202 years ago today, this stork was shot in the village of Klütz in northern Germany. It already had a 30-inch arrow in its neck. The arrow was made of African wood, and this first ‘Pfeilstorch’ (‘arrow stork’) played a pivotal role in the understanding of bird migration.

What a headline.

They’re gonna close down the predatory learning management system unless we put on the best dang talent show this town has ever seen!!!

When I think about Ted Turner: as I stroll/sprint through ATL, I’m bemused/irked that the “Walk Through Atlanta History” in the corridor between Concourse B and Concourse C devotes the same amount of wall space to Reconstruction as it does to Ted Turner bringing the 1996 Olympics Games to Atlanta.

Continue to be of the firm belief that the only way to get through ATL unscathed is to be slightly buzzed. An elderly man that may or may not work here at the third saddest bar in the airport, just took my menu and my ketchup.

Was revisiting one of my favorite bird song diagrams (by Doc Allen two years before his Cornell Lab developed techniques for recording birds in the field) and stumbled on this hilarious and crushing belittling of Greater Yellowlegs as too boring to kill. #envhum #histsci #histstm #envhist

This Is Just To Say I have turned off the AI features that were in the update and which you were probably hoping to monetize Fuck you they were stupid so unnecessary and so annoying

My small child asked to help with dinner and after some tedious de-stemming work, she gave each beet a name and personality and inter-beet drama and now she’s screaming* as I grate them in the cuisinart. NOT HELPING. * expressing their inner lives and voices, not her own horror

Don’t know if the culprit was autocorrect or the state of my brain this point in the semester, but I noticed today that the dental appt for my son (Wren) was in my calendar as “Warn dentist.”

300+ edits later and OUR PROOFS ARE IN. I am getting ice cream, I tell you what.

Today I planned to finish the proofs of our (@emilypawley.bsky.social & 100 other folks’) Handbook for Saving the World. Was faltering with sorrow/rage but found the line “fuck that—no more fossil fuels for you” & it got me over the finish line. Page proof done. No more fossil fuels for you.

Pulling my historian hat down so it’s nice and snug AND JUDGING RIGHT NOW.

A citizen group working to prevent large data centers from being built on prime farmland are seeking a noise expert who can speak to detrimental effects of noise from data centers, especially low frequency sound. They're able to pay. Any recs, incl names/contact info, asap would be so appreciated 🙏

But shall this crazed old man be tamely suffered to drag a whole ship’s company down to doom with him?

This entire thread is lovely but this one is of course my favorite.

There is, apparently, a very specific high that comes with buying (with miles!) one-way tickets.

If we compost billionaires, gas prices will come down. I have made a helpful diagram.

I’m pretty sure our dog-sitter sharpened all our knives.

Returned from Spring Break to find my old office (in a historic register building) completely disappeared and sodded over and the inside of my new office door has insulating tiles for muffling my screams of anguish.

"We will bring down the price of cheese, Gromit."

@drsurekhadavies.bsky.social Look what we found on the big table by the checkout at Vroman’s Books on Colorado in Pasadena!

Friends, @alixhui.bsky.social and I and 70+ historians have been working on this gigantic project for three years and it finally feels like it's going to be real.

PAGE! PROOFS! ARE! HERE! PAGE! PROOFS! ARE! HERE! #envhum #envhist #histstm #histsci

California Heritage Tour Day 1: Smallest child has requested we go to “Inside-Outside” by which I think she means In-n-Out. Learning outcomes progressing nicely.

‘No historical precedent’ Historians:

OMGOMGOMG. Stuck boat is the news I need and deserve!!!

When I was little (6 or so?), I wrote to Salvador Dali and he wrote back!

Just finished the epilogue to my never-ending second monograph. Since it (the epilogue) is mostly about John LutherAdams’ “Become Ocean,” I was also listening to “Become Ocean” as I banged away on the keyboard. I have now fully become swells of sound, words, rising sea. I am become puddle. #envhum

Restoration ecology fieldwork is delightful and deeply creepy in equal measure. #Histsci #envhist

Beyond the problems. Toward the solutions. Mississippi Free Press is committed to solutions-oriented journalism that highlights equity, progress, and pathways forward for our communities. Become a recurring donor and sustain this vital work month after month: buff.ly/FG4ocxy

Avoiding a writing task by throwing myself down a rabbit hole on decommissioned foghorns: 20 years ago in Duluth, the non-profit group TOOT lamented the collapse of talks with the city and U.S.C.G. to restore the port's old diaphone. The higher-pitched replacement was denied as "a peanut horn."

In honor of Lunar New Year, one of my all-time favorite maps: How dumplings spread around the world (tl;dr: It was largely, though not exclusively, the Mongol invasions!)

Remember, all your strawberries are hand picked.

I just pulled a muscle opening a bottle of vodka. Yes it is only just after 8 am here. (It is also the only chance I have to make sauce for tonight’s dinner before a long day of teaching and meetings.)

❤️

“Mom, I got first place in the science fair and also my hypothesis got run over by a bus!”

"Abolish ICE" was submitted 9,200 times for Chicago's snowplow naming contest, records show. blockclubchi.co/3ZAnDTZ

Some thoughts: 1. The deadline for nominating a person or group for the Nobel Peace Prize is Feb. 1. 2. History professors are qualified nominators. 3. The people of Minnesota have been awe-inspiringly peaceful in the face of state violence. 4. He would be so mad.

Some personal/professional news: I’ve been awarded a Safe Place for Science fellowship at the University of Toulouse & will be moving to France with my family in July. Someone on either the #envhum #envhist or #histsci #hstm feeds noted that the call included humanists, so thank you to that person!

Find of the day: DJ Magnificent Montague’s catch phrase, “Burn, Baby, Burn!” (became the rally cry for the Watts Rebellion) was the title of the Apollo 11 master ignition routine code. The beauty of footnotes is that this is going into my environmental phenomenology of background music monograph.

Automatic repost whenever I hear Take Five. This time courtesy to Apple Music’s Listen Now algorithm as I frantically try to wrap up writing THE LAST SECTION THE LAST CHAPTER OF MY NEVERENDING BOOOOOOK! Oooh, this outtake is much more jumpy.

Clinging to this today: as I transfer contributors’ copyedits I am, per their request, putting (erased by et al. style constraints) Palestinian scholars’ names BACK IN, putting the “Nation” of Gwich’in Nation BACK IN. Writing the reality I want to see into the word, one stet at a time.

Yay for discovery! (And this case moving forward in general)

This is the only thing that has made me audibly laugh in 2026, so I must share it with all of you.

Shout-out to everyone who's tired as fuck of only seeing the first four lines of this poem shared around.

finally, we're living through precedented times

Out of curiosity, I looked into the history of inevitability. It was first used as an adjective in the 15th century in Life it St. Katherine. The noun form was used 100 years later. Anyway, possibility has been around for longer. Take that with you into the new year. #academicsky #skystorians 🗃️

an article about postwar bells & sonic gaps? MADE FOR ME (& i kinda wish i wrote it tbh) www.nytimes.com/2025/12/27/a...

In a footnote about Peale’s Power of Positive thinking do I include the current president saying Peale helped him navigate his crushing debt in the 1990s? On the one hand I don’t want his name tainting my lovely monograph. On the other hand I could index his name under “Bilious Turd that I Hate.”