🚨NEW: HSBC is planning major job cuts across its UK wealth management division after replacing staff with AI More than half of managers and specialists are set to go, alongside 70% of wealth managers

Thinking about publishing a book? 📚 Learn what publishers look for, how peer review works behind the scenes, and how to strengthen your book proposal in our upcoming webinar. Register here: oxford.ly/4y52252

A professor in anothe department asked me what I teach and then observed, "Can't AI do that?"

I will think twice about reviewing for OUP. I encourage others to do the same.

We actually don’t know *exactly* what caused the Black Death aka Great Mortality, but one theory is it was caused by co-infection of plague with a hemorrhagic virus bc it coincided with the emergence of the genetic mutation that makes almost a quarter Europeans immune to HIV.

A key material for artists like Botticelli? Egg of course! 🍳 Join Conservation Fellow Valeriia as we take a closer look at the materials used to create ‘The Virgin and Child with a Pomegranate’ from the workshop of Botticelli. Watch the full film here: bit.ly/3PWKcRv

Roy Lichtenstein’s bold, pop culture-inspired work arrived with a bang in the 1960s, but the artist was also responding to earlier revolutions, writes Charles Darwent apollo-magazine.com/roy-lich…

oh great, the out of control hiring process is now filtering down to references. I just filled out a questionnaire with twenty required text boxes to recommend someone for a volunteering role, and they asked for my phone number for a follow up

‘Soundings’ is republished by popular demand. WATCH: RTÉ News reports #OnThisDay in 2010 rte.ie/archives/2015/0928/73…

I'm house-sitting for a friend this week, and I've just had to field strip the oven to find some kind of model identifier so I can find a YouTube video on how to turn it on. What happened to dials? Why does every modern appliance have to be incomprehensible? These used to be old man grumbles but everything is just getting pointlessly worse. I don't know how old people cope. Also, NE Somerset council can fuck off with their parking machines. I do not have a PhD in computer science. And while I'm having a rant, self-service machines can fuck off too. I don't want to use other people's computers just to buy a loaf of bread and a frozen pizza. Also, I do not want to sign up to a cloud service and wait fifteen minutes for the system just to buy a basic laptop in @currys. Modernity sucks.

Continuing coverage of the Bayeux controversy seems to imply that visitors were at fault for spending longer than 40 minutes in the exhibition. Was this time limit publicised? Why are visitors being criticised for their interest and engagement? What a dispiriting situation.

I'm not sure if a particular time and place is meant here, but the past is more complicated than that. If these claims are about medieval Europe, I need to add a little context: Lots of people got an education, even the poor, even girls, just not the way we imagine it, for instance learning a trade while practicing it. But in the medieval low countries it was pretty common for boys & girls to also learn to read, tourists even mentioned how surprised they were about how much women read, how many books they owned and how they refused to keep their opinion to themselves. We Dutch women haven't changed much. Medieval people, even common ones, travelled more than was long thought. People travelled for marriages, trade, fairs, markets, work and the always popular pilgrimages. If you committed a crime a very common punishment was forced pilgrimage, far, far away. Even if you stayed at home, strangers would come to you. The church was extremely strict about who you could marry, as you couldn't marry someone within 7 degrees of kinship and everyone in the families married into your family, which would things pretty tricky in a village. It was also relatively common for both boys and girls to go live somewhere else to learn their trade, towns and cities were full of single young people. Medieval houses weren't filthy, they were kept clean as much as possible, streets were also not filled with filth, medieval people believed in the miasma theory, this told them that bad air could literally kill them, they were terrified of bad smells. They washed, bathed, used soap, did laundry, cleaned houses, cleaned streets, rubbish was collected, etc. They had relatively easy access to clean water, there were wells, springs, conduits, fountains, etc. Clean water was even pumped into the cities. Medieval cities in some ways were cleaner than Roman and even Victorian cities. Their clothes weren't rags and didn't stink, that only describes the absolute poorest of the poor, the slum dwellers, the homeless, just like today. For most people this wasn't reality. They fought lice, they had all sorts of products to fight them. Food was of pretty decent quality, again there were strict laws, strict control and severe punishments for those who were responsible for bad ingredients. Like being forced to walk through the town with a sign, so all your customers could see you made a mess of things. Some of the food we eat today is quite unhealthy too. Come to think of it, we still have polluted water in many places. About hygiene: fakehistoryhunter.net/2025/1… There was quite a bit of variety in food, more than many people realise: fakehistoryhunter.net/2026/0… Yes they did have famines sometimes and the poor didn't always have enough. There was a lot of charity but that couldn't always feed all the hungry mouths. Medieval people had relatively good teeth, they cleaned & brushed them, even used whitening products. Their diet also contained no/little refined sugar/starch/carbohydrates/tobacco/caffeine which was good for their teeth. They would not have lost most of their their teeth by the time they reached adulthood. Yes, poor farmers who couldn't afford to built a barn would share their roof with livestock but the animals were not in the actual living space, they were behind a division. About that: fakehistoryhunter.net/2025/1… Glorifying and romanticising the past is a bit silly, but demonising and making it worse than it was is equally odd.