Last semester, I shifted what had been a 4-part series of online discussion posts to a 4-part series of in-class, pen and paper short essays. I've never received more positive feedback in student evals from a single pedagogical decision ever. www.chronicle.com/article/to-s...

AIR ASSAULT ON PARADOX STUDIOS NOW

Can't believe I had to shake this man's hand. Sic 'em bears?

The Long 19th Century: 1789-1914 The Longer 19th Century: 1756-1948 The Longest 19th Century: 1642-1991

Johannesburg’s Nyamakop Studios turns African artifact repatriation into a bold heist game. Protagonist Nomali and a crew of ordinary citizens reclaim 70 real-life artifacts taken during the colonial era. The 30-person dev team includes people from Zimbabwe, Ghana, Nigeria, Ethiopia and Tanzania.

In this video, inspired by @sonjadrimmer.bsky.social I read Evgeny Morozov's essay, 'Socialism after AI' or, as much as I could endure. Morozov writes about 'AI' using glittering generalities, lacking understanding or acknowledgment of the actually existing industry: youtu.be/NUby9eTbsuM

What this ad doesn’t show: Ring also rolled out facial recognition for humans. I wrote to them months ago about this. Their answer? They won’t ask for your consent. This definitely isn’t about dogs—it’s about mass surveillance. x.com/Phil_Lewis_/...

Did you know that the legendary historian Samuel Eliot Morrison received a commission from FDR to join the WWII Navy & write its history from the inside, & that he narrowly escaped a kamikaze pilot among other episodes? That & more in today’s Valentine’s blog post! @hcrichardson.bsky.social 🗃️

"Eighty-two years after his execution by the Gestapo on June 16, 1944, the Jewish historian and resistance fighter Marc Bloch will be inducted into the Pantheon on June 23... His family requested that 'the far right, in all its forms, be excluded from any participation in the ceremony.'"

Now online and accepting applications. The 2026 AAS Summer Seminar in the History of the Book— “Paper Relations: Hisrories and Futures of Indigenous Print Cultures” Led by Katie Walkiewicz and Kelly Wisecup. Deadline to apply is April 3!

Discord will require a face scan or ID for full access next month

Welcome back.

This is the smart person’s “if wishes were horses.” Morozov repeatedly asserts that technologies have politics but he chooses to overlook here that technologies do also have material properties that circumscribe their politics. www.theideasletter.org/essay/social...

Historian here President Abraham Lincoln opposed the Mexican War as a land grab for slavery when he was a first term Congressman from Illinois.

Always exciting to get the latest delivery off @dgb-history.bsky.social’s ‘Video Games and the Humanities’ conveyor belt!

hey remember when I got shit on for years for trying to warn people that GamerGate was just Nazis and not just about harassing women and not just about some “consumer revolt”

Highly recommend this article showing how the "They're Eating the Pets" refrain emerged from the right's participatory propaganda machine. Extremely relevant, as many Haitian immigrants (the targets of that false rumor/campaign) lose their status Feb 3. americanunreality.substack.com/p/american-u...

So satisfying to find niche screencaps for lecture. 🤌 Today we read Marc Steinberg's @msteinbrg.bsky.social excellent translation of Ōtsuka Eiji's "World and Variation: The Reproduction and Consumption of Narrative" in Mechademia Second Arc 5, no. 1 (2010). 📖🔗 www.researchgate.net/publication/...

Every accusation is a confession.

If you campaigned for the presidency on a promise to destroy these assholes, you would win a landslide the size of FDR in 1936, when he campaigned on a promise to destroy these assholes.

Peter Thiel has been open about this for a long time. Trump is a way to break the republic, which can then be replaced by “free economic zones” with oligarchs as dictators and tech as a taskmaster for helpless humans without any rights. (1/2)

Definitely seems like they destroyed the country on purpose.

A short new piece I wrote for a wider audience: #ConstantinusAfricanus – A North African Migrant Revolutionizes #Medieval Latin Medicine #ConstantinetheAfrican #medievalsky #histmed #medhist #booksky @ddbkultur.bsky.social www.deutsche-digitale-bibliothek.de/content/blog...

Whatever happened to YouTube dub shows like "Dragon Ball Z Abridged" and its ilk? www.typebarmagazine.com/anime-abridg...

The political press very clearly understands “truth” as a social agreement, a compromise position between everyone important enough to have an opinion. It did not reflect on how this would allow dedicated liars to go all-in on lies again and again and dramatically shift the position.

"The old Trek is dying, and the new Trek struggles to be born; now is the time of Doctor Pulaski.” – Antonio Gramsci

For any elected official who needs to hear this, I impart a lesson learned from the NFL: When the other team is tired and on the back foot, you don’t call a timeout so they can catch their breath. You grind their fucking face into the dirt until the final whistle blows and you’ve won the game.

They're gonna call it Stancilgrad

...and MAGA's organizational strategies are entirely fueled by mountains of billionaire cash--which for some strange reason doesn't seem to be replicable on the left. I wonder why?

(Dude suddenly stops pushing his broom across the floor of the Death Star) Does this look like a big laser to anyone else

It's great that some GOP officials are pulling back from what the secret police are doing in Minneapolis. It's great that it is unpopular in polls. But under conditions of fascism, those are not the only incentives from which decisions will get made. 1/x

A big part of the story here is that women like Renee Good are braver and stronger than they could have ever imagined and that just doesn't fit with what MAGA men tell themselves about how gender works. It just does not compute.

My dear friend and colleague @wernimont.bsky.social and I are uniting like Voltron, using our 40+ years of combined experience in digital humanities to write Undisciplined Digital Humanities: Designing for the World We Want. (not the actual cover) +

this is a fake problem. no one is saying this to regular, offline people who are coming around. they’re saying it to people who are engaged in professional political analysis who committed professional malpractice by scolding people who saw what was coming. no, those people shouldn’t get a break.

no one will play Tarkov with me so I replaced the ungrateful bastards with an AI. terrible mistake

Submit to ELO26 January 30! Don't miss out on this online conference. Participate from anywhere on Earth (that has internet access). anastasiasalter.net/ELO2026/

Red or Blue, now is the time to email your senator. Tomorrow morning is the time to call their offices. I don't care if your senator is already on side (give them your courage) or if your senator is wholly useless (give them some of your fear). Make sure they hear from you.

Absolutely right. Call them all, call them repeatedly, don't stop.

It appears that this legend owns a little bookstore — and you can order books from him instead of Bezos. Link in next post.

The "country" Bondi is thinking of:

On the weakness of state terror: once ppl internalize the regime's lawless brutality, that they are no safer in their homes than in the streets (& vice versa), and that their unwavering defiance is what confounds & disempowers the regime, they also realize they have nothing to lose but their fear.

"we went to bed one night old-fashioned, conservative, Compromise Union Whigs and waked up stark mad Abolitionists"

the regime considers all resistance violent resistance. you chanting while holding a sign and carefully remaining on the sidewalk is as worthy of the death penalty to them as someone throwing a Molotov.

The federal government is executing American citizens in the middle of the street for exercising their constitutional right to freedom of speech. This is tyranny. No free people can accept this kind of government. We need to bring an end to the Trump regime.

If only you were in a position of power to exercise some kind of leverage against the administration to make this happen.

This little book really just is required reading these days

Alex Pretti’s last words were “are you ok?” said the woman next to him who ICE also pepper sprayed in the face.

This was a death squad.