Thony Christie
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rmathematicus.bsky.social
Thony Christie
@rmathematicus.bsky.social
Aging freak who fell in love with the history of science and now resides mostly in 16th century Nürnberg.
I use books, keeping them in pristine condition is not a major concern
February 10, 2026 at 4:51 PM
Maybe I just have odd friends
February 10, 2026 at 4:49 PM
Reposted by Thony Christie
Jacques Monod was born OTD in 1910.

“In science there is and will remain a Platonic element which could not be taken away without ruining it. Among the infinite diversity of singular phenomena science can only look for invariants.”

🐋🌱 🦫🦋 #Philsci #HistSTM #evobio
February 9, 2026 at 4:13 PM
Reposted by Thony Christie
Ouch
SWALWELL: You said you wanted to see a deportation process that was 'like Amazon Prime but with human beings.' How many times has Amazon Prime shot a mom 3 times in the face?

LYONS: None

SWALWELL: How many times has Amazon Prime shot a nurse 10 times in the back?

LYONS: None
February 10, 2026 at 4:34 PM
This is a family site, you know!
February 10, 2026 at 4:46 PM
Reposted by Thony Christie
A very interesting volume edited by Mathilde Lequin (@pacea.bsky.social) & Juan Manuel Rodríguez Caso examining historical & epistemological dimensions of human evolutionary research. A much welcome contribution to the growing field of the philosophy of paleoanthropology.

#hpbio #paleosky #philsky
The Field of Human Evolution: Critical Perspectives from History and Epistemology
This book explores critical perspectives on human evolution through history, epistemology, and inclusive scientific approaches.
link.springer.com
February 10, 2026 at 1:56 PM
Reposted by Thony Christie
Book Review Jerry Brotton's Four Points of the Compass
thonyc.wordpress.com/2026/02/10/c...
February 10, 2026 at 9:34 AM
February 10, 2026 at 3:55 PM
Reposted by Thony Christie
This is the 38th time that the U.S. military has unlawfully killed civilians on the orders of Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump. At least 130 people — never charged with crimes, their identities unknown to their executioners — are now dead.
February 10, 2026 at 11:29 AM
Reposted by Thony Christie
I must buy it. It may help me further interpret the four cardinal directions of the Hopi people, which are defined by sunrise and sunset at the winter and summer solstices.
See my “Solstices, equinoxes, and directions in Hopi astronomy” in the February Journal for the History of Astronomy.
February 10, 2026 at 1:34 PM
Reposted by Thony Christie
In this blog post, Richard Ansell (Birkbeck, University of London) discusses how the Bibliography of British and Irish History (BBIH) is contributing to his research on non-elite travel writing as part of ‘Written Worlds: Non-Elite Writing in Seventeenth-Century England’
Non-Elite Travel Writing and the Bibliography of British and Irish History  - On History
In this blog post, Richard Ansell (Birkbeck, University of London) discusses several ways that the Bibliography of British and Irish History is contributing to his research on non-elite travel…
blog.history.ac.uk
February 10, 2026 at 12:01 PM
Well, exactly. It’s the same with people who insist vehemently that north must be at the top of a map
February 10, 2026 at 11:38 AM
🙃
February 10, 2026 at 9:42 AM
Book Review Jerry Brotton's Four Points of the Compass
thonyc.wordpress.com/2026/02/10/c...
February 10, 2026 at 9:34 AM
Reposted by Thony Christie
A low- and no-caffeine lifestyle, you say?
February 9, 2026 at 8:38 PM
Reposted by Thony Christie
Gonna be real, Maxwell 'clearing Trump's name' in exchange for a pardon just tells me he's more guilty than I ever imagined.
February 9, 2026 at 8:32 PM
Reposted by Thony Christie
🏺 Ancient places with half-forgotten histories become liminal spaces for those who cannot easily fit elsewhere.... Makes me think of Neolithic/Bronze Age sites becoming places for deposits including burial much later in the BA/Iron Age, and what this might have meant especially for women
#Matriarcha
February 9, 2026 at 8:34 PM
Reposted by Thony Christie
Amazing that people take this guy seriously with his space cities
Elon Musk (you may recognize him from the Epstein files) has just given up on Mars.
February 9, 2026 at 4:27 PM
Reposted by Thony Christie
So the very lovely students & ECRs @uclarchaeology.bsky.social are organizing a conference Unravelling the Palaeolithic sites.google.com/view/unravel... and aside from creating a fab space for research, I spotted the following - sthg I wish I'd had back in the day:
Unravelling the Palaeolithic
Welcome to the website for the Unravelling the Palaeolithic conference 2026! Unravelling the Palaeolithic is an ECR and student-led conference with a history of showcasing excellence in research in P...
sites.google.com
February 9, 2026 at 2:23 PM
Reposted by Thony Christie
New #OpenAccess #HistMed article by our CHSTM colleague Dr Meng Zhang, on compulsory masking and the role of barbers in 1930s China.

academic.oup.com/shm/advance-...
Protest From Unexpected Corners: Barbers, Labour Unions, and Compulsory Masking in Modern China, 1930s–1940s
Abstract. This article examines resistance from below to compulsory masking in modern China, from the 1930s to the 1940s. Initially marginalised and stigma
academic.oup.com
February 9, 2026 at 8:36 AM
Reposted by Thony Christie
1/ ProPublica collected handwritten letters in mid-January from children held at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center, the same facility where 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos was taken.

Hundreds of kids are still detained.

We’ll let the children’s words speak for themselves. 🧵
February 9, 2026 at 12:25 PM
Reposted by Thony Christie
It will never, ever fail to make me laugh that UCU’s headquarters are at Mornington Crescent. Byzantine rules anyone?
Mornington Crescent: a rant.

Or: how a goofy word game about train stations is the key to how devout causes can ruin people's ability to have a conversation.

Stand clear of the closing doors, let's begin.

1/18
February 9, 2026 at 9:27 AM
Reposted by Thony Christie
Got mine this morning. Told them I didn’t consent to being part of their study, to remove my personal data, and never contact me again.
Don’t work for free, and especially don’t work for free for anything that seems to be scraping your free work for slopAI metric nonsense
The Science Policy Research Unit at the University of Sussex appear to be spamming researchers demanding unpaid labour which they claim is "crucial" for their research project on "Metascience Novelty Indicators".

I have a novelty indicator for them. It is digital, and highly expressive.
February 9, 2026 at 9:33 AM
Reposted by Thony Christie
For absolutely no reason whatsoever, I want to recommend this book, An American Language: The History of Spanish in the United States by Rosina Lozano. www.ucpress.edu/books/an-ame...
An American Language by Rosina Lozano - Paper
Scholarship is a powerful tool for changing how people think, plan, and govern. By giving voice to bright minds and bold ideas, we seek to foster understanding and drive progressive change.
www.ucpress.edu
February 9, 2026 at 2:14 AM