Aaron Swartz, coding prodigy and hacktivist who helped develop RSS and was a co-founder of Reddit, died by suicide after facing $1 million in fines and 35 years in prison for felony charges, just for downloading pdfs of research papers with the intention of making them accessible to the public.

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Downing tools until Thursday on account of the public sector strike tomorrow across #Ireland. See you on the picket line! ✊ #IFUT #PublicServiceStrike #SpeirGhorm #HigherEducation www.ifut.ie/content/ifut...

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I am so sad to hear of the death of Chris Wickham, an outstanding medievalist and (among many other things) a great economic historian. He was also an outstandingly good academic citizen, who in every respect left the rest of us in the shade, and a very nice man. May he rest in peace.

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A personal anecdote about Chris Wickham, whose passing - like everyone in our field - comes as shocking news. Other people will be able to replicate this with myriads of their own examples. In the spring of 2016, I was spending three months in the Belgian Academy of Rome on a modest stipend.

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RIP Chris Wickham. Unlike so many historians who emphasise particularities and contingencies, he was the master of constructing grand, coherent, beautifully rendered worlds out of his evidence. This, from his 2021 Past and Present essay, is a masterpiece of historical writing.

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