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

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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.”

NEW: Organ tuners have been leaving temperature and humidity records in little-known books for decades. 🎹 They reveal how temperatures inside churches have changed over time due to climate change and increased heating. A new scoop for The Reengineer! www.thereengineer.pro/p/church-org...

My childhood Santa candle is dubious of the world generally and the next generation’s holiday decorating scheme specifically. Not my dried okra garland though. Santa loves that.

Have completed my institution’s active shooter response training module (such helpful tips as how to gouge out an attacker’s eyes) and will now change my work email sign off from “taking care of what matters,” our branded school motto to “I deserve to live,” the tag line of this horrendous exercise.

A query for those of you that write and publish academic things: what is a ballpark rate and timeline for hiring an indexer for a ~130,000 word edited volume? We already have a spreadsheet of keywords built. #academicsky #skystorians #histstm

I’ve figured out why my (fabulous, wide-wale, red-orange) corduroy pants are agitating me so much today: they sound just like the cords worn by middle-aged women in the 80s and oh my god, THIS IS MY MOM’S ZIP ZOP!?

"are you enjoying duo mobile" does a hamburger enjoy being made of quarks. does a fish enjoy linear time. does the mountain enjoy the first taste of a cup of hot chocolate when you get back to the ski lodge. your question means nothing to me. i couldn't enjoy duo mobile even if i tried

Who has two itchy wrists and poison ivy in December? THIS GAL!

My son has many wonderful characteristics but today my favorite is that he will break into a Peanuts dance and coax everyone else into it as the (absolute best holiday album) Vince Guaraldi Trio Charlie Brown Christmas tracks come on.

Scroll through for the whole thread!

when we say we want more streets to be pedestrianized, this is what we mean

My friend just fuckin showed up with a corncob pipe & that’s when it hit me that we are all in our 40s which means we get one new accessory slot

“Search history,” a poem (by me) How to prepare duck breast In the fall of democracy, And protect overwintering bees And immigrants. De-icing your freezer And town square, And saying what you mean To get a knee off your chest. Six ways to make casserole Without health insurance. (Cont)

Having spent half my life nearish the ocean, I now find this landlocked phenomenon of 40-degree (Fahrenheit!)-temperature-drop days to be downright thrilling. I have multiple weather apps open just to cheer on the thermometer. Gogogogo! I want to make soup!

The arc of history is a foot-long, but it bends towards justice.

So I guess this is also my favorite Bill Gates story.

My favorite Ted Porter story is the time he found an old ranking of all the high school students in the state of Washington, ranked by aptitude and taped it to his office door for several months. Ranked third was a William Gates, carefully underlined by ballpoint pen. 1/2 #histsci

I got a letter from the government the other day I opened and read it it said you get free electricity

BREAKING: Democrat Johnny DuPree has flipped a Republican-held Mississippi Senate district in a special election. DuPree was previously the mayor of Hattiesburg. His win imperils the Mississippi Senate GOP's narrow supermajority. www.mississippifreepress.org/democrat-joh...

Pretty grateful to our featured sticker artist, Ida for her joyful mermaid!

Couldn’t vote today but did just receive 100s of these promotional stickers @emilypawley.bsky.social and I had made for our forthcoming supernova of a collaborative book. If you’re at HSS in a couple weeks, I’ll give you one! Or stick it on you when you’re not looking! #histsci #envhum #envhist

My second science job as a summer undergraduate intern was here working on the IMAGE spacecraft. It went silent in 2005 but then was found again in 2018!

I have a pet theory that flight attendants, who spend their workdays in a state of emotional and physical restraint, fitting all the cups and condiments and passengers into tight spaces, go home and just fling stuff everywhere. 1/3

Woooo, out doing recon for tomorrow’s community art workshop on… panoptic mapmaking?

Back on the Metro, eyes peeled for my Nutella colonel.

Am in DC for a few days for the GSA. Was ambivalent about seeing the city I used to adore so changed. Made and held eye-contact tonight with an USAF officer (LOTS of stripes/badges/flair?) that was riding in one of the sideways seats with the biggest container of Nutella I’ve ever seen next to him.

Before I go dark on Bluesky for a bit (returning to MS), sharing some heartwarming tidbits I collected in LA this week: First, my Doktorvater’s goldfish survived the Palisades fire in his little pond, soot and all. Second, my niece’s school sings Felix Navidad in Mandarin at their holiday pageant.

Heading back to the severed floor/Mississippi today, so doomscrolling all the Bluesky I can for the next several hours.

Already having a tough day so thought I’d cheer myself up by working on archive requests for my Monday visit. Searched “LA civilian defense” in the hopes of finding some information on the siren infrastructure but the first several hits are civilian exclusion orders targeting Japanese Americans.