of Classical Studies, University of Michigan

🏺 Read & watch classicist Richard Janko talk about his ground-breaking research into the partially-deciphered, 4th BC Derveni Papyrus.

🔥 "This was a wacky book, sort of new-age literature."

#archaeology 🗃️ #skystorians #AncientBlueSky #ClassicsBluesky

ideasroadshow.substack.com/p/the-derven...

“Set this Chessboard and its Pieces Before Your Most Learned Men”: Teaching Chess and the Games of World History Teaching Afroeurasian exchange using chess

I wrote about using chess to teach about pre-modern Afroeurasian exchange. Chess is a fun way to teach about exchange routes from a global perspective. There’s lots of visual primary sources as well.
🗺️🗃️

www.liberatingnarratives.com/set-this-che...

The first school to market itself as AI free is going to corner the market on people interested in actually learning. And I would not be surprised if rich families and the children of people creating this tech were the first movers.

More and more I suspect their is something cult-like about AI adoption. My LinkedIn feed is full of AI evangelists and braggarts.

My employer, Dartmouth College, today boasts it's 1st Ivy "to launch AI at an institutional scale." It is doing this by partnering--"more than a collaboration"--with Anthropic, a company that stole the books of many faculty, me included, which many of us are suing.

Only yesterday I said to the tech guy fixing my laptop that I would literally pay more for an AI free OS when the machine needs replacing.

"Rashness, though often imputed to me, forms no part of my composition. There is a rashness without calculation of consequences; but with that calculation, well-founded, it is no longer rashness."
- Lord Cochrane-
#NavalHistory #RoyalNavy #AgeOfSail #EarlOfDundonald #ThomasCochrane #LordCochrane

My new article has now been published in the 2025 volume of Traditio. I use a little examined episode on the lower Rhine in the late 350s with the aid of agricultural archaeology to reveal fiscal dependency relations between the Empire & Barbaricum, & the consequences of their rupture. #medievalsky