networksofny2026.bigcartel.com/product/netw... hi, did you like my book Networks of New York when it came out in 2016? you might like the updated 2026 edition which I'll be releasing in September and you can pre-order now

Chat, is it good to have an unretracted crane directly behind your house during a tornado watch

and now a fourth! when it rains it pours, I guess

Something I would find useful would be an undergrad-friendly history of AI, from perceptron to transformer, explaining the rise of different ideas, the “AI winter,” etc. I know of encyclopedia articles that don’t quite do that and books that tell the story at length, but I need a v concise version.

fellow academics! want a silly fun community for writing this summer? join me in @thrivephd.bsky.social summer camp! www.thrive-phd.com/summercamp

if I have to have one more contradictory, confusing, or evasive conversation with a contractor about our heat situation, I am going to explode (alas I have to have probably a thousand more because the universe hates me, this house, and heat pumps)

I don't wear glasses often -- I'm just a skosh farsighted so I only wear them for computer eyestrain -- but wow turns out having a prescription that is from this decade really does make a difference

I'm a busy person with an aversion to admin work. it's so easy for me to default to just staying with the same email service I've been using. but they are trying so hard to push me into doing the FUCKING WORK to leave.

Counterpoint: Yes they are, and that is good

The Denali sled dog puppy cam is currently a load-bearing part of my stress management system. www.nps.gov/dena/learn/p...

why does every goddamned account need 2FA? why does a website with no financial or personal information require this level of security, I genuinely do not understand

you know what the real data center is. the human mind. thank you,

this is the way

waited so long to finish this book that my iPad somehow erased any evidence I’d ever started it? disconcerting. but at least this cafe is nice!

not too far from THE MEMORY HUNTERS by @itsamia.bsky.social

foolishly, I thought this dissertation drafter was the closest to being a decent book draft chapter. instead, I have found that past-me somehow made it maximally NOT chronological, where every paragraph contains something that is out of order from the paragraphs around it, for no discernible reason?

my late grandma picked up quilting when I was a kid, and was a self-described shitty quilter. Her supreme enthusiasm for her shitty quilting has really been a model for me in doing my own occasional shitty quilting! i say this with complete earnestness! readfoundobject.substack.com/p/we-turned-...

👀

You can cleanly pinpoint the advent of 'modern warfare' as the moment when medical science and state capacity improved to the point that an army could keep most of its soldiers from shitting themselves to death before they've even seen the enemy.

Few things make me feel more powerful than signing my kid up for parks district activities that have dozens of people on a waitlist within two minutes.

Settling into “To Philly With Love,” the Hallmark movie about a historian falling in love with an archivist in Philly. decider.com/2026/04/18/t...

Remember that whole conversation about eugenics and "real science"? Well, this is for that.

I want a "conference" where every academic cooks a dish for everyone and we all talk about our work casually while cooking. People can sous chef for each other. We eat and talk about our work in progress. You submit an abstract and a recipe.

Both situations should be a reminder that our job as historians is never to decide what history is worth doing based on what we imagine might be "relevant" in some hazy future.

Humanity did that. Science did that. Publicly-funded research did that. Excellent universities did that. Diversity did that. International cooperation did that. Artemis II is a perfect example of what we can do at our best. Welcome home, Integrity crew!

so far in hungary, Vance has stumped for a kleptocratic dictator, regurgitated putinist propaganda, and is now indulging the gutter racism of his hosts. it really is an unvarnished look at what the ideological character of the trump regime is.

tempted to do a @davekarpf.bsky.social style live-post of this article

reading something in the NYT and getting extraordinarily angry, like one does (it's not even about the news! i was already mad about the news! now i am just mad about the NYT!)

one of these days i'm gonna give in and write the ozymandias-but-arctic novel that won't leave me alone, so I'm gonna go ahead and toss this on my teetering stack of books

I know I am not alone in feeling particularly powerless right at this moment. Feeling both very small (awe-inspiring) and very small (terrifying)

Reminiscing about my time living in DC. If you've lived in DC or spent time there, especially in the Cap Hill area, let's look at some of the places you could be killed for being in range of the blast radius of a Mk 84 2000lb bomb dropped by the USAF or Israeli Air Force on a legitimate target

it is sometimes a bummer not having come from a Jewish family and thus not having any family traditions or recipes (other than what I borrow from my in-laws). but on the other hand I get to make whatever the most delicious version of anything is

Famously nothing is as reliable and unbiased as a primary source

📣 New historical data visualization! "How Fast Was the Mail?" is an interactive map showing how long information took to travel across the US between 1882-1908: cblevins.github.io/mail-time/ +

My latest:

It is pretty mind-blowing (and hilarious) how extreme the slicing and dicing can get when going from dissertation to book -- even when keeping most of the same basic content, if not the exact prose. Everything is turned inside-out and sometimes also shredded and then reconstituted like hash browns.

reposting this once more for the week!

I cannot fathom the personality it takes to make a huge bequest to a university and then insist (or even just acquiesce to!) a large institution being named after yourself.

I just realized yesterday was Match Day for medical residents! If you're curious about what the hell Match is, read this article I wrote about the algorithm behind Match and its history: www.kernelmag.io/5/shapley

Absolutely horrific nightmare events here. Utterly predictable and utterly inhumane. Cannot fathom what it was like to deal with this.

I went to a DOD school in Naples (Italy) for K-3 and every year we took a field trip to the fish market. I have a very vivid memory of my kindergarten teacher letting an octopus seller put a live octopus on her arm.

where’s Carmen Sandiego when you need her

this morning instead of writing i am opening approximately 100 tabs of heirloom tomatoes

I just bought a dozen eggs for 75¢ like it’s 1970

A functional country would yeet polymarket and kalshi into the sun

this obscenely large truck is parked behind me on the street. It’s so tall that my SUV backup cam can’t see the hood from a normal parking distance. this is the city! why would you possibly need this?

what I planned to do this afternoon: - a two-hour focused block to draft this chapter opening what I actually did: - read the entire bibliography of a 2018 dissertation - downloaded at least two books & four articles (not for my current book but for my hypothetical next book project)

right?

if you're looking to work off anger about the political situation, may i recommend to you modernist art in all its forms: music, literature, visual art, whatever. and you'll realize that people 100 years ago were grappling with the same crap we're dealing with now.

After watching Alysa Liu’s free skate, my kids spent the rest of the evening shouting THAT’S WHAT IM FRIKKIN TALKING ABOUT at each other