Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reetta Sippola @reettasippola.bsky.social · 10d

Fascinating work of Dr. Sara Caputo will be discussed online next Weds evening (6:30pm London time)! My #posthumanistic research has been quite inspired by her views on the #tracks on the water and on #seacharts. www.rgs.org/events/upcom...
#HakluytSociety #maritimehistory

Lightning at sea in the 18th and 19th centuries

Dr Sara Caputo's EGR Taylor lecture 2025 will discuss how lightning shaped the maritime world drawing on sources from Britain and western Europe.

www.rgs.org

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Reetta Sippola @reettasippola.bsky.social · 15d

This rearly seen draft image of the #walrushunt scene by #JohnWebber (1778) received delightful discussion in #maritimebritain conference last week.

🦄 'Sea horse' was widely used to mean 'walrus' in the 17th and 18th C English; compare with Norwegian and Icelandic words like morse and rosmarus

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Reetta Sippola @reettasippola.bsky.social · 15d

I was trialing my #PhD arguments last week in the
@MaritimeBritain project´s conference in #Southampton. Thanks all delegates for allowing me to pick your brains about #counternarrative to #heroism using #animalhistory #captaincook

#incookcompany #maritimehistory #18thC

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Reetta Sippola @reettasippola.bsky.social · Mar 28

#faffe Kiinnostava tutkimus Suomessa parin vuosisadan aikana bongatuista lajeista tänään ulkona! Julkaisun yhteydessä luennoitiin digitutkimuksen teosta ja tulosten merkityksestä samalla teosta slaideilla selaillen - onpa kaunis kirja! Onnea!! @utu.fi #kulttuurihistoria #sanomalehtiarkisto

Reposted by Reetta Sippola

Dr Laura Sangha @lsangha.bsky.social · Feb 24

📢NEW MANY-HEADED MONSTER SERIES📢

Today I introduce 'Visual Culture in #EarlyModern England', a series that celebrates the relaunch of the brilliant 'British Printed Images to 1700' database and showcases historians' use of printed images.

🗃️ #Skystorians

manyheadedmonster.com/2025/02/24/a...

Screenshot of the front page of British Printed Images to 1700. Printed images border the screen on both sides, in the centre is the website title and various links: About, Search, Resources, Research.

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Reposted by Reetta Sippola

Emilie K. M. Murphy @emiliekmmurphy.bsky.social · Mar 11

Finished a draft chapter today for my little book Listening to #EarlyModern Travel writing. The chapter is 'Earwitnessing and the authentication of experience' and it argues that travel writing was not just an eyewitness genre; that 'seeing' was a multisensory experience... (1/2)

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Reposted by Reetta Sippola

Zanna Van Loon @zannavanloon.bsky.social · Mar 18

Another fascinating #EarlyModern #Bookhistory conference to apply for, this time held at the National Library of Lithuania. Deadline: 30th of April!

💙📚📜 #rarebooks
#printhistory

Milda Kvizikevičiūtė @mildakviz.bsky.social · Mar 4

📢 Call for Papers! Join us at Acutus et Argutus: Early Modern Print Culture in Motion 📚✨ Dive into the dynamic world of book history and print culture. Submit your proposals by 30 April 2025. More info: konferencijos.lnb.lt/acutus-et-ar...

#CFP #AcademicConference #EarlyModernStudies

A dark blue conference banner with ornate Baroque-style floral patterns in vibrant teal, orange, and white hues. The text reads: ACUTUS ET ARGUTUS: Early Modern Print Culture in Motion, scheduled for 8–10 October 2025 in Vilnius, Lithuania. Logos of the Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania and the National Museum of Lithuania are displayed at the bottom.

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Reetta Sippola @reettasippola.bsky.social · Mar 17

Asian kulkua kun jatkuvasti pohditaan: tässä eräs tiiviisti esitetty kommentti pituuspiirin mittaamisesta 1700-luvulla #longitude #earlymodern #seacharts journal.sciencemuseum.ac.uk/article/chro...

Chronometers, charts, charisma: on histories of longitude - Science Museum Group Journal

journal.sciencemuseum.ac.uk

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Reetta Sippola @reettasippola.bsky.social · Mar 9

Kun eurooppalaiset aina nimesi ‘uusia’ paikkoja kaveriensa tai tapahtumien mukaan, niin arvaa missä Cook sai reissun parhaan dinnerin? #inCookCompany #maphistory

Reposted by Reetta Sippola

Shirley Siluk @ebishirl.bsky.social · Jan 27

This is such a good thread, and meshes with the reasons I don't use GenAI tools to even brainstorm, much less write first drafts of anything. Why would I want to steer my thinking away from my own unique ideas and toward some probabilistic algorithm trained on who knows what parts of the internet?

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Reposted by Reetta Sippola

Martin Paul Eve @eve.gd · Jan 26

Library of Congress launches History of the Book post series

blogs.loc.gov/bibliomania/...

History of the Book | Bibliomania

Bibliomania

blogs.loc.gov

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Reetta Sippola @reettasippola.bsky.social · Jan 24

Note to employment agency, I am currently unemployed and in need of funding for this research! Maybe stating the obvious but These posts are a part of getting known and getting hired, not the actual work.

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Reposted by Reetta Sippola

Liesbeth Corens @onslies.bsky.social · Jan 24

Come and hear all about “Food history as history of knowledge: preservation technologies in the #EarlyModern #LowCountries” from the fab @mariekehendriksen.bsky.social

Friday 31 January, 17:30 (UK time), @ihr.bsky.social or on zoom. All welcome! www.history.ac.uk/events/food-...

Painting of an early early modern looking kitchen with two women and a baby. One of the women sitting and seemingly plucking a chicken, the other is showing her something on a plate

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Reposted by Reetta Sippola

will o’the wisp pooley @willpooley.bsky.social · Jan 24

Note that what is being tested here is not even what most academic historians would recognize as worth asking, but just basic ‘facts’ (compiled by a research team then cross compared to genAI multiple choice responses). It can’t pass school rote learning, it sure AF can’t do independent research 🗃️

Christine Kooi @christinekooi.bsky.social · Jan 23

“I thought the AI chatbots would do a lot better,” said del Rio-Chanona, corresponding author of the study and assistant professor at UCL. “History is often viewed as facts, but sometimes interpretation is necessary to make sense of it.”

Where does one even start....🗃️
www.earth.com/news/ai-stru...

AI struggles to understand human history and fails miserably when tested

The study, which is the first of its kind, evaluates the historical knowledge of leading AI models such as ChatGPT-4, Llama, and Gemini.

www.earth.com

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AltYellostoneNatPar @altyellonatpark.org · Jan 23

Paint me
Like one of your French girls

Male otter exposing himself on the ice, with a little of Soda Butte Creak on the bottom left.

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Reposted by Reetta Sippola

Bathsheba Demuth @brdemuth.bsky.social · Dec 27

And for the history nerds, I wrote about the idea of agency in environmental history, in a retrospective of Walter Johnson’s stunner On Agency

academic.oup.com/jsh/article-...

On the Agency of Environmental History

Abstract. Twenty years ago, Walter Johnson warned historians not to rely on a concept that let both user and audience alike feel better without doing bette

academic.oup.com

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Reposted by Reetta Sippola

Tim Soens @tsoens.bsky.social · Jan 22

Monday! Book presentation of our new textbook Environmental History. Online and free, welcome #envhist @eseh.bsky.social

Simone Schleper 🟥 @moneschleper.bsky.social · Jan 22

Join us on Monday for the @eseh.bsky.social environmental history today seminar! #envhist

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Reetta Sippola @reettasippola.bsky.social · Jan 24

I study #human-walrus encounters as a part of my doctoral research, thus all the #walrus things in my feed. #animalhistory #animalagency

Marie Jaros @mariejaros.bsky.social · Nov 27

1519: The Bishop of Trondheim sends the salted head of a #walrus to the Pope in Rome. In Strasbourg it was drawn and provided with verses describing the appearance, way of life and fate of this walrus: "My strong dentures have not helped me"

#Gessner, Fischbuch (1563), p. 91

Reetta Sippola @reettasippola.bsky.social · Jan 24

Robin 🌿 @ringelrobin.bsky.social · Dec 19

the emperor for my seal tarot 🦭 (shhhhh it’s a pinniped it counts)

#art #illustration #sealsky #artsky #tarot #seals #walrus

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Reposted by Reetta Sippola

Jack Ashby @jackdashby.bsky.social · Jan 23

If you were to say that the main benefit of time-travel would be to go back 5-10 million years to see Odobenocetops - the #whale with one tusk like a #walrus - I would not argue.

An Odobenocetops skull, with one massive backwards-facing tusk, on display at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, along with an illustration of the animal.

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Eric Muller @elmunc.bsky.social · Jan 19

Through the good graces of school.ai this morning, I had a chat with Anne Frank.

I had a helluva time trying to get her to say a bad word about Nazis.

Here's our conversation in this thread.

#history #skystorians #historysky #holocaust

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Reposted by Reetta Sippola

Digital Geography Lab @digigeolab.bsky.social · Jan 17

📢 Seminar Announcement! 👉 "Spatial big data research for fair and sustainable societies: Celebrating 15 years of the Digital Geography Lab"

When: 7 Feb
Where: Unioninkatu 33, Helsinki (+ online!)

Program 👉 https://buff.ly/3Cek6ms
Register: 👉 https://buff.ly/4hjVYOc

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Reetta Sippola @reettasippola.bsky.social · Jan 23

A fellowship in #greenwichmaritimemuseum 🔥

Tim Hitchcock @timhitchcock.bsky.social · Jan 20

Just wanted to draw people's attention to the Fellowship programme at the Greenwich Maritime Museum - it looks like a lot of fun to me. www.rmg.co.uk/collections/...

Fellowships at Royal Museums Greenwich

Apply for funding to support research at Royal Museums Greenwich through our Caird Research Fellowships

www.rmg.co.uk

Reetta Sippola @reettasippola.bsky.social · Jan 23

After I read about what these keynote speakers have been writing on #earlymodern nature and agency, I think i need to travel here
#cfp

Sasha Handley @sashahandley.bsky.social · Dec 10

Please share the CFP for our conference: 'Bodies and Environments in the Early Modern World'. Our keynotes are Marcy Norton @marcynorton.bsky.social (Pennsylvania) & Sara Miglietti (Warburg Institute). Join us 9-10 June at JRRIL, Manchester. Further details at: sites.manchester.ac.uk/sleeping-wel...

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Prof. Elaine Chalus @profelainechalus.bsky.social · Jan 14

My chapter in this volume may be of interest to historians of #navalhistory:

'The Loneliness of Leadership
Royal Naval Officers in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars'
www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edi...

The Loneliness of Leadership | 27 | Royal Naval Officers in the Revolu

This chapter concentrates on the loneliness of leadership experienced by active Royal Navy officers during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, specifically

www.taylorfrancis.com

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