596 years ago today, Hanseatic cities of Northern Germany retained the services of the privateer captain Bartholomeus Voet, his nine ships and 300 men. With dire consequences for my hometown, Bergen - but also to great annoyance for themselves.
A thread:
The Hansa and the Nordic countries were the best of frenemies at this time. The Hansa traded extensively with the Nordics and often waged war as well, typically allying with one Nordic country against another...
"..our universities in Australia must be places where we have the courage to take up our responsibilities as ethical researchers and teachers: our classrooms must be spaces of historical truth-telling that seek to explain why and how this is happening and support students to express their truths, including through student activism."
"As educators and researchers, we pay our deep respect to Palestinian scholars, writers, artists, and activists, including Palestinians based in Australia. We commit to continuing to learn from long histories of Palestinian description, critique, and analysis. Our colleagues in Palestine have called on us again and again to take action, and so we must. Telling the truth in history – as we know from our experiences in this settler-colony of Australia – is an important act of resistance, and we commit to undertaking this task."
“As historians who study – amongst other things – settler-colonialism, genocide, apartheid, gendered and sexed violence, Jewish history, Palestinian history, Israeli history, and more, we say that this breathtaking and heartbreaking violence is unacceptable and must be opposed entirely. We know that the violence did not begin on October 7th, and is a result of long transnational histories of imperialism, colonialism, state violence, antisemitism, Islamophobia, and anti-Palestinian racism. The story does not begin on October 7th, and longer histories – involving European colonisation of Palestine, the mandate system and British rule, the 75 years since the establishment of the State of Israel, the 56 year occupation of Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem, and the 16 year blockade on Gaza – must be held at the forefront of our minds. “
Slight delays with Chapters 3 and 4. They'll both air Friday, December 15th and December 29th, respectively. Then we resume our usual schedule to round out January.
You can read Chapters 1 and 2 NOW on via the link below.
As a reminder, if you are a teacher, do not use AI detectors. This piece mirrors what I've heard from a LOT of students on social media (panicked students commenting on my AI videos, with no reason to lie). In my opinion, whatever utility you're getting out of a way to catch cheating is not worth the risk of even one false positive. Especially the potential for systematically biased false positives. https://www.thedailybeast.com/ai-written-homework-is-rising-so-are-false-accusations
Interesting conversation and article on the major downsides of AI detectors, especially the bias it has towards flagging neurodivergent and non-native writers that raise #DEI concerns.
"To trace the unfamiliar to the familiar... is to understand."
Incredible Adventures
Algernon Henry Blackwood British writer of tales of mystery and the supernatural died #OTD in 1951. His two best-known stories are probably "The Willows" and "The Wendigo". Though Blackwood wrote a number of horror stories, his most typical work seeks less to frighten than to induce a sense of awe. via @wikipedia
@cstross
I think the biggest difference is that spaceships in movies (like Star Trek) are built in a space dock, rather than on earth. (Although the last movies show the ship being made on earth)
Having the parts beamed to a space dock (or through an orbital lift) could allow for larger, more spacious and comfortable ships...