Today we have "History on the Tabletop: A Brief Guide for Evaluating Historical Board Games" by @jacobleetom.bsky.social This is the second article in the Playing Inside: Board Games, Video Games, and the Indoors series edited by @theliftline.bsky.social niche-canada.org/2025/09/25/h... #envhum

Next week I am faced with a difficult choice: Whether to get Final Fantasy Tactics and Hades II on Steam Deck or Switch 2.

My latest column for the Chronicle of Higher Ed is now live. It's an argument for including AI-critical voices in campus conversations and policymaking workgroups, and I'm proud to get this dissenting piece into the mainstream genAI/higher ed discourse. Please read and share if you're so inclined 🙂

Call for papers: "Animals on the Move: Towards a Multispecies Understanding of Mobilities." Deadline: 30 September. cham.fcsh.unl.pt/actividades-... #envhist #envhum #animalhist

C'était aujourd'hui l'anniversaire de la naissance de Qubilai Qa'an , quatrième successeur de Chinggis Khan à la tête de l'Empire mongol (1260-1294), et l'un des empereurs mongols les plus célèbres. #mongolsky #mongolempire #tengri #medievalsky #chinahistory #sinology

Star Wars Micro Machines promotional poster art by Ralph McQuarrie (Galoob, 1996-97)

His Majesty. Postcard from my collection, mailed 1907.

9. And one should not be amazed when reads about so many people on horseback. However, every Tartar moves on a horse, and their horses are small and without shoes, with bridles without bits, and their food is grass and hay without grain. And the mentioned Tartars live on fish and meat,

The Ivory Tower. I might need this card.

We need new professional models that don’t assume stable salaries, institutional subsidies, or invisible labor. If we want history to thrive, we need to rethink how we value and pay for its work. 10/

Vote Chris!

It's an online repository for researchers to share work without a company profiting from the platform. It started out as "Humanitites Commons," I think at Michigan State, but has since expanded beyond the humanities. And I get more downloads from there than academia/.edu anyway. about.hcommons.org

“I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing,” as the from SF author Joanna Maciejewska memorably put it, “not for AI to do my art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes.” These stories show what happens when it’s the other way around."

Deleted my academia edu account. Fuck AI, and fuck all those who collaborate with the people who are grifting to make money off of it.

I'm sorry, worldwide, irrevocable, non-exclusive, transferable permission to my voice and likeness? For what now? In any manner for any purpose??? This is in academia/.edu's new ToS, which you're prompted to agree to on login. Anyway I'll be jumping ship. You can find my stuff at hcommons.org.

If it seems like every issue leads to right-wing pundits attacking colleges and universities lately, it’s not random. They’ve wanted to defund and delegitimize higher education for decades. They’re using any pretext to call for faculty firings, defunding public education, canceling grants, etc.

11. Both of these miniatures are taken from the codex with the French text by Hayton: Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, NAF 886, fol. 16v, 17v. gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/b...

The full text of 𝘚𝘱𝘦𝘤𝘪𝘦𝘴 𝘊𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘯𝘴𝘪𝘯𝘨: 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘊𝘶𝘭𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘢𝘭 𝘗𝘳𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘤𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘙𝘢𝘵 𝘊𝘰𝘯𝘵𝘳𝘰𝘭 by Gabriela Jarzębowska is now available on our Environment & Society Portal! #envhist #envhum

"The grandchildren of legendary musical artist Bruce Springsteen are reportedly exhausted after being serenaded with a soul-scorching series of lullabies that made them believe in the power of rock and roll but also just want to fucking sleep, confirmed sources." thehardtimes.net/music/bruce-...

We've published a new article in 'Worldwide Waste', in which Saskia Abrahms-Kavunenko writes on 'Anthropocene Ouroboros: Shimmying Plastics and the Contamination of Time'. Online here: www.doi.org/10.3197/whpw... #openaccess #waste #plastic #anthropocene

i have said this before but when “getting rid of race in admissions” for the administration means “you can’t even try to reach out to underrepresented communities and encourage them to apply and if you do it is illegal discrimination against white people” then the actual goal here is segregation

Judith Butler: "It is important to refuse the notion that this is just how things are right now, invoking a feckless realpolitik that justifies complicity with a brutal and rising authoritarianism."

The release of personally identifiable information that was not relevant to the government’s Title VI investigation was improper. The Trump admin is investigating how the UC responded to claims of antisemitism, not the individuals named in the complaints. The AAUP condemns this move by UC Berkeley.

You cannot understand politics in the United States in 2025 without understanding Gamergate. It is the Rosetta Stone for our current nightmare.

Looks like all the NRCs and Title VI FLAS etc. have been canceled. No surprise, they canned the entire office overseeing them in February. But still a complete disaster for area studies, today and in the future.

1. Fragment from the anonymous “Catalog of the Friars Minor,” circa 1450. #mongolsky #tengri “Item in provincia Sancti Anthonii [jacet] frater Odoricus, qui .XXXIIIIor. annos inter infideles legebat verbum vite, predicans multis annis et lingwis, peragratus pervenit ad Indos,

Today we have "Digital Translations and Playable Space: Ready, Set, Yokohama!" by @jkdahl.bsky.social This is the first article in the Playing Inside: Board Games, Video Games, and the Indoors series, edited by @theliftline.bsky.social niche-canada.org/2025/09/11/d... #envhist #envhum #japan

An early example of testimonials in Urdu advertising! For the homeopathic treatment Amrat Dhara, which will help you with "any struggle in life," in a 1931 edition of Sadaqat (Kanpur). The advertisement features "a few letters of the 36,000" that they claim to have received from users 👀. 🗃️

1. Pegolotti’s “Trading Guide” seems to be the first source clarifying the amount of tax on the value of goods exported from and imported into Caffa in the part of his text where he describes the conditions of trade in the Golden Horde in the early 1320s. #mongolsky #tengri

"Would you kindly make a good adaptation?"

Trump Claims He Can’t Be Expected To Remember Every Birthday Card He Sends To Child Molesters https://theonion.com/trump-claims-he-cant-be-expected-to-remember-every-birthday-card-he-sends-to-child-molesters/

Immediately adding this into my lexicon.

Hello everyone, I hope this Friday morning finds you as inexplicably happy as this 18th-century sea-lion

Please check out my review of Tsering Döndrup’s magnificent and important novel, *The Red Wind Howls* (tr. Chris Peacock) in @chinabooksreview.com (then read the book!) Thanks to editors @alexludoboyd.bsky.social and @alecash.net chinabooksreview.com/2025/09/04/i... @columbiaup.bsky.social

Join us online Monday to hear Tina Adcock discussing A Cold Colonialism. As always, you are welcome to ask your own questions too! Details below.

enshittification | noun | when a digital platform is made worse for users, in order to increase profits

So sick of these centrist impurity tests. Not everyone can meet your standards of being a huge piece of shit, sometimes you have to just grit your teeth and vote for someone good even if that goes against your principles

A great write up by Amanda Lanzillo, a great fellow IU CEUS alum on why area studies matters and why we need to fight to preserve it as it is under assault from all sides.

I wish my in publication article about Mongolian socialist veterinary science in which I make the crazy argument that "vaccines are good actually" was out now. For no particular reason. Doesn't resonate with today's news at all.

Chapter One: Rebellion Has a High-Price Toupée

1. Two very similar Dominican accounts, one century apart, regarding the advantage of Muslims over their Catholic rivals in preaching among the Mongols. #mongolsky #tengri The Dominican Riccoldo da Montecroce, “Libellus ad nationes orientales”, c. 1300, regarding the Ilkhanate:

15 minutes!!!!!

I actually have a bunch of PhDs in my pocket. it's not as useful as you'd think. half of them keep telling me niche facts about the agricultural power of Norfolk in the 1700s, and the other half keep asking me if I can help them find funding

Star Trek celebrates Labor Day

Happy Labor Day, comrades 🫡

I had not realized that bison were found in the Carolinas & Florida, as drawn by Mark Catesby in 1700s below. But indeed they were: extension.sdstate.edu/show-me-home... #envhist

How thrilling to open the New York Times "Design" section on this beautiful Labor Day weekend to see an article on our colleague James Delbourgo's newest book, A Noble Madness: The Dark Side of Collecting from Antiquity to Now. # Rutgers www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/798395...

It is highly debatable that "Mongol rulers tended to adopt the cultures and religions local to the areas under their direct control", making branches of the imperial family "slowly diverged from one another, having less and less in common." #mongolsky #tengri #mongolempire #medievalsky