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willpooley.bsky.social

historian of witchcrafts, folklore, France 18-20th c ass. ed. French History ed. Cambridge Elements in Magic also #CreativeHistories not *literally* a birb

4,230 posts 7,862 followers 2,773 following

Posts 24 Comments 26

The most RHS job advert ever. Which RHS, you ask? BOTH 🗃️💐 www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DNK213/s...

submitted 3 hours ago • 0 comments

Really excited to be speaking at the Modern French History IHR seminar series on Monday on my project on the emergence of medical photography in France in the 19th century. I'll do my best to make it relevant to French historians! www.history.ac.uk/events/emerg... 📸📷🗂️

submitted 4 days ago • 2 comments

“Sorceressery” new blog about 20-21st century opinion polling on “parascientific beliefs” and the assumptions about gender that get slipped into questions #HexTag 🗃️ williamgpooley.wordpress.com/2025/06/09/s...

submitted 7 hours ago • 1 comment

“Sorceressery” new blog about 20-21st century opinion polling on “parascientific beliefs” and the assumptions about gender that get slipped into questions #HexTag 🗃️ williamgpooley.wordpress.com/2025/06/09/s...

submitted 7 hours ago • 1 comment

i saw a nature spirit!

submitted 1 day ago • 2 comments

hard to disagree with the point here that the profile of hacks has been pretty low even when consequences have been genuinely devastating: NHS blood, and naturally i also think of the BL. but when they hit M and S! people notice on.ft.com/4ksHk93 Cyber crime is surging. Will AI make it worse?

submitted 1 day ago • 1 comment

look i didnt love britpop or the heyday of reality tv but i did prefer when this kind of front page headline was about celebrity romance or bands breaking up/reuniting rather than being about the fledgling political party with mysterious funding that is suddenly polling higher than the opposition

submitted 1 day ago • 1 comment

If I were in charge of a small liberal arts school, I would start thinking about aggressively marketing my institution as a "knowledge-first" college. One where students can escape the intrusion of constant AI and focus on deep learning and engagement.

submitted 2 days ago • 33 comments

Okay. I've decided on four articles to ask students to read. These are mostly suggestions from @davidhiggins.bsky.social (thanks!). Also tagging @margotlyautey.bsky.social who wanted the list. 1. This is a shorter piece on the environmental costs of AI: www.teenvogue.com/story/chatgp...

submitted 2 days ago • 5 comments

Another banger for the list of teachable cautionary tales about AI. This one is focused on the link between writing, thinking, and learning. www.hepi.ac.uk/2025/06/06/i...

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

Turn it off. Stop using it. Turn it off. Stop. Stop. Stop. If every time I was wrong about something, a gallon of precious water was boiled into the sky, my neighbourhood got polluted and someone lost their job, people would stop asking me things.

submitted 2 days ago • 33 comments

not for the first time i am struck by the marketing genius of calling them rice krispies given that after roughly half a second in milk they are really rice soggies

submitted 2 days ago • 2 comments

aaaaaaaaaargh valdevia.art/portfolio/my...

submitted 2 days ago • 1 comment

there’s nothing like reading a writer who REALLY annoys me to get my writing flowing, which is why i love to read my own drafts

submitted 3 days ago • 2 comments

looking forlornly at the twelve archives i visited for this project which i don’t cite at all in the manuscript

submitted 3 days ago • 2 comments

I'm curating a collection of good reads on the horrors of AI that I can assign to students. So far I've got Teen Vogue on the environment, and the @guinz.bsky.social Substack piece. Any other recs? Needs to be short so that students will actually read it.

submitted 3 days ago • 18 comments

The public meltdown happening between the world’s richest man 🙄 and the President of the United States 🙄🙄 once again begs the age-old question: are men simply too emotional to be in positions of power?

submitted 3 days ago • 294 comments

the amazing thing about this, in some ways, is that the limits have such pronounced effects when you can walk around south London and see people doing 50 on a narrow street straight towards a pelican crossing by a school like they’re racing the pedestrians to stop them crossing. yes im mad

submitted 3 days ago • 2 comments

Child casualties almost halved, child deaths down by 3/4… All the other stats don’t really matter

submitted 3 days ago • 24 comments

A lot of people say generative AI shouldn't infringe on copyright. These researchers actually tried to do it. The result: an 8 terabyte dataset of text that's openly licensed or in the public domain & 7 B parameter model that performs as well as Meta's Llama 7B www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...

submitted 3 days ago • 16 comments

Academia would like a word...

submitted 3 days ago • 1 comment

Sadsad

submitted 3 days ago • 2 comments

i say this as an irredeemable poster but the stuff going down in the states today is a salutary reminder that posters shouldn’t be allowed anywhere NEAR government

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

what are the weirdest random research request you’ve ever received? and why do i get emails from strangers asking me where they can find X or Y which has basically nothing to do with my work?

submitted 3 days ago • 5 comments