Simon Davies

Important #bookhistory finding: the 2nd edition of Browne’s Pseudodoxia Epidemica had a vastly superior Q compared to the 1st and 3rd editions

#typography

Hah yes! 😂

Really wish I'd had this to hand at a particular party I went to around eight or so years ago 😅

Thank you, I'll send a DM!

Weird! Muse generate their own DOIs though so would that explain why it's not in Crossref?

(I checked because we've had problems with DOIs showing up on PM in the past, interested to see if it was the same problem)

They do, looks like they just don't list them on the article page for some reason 🙂

A Scottish university is trying to bully their faculty into making OA deposits of their published articles by telling them they won't be eligible for the REF if they don't. That's not true. Don't fall for it.

Software companies (Microsoft, Adobe) that add their own save dialog that you have to click through to get to the normal save dialog, which is the only useful one. (Because they want you to use their cloud storage)

Also apps focus stealing! Adobe are the worst for this but Windows allows it

This is great. I’m no fan of the Lords, but clearly a body like this is needed when those in the Commons plumb such depths of mediocrity, venality, and stupidity.

Also I like the choice of Plantin for the typeface 💁‍♂️

Hehe I’m glad to share it!

Columbus just watching them get eaten 😳

Paperback edition of Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea Quartet

Pleased with this bookshop find; I’ve been wanting to re-read it for a while now, and I found the exact edition I had when I read it as a kid ☺️
(My life is riddled with nostalgia)

Nice Q out in the wild
(Trajan by the looks of it)
#typography

Saw this guy painting some lettering for a shop sign in Hove today, fascinating to see. And nice to know this skill is still alive!
www.instagram.com/martinthesig...

Early Instagram was though. So was early twitter, Facebook, etc. These platforms used to be fun to use. Now they’re not. Enshittification isn’t about the early internet, it’s about the post-social media era business model, and it describes where we are now with great accuracy.

It’s a wild take. All the major online platforms have got objectively worse in the last 10–15 years.

The face of the punch of Baskerville’s 16pt roman capital S

The digitisation of the Baskerville punches is a really great resource. John Dreyfus’s account of their history is well worth a read too! They travelled all over France before ending up back in England.
#typography #bookhistory

cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/collections/...

‘I am feminine, morbid, perverse’ Virginia Woolf judged that the Irish novelist George Moore (1852–1933) was a more engaging memoirist than a writer of fiction. But although he produced several volumes of autobiography over the course...

'The youthful confessions of an Irish Decadent'
A nice piece in the TLS on George Moore's Confessions, inspired by the recent edition in our Jewelled Tortoise series 📗
www.the-tls.com/lives/autobi...

Great-looking new collection from @boapublishing.bsky.social: Witchcraft and Magic in England, c. 1400–1920 🧙‍♀️
For some reason only available to institutions though, so those of us without an institution don't get to see it 👎
britishonlinearchives.com/collections/...

Monochrome scan of the title page of a tract from 1681 in negative

This microfilm scan got inverted at some point and it looks super cool

Kinda!

I liked this post but also I wish I hadn’t had to see that loathsome face on my tl 😳

'...and probably for the plague'

Being a Luddite Is Cool and All, but Have You Seen the Hilarious Tapestries These New Looms Are Making? Don’t get me wrong, I’m as invested in keeping my job as the next weaver. When the boss brought in that big new power loom, I was pretty skeptical....

When the boss brought in that big new power loom, I was skeptical. He said once he got it running, we’d be out of a job, so when the boys started talking about breaking into the factory and smashing the thing, I was on board. Until, that is, I saw the funny tapestries it could make.

And our leaders should be supporting us to reach that aim wherever possible. That means governing in support of life, liberty, and happiness, instead of in support of ever more wealth for the already wealthy. Working less is a good thing and should be the goal. But not like this.

The thing is, it would be an immeasurably *good* thing if ‘AI’ could actually take away our jobs. Never mind that what is currently called ‘AI’ has no hope of doing that, what would be needed for that to be ok is governments who don’t see work as the ultimate goal of life. Leisure should be the aim,

I love a good Q. Modern typefaces just dont make the grade for Qs
(Henri Estienne, 1597)
#typography

Heavily vested interest in making AI seem significant though (or that it actually works). Much bigger money at stake than for a historian lol

I immediately zone out at 'I've spent six years building an AI startup and investing in the space' -- clearly not going to be an objective assessment then is it!