mlaser.bsky.social - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

Wondering what it is like to study history at Cambridge, and what we are looking for in potential students? Watch this! www.youtube.com/channel/UC6T... More detail about the course here: www.hist.cam.ac.uk/course/histo...

submitted 9 days ago • 0 comments

"The cliché of judging people by the standards of their time, by working to exempt people in the past from the critical eye of the present, simultaneously obscures other historical figures who we might appraise more positively, especially knowing the context in which they were making their choices."

submitted 6 days ago • 1 comment

One time, we invited a don to give a lecture with a formal hall dinner afterward. He asked if there would be wine, & we said we would provide him a bottle. He then showed up with his own bottle of wine &, during the course of the dinner, proceeded to drink both his own bottle & the one we gave him.

submitted 9 days ago • 1 comment

People talk about how nationalism has been on the rise, but what if nationalism is not on the rise rather it's fighting for it's life to survive? Current rise being its 'battle of the bulge' so to speak. Despite its ebbs & flows hasn't it been over all declining for the past 100 years? (idk...)

submitted 10 days ago • 2 comments

Unless you're from southern Florida, I don't think there is anyone out there who wants the Panthers to win the cup. They are literally one of the most hateable teams ever constructed.

submitted 23 days ago • 0 comments

A new book 'Every Monument Will Fall' by Dan Hicks which is about Oxford & Empire, memorization of history, & the current 'culture war' around history largely in the UK, is VERY interesting. However, I found it very hard to read and full of unrelatable unnecessary anecdotes that were hard to follow.

submitted 23 days ago • 1 comment

I'm gonna say something that is likely to piss off a lot of people but with the current social reality that we have, social media metrics are more important than citation count and part of the reason we are where we are is because prominent academics think they are above all this.

submitted 24 days ago • 6 comments

Without child labor, the mining industry will collapse!

submitted 33 days ago • 3 comments

I'm really disappointed that Switzerland didn't win their first hockey championship last night. They deserved it. Not only did Switzerland become really good in hockey recently but it also was a very important player in the history of European ice hockey. Plus, watching USA lose never gets old.

submitted 33 days ago • 1 comment

(spoilers) I didn't like Expedition 33 story. The ending felt like a "it was all a dream & wasn't real" cop out. You can make the same point of getting over a loss in a way that is far more grounded in reality. But E. 33 story is so detached from reality, I can't relate with the point being made.

submitted 37 days ago • 0 comments

This is a thread to gather some of the stuff I've done that's available online🧵

submitted 240 days ago • 9 comments

The curse continues.

submitted 40 days ago • 0 comments

Are there any believers in Leafs' game 7 victory? I think by now even some of their fans are like 'it's doomed'.

submitted 42 days ago • 1 comment

The reffing this game (Austria vs Slovakia IIHF) was absolutely horrendous. I am not just talking about the missed tripping in the shoot out. It was a series of terrible calls the entire game.

submitted 47 days ago • 0 comments

To this day I still think this was the best video thumbnail I ever made :D

submitted 48 days ago • 1 comment

Nevermind. Sometimes, I find a person on YouTube, but mostly TikTok/Insta, who has a doctorate or is doing a doctorate & is communicating absolutely atrocious history on social media. Just because someone has a doctorate in history doesn't mean they are a good historian or a history communicator.

submitted 60 days ago • 0 comments

I haven't had to do any coding since undergrad, but recently I had to code something for my PhD & because I forgot most of it I used ChatGPT, & man. I know there're lots of issue with using LLMs but this saved me literally a week of work relearning stuff. I'm surprised with how well it worked.

submitted 61 days ago • 0 comments

Historian Matúš Lazar leaves X (2.849 followers) Bluesky: @mlaser.bsky.social #BlueSkyWins

submitted 63 days ago • 1 comment

PhD Timeline xkcd.com/3081

submitted 64 days ago • 614 comments

The script for my video is done and it looks like it's going to be another 45 minute video. AAAAAGAGAGAAGHAAHHAHAH. I hate video animation/editing.

submitted 64 days ago • 1 comment

You got to love those Duolingo leagues. One week, you do one lesson a day and are #1, and the other week, you do like 50 lessons to only barely get out of demotion.

submitted 64 days ago • 0 comments

If my Slavs & Slavery video taught me anything, it's that there are a lot of people out there incapable of understanding & or accepting that words can change meaning over time. These people also usually don't understand that translating isn't as simple as X word in language 1 = Y word in language 2.

submitted 64 days ago • 1 comment

I get why we abbreviate ancient writings e.g. Plut. Art. 1. I do it myself. But when there are multiple well known ancient writers with the same name please use their full name. I swear to god if I have to look up one more time whether you're quoting Seneca the Elder or Younger I am gonna lose it.

submitted 66 days ago • 0 comments

Cloths and shoes have like two cost zones of actually good products. Really cheap: terrible, falls apart in 5 min Cheap to low mid price: actually good and comfortable High mid & expensive price: somehow less comfortable than the cheap stuff Expensive bespoke: comfortable but very expensive

submitted 67 days ago • 0 comments

Sometimes I see people here be very angry about something which makes it clear they haven't read the original source because if they did they wouldn't actually be that angry. The problem is the 'sometimes', because other times the anger is justified and, therefore, we get lazy with checking.

submitted 69 days ago • 1 comment

(thinking out loud here) There're a lot of people out there that are confused about societal issues happening in the world. The problem is the most accessible things people see online about these issues are not well crafted articles or good faith debates helping them develop informed opinions ...

submitted 73 days ago • 1 comment

"Education is dangerous. It is enough if they can count up to one hundred. At best an education which produces useful coolies for us is admissible. Every educated person is a future enemy." - Martin Bormann, Hitler's chief of staff, but could just as easily be JD Vance

submitted 73 days ago • 0 comments

ChatGPT is scarily good at translating ancient Latin and Greek. It struggles a bit with medieval Latin and Greek due to the many linguistic changes that occured during that time but it does well. With that said, you still need to be aware of linguistic nuances which the LLM simply does not catch.

submitted 75 days ago • 1 comment

The Oxbridge boat race debate is becoming eerily similar to the whole NCAA "unprofessional" athletes debate. I am all for Unis having athletes compete for them but lets not pretend that Olympic level athletes are "amateurs". Make it a professional boat race with athletes that get payed.

submitted 75 days ago • 1 comment