Jessica Otis

Me to the Microsoft chat "agent" I connected to: hi, I need help fixing XYZ thing.

"Agent": Worry not, for I stand steadfastly beside you, unyielding and determined, prepared to mend this fractured moment. Your load becomes mine, and together, we shall chart a course toward resolution.

Riiiiiight.

unfortunately, yes

Abstract The London bills of mortality are most well known as printed broadsides produced for public consumption in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, which informed early modern Londoners of mortality rates within their parishes. This article analyses a parallel and more detailed set of manuscript bills of mortality intended for the monarch in order to explore the geographical distribution of a wide variety of causes of death during the 1660s. When read alongside the printed bills, the monarchs’ bills of mortality provide new insight into the geography of epidemic disease outbreaks, as well as how infrastructural, socioeconomic, and environmental factors correlate with other historical death rates in seventeenth-century London.

New research article: 'The Monarchs’ Bills of Mortality: A Geographical Analysis of Death in Seventeenth-Century London', by @jmotis.bsky.social and Katherine Kania: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

The Monarchs’ Bills of Mortality: A Geographical Analysis of Death in Seventeenth-Century London The London bills of mortality are most well known as printed broadsides produced for public consumption in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, which informed early modern Londoners of mortali...

Dr. Jessica Otis and Katherine Kania published "The Monarchs' Bills of Mortality," analyzing 17th-century London death records to reveal connections between epidemic outbreaks, socioeconomic trends, and environmental factors. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03058034.2025.2572138

Generative AI Licensing Agreement Tracker - Ithaka S+R In recent months, several publishers have announced that they are licensing their scholarly content for use as training data for LLMs. These deals

ITHAKA S&R has started a Generative AI Licensing Agreement Tracker sr.ithaka.org/our-work/gen...

Want a T. rex for your yard? N.J. dinosaur park, set to close, is selling animatronic creatures. Or maybe you'd prefer a triceratops for your terrace.

Each dinosaur comes with a control box and speaker

www.nj.com/entertainmen...

It looks like Dinosaur Field Station of NJ is closing and selling their Dino sculptures

we have gone from a world in which we were told not to cite wikipedia because it was unreliable to a world where wikipedia might be the only reliable source left on the internet and we all owe a lot to the pedantic nerds who got us there

Someone shared this with me and it pretty much made my day so I'm passing it on for everyone else's entertainment, too!

On Friday AM I'm chairing a panel where I originally planned to announce a new NEH grant program on sustainability. Even though I don't get to do that, I'm excited for a rich discussion w/ panelists incl @jmotis.bsky.social @kfen.bsky.social as we consider our work in the current landscape. #DH2025

If you're attending #DH2025 make sure to check out @jmotis.bsky.social's panel Revitalizing, Maintaining, & Sunsetting the Digital Humanities on Friday and @deepthimurali.bsky.social & @jasonheppler.org's session Participatory Platforms, Open Scholarship and Advanced OCR on Thursday.

So many ideas, so little time! But all that work was made possible by you and the rest of the ODH team and I greatly appreciated your support (especially when it comes to all things sustainability!)

Humanists are supposed to be good with words, but there aren’t words enough to describe all the things the amazing @brettbobley.bsky.social did for DH communities & ppl here in the US & around the world. I’ve reposted many of y’all’s #thanksBrett posts, but those really are the tip of the iceberg.

But what meant the most was when I was severely underemployed in 2009, @brettbobley.bsky.social took the time to talk with me about the process of applying to jobs at the NEH. We had never met apart from Twitter and he chatted on the phone. That meant so much to a broke PhD. #ThanksBrett

Cheers to a boss and friend I’ll appreciate forever. @brettbobley.bsky.social always took me seriously, let me run away with ideas that both succeeded and failed, and engaged the field with deep kindness. #ThanksBrett

To @brettbobley.bsky.social‬ - Massive thanks to you for everything you have done to foster an innovative, thoughtful, and vibrant DH community! NEH's ODH was where I cut my teeth as a peer reviewer for grant proposals & I'll ever be grateful for those experiences. #ThanksBrett

#ThanksBrett for understanding that the humanities, done digitally, needed specific lines of federal R&D and capacity building $$ to innovate, creatively address field needs , build communities, and foster open source and open access work. (We still need it.) 1/

I'll end this with this meme I made of @brettbobley.bsky.social at the 2015 Crowd Consortium forum that IMLS funded. That event built off one of the many amazing groundbreaking NEH Start Up grants that we all can #thanksbrett for :)

#ThanksBrett for your central role in building up the most exciting and generous academic field of the last 25 years! The office of digital humanities was been a tremendously positive force. @brettbobley.bsky.social

The field of DH is indebted to @brettbobley.bsky.social‬, who has made an indelible impact on so many lives and careers, including mine. Brett founded and led the NEH Office of Digital Humanities with vision, insight, ambition, humor, and passion. And crocs. #ThanksBrett

Thanks @brettbobley.bsky.social! You and ODH provided the infrastructure for DH infrastructures, developed the instruments for instrumenting international collaborations, and envisioned the means for us to envision the future.Here's to your next chapter! I'll always value your last! #ThanksBrett

#DHmakes We're all going to work on crafting this in our own preferred medium for @brettbobley.bsky.social right? #ThanksBrett

As someone who has work for and with @brettbobley.bsky.social for almost 20 years, I know how hard he has worked to ensure that NEH could support the range of exciting work happening in the digital humanities. #ThanksBrett

#ThanksBrett for your generosity, adaptability, and focus on enabling scholarship including by shielding scholars from as much flak as you could.

I am one of so many people in digital humanities whose careers were shaped by @brettbobley.bsky.social. Brett was a model of the kind of worker I aimed to be during my time at NEH, and I was so lucky to work with him for so many years. #ThanksBrett for your leadership, generosity, and vision.

I had the incredible privilege to watch & learn from Brett Bobley’s (@brettbobley.bsky.social) thoughtful, collaborative, & patient approach to building capacity across NEH. Those essential attributes led to the creation of the Digital Humanities Initiative, then @neh-odh.bsky.social, + #ThanksBrett

*sigh* It's too soon, but on the day of his retirement from public service, I think that it's important to recognize the contributions of Brett Bobley to the work of the National Endowment for the Humanities and the field. #ThanksBrett for your leadership, your good cheer & your home-baked goods.

My brain just broke. I was searching through a Slack channel for mentions of Coroner's warrants and Slack decided that when I searched for "coroner" I must obviously also want all mentions of "coronation"... #fuzzySearchFun

YouTube video by Omohundro Institute Death By Numbers: Morality Records & Plague in Britain

Team: Get infected with enthusiasm for Death by Numbers and 17th century London with @jmotis.bsky.social
on the @oieahc.bsky.social's Digital Humanities Coffeehouse series: youtu.be/MmfJidjs370?...

I understand the reasoning to be that there’s no point in litigating the same facts twice when they can be discussed together - saves time and ensures the same outcome for both cases.