Nahyan Fancy

Two Important articles dissecting the situation here and beyond for higher ed, including the problem with consultants @exeter.ac.uk @exeterucu.bsky.social #DefendExeterUni www.technosphere.earth/the-bonfire-... 1/2

The @exeter.ac.uk smallpox project has launched! Flemming's inaugural blogpost poses the central questions: what did Galen understand by the terms anthrax, erusipelas & herpēs? The project will give a model for putting ancient & modern disease concepts into dialogue. ccehexeter.org/anthrax-erus...

My latest for National Geographic looks at the 131 new Hittite cuneiform tablets unearthed at Šamuḫa (c. 1400 BCE) & what they tell us about everything from augury to an epidemic that killed Hittite children. Thx to @digkabri.bsky.social, Theo van den Hout, @knpazuzu.bsky.social & ISAC for aid. 🪏

Counterpoint: CEOs should look at their companies as if they needed to provide a service for every citizen, constantly renew their social licence to operate, and plan for the long term wellbeing of the whole country. www.ft.com/content/8255...

So basically, the Pentagon refused to evacuate families of US service members from Bahrain because "it would look bad at home", but senior leaders evacuated their own family members and left Bahrain under the cover of "military exercise". Yeah, the US is definitely a failing empire...

Chris Wickham, remembered fondly, appreciated finely.

"They can start cutting people's faces up. They can stab someone. They can shoot someone." EXCLUSIVE: Our hidden cameras capture the leader of Turning Point UK organising a fake rally for a foreign government and helping arrange a murder-for-hire with loyalist paramilitaries.

Check the following excellent analysis of a Bamiyan Geniza fragment by Kevin Blankinship (and nice homage to Douglas Adam!!): invisibleeast.site.ox.ac.uk/articles/doc...

Really important new study focusing on "a continuing debate over which typically comes first, the epidemic or the food shortage." The category "Plague & Famine" was recently added to the 2nd Plague Pandemic bibliography & this study captures some of the reasons why. tseg.nl/article/view... #histmed

People often find it shocking to learn that Yersinia pestis, the bacterium discovered in 1894 that is believed to have caused the mid-14th-century Black Death and other plague pandemics, is still around and dangerous, but that is one of many misperceptions about plague that need correcting.

Very cool! The Medieval Academy of America & @uchicagopress.bsky.social have kindly agreed to temporarily lift the paywall on a short essay I published a few months ago: www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/.... Dating, dating, dating. Vital for the historian; essential for interdisc. dialogue.

And yet 0 (ZERO) consequences for the offenders, the genociding state that protects them or the lobbyists and politicians who protect the genociding state from even criticisms and instead ban their critics and those calling for such accountability...

63% of voters back wealth tax for mega-rich. Wealth tax can be: Tax on accumulated wealth Higher rates on dividends & capital gains Mansion tax Investment income surcharge Cap tax relief on pension contributions by the mega rich What will Chancellor get-off his bended-knees?

do it!

Whenever someone tries to blame the undecided movement for Trump, I just remind them Kamala was willing to trade on the lives of Americans to keep a genocide going. She basically said “you support genocide or you all get what you deserve”.

She condemned the Biden U.S. arms deal with Israel, and as retaliation the Biden administration opened an investigation against her. The Trump administration is actually piggybacking off that Democratic investigation. Both parties are cesspools of Islamophobia.

Excellent front page here

#MedievalSky This from the New York Times, minutes ago: "Has plague ever been used as a bioweapon? Maybe — but it’s been a while. In the 14th century, according to one account, a Mongol army catapulted plague-infested bodies into the Crimean city of Caffa." Please don't let this nonsense persist!

The book is finally out -- and the physical evidence has arrived. brill.com/display/titl... #dh #digital_humanities #arabic_studies #islamic_studies #islamic_history

The @mcps-philsci.bsky.social post-doctoral fellows program is continuing into the future and is currently accepting applications for a 2-year fellowship starting Fall 2027! Interested recent or impending PhDs in #PhilSci, #HPS and #HOPOS, please apply! cla.umn.edu/mcps/news-ev...

Why we need more history, social sciences & humanities for critical thinking, analysis of audience & how to weigh evidence. Great piece by @lsangha.bsky.social. This is why consultants (in bed with polluters) are dismantling humanities & social sciences from Exeter to Edinburgh & now Nottingham.

Little doubt that the same consultants involved that dismantled Australian unis (though the new audit has revealed problems and hopefully clawing back down under), and of course Cardiff, Exeter, Southampton and so many more. Get Nous, KPMG and all consultants out of higher ed, fire the snr mgmt.

Based on my own reporting on OpenAI's audited financials from 2025, it appears that Anthropic was a worse business (at least in that year), spending $2.75 make $1 versus OpenAI spending $2.60 to make $1. So many people told me this company was "more profitable"! www.wheresyoured.at/exclusive-op...

Day 1 of our strike at the University of Edinburgh while senior management shrugs and says 'crisis, what crisis?' at the complaints about the inevitable falling educational standards and job losses.

Day 1 of the strike by the workers of UCU Edinburgh against the manufactured deficit (which is not really a deficit), and against a senior management earning millions while staff disappear and education suffers. Solidarity against this parasitical form of management of our higher education.

I think these phrases would work nicely when communicating with senior management in universities (and beyond). My favorite are the third and fifth ones.

Lina Khan has pointed out that have robust and well-developed theories of product liability law. What we are missing is *enforcement* www.commondreams.org/news/ai-liab...

“The logic of other venue owners joining Kraft in banning Macklemore over concerns about antisemitism is hard to follow while Kanye West — who released a song entitled “Heil Hitler” just 18 months ago — continues to tour unabated.”

Yup. Did the conference circuit with it. Sold a lot of very bad data back to universities (based on the HESA submissions that universities themselves submitted...). Had exponential curves in the most high-on-their-own-ignorance way possible. (Mark Corver = DataHE guy. Focusing on buildings)

Folks @edinburghuni.bsky.social @ucu.org.uk your vice-principal was bonding with Exeter's Regsitrar, who also moonlights as a Nous promoter, at the following conference last summer: www.humane.eu/events/resid... Coincidence that both our unis instigated these cuts within a year? #DefendUKUnis

It takes a special skill to make your first contribution on an actual "culture" issue in 11 months and have it be defending Ed Sheeran.

Dubai's "home transaction volumes in May were roughly half the levels of a year earlier, according to data from local research and consultancy firm ValuStrat, as the war hit market sentiment and left sellers reluctant to sell at steep discounts. www.ft.com/content/3d6b...

All the dooming has me thinking back to my misspent youth reading Asimov stories where the first law of robotics is that they can't harm humans. Too bad that turns out to be a non-starter as the main thing all these companies want is to get in on those sweet, sweet, no-bid defense contracts...

London based peeps! Put the 23rd of October in your diaries and come along for some good chat!

Check out this fiery interview with my colleague @exeterucu.bsky.social tearing down the University of Exeter's senior management. #DefendExeterUni www.youtube.com/watch?si=8kU...

New article by Behnam Zolghadr on the logician Afdal al-Din al-Khunaji in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. plato.stanford.edu/entries/al-k...

'Numerous universities have begun employing staff through subsidiaries in a bid to cut pension costs. Institutions are not required to submit to the Higher Education Statistics Agency (Hesa) pay data relating to such staff, whereas they are for directly employed staff.' Adding insult to injury.

It's always hedge funds/private equity when you follow the paper trail and money. Acquired by Chatham Asset Mgmt, then push for AI (undoubtedly to help Chatham's other stock and equity interests), now layoffs, possibly later shutdown and disposal of fixed assets to make money.

Good lord www.poynter.org/business-wor...

Ditto. But the loss is real. & though there are no compulsory redundancies, from word of mouth, it seems we may have lost upwards of 100+ FTE academic staff to early retirement (2/3 of original target). This when most dept were already understaffed (except in the fantasy land of snr mgmt)

It's good that this story is getting attention, but it would be equally outrageous if the people whose doors were being hammered on actually were asylum seekers. It's not just a problem because they're international cricketers. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Incredible mobilisation across the institution, in all faculties and PS divisions. This is a resounding statement of industrial strength. Now we have to decide what to do with it!! 😂 With compulsory redundancies off the table already, tomorrow’s EGM will be interesting. There’s power in the Union! ✊🏻

Classic: lead with half measures because you assume the US and Israel will go nuclear. Yet surely they'll go nuclear anyway and then the argument for rowing this back is already right there: these are symbolic moves anyway so it's just not worth it...

Obviously, the correct response to someone who always takes a hysterical, maximalist position is just to do what you want rather than negotiating with yourself until you do what they want. But the West never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity when it comes to restraining Israel.

Sophie Lewis on Gloria Steinem.

As always, Sophie Lewis has the most insightful take, this time on Sophie Lewis: www.patreon.com/reproutopia/...

I love the concrete examples of how to avoid anthropomorphism in this article: artificial intelligence → probabilistic automation image recognition → image labeling speech recognition → automatic transcription shows bias → reflects bias hallucination → undesirable output goal → success condition

I've had the exact same experience! THEM: "Of course we value the humanities! Where would we be without them?" ME: "That's great, so anyway I'm a historian of technology and—" THEM: [eyes narrowing so quickly it makes an audible sound]