Where did they get that picture of Gen. William Howe?

Personally, I think it's terrific that no one around the president is willing to tell him he sounds completely delusional and out of touch here. Just let him keep telling voters they're not paying what they're paying.

Did not expect to see William Hogeland in the “American Revolution” doc. Seems like an unorthodox choice. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Happy to drop the place with contemporary book citations, but I work on the history of publishing, so dropping the publisher name from old books is still a big no from me.

"CPB agrees to revive a $36 million deal with NPR [that it had earlier] killed after Trump's pressure"

this would have been a month-long scandal in 2011

At least people have stopped asking when Trump will pivot, when he is clearly getting worse. people.com/donald-trump...

President Donald Trump touts a roughly 25% price decline for a Walmart Thanksgiving dinner package as evidence that grocery prices are falling. A detailed comparison shows that the price drop is not from lower food prices.

It also confirms my longstanding belief that the Revolution can never compete with the Civil War, dramatically, visually, literarily, whatever. The problem is you cannot grasp the Revolution without grappling with its ideas while avoiding all the platitudes or obvious ironies.

Really? I watched the first two hours last night and am not sure I can take any more. Nice to see colleagues on air (even my mentor, no longer with us, got a few seconds), but the content is so thin it just did not seem very energetic or informative.

Francis Heaney’s Holy Tango of Literature. He answers the (understudied) question of what would happen if poets and playwrights wrote works whose titles were anagrams of their names. You can read the whole thing free here on his website here: www.francisheaney.com/holy-tango-o...

They should catch everyone leaving the auditorium and get them on camera and ask “what was your favorite fact of the speech” and supercut all the awkward laughing and ums together

The vast body of research that Ken Burns relied upon to make his new documentary on the American Revolution would be practically impossible to be produced today, what with the defunding of humanistic scholarship, the collapse of stable academic jobs, the attack on public history & academic freedom.🗃️

Shout out to historian John Rees who has done a ton of the research on Black soldiers in the Continental Army which the documentary is currently highlighting

You have the odd circumstance where your army is composed of force providers that offer manumission to enslaved people enlist (Rhode Island) and those that offer enslaved people to those who can recruit a company as a bounty (South Carolina) And then there’s GW, as you can see on the doc

So capt Mowatt started with Falmouth (Portland) first on his burning spree bc he had kinda been super duper embarrassed there a few months earlier when county militia captured him Portland has had the last laugh, with a hot sauce company named for him www.captainmowatts.com

Oh god stfu about rifles - they’re such a tiny minority of the force that fights in the Revolution. Unsupported by grunts with muskets and bayonets, riflemen are really great pincushions for cavalry or anyone else

I do wish they’d talk more about how insane the idea of a Continental Army was in June 1775. The colonies has experimented with all sorts of colonial combined forces prior to this with really unhappy results. Washington’s eldest brother died from disease contracted in the one experiment in 1740s

The map Arnold had came from John Montresor (one of my fave characters) who traversed the route from Quebec to Maine and made the map - eating his shoes, in the process, bc of no food anywhere on the route Should’ve maybe been an indicator not to march via the Maine wilderness lol

One thing the doc doesn’t mention is that William Pitt, who as PM basically won the 7 Years War for the Brits, vocally voiced opposition to the war against America sitting in the House of Lords. When the army went looking for its past American commanders, like Amherst, they were like “lols fuck no”

While we're waiting for denouement of Comey let's rate how big the lies that Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer submitted last week. 1) "There was no additional presentation, interaction, or discussion with the grand jury outside of what is reflected in the transcript." Absolute horseshit.

Absolutely this. It keeps being portrayed as a boycott - and maybe it is for some, but these stories are having a big influence.

Chicago Manual of Style arcana! In my meeting with a student about to file his thesis, he told me he realized there's an asterisk to the idea that CMS 18 does away with place of publication. It only does that if the book is post-1900! Before that, you keep place & normally omit publisher!

They do omit that the British fire Charlestown during Bunker Hill- the first of many American towns the British will burn in 1775 It’s a significant moment and sends a really strong signal that this will not be a “clean” war

John mothafuckin Stark has entered the chat and caused 80% casualties in the British light infantry units He ordered his men to aim at enemy gaiters when they passed the aiming stakes at 30 paces, meaning they would hit center mass. Horrific casualty rates ensued

Always amusing to me that the ship carrying Burgoyne, Clinton, and Howe to Boston was called “Cerberus” - a 3 headed dog from Hell for Gage, for sure Henry Clinton described himself as “a shy bitch” and has always been my favorite of that lot

Some good news for your Monday. Remember this kid? A federal judge just ordered him to be released!

When we were starting out Petrol Head @pye.bsky.social and I talked about how to do car chases successfully in comics. The only one I could think of that really worked was John Paul Leon in Winter Men.

Parents and children’s writers, check the alt text here for evidence (if any was needed) that kids’ behavior is eternal

NEW: An Irish tourist visiting the US was jailed by ICE for 3 months after overstaying 3 days due to medical issue. Thomas agreed to be deported, but instead went to federal prison where he recounted horrific conditions + no medical care. “Nobody's safe from the system if they get pulled into it"

Lots of people been asking for book recommendations for help with background context for the Ken Burns RevWar documentary, so I’m very grateful to my past self for putting this together so that my current self can be lazy: angrystaffofficer.com/2024/08/22/u...

NEW: An analysis finds that NIH funding cuts have disrupted at least 383 clinical trials, affecting over 74,000 participants that were enrolled in studies that were testing treatments for conditions including cancer, heart disease and brain disease.

The rule of law is a precious gift. And it is slipping away.

Today is Octidi the 28th of Brumaire in the year 234. Brumaire is the month of mist. Today we celebrate quince.#JacobinDay More information on quince

Boarding an international flight out of Boston and CBP officers literally in the gateway face scanning every passenger with their phones. I have never seen this before.

The president also repeated his now-familiar lies that he was never really around his longtime friend and now-dead child sex trafficker.

Federal judges are getting pretty annoyed by the Supreme Court's sloppy pro-Trump docket

Folks, I don't think the lawyers can make anymore sense of this. But what APPEARS to have happened is: 1) They no-billed one count. 2) SOMEONE IN THE GOVT LEARNED THAT. 3) They put together a 2-count indictment and, w/o re-presenting the case, got them to vote for those. The whole thing is cooked.

New episode of World's Turned Upside Down - a really great podcast for anyone interested in #18thCentury #C18th history 🗃 open.spotify.com/episode/61Z8...

This is a phenomenon that has long fascinated me. For a significant portion of the American population, BEING racist is a much more acceptable position than being CALLED racist.

"Would I knock out those factories? I would be proud to do it" -- moments after threatening military strikes in Mexico, Trump threatens strikes in Colombia as well

I’m gonna be so transparent: I saw the pull quote from what Raskin said and rolled my eyes and kept moving. But I actually listened to the whole clip and it’s so obvious what he’s trying to do; we should be BEGGING for other Ds to make that same rhetorical move.

Liked this so much more when it was fiction.

NEW—US Park Police w/ DHS officers near DC are increasingly pulling over Black and brown men, leaving their work vans on the side of the parkway + immediately calling a local towing company to take them. Families who just lost their breadwinner are stuck with the bill. @melbuer.bsky.social reports:

"People familiar with FBI security protocols said they were unaware of any other instance in which the girlfriends of top FBI officials received government-staffed security details..." www.ms.now/news/kash-pa...

Great news. This is what an ICE agent looks like in a mugshot. Meet Gerardo Rodriguez, 45, of Temecula, courtesy of the Riverside County Sheriff’s Office. Arrested for "illegally detaining a minor at gunpoint while off duty last week." 🧵

Probably he was only arrested because he was off-duty, although worth pointing out that there are a number of (never prosecuted) police shootings everywhere committed by off-duty cops (which always blows my mind up). ktla.com/news/local-n...

79 yr old sent to Trump's tropical concentration camp after 70+ years as a resident alien in America. The cruelty is astounding. His birth in a post WWII refugee camp adds a strange twist. Perhaps, if he could demonstrate his Polish parents were Nazi sympathizers, it would help is case with ICE.