Austin Hoffman

When DOGE Unleashed ChatGPT on the Humanities

What we suspected is, of course, true.

Pasts Imperfect (3.5.26) Across the world—from the United States to Canada to Australia—departments and museums within higher education are closing. This week, ancient historian Geoffrey Greatrex discusses the suspension of t...

The latest Pasts Imperfect is out, focused on the closing of humanities depts. & museums. @otavano.bsky.social discusses the U. of Ottawa, @mokersel.bsky.social on the DePaul Art Museum, @meirazk.bsky.social & @vox-magica.bsky.social on shuttering religious studies depts, & Justin Vorhis on U. Iowa.

Sudanese who had applied for Chevening scholarships are reporting that they've been informed today their applications have been terminated due to new legislation. Just an unnecessarily cruel policy that will have a huge impact on people's lives.

Organizers have collected 14 lotion bottles, two deodorant bottles, and one AA Battery that detainees have thrown over the fences with notes attached to them.

The full story: lataco.com/captive-loti...

By Aisha Wallace-Palomares

Interested to see that the German Archaeological Institute in Cairo has digitised its records and photos of the work it undertook at Kalabsha during UNESCO's Nubian campaign in the 1960s: www.dainst.org/newsroom/nos... I wrote an article about those photos here: intellectdiscover.com/content/jour...

Expedition Magazine | “Scholars Will Call it Nonsense” <p>In 1968 an obscure Swiss hotel manager published a book entitled Erinnerungen an die Zukunft. An English edition appeared under […]</p>

With the recent passing of Erich von Däniken, here's a short article from 1987 dissecting his claims about aliens in Chariots of Gods (1968). It's a reminder that archaeologists have been debunking pseudoarchaeology for nearly 40 years.

Close encounters of the racist kind The modern far right is crisscrossed with pseudo-scientific research into lost Aryan super-civilizations, biblical giants, ancient astronauts and the occasional inter-dimensional alien.

Pseudo-archaeology, pseudo-history and various strains of UFO belief can get … extremely racist and it’s something that doesn’t get covered competently in the mainstream press. www.splcenter.org/resources/ha...

Sudan preservationists struggle to restore country's shattered cultural treasures The shattered remains of antique pottery and shards of ancient statues lie among broken glass and bullet casings at Sudan’s National Museum, not far from where the Blue and White Nile meet in the capital Khartoum.

So far, about 4,000 antiquities have been counted missing in Sudan. 700 pieces disappeared from museums in the cities of Nyala and El GeneinaI, where the museum’s curator was killed when the building was shelled

www.reuters.com/world/africa...

I am absolutely thrilled to announce the upcoming international workshop Cities on the Edge: Documenting, Preserving & Teaching Endangered Urban Heritage in Egypt, Sudan & Palestine. Oct.31-Nov.1 AUC Tahrir, Cairo + on zoom. Join us!
Details + rsvp here: shorturl.at/bnrIZ

Duanfang’s Egyptian rubbings: the first Egyptian collection in Late Imperial China | Antiquity | Cambridge Core Duanfang’s Egyptian rubbings: the first Egyptian collection in Late Imperial China

Read the original research in Antiquity 🆓
'Duanfang’s Egyptian rubbings: the first Egyptian collection in Late Imperial China' - Tian Tian.
doi.org/10.15184/aqy...
13/13
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Arabic Names of Egyptian Kings NOTE

If you are interested in medieval Arabic accounts of ancient Egypt and where the names of the (imaginary) kings in them came from, I've translated and annotated Ahmed Kamal's interesting but uneven 1903 analysis. www.jasoncolavito.com/arabic-names...

Pollution From the Tijuana River Affects Air Quality in San Diego A new study from UC San Diego examines how pollutants from the Tijuana River travel and are transmitted in the atmosphere through coastal aerosols. The study found a mixture of drugs and chemicals fro...

⚠️ Pollution from the Tijuana River—including sewage and industrial waste—is impacting air quality in San Diego, according to a new study led by @ucsandiego.bsky.social researchers. Learn more about the research led by @chemcooper.bsky.social and
@kprather.bsky.social. ⬇️ @ucsdphysci.bsky.social

The genomics of t’ef and finger millet domestication and spread | Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences The Northern Highlands of Ethiopia and Eritrea (NHE) were a centre for food production in Africa, hosting one of the earliest agriculture-based complex societies on the continent. The NHE’s geographic...

📢 New publication: "The genomics of t’ef and finger millet domestication and spread" by Mekonnen D.Z., Gomes A.I., Machado R.S.R. & Oliveira H.R., in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences (2025, Vol. 380, Issue 1926).
🔗 More info: doi.org/10.1098/rstb...

Poster for the talk with details and registration link. Title: "Let's Talk About Atlantis: Engaging with Archaeology and History Misinformation"

Hey all, this Friday (noon CST/6pm GMT) I'll be giving an online lecture for Northwestern University's Global Antiquities Group on my research and public engagement about Atlantis pseudoarchaeology

If you are interested in attending, register here: northwestern.zoom.us/meeting/regi...