Some great tips on remote archival research from @sourcery_app grad student, Mohammad Edalati sourceryapp.org/2025/09/28/h...

Pretty disheartening to finally receive panel reviews on an IMLS proposal submitted in 2024 and not know whether the excellent scores weren't quite excellent enough or whether it was tanked for ... other reasons. #libraries #museums #digitalhumanities #dh

OH: “The biggest lie of grad school is that your job is to be smart. Your job is to be a project manager.”

“Over the summer, Maddie was able to use Sourcery to compile the final pieces of research for the third chapter of her dissertation. These materials have allowed her to move forward on her project earlier than expected and offered new research leads…” sourceryapp.org/2025/09/23/s...

Need something at NYPL? BPL? Or somewhere else in New York or Boston? Try Sourcery! (use SOCIAL10 for 10% off your first request) buff.ly/rN7YOj5

Sourcery requests cost $65?!? Yes, because we pay a living wage buff.ly/4sLXvr4

If I was currently researching in DC-area archives, I would sign up. You may know some grad students, or someone in between jobs, who have their LC researcher cards, or are immersed in collections at one of the Smithsonian Libraries, who might be interested.

In January, shortly after the inauguration, I floated the idea of The New England Option, a thought experiment about a regional, rather than national, approach to politics. Today it’s happening. foundhistory.org/2025/09/the-...

We’re hiring! We need people to get documents in DC and people who need documents in DC to help us with testing Sourcery ahead of launching in our third city. sourceryapp.org/2025/09/17/j...

“A university is a series of individual faculty entrepreneurs held together by a common grievance over parking." -Clark Kerr Never gets old. #highered

The surest way to win an award in Hollywood is to make a show about Hollywood. The Studio is … fine. But by no means is it great. variety.com/2025/tv/awar...

It seems like the new conventional fitness wisdom is that HIIT (high intensity interval training) is really good for you. This is something any swim coach from 1970 could have told you.

New issue of my newsletter: "The Reboot of Digital Humanities Now" — Discover the latest work from across the field and around the world newsletter.dancohen.org/archive/the-...

Social media gets the bad rap. But the phone is the root of the problem. www.theargumentmag.com/p/youre-bein...

Briefly noted for September 9, 2025: Teaching the power symbol; the Imperial War Museums and AI transcription; an ambitious roll-your-own project; and should humanities courses be harder? #dh #histsci #histtech #ai #humanities #higher ed

ICYMI: Sourcery is all new and filling requests at archives in New York and Boston. Get scans of the documents you need without the planes, trains, and automobiles from Sourcerers paid a living wage. Use REFERRAL10 and mention I sent you for 10% off your first request. buff.ly/p22qQoc

Big things to announce! Greenhouse Studios and i3 (a unit of the UConn Provost’s Office) are joining forces to better meet the challenge of scholarship in the digital age. I’ll be returning to teaching and research—and taking a long-overdue sabbatical! More here: foundhistory.org/2025/09/tran...

Google Gemini has been trained too well on my Internet presence. I asked it to suggest some plants for my yard, and it produced what it called, “a scholarly yet accessible garden design” 🤪

The all new Sourcery is here! Request scans from any archive in New York or Boston and our team of Sourcerers will get them for you! Get yours now! sourceryapp.org (Chicago, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. coming soon!)

Summoning the equanimity to write the final report for a federal grant that was cancelled without explanation is a special kind of bureaucratic absurdity.

Can we stop calling them “newsletters” already? They’re blogs, OK?

Here are a few start-of-semester links that are helping me think through AI’s role in education, research, and cultural heritage. buff.ly/XAikSZu #AI hashtag#highered hashtag#teaching hashtag#libraries hashtag#archives hashtag#museums

How do we reach an audience when the audience has scattered? New blog post: Digital Humanities Outreach and Media Fragmentation foundhistory.org/2025/08/digi... #dh #digitalhumanities

I miss “what my cat ate for breakfast” Twitter.

“When readers interact imaginatively with a book, they are still following the book’s lead, attempting to answer the book’s questions, responding to the book’s challenges and therefore putting their own convictions at risk.” Is this true? Is this how we really read? www.nytimes.com/2025/08/02/o...

For those of us in the humanities, the last 20 years have often felt like a siege. But maybe we’ve reached a nadir. Here are a few links that may provide a needed boost for the new semester. #AI #HigherEd #humanities #DH #digitalhumanities buff.ly/wruPQ47

ICYMI: 11 changes historians and archivists need to make in response to generative AI. Now with a new and improved reading list. #dh #digitalhumanities #history #archives #ai #highered #pedagogy foundhistory.org/2025/07/gene...

Yesterday I gave a talk on AI and archives at the Colby/Bates/Bowdoin Special Collections and Archives Staff Retreat. A lightly edited transcript and reference and reading list is on the blog. foundhistory.org/2025/07/gene...

If we had a functioning Congress, credit reporting companies wouldn’t also be able to sell you debt www.experian.com/lp/no-ding-d...

Reading anti-AI posts, it’s clear many people assume the point of a language model is to write *less.* This is why they perceive a response like “writing is thinking” as a compelling critique. But when models are used as interlocutors, I find the process actually involves *more* writing. +

Perfect! I already do this. www.gq.com/story/the-se... The Secret to Looking Hot in 2025? Dress Like It’s 2005 - GQ

Love Park in Philadelphia

The field of DH is indebted to @brettbobley.bsky.social‬, who has made an indelible impact on so many lives and careers, including mine. Brett founded and led the NEH Office of Digital Humanities with vision, insight, ambition, humor, and passion. And crocs. #ThanksBrett

Our open-source Sourcery project is seeking current or recent humanities grad students or MLIS students based in NYC to serve as beta testers and community ambassadors. Compensation is $1,000 for ca. 40 hrs. of work from July 1-31. Apply by June 19! sourcery-dev.web.app/ambassadors?...

❤️ NEH

Yesterday I gave a talk at the Science Museum, London in memory of my friend and doctoral advisor, Jim Bennett. foundhistory.org/2025/06/jim-...

Note to Democrats. Stop using the term “autocracy.” It may be more precise than “dictatorship” but it’s also more inscrutable and hoity toity. This is not how you bring ordinary people along.

Jazz was made for the stage, rock for the studio. I have kids, so rock gets most of my listening. But when I do get out, this is hard to beat.

“If Democrats are taxing people to build high-speed rail, that high-speed rail should exist; if they are taxing people to build electric vehicle chargers, those chargers should get built… “ Real power is doing things. @ezraklein.bsky.social’s theory of power www.nytimes.com/2025/06/08/o...

I’m in England, where I lived in the late 90s and early 2000s, for the first time in (more than?) a decade. I’m struck by how NOT different it is than the U.S. these days.

Life lesson: You will never satisfy a dentist or a veterinarian. You will never floss enough or feed your pet healthily enough to avoid their stink eye, so stop stressing.

I feel like our community isn’t really doing quite enough to prepare for a post-IMLS, post-NEH future. #dh #digitalhumanities

With the semester's end, I've been experimenting with Google Gemini 2.5 Pro (preview) to see how it works with different things on my to-do list. This morning, I asked it for something more creative: a history of the future. Here's that history, on the blog. foundhistory.org/2025/05/writ...

I'm working with Google Gemini 2.5 pro to build a research and writing schedule for myself for the next 12 months. Without asking, it gave me two weeks off for Christmas. If you don't think the AI tools have gotten much better since the release of ChatGPT in late-2022, you're not paying attention.

I volunteered at my kid’s swim meet today. They gave me a yellow vest. I felt like a French activist.

Workers need a raise, the infrastructure is failing (especially in summertime), and fares have risen ahead of inflation. Why can’t we run a decent train service in the Northeast, the richest, densest place in the world? www.nytimes.com/live/2025/05...

If the Internet had come of age at any time in the 20th century aside from the radical laissez-faire 80s and 90s, we would not have Casey Means for Surgeon General. apnews.com/article/dona...

For decades now, people have turned to veterans of the Clinton administration to ask how Democrats can win the Presidency. How come no one ever says, “Find a right-leaning third party candidate to take 20% of the vote”? /us/podcast/the-opinions/id1762898126?i=1000706781042

Taking bets: Leo XIV’s Villanova ties boosts its application numbers as much as the basketball championships.

This semester I taught my department’s required writing course. Instead of writing papers, each student had to research, script, record, and produce a four-episode podcast series on a digital culture topic of their choosing.