Financing roads has always been a challenge for communities & governments. In the 1600s the English started putting up barriers -- turnpikes -- and charging fees. @genejean.bsky.social and @howtoreadthisch.art tell all. N.E. USA still calls toll roads turnpikes. how-to-history.com/2026/05/27/t...

"Gentlemen, you can't report in here! This is the press office!"

Thought I knew something about English history but I never heard of Church Courts, which enforced local morality and registered wills. Great resource for genealogists and social historians, as @joesaunders1.bsky.social @howtohistory.bsky.social explain. how-to-history.com/2026/04/29/c...

Exactly

Photography is art mediated/ assisted by technology. So why aren't AI novels art?

Suburbs weren't always fashionable leafy neighborhoods for the well-off. @joesaunders1.bsky.social tells all, including the etymology of "extramural" @howtohistory.bsky.social how-to-history.com/2026/02/25/s...

lol @mchinn.bsky.social finds EJ Antonini & the Heritage Foundation creating excellent econometrics teaching material by making many stupid mistakes that beginners should avoid. econbrowser.com/archives/202...

Antiquaries like to potter around cool stuff left by people from the past! Long on observation and short on theory, they get looked down on by academic historians. @joesaunders1.bsky.social @howtohistory.bsky.social gives them their due. how-to-history.com/2026/01/28/a...

"You were given the choice between endorsing the quack RFKjr and losing your seat. You chose the quack. And you will lose your seat."

Before insurance companies & government welfare, people set up "friendly societies" to assist each other when hard times hit. They kept careful records, @howtohistory.bsky.social & Joe Saunders write, which increasingly furnish data to historians. how-to-history.com/2025/12/31/f...

A surprise gift at the end of 2025: This review from @jayhancock.bsky.social in @wirobooks.bsky.social. Thank you! 📚💙 #booksky, #animals, #dogs

I want to know what @robin-f.bsky.social thinks about this! Seems sketchy -- certainly the Cambridge PR headline "Britain's economy boomed..." archaeology.org/news/2025/09...

If you were hoping to see a teenage Ben Affleck* talking to Dr Peter Reynolds @butserancientfarm.co.uk before the weekend, then don't worry: we've got you covered. 👍 www.youtube.com/watch?v=CeJj...

Britain is crosshatched with lyke ways -- paths for transporting the newly dead toward burial & eternity. Famous, hikeable ones in Dartmoor and York Moors. @annacusack.bsky.social @howtohistory.bsky.social tell all about them. howtohistory.substack.com/p/corpse-roads

My piece in the @wirobooks.bsky.social. The new oral culture and the end of reading & writing.(!) www.washingtonindependentreviewofbooks.com/features/its...

Newsmax to pay $67 million to Dominion Voting over 2020 election coverage By @maddylauria.bsky.social for NPR News www.npr.org/2025/08/18/n...

Build your own newspaper/ magazine! Escape email newsletter hell! RSS has been a primary news source for me every day for 15 years. Now it's making a comeback & @molly.wiki tells you how to do it. Yay! www.citationneeded.news/curate-with-...

Like @lucyanne.bsky.social I am posting my ancestors' smallpox vaccination credentials. Why aren't the rest of you?

One hundred years ago today my great-grandparents, Irene & Eb, got vaccinated, helping to wipe smallpox from the planet. Thank you for your service!

We want to thank reviewer #2 for the very constructive comments. We were able to incorporate all of them. The manuscript is now much more clear.

You do not have to say “pro vaccine groups.” You can say the vast majority of doctors and scientists and the American Medical Association.

After taking a somewhat longer-than-expected hiatus from social media (motivated by divisive and mentally draining rhetoric on other platforms), I think it's about time to re-emerge. To re-introduce myself - hi! I'm Ron, and I'm a gerontologist interested in elder and LGBTQIA+ equity and advocacy.

Scholars following facts regardless of ideology get bigger audiences. Good! They "not only attract a new... audience for their recent work, this new audience also engages with... the author's previous... papers, thereby helping to break down echo chambers." www.anderson.ucla.edu/sites/defaul...

Humans: the same everywhere. "Most participants tolerated inequality when it benefited them but were intolerant of inequality when it benefited others." papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Implement a 100% tariff and ruin a movie Hexadecapussy

A few years ago Baltimore, Md., merchants launched Bnotes -- currency for buying from local shops and restaurants. @howtohistory.bsky.social @annacusack.bsky.social show how local trade tokens have substituted for sovereign currency for a long time. howtohistory.substack.com/p/trade-tokens

It's @sheilaghogilvie.bsky.social & Tyler Cowen on plague, social mobility, European growth. "It’s quite good to be a foreigner here [UK] because if you behave in an eccentric way, they think it’s just because you’re foreign. They don’t blame you for it." conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/she...

That's bullshit -- the ACA expansion is a separate pool of federal money that bolsters hospitals and state economies as well as population health. But defend it! Identify Rs' chief target -- low income adults.

Some moviegoers appreciate the cinematography and acting. I log the modernistic howlers in the script. From The Brutalist: "significant others," "in the interest transparency" (really!?), "tropical depression," "he reached out to me" (for business), "hassling women & children," "I've done the math"

Pretty slick @proton.me. Don't automatically empty trash baskets for non-premium users. Let the trash pile up (12k msgs in mine). Then tell customers their storage is full & they need to upgrade.

Incredibly stupid and tragic. Alawite Syrians (Assad loyalists) have everything to lose by provoking and resisting the new (seemingly, relatively) moderate regime. Free link www.nytimes.com/2025/03/07/w...

Love this @joesaunders1.bsky.social piece on microfilm and microfiche. Fussing with film reels and fiche magnifiers has become a weird archaic skill needed by historians along with learning Latin and reading Carolingian miniscule. howtohistory.substack.com/p/microfilm-...

Rachana and @kffhealthnews.org and @kff.org are among your essential follows for understanding the effects on health care of the batshit crazy annihilation of government capacity by the Trumpbots.

If you want to run the government like a business the first thing you do is fire half the accounts receivable department. Bravo. www.nytimes.com/2025/03/04/u...

BREAKING: DOJ goes to SCOTUS over order that State/USAID pay owed contracts by the end of the day. This is coming out of Judge Ali’s Feb. 13 TRO, which he ordered the government to adhere to — with a deadline — in a new order issued on Tuesday.

NEW - Rep. Mark Alford tells fired KC federal workers ‘God has a plan’ at hostile town hall Folks, I've been covering politics for a dozen years in Kansas and Missouri and this is probably the most intense, angry town hall I have ever seen www.kansascity.com/news/politic...

New, from me: DOGE's mass firings of probationary employees are a masterclass in how not to manage public organizations. They don’t have a plan to fix what they are breaking because they don’t understand or care about the damage they are doing. 🧵 donmoynihan.substack.com/p/doge-misma...

Alexander Hamilton assured the nation, in Federalist No. 76, that requiring Senate consent for high executive officers "would tend greatly to prevent the appointment of unfit characters..." okey dokey www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/...

I like it when @delong.social recommends fiction. It's how I discovered Alan Furst (noir 1930s Europe), who is newly relevant! TIL about the Small Change series, described by Brad as "how people resist, acquiesce, or enthusiastically embrace" looming fascism. braddelong.substack.com/p/review-sma...

"For tech bros, data is the means of control. At last count, Musk employees have control over sensitive student aid data, SBA data, federal employee data..., social security and tax refund data, [Medicare] data..." donmoynihan.substack.com/p/meditation...

Honestly, when I first saw DOGE mentioned in the newspaper last week, I first assumed that it was yet another new flood control system for Venice, like MOSE. Sadly not. Choose your republics well, I guess - and look after them. 🇮🇹🐬

Xpostfactoid is usually not this boisterous, which is a clue that appallingly bad & stupid things are happening

lol

Really rich. Nobody fights harder against safe, reliable & affordable energy for Marylanders than the Sierra Club. thebaltimorebanner.com/politics-pow...

Did not know this was part of the tort bar economy. Promote crazy ideas about medicine & vaccines, then collect kickbacks from the resulting litigation. www.nytimes.com/2025/01/22/u...

As someone w/ archaeology sympathies who never could have hacked it in the field, I smiled at this wisdom from Rachel Glaves & @howtohistory.bsky.social "The glamour of archaeology is maintained for those who work indoors" tinyurl.com/3nue572c

I liked Marco Visscher's *The Power of Nuclear* a lot. Anti-nuke environmentalist decides nuclear energy is crucial to fight climate change. But he doesn’t make it about himself. Book presents the argument on its own merits, fact by fact, tradeoff by tradeoff. jayhancock.substack.com/p/how-to-thi...

“Riveting Storytelling for All of America" is the worst newspaper mission statement I have ever heard. I guess "Enquiring Minds Want to Know" was already taken. www.nytimes.com/2025/01/16/b...

My review in @wirobooks.bsky.social of Marco Visscher's newest. He's a former nuke-energy critic who examined the facts and now supports it. One tidbit: NOBODY died at Fukushima from radiation. www.washingtonindependentreviewofbooks.com/bookreview/t...