Shannon McSheffrey

I kind of loathe the 'not your grandma's knitting' shit, AND the 'see it's not just silly woman stuff' push, because I think actually what we need to do is to accept that traditionally feminine crafts are actually very complicated and skilled, rather than divorce them from femininity to accept that.

I'm pretty sure there were Indian spices in England before potatoes.

“Blah,” said Toad.

The Pope tweets: "The poor are not there by chance or by blind and cruel fate. Nor, for most of them, is poverty a choice. Yet, there are those who still presume to make this claim, thus revealing their own blindness and cruelty. #DilexiTe" Someone replies: "I was so hopeful I could be a Catholic again after the disaster that Francis was, guess we just get Francis 2.0 now and I am heartbroken. How do I stay a Catholic now...I don't want to lose faith but I am. You belong to someone else, not God."

heartbroken to learn the pope sympathizes with the poor. how can i continue to believe in god

Will send in the morning!

If you think that professors exist as repositories of knowledge that students ask for answers, you’re missing the entire point of a college education.

We’re here to teach students how to do research, how to analyze and argue, how to think for themselves — how to find the answers on their own.

The pervasive reduction of human knowledge & understanding to 'information' in GenAI discourse is astounding. Trying to explain why we don't just need 'information' to AI zealots is like playing chess with a pigeon except the pigeon is the size of Texas & uses more electricity than a small country.

Wishing Otto a speedy recovery and mellow times in the interim

The professor should be forced to pay back the money she forced her students to spend buying her AI-generated textbook--this is such a scam. And she should never teach again.
And this is exactly why universities should have calmed their jets before heralding gAI as the next coming of Christ.

I’ve just written a paper to be delivered at the NACBS in November: there is v little written for the early 16th century if that’s where you’re located right now. Can send you the paper and you can look at my references if you like

So glad not a single politician on the planet has the intelligence to perceive how massive a con this is (AI will cure cancer we are told, instead we get this) or the political will to regulate this company and sector.

Knit one, purl two on the way to mental health - Healthy Debate Addressing rising mental health rates will undoubtedly require a range of different tools, both pharmacological and non-pharmaceutical.

#Handcrafts as a scalable (fun!) therapy?

Knit one, purl two on the way to #mentalhealth healthydebate.ca/2025/10/topi... by Jane Caulfield (yep, might be connection!) via @healthydebate.bsky.social

Studies show #knitting has many potential benefits for "mental health & general well-being.”

The only actual use case here is perverts putting themselves in sex scenes with Daenerys but the key to this whole industry is that everyone must pretend to have been born yesterday. The naivete is load bearing.

Try saying “Profefforis” five times fast

So-called #genAI means the abolition of the future through the proliferation of endless streams of stochastically rendered generic pasts. Having turned large parts of the cultural archive into training data, it now traps us in a foreverized pastness, a 24/7 nostalgia for a past that never existed

cry havoc and let slip the frogs of war

A woman’s place was not in the home: New book challenges assumptions about women’s work in early modern history New research has revealed that women played a fundamental role in the development of England’s national economy before 1700. Far from being the unpaid homemakers and housewives of traditional historic...

Many congratulations to my colleagues in the Forms of Labour project team on the publication of their new monograph! 🗃️👏🎉

Brilliantly, The Experience of Work in #EarlyModern England is available open access:

www.cambridge.org/core/books/e...

news.exeter.ac.uk/faculty-of-h...

Canadians: The federal government is seeking public input on how AI should be developed and used in business, research, and the military.

If this scares the shit out of you, please let them know:

Assistant Professor in Irish and/or European Medieval History at Dublin City University Discover an exciting academic career path as a Assistant Professor in Irish and/or European Medieval History at jobs.ac.uk. Don't miss out on this job opportunity - apply today!

Assistant Professor in Irish and/or European Medieval History
Dublin City University - School of History & Geography #skystorians 🗃️www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DOY744/a...

SHAPIRO: OK, so you've spent your career creating television without Al, and I could imagine today you thinking, boy, I wish I had had that tool to solve those thorny problems... SIMON: What? SHAPIRO: ...Or saying... SIMON: You imagine that? SHAPIRO: ...Boy, if that had existed, it would have screwed me over. SIMON: I don't think Al can remotely challenge what writers do at a fundamentally creative level. SHAPIRO: But if you're trying to transition from scene five to scene six, and you're stuck with that transition, you could imagine plugging that portion of the script into an Al and say, give me 10 ideas for how to transition this. SIMON: I'd rather put a gun in my mouth.

David Simon, creator of ‘The Wire’, being interviewed by Ari Shapiro (NPR)

PhD position in History (100%, 4 years) - Vacancies - University of Lucerne Assistant or doctoral positions, employment or internship: Looking for a job at the University of Lucerne? Find our listed open positions and apprenticeships here.

Want to work on the history of hair? I am looking for a doc and postdoc to join my project team researching #earlymodern hair, race, trade and multispecies history at the University of Lucerne.

Do apply and spread the word!

www.unilu.ch/en/universit...

www.unilu.ch/en/universit...

Pretty dispiriting to see PM chuckle over US violating international law.

CFP - CSM Sessions at ACCUTE's 2026 conference in Montreal, 4-7 June

Submit your paper proposals on
• Medieval Magic
• Medieval Masculinities

for two CSM-sponsored sessions. Deadline 15 Nov. 2025. Details here www.canadianmedievalists.org/CSM-at-ACCUT...

Laura Moncion – Boyle Prize Presentation / Colloque du prix Boyle - REGISTRATION / INSCRIPTION On 5 Nov. 2025 at 11h00 (EST), the Canadian Society of Medievalists will hold its second annual Boyle Prize Online Presentation, when Laura Moncion, the winner of the Society's Leonard E. Boyle Prize ...

The CSM Online: Tune in Wednesday 5 Nov. 2025, at 11am EST to hear 2025 Boyle Prize Winner Laura Moncion talk about her dissertation, "Being a Recluse is No Small Thing: Late Medieval Women’s Reclusion in Theory and Practice."

Register for the Zoom link: forms.gle/n6LJh7JYKvRD...

Laura Moncion – Boyle Prize Presentation / Colloque du prix Boyle - REGISTRATION / INSCRIPTION On 5 Nov. 2025 at 11h00 (EST), the Canadian Society of Medievalists will hold its second annual Boyle Prize Online Presentation, when Laura Moncion, the winner of the Society's Leonard E. Boyle Prize ...

La SCM en ligne : le mercredi 5 novembre 2025 à 11 h (heure de l'Est) on écoute Laura Moncion, lauréate du prix Boyle 2025, parler de sa thèse intitulée « Being a Recluse is No Small Thing: Late Medieval Women’s Reclusion in Theory and Practice ».

Inscription : forms.gle/n6LJh7JYKvRD...

okay how about writing it on a cake instead?

Please join me in congratulating Woman on her appointment

I’m pretty sure I believe now in Hell and that this is it.

The road to reconciliation begins with truth
Mishiikenh Kwe ~ Anishinaabe
c. 2022

Reconciliation includes recognizing Residential Schools are not the only colonial atrocity When it comes to reconciliation in Canada, we need to remember that the colonial history encompasses many assimilation tactics and its impacts are ongoing.

Today is Orange Shirt Day, the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation in Canada: read this by Concordia PhD student Wade Paul to understand the ongoing harms the settler state has perpetrated against Indigenous people. #EveryChildMatters #NDTR #OrangeShirtDay

theconversation.com/reconciliati...