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robertsmartino.bsky.social
Medieval & Early Modern Historian (PhD Nottingham 2020). Writes about C16 Church Courts. Postdoctoral Researcher @ University of Lincoln. Once a lawyer. Still overweight. Increasingly bald. Never keen on Fascists. Philogynist.
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Harvard hired a researcher to uncover its ties to slavery. He says the results cost him his job: ‘We found too many slaves’

submitted 11 hours ago • 48 comments

'The university has informed staff of plans to cut 400 full-time equivalent (FTE) positions by July 2026, with academics the first to go.' Professor Andy Schofield, VC at Lancaster University since 2020, will take up position of Principal & VC at Glasgow University on 1 October 2025.

submitted 1 hour ago • 1 comment

The kind of thing only someone who thinks their own brain is the size of a galaxy would ever say.

submitted 18 hours ago • 1 comment

Because Putin is an aggressive warmongering dictator, and we're not falling out of windows?

submitted 22 hours ago • 2 comments

I’m doing an event on the evening of 9 July at Hatchards in London to celebrate the release of my new book. @rebeccarideal.bsky.social will be leading the questions, so do come along! www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-blood-...

submitted 1 day ago • 1 comment

Devastating news: "An end to teaching and research in ancient history, religion, theology, Portuguese, German, and Italian. The schools of ancient history and theology will close."

submitted 2 days ago • 1 comment

Ewww!

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

Universities should be the places rapidly raising the alarm about AI, not adopting it

submitted 1 day ago • 5 comments

I can't believe it needs to be said, least of all to a Labour Government, but we should be tougher on genocide than peaceful protest against genocide.

submitted 1 day ago • 19 comments

Some of the arguments being made this week in the Telegraph and London Standard about the authors' preferred ethnic makeup of Britain/London would have been considered dubious, antiquarian, and extremist in the 1990s.

submitted 2 days ago • 17 comments

And there's more of the evidence I was looking for!

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

My new theory: you have to be a certain kind of stupid to rise to the top, something that is beyond those of us who are merely quite intelligent. Perhaps I should put in a grant application? Aaaaaarrrrrrggggghhh!

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

Your Brain on ChaGPT. TL;DR: it's NOT good. www.media.mit.edu/publications...

submitted 2 days ago • 4 comments

The deadline for submission of evidence to the Education Committee's inquiry, 'Higher Education and Funding: Threat of Insolvency and International Students' is 31 July. Direct link is: committees.parliament.uk/work/9012/hi...

submitted 8 days ago • 0 comments

'Pay a little more in tax and we'll allow you to continue destroying the world.' www.desmog.com/2025/06/19/r...

submitted 2 days ago • 12 comments

The problem with this ‘let’s weaken our commitment to the ECHR so as to fend off Farage’ plan is that when it doesn’t work, we end up with Farage *and* a weakened commitment to the ECHR at exactly the moment we need the ECHR the most.

submitted 2 days ago • 69 comments

Amazing: MIT researchers revealed how ChatGPT etc are destroying our brains and booby-trapped the report to expose those who want to use AI to ostensibly summarize the results. t.co/JXeTALBPds

submitted 2 days ago • 51 comments

So, it was all a work of fiction?

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

This on the same day that the UK “academic regulator” insists that insulting and demeaning people is “free speech” and very nearly compulsory in universities…

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

Grim.

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

#booksky #writingcommunity

submitted 4 days ago • 177 comments

'Spooked by the twin threats of Putin abroad and Reform UK at home, Labour has chosen to fund submarines and social housing but not higher education. The consistent failure of universities to make a convincing case for public finance has come back to bite us.' 1/3

submitted 5 days ago • 1 comment

Because they want to be seen as experts without putting in the work of scholarship, which in case we somehow didn’t make that clear, involves a lot of reading.

submitted 4 days ago • 1 comment

Golf. I bet he left early to go to play golf.

submitted 5 days ago • 10 comments

Exactly. What's not being said. It's the silences. It's about interpretation and nuance and inference.

submitted 5 days ago • 1 comment

I refuse to give the NYT my eyeballs, so I can't speak to the specifics of this article. But any historians attempting to use AI for either writing or research should be run out of the field. AI is inherently unable to do anything we need it to do to understand and communicate history.

submitted 5 days ago • 25 comments

1. The Tories knighted Kier Starmer for his work as Head of CPS in prosecuting grooming gangs. 2. Tories had 14 years to instigate an inquiry. 3. Starmer had instigated a rapid review AND instigated an inquiry in 10 months. 4. Grooming gangs are all Kier Starmer’s fault says Badenoch. 5. FFS.

submitted 5 days ago • 28 comments

But it already does!

submitted 5 days ago • 0 comments

Completely, 100 per cent and on the mark, true about AI, its danger to the study and understanding of history, and its manifest threat to our profession.

submitted 5 days ago • 0 comments

An interesting take. www.theregister.com/2025/06/15/a...

submitted 6 days ago • 0 comments

I imagine all these jobs will go with AI

submitted 6 days ago • 32 comments

It is really really sinking in for me the degree to which LLMs are the ultimate expression of right wing anti-intellectualism. Its proponents are literally mocking the idea that anyone would ever want to learn anything, know anything, develop any actual skill, or have a thought of their own.

submitted 6 days ago • 115 comments

If anyone bothered to get to the bottom of it, the same would very likely be true of the vast majority of universities making cuts in England and Wales. But only in Scotland do you get anyone in power asking the hard questions of leaders of distressed universities.

submitted 6 days ago • 2 comments

25 years ago Alan Shearer stood behind me in a taxi queue at KX. To this day, my wife refers to him as "your mate" every time he's on Match of the Day. Drives me quietly crazy!!

submitted 7 days ago • 0 comments