Vicki Blud

Screenshot reads: She and other publishing specialists question whether LeapSpace’s limited reach is worth the cost. Users will need either an institutional subscription (based in part on the institution’s size and amount of research) or an individual one, which costs $32 a month. Many libraries are already struggling to afford existing subscriptions. And if users want to read the cited content, they will need a separate subscription to that content’s publisher—akin to paying for multiple video-streaming services.

The inevitable next stage of academic publishers profiting from academics' work is here - scraping it for AI then charging subscriptions for access to the AI summaries, and then again for the citations. Academic content assetization as we called it in a recent paper. www.science.org/content/arti...

Star Trek at 60 | Science Museum Boldly go where no one has gone before with our special season celebrating the 60th anniversary of Star Trek.

*Finally* able to talk about the Star Trek @sciencemuseum.org.uk team-up we are organising for the 60th anniversary! Special events, world first film season, exclusive merch, props and costumes from the Paramount archives, and more! www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/star-trek-60

I can’t believe you lefty Luddites hate tech so much that you embrace mRNA vaccines, heat pumps, electric bikes, hybrid work, renewable power (and awesome advancements in storage), space telescopes, and hot/cold running water but reject the planet destroying plagiarism enrich the worst people bots!

📷 © Daily Herald Archive/Science Museum Group/SSPL

Today is International Day of Women and Girls in Science 👩‍🔬

To celebrate, we’re holding additional free Women in Science tours throughout the day, and special spotlight talks on the life and work of Marie Curie in Medicine: The Wellcome Galleries.

Find out more: https://bit.ly/4rBbeeo

Join us today at our Future of Food Lates and treat yourself to tasteful experiences, including a screening of Soylent Green, Silent Disco, special exhibition-themed comedy and sample tastes of futuristic food.

Book your free admission tickets: https://bit.ly/3Zz9F4S

Did My Father’s World Die with Him? Grieving the Incalculable Costs of “STEM.” - The Scholarly Kitchen Grieving my father's death feels inextricably tangled with grieving the catastrophe overtaking the whole of our research infrastructure.

“The problem is that we have accelerated into a consuming and exclusive narrative about science in the national interest.”

Some day I’ll stop sharing my v personal perspective on how devastating humanities has in fact devastated science. Not today.

scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2025/06/26/d...

Look what arrived today, or at least the ebook did. This is the first encyclopedia devoted exclusively to medieval women’s writing globally,focusing on the thousand-year period between 500-1500. Entries on about 250 women writers plus longer thematic essays. You’re welcome.

Where is the Dark Academia novel in which Dark Academics spend 80% of their time writing grant applications to the Dark Funding Council and most of the rest being harrassed by Dark ResearchFish (RIP)?

Leeds International Medieval Congress 2026 Alicia Spencer-Hall will be giving a keynote (paper 1199): 'Timely Images': Medieval Trans Saints, Historiographical Dysphoria and/as Trans-Temporal Methodology (Language: English)

Description In Transgender Warriors, Leslie Feinberg writes: 'I couldn't find myself in history. No-one like me seemed to have ever existed'. Such a feeling - what I call 'historiographical dysphoria' - is familiar to marginalised subjects, those of us who have been written out of cis-hetero-normative history. Gender dysphoria refers to the distress and dis-ease caused by a mismatch between one's assigned gender and one's identified gender. Historiographical dysphoria is an artefact of gender dysphoria, and, more generally, the multifarious dysphorias that come from an authentic existence that does not, cannot, and will not fall in line with the dominant norms of cis-hetero-normative society. This is the distress and dis-ease caused by the wilful cleaving of an individual from the past, from the collective past of their community. Transphobic rhetoric insists upon the newness of transness, and indeed trans people. We are a symptom of modernity's degradation, a disease in urgent need of cure. There we no trans people in the Middle Ages, no queer people, no crips either. We have no past, and, as such, we will not be allowed a future. This is the story that traditionalist historiography so often tells. In recent years, things have begun to change. Trans saints have become ever more visible in scholarship, a vital resource for trans and genderqueer people at a time of ever-rising transphobia. We turn to the past to survive the present and to scope out new ways of being in the future. This paper articulates the possibilities and pleasures of trans-medievalist work, focussing on trans saints. This is scholarship that attends to trans lives, experiences, and traces in the medieval past and operates 'trans' time itself. It rejects normative linear chronology in favour of the fierce embrace of trans-queer-crip time(s), of the blurry temporalities of transition itself. In this way, trans-medievalist work offers a powerful methodology for the entire medievalist field.

Cat's officially out of the bag
#IMC2026 @imc-leeds.bsky.social #MedievalSky 🗃️

An AI image of a apocalyptic medieval battlefield with dark clouds overhead.

We are delighted to announce the details of our Semester two York Medieval Lecture:

The Darker Side of the Middle Ages
Speaker: Professor Kathy Lavezzo (The University of Iowa)

📅 Tuesday 17 February
🕛 Lecture 6:30-8:00pm
📍 SLB/118, Spring Lane building
🌐 www.york.ac.uk/medieval-stu...

It’s that time again!

Protester in Minneapolis just before disappearing in gas: "Fuck you! Stop. Damn! I'm 70 years old and I'm fuckin' angry!"

Who’s who at X, the deepfake porn site formerly known as Twitter A look inside Elon Musk’s big tent

There we go. That there’s a headline.

Screenshot: Imperial War Museum accused ofremoving medals to promote LGBTQ history Lord Ashcroft claims museunm beyond parody' as it launches new virtual tour after closure of his gallery

Mendacious drivel trying to make readers think that a physical museum gallery has been replaced by a completely unrelated trail through the existing galleries. You can access the trail 'Refracted Histories: Exploring LGBTQ+ Stories in Times of Conflict' here: www.iwm.org.uk/events/refra...

He ys ridinge a horse
He ys emerald and svelte
He will get reallye weirde
If you lie about beltes
The Green Knighte
Ys Cominge
To Toun

Another way to restart the world’s idea machine is to restore funding and grants to universities, researchers, and artists.

Headline: "Microsoft Scales Back AI Goals Because Almost Nobody Is Using Copilot" by Jan Martindale Dec. 10 2025

we can kill them all if we just work together and ✨believe💫

We’re inviting children across the UK to join us for an online lesson hosted live by Tim Peake at the @sciencemuseum.org.uk at 11.03, the moment Tim launched into space a decade ago. Great to see Tim and my colleague Libby on @BBC Breakfast! x.com/sciencemuseu...

'AI is coming' I tell the museum stakeholders as I proudly cut the ribbon of our new Artificial Insemination exhibition

The NHS is under pressure to adopt Palantir software. Its founder openly despises the NHS.

You can push back: use our tool to see if your local trust is using the software, then send an email to say no to Palantir
https://goodlaw.social/658abc

I have set up a bsky for MATER! Please feel free to follow. :) 🗃️

Given * everything* that’s gone on in the past decade and how public discourse has been bent to the biases of unflushable Nige, the fact that doubts might finally be setting in with a (way overdue) realisation of how hateful he is, rather than some sort of economic gotcha, is… kind of heartening?

It’s OBJECTIVELY HILARIOUS that Wes Streeting said we have to look at potential over diagnosis of Autism and ADHD through a ‘strictly clinical lens’ as though there aren’t already a million hoops to jump through to even get put forward for a clinical diagnosis on the NHS.

National Railway Museum - Google Arts & Culture Journey through the untold story of the railways

Please enjoy this project we've been working on with the lovely team at Google Arts and Culture:

artsandculture.google.com/project/nati...

Its so exciting to make so much of our collection accessible this anniversary year for the railways from models and artwork to tools and vehicles!

If you have the means I highly recommend the cause of supporting a fellow scholar

Is Santa Real? Many users feel they're getting presents from him. Scientists say it's time to consider whether they're onto something.

Recently, Blake Gutt and I had the great fortune to sit down with @eocieslik.bsky.social & record a converation for the Whiplash pod with @maxwellkuzma.bsky.social on medieval trans & genderqueer saints--and why they matter today, more than ever

#MedievalSky 🗃️

Can’t tech a joke: AI does not understand puns, study finds Researchers say results underline large language models’ poor grasp of humour, empathy and cultural nuance

Microsoft Excel also does not understand jokes

Genuinely, it is such a serious problem that academics and media outlets are presenting text processing software as if it could ever "understand" anything. All this does is misinform the public and do supply free PR for tech companies

Many people have noted that the Primary / Social / Forums / Updates tabs are missing when you do this 👀. You can recreate these manually using the "Multiple Inbox" setup in settings. Basically, tell your inbox to include emails tagged "inbox" and exclude the social / forums / updates.