🏴 **We built a database of 290,000 English medieval soldiers – here’s what it reveals**
A humanities degree is still a smart investment|Opinion
https://share.inquirer.com/8dVqH3
Oxford picks 'rage bait' as its word of the year. But what does it mean?
https://abcnews.go.com/US/oxford-picks-rage-bait-word-year/story?id=127998763&utm_source=flipboard&utm_medium=activitypub
Posted into News @news-thenewsdesk
🇬🇧 **New analysis: 800,000 under-5s using social media**
"_Data from Ofcom found that 37 per cent of parents of three to five-year-olds say their child uses at least one social media app or site, up from to 29 per cent in 2023._"
🔗 https://www.centreforsocialjustice.org.uk/newsroom/under-5s-using-social-media.
From University Press of Kansas:
Now in Paperback! Rural Rebellion: How Nebraska Became a Republican Stronghold, with a new preface by the author Ross Benes
or call 800-848-6224, and use code: UPKHOLIDAY25 at checkout to receive 40% off. Hurry, this sale ends December 26, 2025!
More info: https://t.e2ma.net/message/xt80aj/p3ytbvlc
Beginning with some self-promotion 😊
My book, along with the entire catalog, at the University of Virginia Press is 50% off through Cyber Monday with code 10TURKEY.
I explain how mapmakers and merchants and many more made sense of the new global encounters in the sixteenth century.
All Cornell University Press books are 44% off through December 5 with code 9WINTER.
Cornell has a wonderful series in #Russian and #Eurasian studies. #Soviet and post-Soviet societies and questions of all types.
https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501781872/encountering-race-in-albania
UVA Press has excellent books in many categories, including Early America, African-American history and, of course, #CivilWar history. Not to mention the Studies in Early Modern German History series, including this one-of-a-kind diary of an executioner in Nuremberg in the sixteenth century.
https://upress.virginia.edu/title/4975/
All 50% off through Monday with code 10TURKEY
🦃 🦃 🦃 🦃 🦃 🦃 🦃
🇩🇪 🇵🇱 **Germany will return Teutonic archives looted in WWII to Poland, media reports**
"_The archives, seized by Nazi forces as part of a broad cultural plunder, contain manuscripts and documents tied to the medieval Teutonic Order of warrior monks—materials invaluable to understanding the order’s expansion, its conflicts with Poland and Lithuania, and the formation of regional borders._"
🔗 https://tvpworld.com/90298141/germany-to-return-medieval-teutonic-documents-stolen-in-wwii-report.
Is America Heading for a Debt Crisis? Look Abroad for Answers
https://www.wsj.com/finance/investing/uk-budget-debate-us-debt-lessons-38bc52e3?st=SxRgcd
**UC San Diego Review of Senate-Administration Workgroup Report on Admissions**
"_Between 2020 and 2025, the number of students whose math skills fall below high school level increased nearly thirtyfold; moreover, 70% of those students fall below middle school levels, reaching roughly one in twelve members of the entering cohort._"
Today in Labor History November 29, 1781: The crew of the British slave ship Zong slaughtered over 130 enslaved Africans. According to the crew, the ship ran low on drinking water after several navigational blunders. Consequently, they threw the insured slaves overboard. However, when the insurers refused to pay, the slavers sued. On appeal, the judges, ruled against the slave trading syndicate, due to evidence that the captain and crew were at fault. Following the first trial, a freed man, Olaudah Equiano, brought news of the massacre to the attention of the anti-slavery campaigner Granville Sharp, who fought unsuccessfully to have the ship's crew prosecuted for murder. This did increase publicity, stimulating the abolitionist movement. The event led to the passage of the Slave Trade Act 1788, Britain’s first law regulating the slave trade. And in 1791, Parliament prohibited insurance companies from reimbursing ship owners when enslaved Africans were murdered by being thrown overboard.
#workingclass #LaborHistory #slavery #abolition #massacre #racism #BlackMastadon
🖥️ **Bosses think AI will boost productivity — but it's actually deskilling workers, a professor says**
_"It's one thing for a senior coder to use AI," she said. "But the junior people are useless because they cannot help themselves from using it."_
_Because they lean on AI from day one, Berg said, they never build the foundational knowledge required to understand what the AI is doing — let alone verify or correct it._
🔗 https://www.businessinsider.com/ai-tools-are-deskilling-workers-philosophy-professor-2025-11.
#AI #ArtificialIntelligence #Technology #Tech #Careers #Jobs #Productivity #Deskilling
#Image attribution: Openbiblio, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons. Page URL: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Science_hybride_V1.jpg.
**How the first Bible to include a map helped spread the idea of countries with borders**
**Ancient humans took two routes to Australia 60,000 years ago**
📚 **Leonardo's Library: The World of a Renaissance Reader**
"_The exhibition draws on Stanford’s Special Collections and the collections of the David Rumsey Map Center and the Lane Medical Library to reveal the authors and texts that shaped Leonardo’s world and influenced his ideas, reading habits, and understanding of books in the age of Gutenberg._"
📚 **Why is BookTok so obsessed with reading goals?**
"_Not only can many people not afford to purchase hundreds of books a year (or a Kindle to do so on) but if you are not a full-time BookTok influencer you likely spend most of your day at school or work, and therefore would not have the time in the day to read so much even if you wanted to._"
🔗 https://nouse.co.uk/articles/2025/11/28/why-is-booktok-so-obsessed-with-reading-goals.
#Reading #Books #SocialMedia #BookTok #Booktube
#Image attribution: freestocks.org from Olsztyn, Poland, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons. Page URL: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:A_pile_of_books_(29767858348).jpg.
💻 🖋️ **These professors say they’re part of a growing movement banning laptops from the classroom**
_“I read the literature on it and it really showed that students learn better when they’re taking notes rather than trying to type as fast as they can verbatim what you say,” said Amy Gutmann, Penn president emerita, who is co-teaching a class at the Annenberg School for Communication this fall._
🔗 https://www.inquirer.com/education/professors-college-laptop-ban-temple-upenn-20251126.html.
Worth reading today:
“How the 19th-Century Know Nothing Party Reshaped American Politics
From xenophobia to conspiracy theories, the Know Nothing party launched a nativist movement whose effects are still felt today”
Large Language Models Will Never Be Intelligent, Expert Says
https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/large-language-models-willnever-be-intelligent?utm_source=flipboard&utm_medium=activitypub
Posted into Futurism @futurism-Futurism
Not a bot just a chap in his fifties who occasionally reads things.
Toots are humanities, science, non-fiction, books, maps, charts and graphs related. Some toots containing videos may also find their way into the timeline.
Toots or follows or boosts or mentions ≠ endorsements of any particular notion or notions.
Finis