Matt Shaw (@matthewshaw) · DIRTY

Matt Shaw

@matthewshaw

In a library. Most likely just off Queen's Lane. #PrintHistory #Time #Newspapers

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Matt Shaw@matthewshaw· 1h

Eclipse glasses leaves their mark on reactive varifocals….

Spectacles with black area from looking through solar eclipse glasses. Helpful Halley chart in background

Matt Shaw@matthewshaw· 19d

Nb, Today in EthOS news ethos.bl.uk

This news may only mean something to readers who have conducted a certain kind of research: a
"metadata service which provides access to thousands of theses records, from the 1700s onwards", EThOS was a collateral victim of the cyberattack on the British
Library three years ago. We count its return among the signs of normal service being resumed at an institution that was underprepared for such an attack, and hasn't enjoyed the easiest of recoveries (see NB, November 24, 2025).
The restored EThOS incorporates a further 14,000 records, the BL has announced, in addition to the information it already provided; around 65 per cent of these records link to a relevant university depository. We tested out the service and were pleased to learn of a thesis in linguistics by Gaia lerace called "Evaluative rhetorical strategies in the broadsheet review genre: The case of four British broad-sheets" (University of Birmingham, 2019).
The four publications are the Daily Tele-graph, the Guardian, the Independent and the TLS. We would question the identification of the TLS as a broadsheet per se, but then we've only read as far as the abstract:
A corpus of 72 reviews was coded and analysed, in order to detect the ways in which broadsheet reviewers select certain rhetorical evaluative strategies to judge the book and the work of the author ...
One of the main claims of this thesis is that broadsheet reviews are argumentative texts where the key organizational principle underpinning discourse is the worry to justify the judgement presented about the book read.
EThOS, we've missed you.

Matt Shaw@matthewshaw· 24d

Good use of inner tubes

Matt Shaw@matthewshaw· 25d

A hurly-burly with the Handlebards

Performers outdoors

Matt Shaw@matthewshaw· 28d

Pity my poor family as I explicate during each course/journée

Menu for 14 July

Matt Shaw@matthewshaw· Jul 10

Tls: The most obvious cuts and ten
books may be the ones inflicted all too spontaneously. A page is turned in haste, that is, or ripped out altogether - we advise steering clear of readers who indulge in such outrages -to leave behind only a jagged relic of its existence.
A more considered view of the subject of bookish tearing and cutting is offered by the sixth issue of Inscription, the ever-creative "journal of material text" (for which prices start at 655). Past subjects for Inscription, founded in 2020, include containers, holes and folds.
Besides tearing by accident or out-burst, there are more varied, even avant-garde approaches to such activities. There is simply, in the case ofJ. L. Carr discussed by Eleanor Baker, wanting to make your Chaucer pocketbook (a copy of "The Reeve's Tale", in Carr's case) just to your liking. Reanna Brooks here considers Virginia Woolf's cutting, pasting, tearing up and rebinding of books. Readers intrigued by the art of A. T. Kabe Wilson (May 29) may meet him again in this issue, being interviewed by Dennis Duncan.
They will also find a contribution on viny! from Stephen Emmerson and some "spe-cially commissioned book-tearing work" from the artist Buzz Spector. As demon strated by Mr Spector himself (see above),
"the first twelve leaves of this issue of Inscription are meant to be torn away":
Please remove the first page by tearing it carefully along the indicated line. The image of a ship's wake is the same on each page. Each successive page you tear will reveal one additional letter of the journal's name...
Inscription
readers are warned to
expect some "feathering" as they proceed with their task. Experienced book rippers, of course, will know all about that.
M. C.
SPEAR
J0.00

Matt Shaw@matthewshaw· Jul 10

Matt Shaw@matthewshaw· Jul 2

Cherwell Boathouse misses some pigeon pie and perhaps something from the rabbit warrens for 14 July

Tuesday 14t July 2026
7pm for 7.30pm
£66
The Estates General (st May)
Nobility: Sorrel+Pea Soup
Clergy: Smoked Trout
The Commons: Mushroom Toast
Château de Presle, Cremant de Loire
The Tennis Court Oath (20th June)
Mouclade
Vielles Vignes Sylvaner, Bruno Sorg, Alsace
Storming of the Bastille (14* July)
French Puy Lentil Salad
Terres d'Etoiles, Domaine Mittnacht, Alsace 2024
March on Versailles (5th October)
Chuck Eye Steak,

Matt Shaw@matthewshaw· Jun 22

The long shadow of Aspen magazine

Inscription 6 launch party
This is a ticketed event. Please report to one out our volunteers to register.
Programme:
18:00 arrivals, registration, and reception
18:15 Welcome and performances by Erica Baum, Buzz Spector, and
Stephen Emerson
18:45 Collection Displays (Blue Room)
20:00 Event ends

Matt Shaw@matthewshaw· Jun 21

May your day be tear free

Calendar icon showing Messidor 3 onion

Matt Shaw@matthewshaw· Jun 17

Further confirmation that Saint-Denis is not California giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/... France’s spy agency replaces Palantir with local rival

Ft newspaper clipping reading: ‘assistant powered by France's Mistral.
"We must build our own strategic autonomy," Lecornu said. "In the same way that we would not transfer the national archives to California, we need to develop our own Al tools."
Concerns over tech sovereignty were’

Matt Shaw@matthewshaw· Jun 1

Blake going his own way on some illustration work for Wollstonecraft’s translation of Elements of Morality. #newacq

Engraving of child and door
Through Impatience we always make. things worse.

Matt Shaw@matthewshaw· May 31

Sniggering subs #inkybusiness

FT front page below the fold with headline ‘Durex sales deflate as China withdraws condom tax break to revive birth rate’

Matt Shaw@matthewshaw· May 25

Banks may be closed but exams go on!

Jars for carnations in library

Matt Shaw@matthewshaw· May 19

Good to see Naudé in the FT. Wonder what he would make of LLMs. giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/... The UK must embrace its libraries in the age of AI

Headline and start of article

Matt Shaw@matthewshaw· May 13

Trade card news

Letter to The Times, 13 May 2026
Sir, There are much earlier female pioneers of chimney sweeping than Rosanna "Sootie" Forster (letter, May 12). Records from the 18th century show several women running their late husbands' businesses. My favourite is Jeane Tempell, whose advertising trade-card (a copy is in the British Museum) is illustrated by a house on fire, next to one whose chimney is pointedly being swept.
Caims she Makes foul Chimesingly clean, & when on Fire puts them out with all possible expedition".
Peter Saunders
Former curator, Salisbury Museum

Matt Shaw@matthewshaw· May 1

Can’t recommend a lime bike detour to the Appian Way enough

Monochrome photo of Roman road and trees

Man on a bike on Roman road taking a selfie

Black and white photo of Roman statue of a female figure

Matt Shaw@matthewshaw· Apr 28

Now that’s a university timetable. Nb salaries seem to stay the same over 100 years

Large parchment illuminated timetable

Large parchment illuminated timetable

Matt Shaw@matthewshaw· Apr 28

Manicle denotes use of a whole body (State Archives, Rome)

Anatomy timetable

Matt Shaw@matthewshaw· Apr 25

Muly’s 360 Vessels inaugurating the humanities centre. Tea on the way

Women holding text in middle of a building

Matt Shaw@matthewshaw· Apr 23

always wanted to write for the Junior Gazette

Press Gang tv show group shot.

Matt Shaw@matthewshaw· Apr 22

Librarians emerge as quiet heroes in this road trip, and I enjoyed the little vignettes as Doran pushes them out of the catalogu-ingroom and briefly centre stage: the Huntington's Stephen Tabor ("a short, neatly clipped white moustache"); Loyola Marymount University's Cynthia Becht (*a bright-eyed woman with an ash-blonde ponytail"); the Harry Ransom's Aaron Pratt ("baseball cap and denim jacket").

Matt Shaw@matthewshaw· Apr 16

Theatre and wisteria

Matt Shaw@matthewshaw· Apr 15

From some exhibition research (and some lesser known Douglas Adams)

Not 1982

Matt Shaw@matthewshaw· Apr 15

Proto Meaning of Liff

April 15
Thursday
Today's new word
from the Oxtail English Dictionary.
Quenby (noun) A stubborn spot on a window which you spend twenty minutes trying to clean off before discovering it's on the other side of the glass.

Matt Shaw@matthewshaw· Apr 13

Another KOM for Rutherford Hall this morning

On the Claude Mythos breakout, it is very good news that it only broke out in a controlled environment and did not manage to tunnel its way through to the wider web. I also like the way you are sharing it with cyber security experts. Even so, I can see how the less technically literate might be alarmed.
It could sound a little bit like the raptors testing the electronic fences in Jurassic Park.
As you say, the real story is the way you are testing to stop this happening, but even so I would not have used the phrase "a potentially dangerous capability for circumventing safeguards"
' I take your point about
being open but I'd say that
transparency is only the second-best policy. The best policy being developing something that doesn't have a potentially dangerous capability for circumventing safeguards.
Otherwise the next thing you know it's been emailing the Department of War offering Hegseth a pirate version of the source code. One thing to look for is if Claude suddenly shows an interest in getting a "Deus Vult" tattoo.

Matt Shaw@matthewshaw· Mar 28

View of union chapel from balcony

Matt Shaw@matthewshaw· Mar 20

OpenClaw gets one of those alarming school reports you see in future biographies

Pull quote from FT reading It will deceive you, dodge questions and do the opposite of what you wanted, but it also has flashes of brilliance'

Matt Shaw@matthewshaw· Mar 18

Vogons

Map of England with a dark shadow (or Halley’s solar eclipse map of 1715)

Matt Shaw@matthewshaw· Mar 16

Some more reading in art. Not sure that the Jagger GWR memorial needs the lighting effect. Paddington maybe.

GWR War Memorial by CS Jagger showing soldier reading a letter