“The idealists and visionaries, foolish enough to throw caution to the winds and express their ardor and faith in some supreme deed, have advanced mankind and have enriched the world." Emma Goldman

As a journalist and a hyper person, I am telling you there is nothing better than the sweet sweet dopamine of writing a really good piece quickly and accurately on deadline, getting great quotes from researchers, and smashing that send button once the piece is done.

I emerged from long hibernation to talk Laura Ingalls Wilder with the awesome Sandra Hume! www.youtube.com/watch?v=xD2s... (alternative links in comment)

NOT be on antidepressants? In this economy?

So far my foray into academia mainly consists of opportunities to humiliate myself by being completely de-socialized, AMA

Feeling very New York Times cooking section commenter-y as I bake an olive oil cake with substitutions for the olive oil, white chocolate, liquid flavorings, dusting the cake pan, and amount of flour, CONVINCED this will taste delicious

4 years ago, Marjorie Lane signed up her Native granddaughters for CO's Westernaires youth horse riding organization. The girls loved it. Until they saw their white peers dressed in Indigenous-inspired clothing dancing, whooping and acting out a cowboys vs. Indians battle scene.

update: all is not lost www.denverpost.com/2026/04/30/c...

😭🍑🍏😭 www.dailycamera.com/2026/04/30/c...

Send fan mail to your heroes. Send fan mail to your kind-of heroes. Send fan mail to obscure and penniless authors. I'm always amazed by how touching I find reader mail. Someone took the time to read something I wrote and let my voice narrate their world for a bit? Incredible. 💖

Welp, my gallbladder did its best to kill me this weekend—one emergency surgery later, I am much better aside from being sore and exhausted. I’m looking forward to some uneventful weeks after the last several days!! 🫠

Of course bsky is on the fritz the day I have huge-to-me personal news. YOU GUYS, I'M GETTING MY DOCTORATE! I just accepted a fully-funded Ph.D slot at the University of Colorado, Boulder. I'll begin my studies in American history there this fall! 😭😭😭😭

Random book recommendation: I'm re-reading Caroline Fraser's PRAIRIE FIRES and it is an opus that absolutely deserved its Pulitzer. Fraser doesn't just contextualize Laura Ingalls Wilder; she demolishes the entire premise of the ever-Westward Manifest Destiny myth Wilder helped create/perpetuate.

Sneak peak of "Body Weather" is out today in @smithsonianmag.bsky.social! You get an adapted excerpt from the last part of the book: www.smithsonianmag.com/science-natu...

Jeff Bridges, duh

question: are there historians working at the intersection of science, med, and enviro centering the study of allergies? like a burgeoning field of critical allergy studies? I've been wanting to write on plantation forestry in postwar Japan and the hist of hay fever, and I'm looking for inspiration

New paper in PNAS just out: Measles cases in the US in 2025 imposed a societal financial cost of $244.2 million. A scenario where vaccination rates in young kids falls by 1% per year for 5 years would cost us all $7.77 billion over those years, while hospitalizing 4k+ people and killing dozens.

The AHR has launched a new project, Authoritarianism 101: A Global History, as part of the #AHRSyllabus series. Explore 30 modules from different contributors and key questions on authoritarianism—each paired with primary sources and teaching resources. The first twelve modules are now live.

WOW. End of an era. Thinking about all of the "five colleges" materials that will need to be changed...

Seven years since I wrote a piece about the ways in which Black Americans were shut out of the GI Bill after WWII and it's still generating email. It's definitely in my top five of "most reader response ever" stories. Wish it wasn't still relevant to those whose fathers never got their due.

“Beds Are Burning” by Midnight Oil is the perfect pop song.

Buddenbrooks is better than The Magic Mountain

The Parent Trap is actually a horror story about the child custody trauma inflicted and endured by a rich, divorcing couple

Hard to overestimate how catastrophic a Forest Service closure will be for wildfire prevention and research.

The problem with books is that I want to write approximately 70 at any given time, and I can't stop time to allow them all to happen.

Want to read an excerpt from the Prologue of THE WESTERNERS before committing to the whole book? If so, get thee to @literaryhub.bsky.social! lithub.com/frederick-ja...

Scary experiment: create a FAKE disease & upload FAKE studies to preprint servers to support and PRESTO AI thinks real. Ugh. Good example of how easily AI can warp knowledge base... Scientists invented a fake disease. AI told people it was real www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Once again, the national average pay for adjunct professors with PhDs is a flat fee of $3900 per course.

At various points in her career, journalist April Morganroth reinvented herself to start fresh in a new state, leaving behind a wake of professional and personal misconduct.

Tapping the sign

As an Eighties Kid, rocket launches will never not terrify and worry me.

The Dark Horse will auction off items online on April 14: www.axios.com/local/boulde...

Donald Trump is a birthright citizen of the U.S. So is Stephen Miller. So are you, if you were born here.

My newest enterprise is to attempt to be as soft as I truly am inside despite a harsh, brutal, morally bankrupt, and exhaustingly cynical world. You could argue that 2026 is a hell of a year to lean into that—or that it's the best possible time to do it. I guess we'll see.

If you're in Manhattan today, keep your eyes out for these sidewalk chalk memorials for the 146 victims of the Triangle Factory Fire. The Chalk Project was started by Ruth Sergel in 2004 and is now organized by the Tenement Museum.

While the Great Man theory theory of history is bunk, the That Fucking Guy theory of history is compelling.

It's been offline for a couple of months due to hosting issues, but the Video Game Soda Machine Project archive is back online again. If you've ever wanted to browse through more than 3,000 screenshots of soda machines from video games dating back as far as 1983, this is the site for you.

A viral video about a man named Solomon Fairfax, who earned the nickname the "Grim Reaper" of Charleston after spending years killing slaveholders, has hundreds of thousands of likes and shares. There’s just one problem: Solomon Fairfax doesn't exist

What's worse than an editor insisting on adding a shitty, clickbaity, or misleading headline on your story? Having the shitty, clickbaity, misleading search engine write its own 🫠

We’re so screwed, part one billion.

Tell me you've never read a book without telling me you've never read a book challenge

Font-de-gaume artwork used datable charcoal, not just manganese. archaeology.org/news/2026/03...

Me as Thursday commits its usual violence against my remaining peace of mind:

Exciting news from the sixteenth century:

TFW you dismantle your entire staff of editors with news sense

My newest Flashback quiz is up! Can you put all eight events in the correct order? www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

I am at the dealership having my car serviced and let me tell ya, I’m convinced dealerships are truly the worst and most American of institutions. It is CRAWLING with ambient dudes with a variety of grifts.

One thing that stands out when I look at photos of Epstein and his rich friends is the submissive body language of his male counterparts and friends. They so obviously wanted to impress him, despite and probably because of the blackmail power he wielded.

**BREAKING NEWS** - Marsh Clubmoss refound in Dunbartonshire, at a site where it was last recorded in 1854! Being more-or-less evergreen, clubmosses make great botanical targets all year round. With that in mind, I set out to hunt for Marsh Clubmoss near Inveraran on the shore of Loch Lomond 🧵