Drinking coffee and looking at plants is my favorite season.

It is June. Act accordingly.

Real talk: Do I need another indulgent pair of shoes?

Funny that all of these musicians are now dropping out of the White House 250 event and I’m like, who even is that?

Hot take: I’m not convinced LinkedIn is real.

I noticed this for the first time just the other day and had a full-blown panic attack.

You know, the thing is, there will come a day when we don't have to see his stupid face or hear his idiotic voice every fucking day. If he doesn't kill us all first, that day will happen in our lifetimes.

I still can't believe we are marking the 250th by bringing bloodsport to the people's house just so our moron leader can cosplay as emperor. Americans are a historic embarrassment.

Okay, legal historians, here's another one: Why would a defendant "tender a bill of exception" alongside a special verdict?

Question for my legal historians: What is a "special verdict" and why would a jury issue one in, say, the 1790s?

This is amazing. Organic chaos. The anti-AI. So pure.

Looking for a speaker for your 250 event? Want to better understand how the heck we got here? Call your local early American historian! civics.shear.org

I’ve been planning to read all of these over the summer and it’s mostly out of respect for Stephen Colbert.

Fuck.

Trying to make a readable narrative out of genealogy is hard and confusing as hell. Squeaked by with 510 words today. #team500

Perhaps the AI summary of the Constitution that current members of Congress scanned before being sworn in failed to mention Article 1?

If they’re willing to be this shameless before the midterms, after November they’re just going to pull up on the IRS with a truck and a shovel to just load up on our tax dollars.

A timeless classic.

Silence Of Magic….

Binging the new season of Couples Therapy so hard.

Still blows my mind how despite all the ineptitude, the corruption, the criming, the damage wrought, the craven, cruel, and stupid shit he says hourly, the live-streaming of mental incapacity, his brand is so strong that low-information voters still shrug it off with “bUt He’S a buSiNeSSmAn.”

865 words today. Most of the end will need serious rewriting. Just. Keep. Going. #team500

Preach.

Got a late start today and was sucked into a genealogy rabbit hole but still made 563 words today. Forward! #team500

Is @historianess.mastodon.sdf.org.ap.brid.gy here to #team500 with me just like old times?

I am hellbent on finishing two more chapters this summer. Please look away if public accountability metrics annoy you. First day back on chapter 4 today and I made 587 words. Hoping to make some more tomorrow. #team500

The Slopquincentennial.

My partner and I live in different time zones. We FaceTime every night. I never get enough sleep. Once the semester ends and we can be on the same schedule and I can get eight hours of sleep, it’s so wonderful I could cry.

Blue got a whole paragraph in my last.

These manmaxxing stories are my Roman Empire.

Ceci n'est pas une pipe.

We took Ruthie to the dog park last night after sundown. Did not expect to discover an after-hours corgi rave. Corgis in costumes draped in lights running around to house music. Ruthie made lots of friends. So Las Vegas.

Every year I tell myself I'm not going to read my student evaluations because negative comments gut me completely. And every year I cave and read them anyway. This year, I'm glad I did. I worked my ass off this semester, took some risks, got really positive feedback. I learned a lot from them too.

Canvas, the Strait of Hormuz for American education

Please listen to historians.

Imagine putting all that energy into creating a thriving modern society instead of a decades-long crusade to institutionalize white supremacy. Have they ever thought of, like, doing something else for a change, or are we just going to keep playing this one note on loop forever?

I’ll never forget that OAH spring 2025 watching people walk around, staring at their phones in shock as their NEH grants were terminated in real time.

Being in higher ed right now kind of feels like watching administrations steer your ship directly at the iceberg, while everyone on board is pointing and screaming, and they’re like, “yes we know isn’t it beautiful?”

Asked my Legal History students a question I don’t really like since I don’t do prognostication, but thought it worthwhile: What comes next? Over the semester, we’d studied moments when our Constitution collapsed and analyzed ways it got rebuilt. Their answers were fascinating:

Okay, hear me out: Or maybe, maybe, Americans are not as dumb as you think.

I just saw a whole bunch of bighorn sheep along I 70! With big horns! So cool!!! 🐏

You guys, I'm so distraught. As the unofficial Chair of the unofficial CU Boulder Heated Rivalry Studies Program, I just finished book 1, Game Changer, about Scott and Kip. In the show, Kip is an art historian. In the book, Kip was a HISTORY major and he get into an MA program in HISTORY.

Nobody will be more delighted to be proven wrong about this than me, but I’m not going to hold my breath.

Remember all those articles about a decade ago when businesses were freaking out because they couldn’t hire anybody with critical thinking or creative skills because of the higher ed pivot to professional training? Well, brace yourselves for the next round of stories once the AI-hype gen graduates.

It’s possible to see a way out of this, but it’s going to require a hard pivot from the reigning logic of big unis (butts in seats! huge classes! bean-counting, revenue-generating metrics!) Humanities may just have to accept niche status and lean into the cultivation of Artisanal Intelligence.

I have never been so despairing of the future of higher ed than I am at this moment. Students and faculty are still trying to do the good work while those who run these institutions are frantically sowing the seeds of our own destruction. We’ve let AI in and we’ll never recover.

Let me get this straight: When a student now clearly uses AI on an assignment but does so in a way that’s insightful, I’m supposed to be happy about it now? They haven’t done any of the actual reading or thinking, but have manipulated prompts well enough to generate good work product, I celebrate?

I just submitted final grades and am so full of despair. Some of my students did amazing work and I couldn't be more proud. But the number of students who phoned in the most basic shit and used AI for the simplest of projects was staggering and so fucking depressing.

In the age of AI, I find myself becoming quite fond of and sympathetic to sloppy but honest undergraduate prose.

What I would give these days to have a normal anxiety dream about forgetting my lecture or not wearing pants.