A short thread on #soccerhistory here in Utah, featuring Utah State University’s championship-winning eleven from 1950, led by a decidedly international group.

There’s a lot of hemming and hawing recently about the influx of international players on college soccer teams. That trend actually has a much longer history than many folks realize. The college game, in fact, has been international since its inception. A short case study from here in Utah: 🧵

This sucks. Worldcat used to be amazing.

Imagine telling kids: Listen, rich people made this somewhat crappy product they're going to make you use when you end up having to work for them, so we have to teach you how to try to use it and that's a lot of work for both of us because it's pretty crappy. That's called "AI literacy."

Folks, a number of you have learned that historian Ardis Parshall has died. There's a GoFund me to support burial costs and keep her website online www.gofundme.com/f/honor-ardi...

My kindergartner filled out this worksheet last week. The three facts she learned about GW: 1. He had jacked up te[eth]. 2. He wore a wig. 3. He did not hav[e] a dad. A bit morbid, but I think she got the essentials. Maybe I have a historian of material culture and death on my hands.

the AI evangelists are not okay

Ugh, who wants to have to write about coverture bc relevant to current events? Super short post bc apparently needs circulating. karinwulf.com/tidbits/cove...

i've decided not to listen to the audio of a teacher reporting a kindergartender because frankly I don't want to become the person that that event would turn me into. but one thing I hope we are collectively coming to grips with is what it meant that we have lived among such people this whole time

Everyone knows that the best technologies are always the ones they had to beg and cajole and threaten you into using. Henry Ford had to threaten to shoot people’s horses if they didn’t buy his cars.

By Nate Oman nateoman.substack.com/p/against-ch...

Thousands of institutions abandoned programs, ended or rewrote scholarships, closed down clubs and publications, all in pre-emptive compliance. And you know why? Mostly because they wanted to do it if they thought they could blame someone else for it.

It has been the warmest and driest winter I can remember in Utah. But today, we finally got snow!

Roughly 2 USAIDs

The $38.3 billion they are going to spend for interment camps could fund the annual budget of NASA, the EPA, and all clean energy R&D at the Department of Energy—combined.

Just in case you missed this amazing conversation I had with Kellie Carter Jackson about the intersection of family history and our historical work! reunion-a-podcast-about-family-histories.ghost.io/episode-003-...

Arrived at my office this morning to this. I love my students and am touched the seem to appreciate me. What they didn’t know is that we had a death in the family yesterday, which made the gesture all the more touching and meaningful.

A friend of ours was able to be a test subject for an mRNA vaccine for an aggressive form of breast cancer. Completely worked. It is one of the greatest miracles of science and like 40% of the country turned it into The Jab because they are mushheaded simpletons.

What they can do is cheat and get failed, or they can permanently disrupt their own potential by offloading all learning, thought and skill into a shitty freeware algorithm, guaranteeing they'll never be employable. Colleges, cut it out.

All the reports showing it either decreases productivity or increases workload or both aside, ethics of incorporating The Great Plagiarist Bot into a university curriculum aside, destroying the planet aside: students do not know enough about anything to even use genAI for its theoretical potential.

Colleges need to stop trying to teach students how to use AI. Even in the theoretical use cases, genAI requires the expertise to know the process and outcome WITHOUT IT to be able to use it for shortcuts and then THOROUGHLY vet the product. EXPERTISE. Students don't have that, they're students.

In case you missed the moment. Art is powerful

I'm hardly the first person to note this, but it's enormously instructive that our President and his followers saw the message "THE ONLY THING MORE POWERFUL THAN HATE IS LOVE" and understood it, correctly, as an attack on them

The Champions League final in Germany last year opened with Linkin Park

Unidos somos América.

Somewhere between 51 + 60 million U.S. residents speak Spanish. Most of them (40-45 million) as their first language. I’m one of many more who understand the language but don’t speak it. And you certainly didn’t need to understand a single word to appreciate the artistry + joy on display.

Watching Bad Bunny in a room full of Latinos — including my partner, my MIL, and my children — dancing and singing along to every word. ❤️

France’s Olympic athletes definitely needed more pockets on their Opening Ceremony outfits.

Delighted to welcome one of my graduate advisors, the incomparable @kawulf.bsky.social, to BYU for a lecture tonight.

Gramsci once observed "the old is dying and the new struggles to be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear," and I'm not sure there would be any better encapsulation of our society's comorbidities than this headline.

The idea that the Court should operate entirely in secret is a modern phenomenon. The idea that the Court should be separated from the public is a modern phenomenon. Earlier generations did not accept a powerful, isolated & secretive Court and we shouldn't either 1/6 www.nytimes.com/2026/02/02/u...

Ayeeeeee! Happy Black History Month!

🚨New Episode Alert🚨 Kicking off Black History Month with Prof. Sara Gallagher (@sgallagher12.bsky.social) of Durham College and her book "Black Wests: Reshaping Race and Place in Popular Culture" (@oupress.bsky.social 2025). writingwestwardpodcast.podbean.com/e/083-sara-g...

Want to start #BlackHistoryMonth off on a good note? Come listen to @kcarterjackson.bsky.social + @profblmkelley.bsky.social talk about researching their own family histories.

This x1000. I have a standing offer to students to come visit with me to learn how to read a history book. To my delight, 3 have already come in this semester to meet. All 3 reported success reading through the next assigned book.

Family history work depends on the material lives of records: how they were created, used, marked, preserved, or repaired. Come hang with me and @ccjones.bsky.social and Amy Harris and chat about archives, archival practice, and genealogy!! juvenileinstructor.org/call-for-par...

If you have not yet read @adamserwer.bsky.social on Minnesotans' heroics, you are going to feel way better when you do. He went there. He talked to the people doing the work. Then he thought about it and produced something rare. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0... [gift link]

I know the world is going to hell, but Trinity Rodman is a sincere bright spot in my day to day life. Not just the on pitch performance, but the joy she plays (and celebrates) with. #USWNT

Did the Utah legislature just do something … good? This is a new feeling.

Proud dad moment, receiving this message from my 14yo.

There we go: “It should no longer be possible to say that the Trump administration seeks merely to govern this nation. It seeks to reduce us all to a state of constant fear… That is our new national reality. State terror has arrived.” Gift link:

I wish Democrats would start just speaking the truth: “ICE is killing American citizens in public for exercising their freedom of speech because Donald Trump wants to be a king. This isn’t about immigration—Trump wants to make it illegal to oppose him, and to stay in power until he dies.”

Germany is wonderful, and I may just not come home. #heidelberg

Reunion: a Podcast About Family Histories is a creation of my BYU History faculty colleagues @ccjones.bsky.social & @jstuart.bsky.social. Talk about hitting the ground running! The 1st 2 episodes have featured @kawulf.bsky.social & @agordonreed.bsky.social! WOW! podcasts.apple.com/ye/podcast/r...

Re: Sean McDermott getting fired, I ask once again: why are all these GMs keeping their jobs when they bear more responsibility for team failure?

From 1961 to 1966, Martin Luther King Jr. wrote an annual essay for us on the state of civil rights and race relations in America. In this piece from 1966, he wrote about economic justice as the next struggle for the civil rights movement. www.thenation.com/article/acti...

Episode 2 of Reunion: A Podcast about Family Histories, is out now! We were delighted and honored to welcome @agordonreed.bsky.social to discuss her groundbreaking research on the Hemings family + more! @jstuart.bsky.social

“Standing with librarians means standing with the idea that democracy requires access to information. It means rejecting the notion that fear should dictate education. It means trusting young people enough to let them read, question, and think for themselves.”

This should anger you. It should infuriate you. It should motivate you to do something.