The (Side-)Blog

of a history PhD candidate. (Main blog: @ficklescribbler )

[deathgasmic]

who else is up permanently feeling like they did something Wrong

[what-even-is-thiss]

You know as an American born in the late 90s I’ve watched my country blow up foreigners on tv supposedly in the interest of national security since I was a toddler but quite frankly we live on a natural fortress of a continent with friendly nations to our north and south and have been attacked on our own soil literally two times in the past hundred years and we have military bases on every inhabited continent on earth. It’s never made sense to do these things for “national security”. It never will make sense unless you value the shareholders of weapons companies over the lives of children. And apparently a concerning amount of people do.

[ahistoriantobe]

Too many devices are being advertised as "smart" and making life "easier" for us.

What they're doing is taking the "smart" out of human beings and giving it to machines. We're being turned into zombies and we're walking straight into it, gobbling it up, paying good money for it.

Can't we be more smart about all this, while we still can?

[ahistoriantobe]

Completely by accident, I just discovered that my dissertation was quoted here on Tumblr by a rather mysterious user (I won't reblog it, obviously). I'm incredibly curious as to how exactly they've got hold of it, since I didn't even share it on Academia, and now I just want to know who they are, if I'm familiar with their work, etc.

This is so very bizarre... (and a little bit flattering, if I'm fully honest!)

[ahistoriantobe]

Woo-hoo! Reviewer 2's report is in and it's a pretty renowned historian in our field and it's a great report! Translation proceeding smoothly on the production line - getting more hopeful now for a 2026 publication!

[ahistoriantobe]

May We Feed the King by Rebecca Perry review – a dazzling puzzle-box of a debut

The plight of a reluctant medieval king is glimpsed through scattered pieces of the past, in an ingenious novel that asks how much we can re

What a great review. Perry seems to have been able to recreate a miniature representation of the historian’s craft for the lay reader, offering a taste of the frustration we perpetually labor in. We invent our own adhesives and fillers, stuff them into the gaps and cracks and “restore” history to the best of our ability… praying it doesn’t end up like the “Monkey Christ”.

[vibraph0ny]

Everyone's all "ohhh 2026 bring back physical media" until I start talking illuminated manuscripts and then suddenly we're not on the same page anymore

[shredsandpatches]

Well, with illuminated manuscripts it's standard to use foliation rather than pagination, that might explain it

[ahistoriantobe]

Exactly four months after I submitted my translation of that 17th century source, the first reviewer's report is on. Bottomline? "So we recommend this work to be published 'cos it's super important, though it'd be awesome if the author could update the intro."

Yep, anyone with a BA in history could have told them that. So had I, right from the start, but things got derailed pretty quickly last year and I simply sidestepped to remain clear of the wreckage.

Sigh.

I just hope this gets to see the light of day in 2026.

[doodleoo]

wrote an article again for the first time in three years. should do this more often, i forgot how much fun writing a good argumentative text is

[uwillneverknowwho]

Hey. Stop for a second. Take this moment to appreciate that you don't have to write a paper right now. No one is asking you to write a paper. You don't have to think about the paper or plan your time around the paper. You have the freedom to think about whatever you want. Everything is going to be okay. At least you don't have to write a paper right now

[caesarsaladinn]

“the mind of a medieval person was foreign and incomprehensible” factoid is false. the average medieval person was pretty normal. the chivalric death cult, whose members were known to literally die if prevented from riding to war, was an outlier and should not have been counted

[caesarsaladinn]

On hearing of Anjou’s death, a tailor of Orleans named Guillaume le Jupponnier, when “overcome with wine,” burst into a tirade in which can be heard the rarely recorded voice of his class. “What did he go there for, this Duke of Anjou, down there where he went? He has pillaged and robbed and carried off money to Italy in order to conquer another land. He is dead and damned, and the King St. Louis too, like the others. Filth, filth of a King and a King! We have no King but God. Do you think they got honestly what they have? They tax me and re-tax me and it hurts them that they can’t have everything we own. Why should they take from me what I earn with my needle? I would rather the King and all kings were dead than that my son should be hurt in his little finger.”

[worse-than-konstantin-levin]

'Dead and damned': medieval commoners' wonderful hatred of royalty | David Forbes

Get more from David Forbes on Patreon

I went looking for more information on Guillarme le Jupponier, and found this article, which points to a slew of similar speeches in European and US history-- and, crucially, the fact that Guillarme le Jupponier was released after that speech, not tortured or executed, because it was acknowledged that his sentiments were extremely common.

[caesarsaladinn]

Studying nearly 1,100 rebellions in France, the Low Countries and Italy stretching back to 1200 the historian Samuel Cohn discovered that instead of hat-in-hand deference, “genuine, heartfelt hatred for a king or queen is easy to find.”

can we pause on that? 1100 rebellions?!?

[queeranarchism]

So I looked this up and the book Samuel Cohn wrote on this is:

Popular protest in late-medieval Europe. Italy, France and Flanders.

It covers the period from 1245 to 1423, so 178 interesting years.

It gives details on about 130 rebellions with lovely titles such as 'The people of Carcassonne attack a royal castle', 'The Roman people popolo kick Luca Savelli out of town', 'Domestic servants of the Governor of Cortona attempt to kill him and overthrow the government' and Regime change in Siena six governments in five months'.

[ahistoriantobe]

I always got a kick out of reading on popular revolts across Europe (and the Ottoman empire) in grad school. There's something in it that secretly appeals to a person, isn't there? ;)

[ahistoriantobe]

Still waiting for Google Search the internet to get over the concussed genius phase and settle into something at least mildly dependable again.

[fishlung8877]

You have to explain the last thing you ordered online to a medieval peasant, and if you can't then you have to EAT IT. do you survive

yes

no

Voting ended onDec 12, 2025

[noah-wyles]

she's the best of us

[ahistoriantobe]

As someone for whom writing is a core element of their identity, I am constantly pissed off, enraged, insulted, offended, horrified, and unfortunately, terrified of the advent of AI. "Stay in the present" has never felt so timely an advice: the future has become too bleak to contemplate.

[dialogic]

u know someone’s about to get dragged through the mud when an academic uses the phrase ‘it’s tempting to assume’

[apricops]

“it’s tempting to assume” is academic speaking for “you might think, if you’re a fucking idiot,”

[ahistoriantobe]

Could a native English speaker samaritan kindly explain to me what on earth the difference between bubble and foam and froth is?

I *would* think froth in relation to drinks or cooking in general, a more substancy sort of surface bubbliness. I would think bubble for soap or detergent. Which leaves me with foam - how is foam different than both?

Real question is - do I say "the water flowed so forcefully that it frothed," or "foamed" or what? The guy I'm trying to translate is trying to describe the water jets in a fancy spouting fountain.

[geek-22]