all of this all of this can be yours

This is so much what I've been thinking about a different period that I'm writing about - that it's there, even though people are saying It's Ded, it's just not doing the flashy newsworthy visible stuff or the results are the things are are not, or no longer, happening: The one thing everyone gets wrong about feminism.

***

I am a great admirer of Professor Athene Donald's blog, and I like this recent post: Unintended Consequences - in particular perhaps this apercu:

Business gurus tend to talk about ‘being authentic’ as the right way to lead. But if you are a testy, over-bearing soul being authentic may be very destructive for those around you.

***

This is another story about mobility in the world: Looted from a royal palace: The medieval jug now on display in London:

A large bronze medieval jug bearing the English royal coat of arms would be a rare find if dug up in England, but somehow it had ended up in West Africa, in modern-day Ghana, thanks to early trading routes between nations.
Dating from between 1340 and 1405, the jug is the largest surviving bronze ewer from medieval England. Decorated with an English inscription, royal heraldry and coat of arms, it was originally a luxury object — but its meaning changed dramatically as it moved across continents.

I've had to do with either this artefact or another very similar in my working days, I did not know about the biological contamination (we didn't know for quite some time about the radioactive notebooks, either): a parchment scroll designed to guard against the dangers of childbirth:

Until now, this scroll’s worn surface and suggestive staining constituted the main evidence for its use in childbirth. However, new research by Sarah Fiddyment, presented in the exhibition, reveals that human proteins found on the scroll’s surface indicate the presence of cervico-vaginal fluid. This is an important breakthrough in the burgeoning field of biocodicology, which seeks out the invisible traces left behind by users of manuscripts, as they held, rubbed or kissed a parchment.

***

You know, I would have sworn that back in my working days I came across something appertaining to this historic event: How smallpox claimed its final victim, but I'm unable to trace it.

Last week's bread held out admirably.

Friday night supper: ven pongal (South India khichchari).

Saturday breakfast rolls: eclectic vanilla, came out a bit more vanilla-y than usual.

Today's lunch: Norwegian halibut fillets panfried for slightly less long than suggested on packet, as I have found this in the past to be a bit of an over-estimate, served with samphire sauce, baby cauliflowers quartered and cooked thus (used lime and lemongrass vinegar for the acidulation) and La Ratte potatoes roasted in goosefat.

Or whatever. This is clearly my week for being Grumpy Archivist.

Have been solicited to review article for journal with which I have had a long connection, following a recent backstory I will not go into.

But anyway, I have been asked to review it, and it is definitely Within My Purlieu -

Perhaps too much so, because on opening the document to check that it in fact was, the person sending it having given me no indication of what it was about -

Discovered it was based upon an archive with which I had a significant history.

And no, the fact that there is this beautiful and fairly substantial archive in lovely curated order available to the researcher is a lot less down to the creating body (okay, I will give them points for the stuff actually having survived in fairly good nick) than to the work of archivists over 2-3 decades acquiring the material (in batches as it turned up during office moves and so on), sorting it into some kind of coherent order, and cataloguing it.

A saga which is actually recounted in the online catalogue to the collection, not to mention an article wot I writ about the organisation in question.

It is actually a pretty cool organisation, compared to some I have had dealings with, but superior archive processing, not really in their skill-set.

Grump. Will try and make tactful point about acknowledging the labour of archivists....

***

We may recall the saga of the tech bro whose sprog did not want the AI teddy he had acquired for her to talk back, and turned the speech facility off, his head around this he could not get -

And this is very creepy, no lessons have been learnt: AI toys for children misread emotions and respond inappropriately, researchers warn:

The parents in the study were interested in the toy's potential to teach language and communication skills.
However, their children frequently struggled to converse with it. Gabbo didn't hear their interruptions, talked over them, could not differentiate between child and adult voices and responded awkwardly to declarations of affection.
When one five-year-old said, "I love you," to the toy, it replied: "As a friendly reminder, please ensure interactions adhere to the guidelines provided. Let me know how you would like to proceed."
The concern is that at a developmental stage where children are learning about social interaction and cues, generative AI output could be confusing.

Naturally, from various angles of my interests, I am going to click on a link like this, no? Pornucopia: The World’s Largest Collection of Smut, and You Can’t See It.

And while I have a certain historianly interest in the contents of the collection (though I was having a conversation with somebody a little while ago and we reckoned we would love to take a gander at Antony Comstock's Private Cupboard, because a leading smuthound must have accumulated a really outstanding filth collection, hmmmm?)

- I was going to myself with my archivist hat on, OMG, this is so many problems - there must be HUGE conservation issues, I just hope none of those porno movies are on nitrate film, but I do not think the smart money would be betting on it, and a lot of those relics are on degrading media even if they're not going to spontaneously combust. Some of them I wonder if there are actually means of playing them still.

(Tangentially I mention my wince when hearing thrilled younger scholar recount how they had listened to a 78 rpm recording in a sound archive, and I was, really???)

Then it sounds as though they are Not Keeping Up With Basic Processing ('embarrassed about the unorganized conditions', heh) which sounds as though ambitious collecting agenda has totally outrun capacity of institution to keep on top of it (should I add 'fnar fnar, nudge wink' at this point???).

Plus on the access thing and being not entirely welcoming to visitors, while - perhaps - historically collections like The Private Case (in the BL), L'Enfer (Bibliotheque Nationale), etc, were only made available to selected readers for fear of contaminating the public, in more recent days this is because this material is particularly vulnerable to to being mutilated - pages torn out or defaced, etc - which is why if you want to consult Cup. classification material in the BL you have to do so under the eye of the Librarian's Desk.

I suspect also in play is a probably legit fear of persons presenting themselves as SRS Scholars who once they are in will go BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES on the place ('wary about divulging warehouse locations', totally figures).

Over here, being niche.