Jon Agar

Ecologies of Resilience: The Many Colonizations of Rapa Nui (Easter Island), c. 1200–present Abstract. The history of Rapa Nui has often been told as a cautionary tale meant to reflect on the destructive tendencies of our own civilization, but it l

Today at @stsucl.bsky.social #histsci Reading Group we discussed @guanoguy.bsky.social et al ‘Ecologies of Resistance: the Many Colonizations of Rapa Nui’, AHR, 2024, doi.org/10.1093/ahr/... & @farsouthhistory.bsky.social ‘Shaky Claims’, Isis, 2024, doi.org/10.1086/733152 (ht Jordan Goodman)

Here I am.

In the small open cluster of Critical Data and Technology Studies Bluesky users

The galaxies of Political Science and Canadian Progressive Media loom in the night sky

Further away are Italian Progressives and Plant Science galaxies

On the Western edge of the Bluesky universe

Two early ones for #wildflowerhour: Winter Aconite (Eranthis hyemalis) and Blackthorn (Prunus spinosa). Both looking a bit soggy. Hackney Marshes

Today at @stsucl.bsky.social History of Science Reading Group we discussed Moira Donovan’s 'How AI is helping historians better understand our past' MIT @technologyreview.com (2023), and the AHA @historians.org Guiding Principles for AI in History Education
(ht for suggestions: Norberto Serpente)

Sad news in the UK #histSTM community - my former University of Kent colleague and admired historian of 19thC energy physics and steam ocean navigation, Crosbie Smith, died at the weekend following a short illness. We owe him a great deal.
www.kent.ac.uk/history/peop...

YouTube video by UCL Science and Technology Studies What is Science and Technology Studies?

A neat short video that introduces our Science and Technology Studies degree programmes at @stsucl.bsky.social

Please share if you like what we do! #histsci #philsci #sts

www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYYE...

Lesser celandine, Horsenden Hill, London for #wildflowerhour

sign of Spring

“This train is powered by fast-charge battery technology”

A battery powered train arrives at Greenford station

London’s first battery-powered rechargeable train arriving on its first day. Greenford station

UCL main quad - grass is gone

No grass Here

The decline of Chinese bryophilia

Today at @stsucl.bsky.social History of Science Reading Group we discussed Samantha Muka, 'From Silent Partner to Permanent Institution: the New York Aquarium as an Invisible Scientific Institution, 1902–1967', Isis (2025) (ht Janet Browne & Jordan Goodman)
www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10....

My total bird count was 1 (in an hour, watching my garden). Less than national average of 27

My number 1 (and only) bird was a woodpigeon

Perhaps the least thrilling RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch I’ve done

But thanks to the woodpigeon, for turning up

At the Hawaiian exhibition at the British Museum. Feeding my Hawaiian bird obsession

Here’s an ‘o’o drawn by John Webber on Cook’s 3rd voyage 1770s

Any good suggestions for STS lit/resources for thinking about “tech bros” and what they want?

Today @stsucl.bsky.social History of Science Reading Group we discussed Jenny Beckman's, 'Under vernacular bushels: language as science policy in the reorganisation of Nordic scientific publication, 1960–1980', @conteurohistory.bsky.social doi.org/10.1017/S096.... (Suggested by Emmeline Ledgerwood)

found them!

(thanks Chris)

Just wasted half an hour in Google streetview trying to find transistor-shaped street sculptures outside the site of the original Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory at 391 San Antonio Road. They’ve vanished

Got lost. Now stuck in car park. It’s hot and sunny

Anyone know what happened to them?

It’s the best view of the best mountain from the best train in the world

The surprising story of the contents of the winning file (no. 2, on how valuable was British Coal’s art collection) is told by me here: bsky.app/profile/jona...

The plinth with the list of winning first aid teams is also in their collection but apparently not on display. museum.wales/collections/...

But, hang on, what’s this!

Here is the Mitchell-Hedges Trophy in the Amgueddfa Cymru/Museum Wales collection!

Saved! (But did they have to pay?)

museum.wales/collections/...

The file ends with the Coal Board Corporation about to sell off the (mining family) silver

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿☹️

The National Museums and Galleries of Wales (which does not have that money to hand) make a counteroffer

It’s a “highly significant heritage object, of great importance to the history of Wales, and subsequently to the coal industry during the period of nationalisation”

Perhaps for free as a gift?

The Coal Board Corporation offer it to the National Museums and Galleries of Wales

But, wringing their hands, they say they have “a statutory duty to dispose of assets on the best possible terms”

It’s pure silver. It’s worth £250,000

(This selling of silver is the METAPHOR for privatisation)

But what about the Mitchell-Hedges silver trophy for coal mine first aid?

In 1994, Mitchell-Hedges’ daughter (not the skull one, surely) is inquiring about it…

Whitehall, bless them, says ”it is essential that we do the proper thing and do not allow the trophy to become ‘lost’ on privatisation”

He is perhaps most well-known for the “Mitchell-Hedges crystal skull”, that he claims his adopted daughter found in (what is now now) Belize in 1924

(he almost certainly purchased it from a dealer in the 1940s. It was almost certainly recently made)

This is the unexpected Indiana Jones reference

Frederick Albert Mitchell-Hedges was an “adventurer”, a traveler and teller of tall tales. At one stage he is captured by Pancho Villa in Mexico. He has a radio show.

F A Mitchell- Hedges holding a pangolin

Who was Mr Mitchell-Hedges?

Here he is

Holding a pangolin

It had been presented by Mr Mitchell-Hedges to his friend, coal chairman Lord Hyndley in the 1940s

It was awarded for a while to the miners who mined the most coal, as a kind of spur to productivity

Then it became a yearly prize in a First Aid competition, which continued right up to 1990s