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Winston Black @winstonblack.bsky.social · 9h

New book! So pleased to get my author copies of our edition, translation, and study of Gregorio Dati's "La Sfera", a fifteenth-century Florentine poem on cosmology and geography.
This was the brainchild of the unstoppable Carrie Beneš.
It's profusely illustrated and will be great for students.

Cover of Gregorio Dati, La Sfera/The Globe. Cosmology, Science, and Geography in the Fifteenth-Century Mediterranean, ed. Carrie Beneš, Laura Ingallinella, Laura Morreale, Caterina Agostini, Winston Black, Elena Brizio, and Monica Keene. It shows a fifteenth-century manuscript diagram of the earth surrounded by the four elements and the moon, rendered in brilliant blues, reds, and greens.

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Isaac Land @coastalhistory.bsky.social · 20h

Actually holding a physical copy of Craft of Historical Research, what a joy! Very much the book I wish I’d had as a student, so happy to see it out in the world. 🗃️ You can find it as an affordable paperback or eBook.

Laughing academic in a sweater holding a copy of Craft of Historical Research

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Dr. Jamie LH Goodall @lhistorienne.bsky.social · 1d

Inventory left: 📚

🏴‍☠️ Pirates of the Chesapeake: 5 copies

🏴‍☠️ Pirates & Privateers from Long Island Sound to Delaware Bay: 15 copies

🏴‍☠️ The Daring Exploits of Pirate Black Sam Bellamy: 9 copies

#SkyStorians #PirateHistory #BookSky

Dr. Jamie LH Goodall @lhistorienne.bsky.social · 6d

If you enjoy my work, please help me continue to do it. Snag one (or all) of my books as I’m furloughed and help me pay some bills! 🏴‍☠️📚 DM me! #SkyStorians #PirateHistory

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Library Innovation Lab @harvardlil.bsky.social · 1d

LIL fellow @maxy.bsky.social asked 14 scholars, archivists, designers, business leaders & engineers: "If you were given unlimited funding to design a system for storing and preserving digital information for at least a century, what would you do?"

Their answers:
lil.law.harvard.edu/generational...

Generational Data Interviews | Library Innovation Lab

14 Designs for Digital Preservation in 2025

lil.law.harvard.edu

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Lewis Wade 🗃️ @wadehistory.bsky.social · 1d

It's super cool to see that, two years on from its publication, Privilege, Economy and State in Old Regime France is still finding new readers! Also delighted to see @jakedyble.bsky.social's Managing Maritime Risk in Early Modern Europe on the list too #MaritimeHistory 🗃️

Our most read Open Access books: 2025

Through our open access programme we support authors in sharing their work freely & globally. Discover our 2025 most read open access titles.

boydellandbrewer.com

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Oisín McGann @oisinmcgann.bsky.social · 1d

If anyone has some time to help out in transcribing old, handwritten weather records.

www.met.ie/met-eireann-...

Met Éireann opens historic weather transcription project to all - Met Éireann - The Irish Meteorological Service

Met Éireann, the Irish National Meteorological Service, is the leading provider of weather information and related services for Ireland.

www.met.ie

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RCP museum @rcpmuseum.bsky.social · 1d

In 1543 Andreas Vesalius produced one of the most famous books in medical history: De humani corporis fabrica (‘On the fabric of the human body). A 1st edition is on display in exhibition #BodyOfKnowledge!
The anniversary of his death #OTD 1564 is now celebrated as #WorldAnatomyDay.
Discover more 👇

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MEMS @memsunikent.bsky.social · 2d

📜 Pre-Modern Race Roundtable
🗓 Thurs 16 Oct | 17:15–18:30
📍 Darwin LT1 & Online (Teams)
🎙 Dr Sarah Dustagheer, Natalie Tolentino, Georgie Anderson, & Eleanor Hex discuss race in the medieval and early modern worlds, from the ‘Other’ and fabulation to Digital Humanities and Premodern Race Studies.

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Margot Finn @eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 2d

For reasons, it would be v. helpful to have information from a broad range of academic and non-academic (incl. GLAM) users of the BBC Written Archives OTHER THAN historians, briefly on: 1) What you've used it for and 2) How the proposed changes would impact on your research.

Reposts welcomed.

Historians dismayed by ‘scandal’ of BBC cutting access to...

Critics say new limit to trove of information sounds knell for independent research

observer.co.uk

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Victor Seow @eastasiascitech.bsky.social · 3d

Reminder 📢

Come join the Harvard Science and Technology in Asia online seminar series tomorrow for this talk by John DiMoia of Seoul National University! 🚢

Zoom registration: seow.scholars.harvard.edu/STinAsia

Victor Seow @eastasiascitech.bsky.social · 11d

How did Korean firms like Hanjin carry containerization from Vietnam’s Cam Ranh & Qui Nhon to Busan, transforming ports & unsettling U.S. contractors like Lusteveco? 🚢

John DiMoia @ Harvard #STinAsia, Tue Oct 14, 10:30 ET

Zoom registration: seow.scholars.harvard.edu/STinAsia

#histstm #histtech 🧪

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Dr Laura Sangha @lsangha.bsky.social · 2d

If you want to know more about our use of handwritten text recognition software (Transkribus) on the wills project, tune in on Zoom next week 👇

All welcome (not just postdocs!).

#EarlyModern 🗃️ #DigitalHumanities #HTR #CitizenScience

The Material Culture of Wills Project @materialwills.bsky.social · 2d

Project Research Fellows Harry Smith and Emily Vine are looking forward to speaking as part of the Warwick History 'Post-Doc' Club series, next Wed 22 October @ 17.00.

They'll be discussing 'Digitization & Citizen Science'📜💻

Follow this link for Zoom details:
warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/his...

A poster with a white background and black text, with a blue border at the top of the poster, and photographs of manuscripts. The title of the poster reads Warwick History ‘POST-DOC’ CLUB METHODOLOGIES SERIES. Online Meeting: Weds 22 October at 5pm
DIGITIZATION & CITIZEN SCIENCE: Inviting collaborative research to transcribe handwriting. With Harry Smith and Emily Vine of the Material Culture of Wills, 1540-1790 project at the University of Exeter.

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Derek Miller @visualizingbroadway.com · 2d

Here's a thread, from oldest to most recent, of the key @nytimes.com reporting on an imminent deal between Harvard and the regime.

A Charlie Brown comic strip panel showing Lucy and her football. Lucy (labelled "Trump") says, "Harvard cut a deal with us! We're gonna sign it today!" Charlie Brown (The New York Times), says "We'll print it in the paper!" The football is labelled with Harvard's seal.

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The Pleasure Vice Principle (he/him/his) @hannibaltabu.bsky.social · 5d

I saw the dot coms crash from a front row seat. AI is running out of money way faster.

The evangelism is insecurity from people who made the wrong bet. I’ve seen it before. futurism.com/future-socie...

AI Data Centers Are an Even Bigger Disaster Than Previously Thought

An investment manager realized he made a crucial mistake — and that his grim prediction about AI investments may not have been cynical enough.

futurism.com

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Mike W @gekido.bsky.social · 5d

so Google just added a bunch (more) AI bullshit to Chrome

Go through these steps to disable it:

opus.ing/posts/how-to...

#chrome #aibullshit

How to Remove AI From Your Google Chrome Experience - Opus

Follow these steps to resist the AI-pocalypse in your everyday web browsing.

opus.ing

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Margaret Schotte @schottemargaret.bsky.social · 6d

Daniella, amazing milestone! Thanks for all your efforts!

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Ed Zitron @edzitron.com · 6d

Tomorrow: The AI Bubble is built on impossible promises. GPUs die in 5 years, nobody has built a 1GW data center, and they have the power to do so. Stargate Abilene won't have enough power before 2028.

Here's a link for $10 off premium.

edzitronswheresyouredatghostio.outpost.pub/public/promo...

Everybody is very casual with how they talk about Sam Altman’s theoretical promises of trillions of dollars of data center infrastructure, and I'm not sure anybody realizes how difficult even the very basics of this plan will be.
Nevertheless, everybody is happily publishing stories about how “Stargate Abilene Texas - OpenAI’s massive data center with Oracle - is open,” by which they mean two buildings, and I’m not even confident both of them are providing compute to OpenAI yet. There are six more of them that need to get built for this thing to start rocking at 1.2GW - even though it’s only 1.1GW according to my sources in Abilene.
But, hey, sorry - one minute - while we’re on that subject, did anybody visiting Abilene in the last week or so ever ask whether they’ll have enough power there?
Don’t worry, you don’t need to look - I’m sure you were just about to, and had simply been busy! - but I did the hard work for you and read up on it, and it turns out that Stargate Abilene only has 200 megawatts of power - a 200 megawatt substation that, according to my sources, has only been built within the last couple of months, with 350 Megawatt of gas turbine generators that connect to a natural gas power plant that might get built by the end of the year in the event that one of the multiple construction firms involved . Said turbine is extremely expensive, featuring volatile pricing (for context, volatility fell in Q2 2025…to 69% annualized, meaning that if you had these prices across the entirety of a year you’d see swings of 69% up or down) and even more volatile environmental consequences, and is, while permitted for it (this will download the PDF of the permit), impractical and expensive to use long-term.
Analyst James van Geelen, founder of Citrini Research recently said on Bloomberg’s Odd Lots podcast that these are “not the really good natural gas turbines” because the really good ones would take seven years to deliver due to a natural gas turbine shortage.
But th…

$Stargate Abilene does not have sufficient power to run at even half of its supposed IT load of 1.2GW, and at its present capacity - assuming that the gas turbines function at full power - can only hope to run 370MW to 460MW of IT load. I’ve seen article after article about the gas turbines and their use of fracked gas - a disgusting and wasteful act typical of OpenAI - but nobody appears to have asked “how much power does a 1.2GW data center require?” and then chased it with “how much power does Stargate Abilene have?” The answer is not enough, and the significance of said “not enough” is remarkable. Today, I’m going to tell you, at length, how impossible the future of generative AI is. Gigawatt data centers are a ridiculous pipe dream, one that runs face-first into the walls of reality. The world’s governments and media have been far too cavalier with the term “gigawatt,” casually breezing by the fact that Altman’s plans require 17 or more nuclear reactors’ worth of power, as if building power is quick and easy and cheap and just happens. I believe that many of you think that this is an issue of permitting - of simply throwing enough money at the problem - when we are in the midst of a shortage in the electrical grade steel and transformers required to expand America (and the world’s) power grid. I realize it’s easy to get blinded by the constant drumbeat of “gargoyle-like tycoon cabal builds 1 gigawatt data center” and feel that they will simply overwhelm the problem with money, but no, I’m afraid that isn’t the case at all, and all of this is so silly, so ridiculous, so cartoonishly bad that it threatens even the seemingly-infinite wealth of Elon Musk, with xAI burning over a billion dollars a month and planning to spend tens of billions of dollars building the Colossus 2 data center, dragging two billion dollars from SpaceX in his desperate quest to burn as much money as possible for no reason. This is the age of hubris - a time in which we are going to watc…$

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Nico Mara-McKay 🦇 (they/iel) @nicomaramckay.com · 8d

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:

Help define the next chapter of Canada's AI leadership

Current status: Open from October 1 to October 31, 2025 Canada helped invent modern AI. To stay a leader—and protect our digital sovereignty—we're running a 30-day national sprint to shape a renewed...

ised-isde.canada.ca

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FrenchHistTO @frenchhistto.bsky.social · 8d

Our 2nd talk of the fall term will take place on Oct. 24. We very much look forward to welcoming @andreloez.bsky.social for his talk, "Unsettled voters. Invalid ballots in the first elections by universal male suffrage in France"

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Annika Bärwald @annikabaerwald.bsky.social · 9d

Wonderful opportunity for scholars, activists, and artists engaging with early Black presences in Europe🗃️

H-Soz-Kult @hsozkult.bsky.social · 9d

CFP: Black Presence and Influence in Europe Before the Atlantic Slavery

https://www.hsozkult.de/event/id/event-157868

Lüneburg, 21.01.2026-22.01.2026, Leuphana Institute for Advanced Studies (LIAS) in Culture and Society, Leuphana University Lüneburg, Bewerbungsschluss: 30.10.2025

www.hsozkult.de

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Brett Rushforth @brettrushforth.bsky.social · 9d

Loved this book - congrats to Jack (and @yalepress.bsky.social)!

Henry Snow @henrysnow.bsky.social · 9d

My colleague Jack Bouchard's book Terra Nova is out today! It's about early 16th-century mariners and the seasonal fishery around present-day Newfoundland, and its place within the Atlantic World. I cannot wait to read it

yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300...

Terra Nova

A bottom-up story of the fishworkers, whalers, First Nations, merchantwomen, oceans, and animals who together made a new colonial world in the early Atlantic...

yalebooks.yale.edu

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French Colonial Historical Society @frenchcolonial.bsky.social · 25d

Share widely!

We are now accepting paper and panel proposals for our 2026 Annual Conference in Ireland at Maynooth University taking place 25-27 June 2026!

The submission deadline is 14 November 2025, and you can read more information on our website!

frenchcolonial.org/annual-meeti...

Annual Meeting – French Colonial Historical Society

frenchcolonial.org

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Erin Grievances @erinbartram.bsky.social · 11d

If you are a supporter and reader of @contingent-mag.bsky.social one of the biggest things you can do to help us at the moment is get this CFP to the NTT folks in your life. The fracturing of social media has made it very difficult to get the word out esp. to adjuncts and VAPs.

CFP: A Time of Monsters

The monster has been here all along. It is a historical constant that manifests in wildly different ways across time, place, and culture. Whatever form it takes, the monster claws at categories; it un...

contingentmagazine.org

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Cindy Ermus @cindyermus.bsky.social · 12d

Here's the TOC! Feb. 2026.

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Bryan Banks @bryanbanksphd.bsky.social · 12d

And we have our cover! @cindyermus.bsky.social

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Europe & the World at the IHR @ihreurope1500.bsky.social · 13d

FIRST SESSION THIS MONDAY! Join us for "At the Cusp of the Modern? Tipu Sultan, the Family & East India Company Rule", a paper by @eicathomefinn.bsky.social with comment by @jhowesuk.bsky.social

All welcome in person @ihr.bsky.social & on zoom (register for link: www.history.ac.uk/news-events/...)

Europe and the world, 1500-1800, IHR seminar, Mondays, 17:30.
6 October: Margot Finn: At the Cusp of the Modern? Tipu Sultan, the Family & East India Company Rule
10 November: Sari Nauman: Between Categories: Migration, War, and Refuge in the Early Modern Baltic Sea
17 November Roger Lee Jesus: Colonialism and Land: Rethinking Imperial and Local Agency in the Portuguese Empire in Asia
1 December: Ana Lucia Araujo: Dahomey: A West African Kingdom in the Centre of the World During the Eighteenth Century

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