David Defries

We know that individualized attention for creative learning works best. Wealthy universities provide that to the minority. We can afford that for everyone.

Modern universities based on that model are absolutely sustainable! It would be much more economical than blowing through the resources consumed by data centers. The war budget of the US is over a trillion dollars. That wealth is literally vaporized.

Viking soldier's gold coin pendant found in Norfolk field The pierced coin was probably lost by a member of the Viking Great Army, says a coin expert.

This was a fun conversation:
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

It happened the other way round. Cuts happened because the wealthy attacked the public good. Loans are a way to extract more wealth from people whom the wealthy have hurt by attacking government.

Hidden Medieval Tunnels and a Viking‑Age Mass Grave Revealed Underground Tunnels and Violent Burials in Europe Recent archaeological discoveries in Germany and England reveal how much of early medieval life and death took place beyond the surface. From narrow underground tunnels cut into ancient burial monuments to mass graves bearing signs of execution and medical intervention. A Medieval Tunnel Carved into a Prehistoric Sacred […]

Hidden Medieval Tunnels and a Viking‑Age Mass Grave Revealed

Oooh and with a focus on gender history! 👇👇

I guess my main suspicion is that if HE admitted that online teaching is inferior, it would have to discount it on a permanent basis.

I've never understood uni responses to these complaints. Unis should give them some of their money back and reduce the credits the students earned proportionately. Then, students will have to return to finish their degrees if they complain.

Gonna spam some of my own writing here again because AI industry people are bringing out that “black box” canard again www.techpolicy.press/the-black-bo...

Revelations of blindness in the Middle Ages Medieval texts, from Islamic medical treatises to Christian books of miracles, reveal surprisingly varied and complex experiences of blindness. But when medieval scholar Jude Seal experienced visual i...

When I experienced sight loss, my perspective on the experience of blindness changed. This post discusses blindness and cataract surgery in the Middle Ages. wellcomecollection.org/stories/reve...

www.nottingham.ac.uk/news/new-boo...

Awesome work from one of our PhD students Vera! Check out this mega isotope dataset! 🧪 ⚛️ 🦷🦴

I like Rosenwein's because of the way it grapples with the "clash of civilizations" thesis.

Everything Is Mechanical Turk

Students unearth remains in possible execution pit on training dig The discovery was made at Wandlebury Country Park near Cambridge

A very interesting viking (?) find from south of Cambridge: www.independent.co.uk/news/science...

Assistant Professor, Medieval History in Chile
networks.h-net.org/jobs/69752/p...

A poster for my inaugural lecture at 16.00 on 4th Feb.

Very much looking forward to this #charterrific event tomorrow! If you want a copy of the Teams link, just let me know. (Formal sign-up is now passed, but I have permission to circulate the link.)

New discovery: A wooden structure, identified as river bank protection of the #Roman harbour, has been unearthed in Cologne.

www.stadt-koeln.de/politik-und-...

#RomanArchaeology #archaeology 🏺

Lecturer in Early Medieval History | King's College London

Anyway, good news! Open-ended lectureship in early medieval history at KCL.

www.kcl.ac.uk/jobs/136727-...

Similarly, the tech extinctionists, who think they will make themselves immortal by uploading their consciousnesses while the rest of us die from the climate catastrophe should learn to value their "wetware" more.

I've not seen it pointed out yet, but AI cannot think human thoughts, which are formed by the connections of neurons. AI developers cannot simulate this process, because we do not know how neurons connect to make thought. AI is a simulacrum that they force on us.

Digital Tools for Manuscript Studies

If you have graduate students working with medieval manuscripts this free online training might be useful 👇
www.sas.ac.uk/news-events/...

If you feel like they’re trying to force LLMs (“AI”) down our throats even if we don’t want it, it’s because they are. Fascinating essay on the SV-authoritarian alliance, LLMs, and the complete alienation of labor

Almost all of my writing assignments are satisfactory/unsatisfactory. I messed around with point levels but they were illegible to students. Now, I do simple percentages of points available, which translate to letters. Satisfactory on time = 2 points; Satisfactory late = 1.

For #FindsFriday two very small gold bars from the #viking age found in Denmark (🇩🇰 East Jutland) last month
www.tv2ostjylland.dk/randers/muse...

networks.h-net.org/jobs/69704/k...

Vikingverhalen - Rijksmuseum van Oudheden In het avondvullende programma 'Vikingverhalen' laten internationaal gerenommeerde wetenschappers hun licht schijnen over oud en nieuw onderzoek naar de Vikingtijd.

Dutch pals! Er zijn nog enkele laatste tickets vrijgegeven voor de (gratis) 'Vikingverhalen'-avond @rmoudheden.bsky.social deze donderdag. Lezingen van Eleanor Barraclough, Nelleke IJssennagger-vd Pluijm, Annemarieke Willemsen, en ikzelf.

Throughout Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages, a vast corpus of potentially dangerous texts was dismissed as unorthodox and unauthorised by Christian scholars and policy makers. Yitzhak Hen explores some of the mechanism that allowed the dealing with such texts.
see mgh.de/en/blog/post...

Ah, but that's barbarism, not civilization or Arnoldian culture!