Historian and Folklorist. Writes books on witches, magic, ghosts, religion, popular medicine, and folklore.
Owen Davies
“Bugs are lucky” . “People leaving houses condemned under a Huddersfield slum clearance scheme are reported to have taken a few bugs with them, boxed up, for release in their new homes.”
UK government intelligence report on public health, 1943.
This is wild: essentially every LLM—ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini—keeps using the same character when asked to make up a story, a guy called 'Elias Thorne'. He appears so much it's impacting Google Trends data and the self-published book market. Now we might know why www.404media.co/elias-thorne...
Listen to my conversation with @matthewlloydr.bsky.social about Grosvenor Square for the Open City Deconstructed podcast. It's a good one! @reaktionbooks.bsky.social #OpenCityLondon
open-city.org.uk/podcast
Rummaging through my Viewmaster collection to look for something for @odavies9.bsky.social and found these rather terrifying Worzel Gummidge and Doctor Who images in 3D, as if the 2D versions on TV weren't scary enough for '70s kids!
Have loved today's @folkloresociety.bsky.social conference, not least co-presenting on how/why so many British letters to Santa made their way to Norway with the wonderful @idatolgensbakk.bsky.social. And now, being the exciting person that I am, it's PJs and junk food in the hotel room for me 😁
We've been podcast-tastic this week for FOLKLORE MATTERS @nfsengland.bsky.social recording more episodes with @kwasbeb.bsky.social Swedish urban legend expert Jack Werner and Mike Hankin of thefolkunion.com - more recording to go but series 2 is coming SOON!
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A good piece from Glen. The permanent threat of redundancy is the new normal in UK Higher Education. I'm now very at "At Risk" but I can fall back on early retirement. The vast majority of colleagues cannot. And in most universities now, you can forget about attaining a Professorship in the future.
