This may be obscure, but I ended finding an interesting theory while reading the translators notes in the Forme of Cury. (a 13th century English scroll about cooking.)

He noted that the word Pynes, which is almost always assumed to mean pine seeds/nuts actually references the Mulberry, a berry that looks suspiciously like a pinecone.

For those of you who are or have been academic, do you or your department do anything in the way of public outreach? And for everyone, do you feel like it's something you're obligated to do?

I got into a spat a while ago with one of my old professors when I suggested a big "what-if" that it might be neat if historians could find work as public educators in, say, libraries. It probably wasn't a good idea--I was an undergrad at the time and didn't understand what historians do as well, but the basic idea was that since the state is already funding universities, shouldn't academic institutions be obligated to package academics' work in a way that anyone can benefit from them? My idea was like, hire a PhD or two full-time to hold regular lectures and roundtables, basically like academic blogs do online, except the academics get paid for it and it doubles as a community-building thing that gets people coming through libraries again.

My professor told me I was "contributing to the pauperization of academia," and that high-level education should be expensive because we shouldn't be breaking our backs for chump change. I'll leave out the gory details, but since we have a lot of academics and non-academic historians here, I'd like to year y'all's takes on state-funded public outreach, whatever your country might be. Hope that ramble made sense, I'm running on about one hour of sleep in the past two days.