Working on a design for a Somerville-themed pillow to crochet for my niece.

I’m so embarrassed for my ancestor. Leave her alone.

Remember how lefties used to say "abolish ICE" back in the 2010s, and got roundly scolded by the centrists for it ever since, and now events have shown beyond a shadow of a doubt that they were 1000% on the correct side of history, but somehow they're still being scolded? Fun.

Ah yes, the golden rule of leadership: gather hundreds of better-qualified people for a pointless display of dominance that can galvanize them around the core belief that you are a feckless nubbin of mewling insecurity.

An anonymous note in Russian State Archives about Sam reads: he “likes to sleep late in the morning even if it means missing his cornflakes. He comes from Philadelphia, the cradle of American liberty. Some of his ancestors met the Mayflower. You’re likely to hear him whistling...

Samuel Conway Willis was born #otd in Philadelphia, 1914. In school until the 5th grade, he worked as a busker and joined the Young Communist League in 1929. He arrived in Spain on June 20, 1937. He served with ALB and the Mac Paps as a Scout and Runner until he was MIA/KIA on March 17, 1938.

Through her creative platform, Saint Heron, Solange has launched The Saint Heron Library, a digital archive dedicated to making rare and out-of-print works by Black authors, poets, and artists accessible to all. 🔗 library.saintheron.com

Taking my kid to get some on-schedule vaccines today, which should not feel like an “in spite of the Federal government” sort of thing, but here we are.

Exciting to see Victoria's work being recognised by the Guardian - the evidence for the Book of Kells being made at Portmahomack is getting very compelling now.

UNTIL IT'S DONE, Ep. 2 When the Brownsville Clinic opened in 1916, it was the first birth control center in America. Its very existence felt impossible. For young women, it was a lifeline. 109 years later, the Clinic is long closed—but Brownsville mothers are still struggling.

A request for help. I am looking for article-length examples of historiography that takes place and built environment seriously. I don't think exactly architectural history, but emphasizing people occupying and using particular places. This is a methodological example for an undergraduate project. 🗃️

Lovely days in fall always remind me hanging out with the nosy cemetery cows in northern France.

Again, the Nazi regime was defined by continuously removing rights and options for those considered not protected by the law. A million of exceptions that, in turn, would provide the legal basis to justify even more extreme and inhumane treatment later.

So the Jim Henson Company is auctioning a bunch of puppets and props, which is surprising. It’s very interesting to see the reactions on Facebook—lots of people saying these things belong in a museum and lamenting that rich people will own them. It’s very different from other props and costumes.

Real people from history should have more plausible names if they want me to believe they existed

The MAGA monocultural revolution is so thorough that Hegseth made it a priority to honor soldiers who carried out war crimes in 1890.

In one hour! Join us!

I applaud the photographer for skillfully conveying his opinion of this "penthouse balcony" (unit listed for $8.6-$15million). www.bostonglobe.com/2025/09/25/b...

For one thing, I just did the same inquiry, and it gave me quite a different answer. That's not a valid form of analysis in an opinion.

I do not think this is a useful application of ChatGPT, to be honest.

Here we Goooo! I haven’t been able to post about this until we went live, so today I’m posting highlights from the Les Enluminures Text Manuscripts Fall Update! This is our annual Big September Issue.

BOOK COVER ARTISTS QRP with your book covers 📚 #BookCovers

People of Caribbean had some good Qs when found out Euros arrived for gold: 'how miserable art thou, thus to expose thy person to such tedious and dangerous Voyages, and to suffer thy self to be orpress’d with cares and fears! The inordinate desire of acquiring wealth puts thee to all this trouble'.

You can be a fucking idiot, or an influential idiot, or a wealthy influential fucking idiot. You can also be a grifter and all of the above, but you're still a fucking idiot. Time these frauds were laughed out of existence

Art Director, 1904: Can't we just photograph the women wearing the corsets? Editor: No! This is a respectable catalogue, not a peepshow! Art Director: So what do you want me to do? Editor: Can't you draw the corsets and stick some real heads on top? Art Director: Proportional heads? Editor: No!

This tiny stone in Harvard Square commemorates three babies who died in the 1720s. In 18th-century Massachusetts, many stillborn babies were buried without public ceremony, but obviously not all. It is more notable that the two baby Jonathans were named — most stillborn babies were not.

Look what we have here then.

Stephen Mullen, a highly regarded historian specialising in Scotland's links with Atlantic slavery, objects to a right wing scholar's flagrant misrepresentation of his own work and that of Glasgow's Kelvingrove Museum's curators in @thetimes.com alanlester.co.uk/blog/falsify...

I would like to see the next journalist who gets a sit-down interview with Trump spend the entire time asking him to describe the seven wars he has stopped and ask specific followups about how, exactly, he has done so.

A few weeks ago, someone tore down an AI mural hanging on a business across from Graffiti Alley, the outdoor art space. It highlights the conflict inherent in an AI image that relies on the work of street artists, but holds itself aloof from street art culture. www.bostonglobe.com/2025/09/24/m...

If you read this article in WaPo, you'll want to read @colsonwhitehead.com's "The Nickel Boys". wapo.st/4nHWtEF

Wrote for @thenation.com about the complicity of some liberal politicians and pundits in the conservative campaign to exterminate trans people www.thenation.com/article/poli...

One of the records I looked at for our report on Black History at the Vassall Estate was the 1851 Agricultural Census of the Dawn Settlement, a community of freedom-seekers in Ontario, near Detroit. It was founded by Josiah Henson, who escaped slavery in Maryland: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josiah_...

THE SCIENCE IS VERY CLEAR, NPR! FUCK YOU!

"It looks like they’re pumping into a horse. You have a little child, a little fragile child, and you get a vat of eighty different vaccines, I guess. Eighty different blends, and they pump it in... So, ideally, a woman won't take Tylenol." www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/the...

I really enjoyed speaking about my new book with Dr Miranda Melcher for the @newbooksnetwork.bsky.social podcast 📖 Now available online! 👇📻 newbooksnetwork.com/birth-death-... @universitypress.cambridge.org @uoearchhist.bsky.social @uniofexeterhass.bsky.social @uniofexeternews.bsky.social

Des Moines has you all beat

It looks like it was actually 11 kids out of 283 that they followed up with that stopped identifying as trans, or 4%—which is still wildly low! Meanwhile, 28 of 285 kids that entered the study as cisgender now identified as trans or gender diverse on follow-up—10% of the cis kids were really trans!

With a new book coming out, I finally got around to updating my website. I'm thrilled with the new design - plus, my bio now includes the accurate number of children! (Last edit to my previous website was 7 years ago...) Check it out! www.katharinegerbner.com

i have to say, as a trans journalist who has covered the "trans debate" for about a decade now, there is no daylight between how the trump administration and conservatives lie about tylenol and autism and how they've lied about youth trans care.

NCPH had the pleasure of helping to shepherd this project, and it was exciting from start to finish.

Are we going to talk about the fact that we have a clear pattern of ICE taking children as hostages here in Massachusetts, #mapoli, or are we just going to continue to yammer about how we support public safety? Because this isn’t safe at all.

Well, if it’s 23 September... YES, THAT’S RIGHT! It’s the 71st anniversary of the hunt for the Gorbals Vampire, in which hundreds of children aged from four to 14, armed with dogs, knives and sharpened sticks went looking for an urban myth

“Leominster police arrived at the scene, recovered the child and returned her to the family. However, two days later, on Hip's wife's birthday, federal agents returned to the house, pulled the man out of the car and arrested him.” In Leominster, MA

would anyone like my recommendations of gay romance books i really liked. i have a bunch up my sleeve now, they are pretty much all fairly raunchy historical fiction

new from @kylietcheung.bsky.social in @teenvogue.com: recently, men have impersonated plainclothes ICE agents to assault women—only possible, she argues, because state agents commit violence with impunity. "To be clear, men wouldn’t be posing as ICE agents and assaulting women if ICE didn’t exist."

My TikTok algorithm has not yet warned me of the Rapture, but it does want to prepare me to sing my way through starting a stolen F-16.

dudes rock

22-year-old Ward Sakeik, a Palestinian woman who has lived in Texas since she was 9, says her experience in federal detainment could only be identified as “human trafficking.” And she’s not staying quiet about the women she was forced to leave behind. thebarbedwire.com/2025/09/22/w...

Great @leilaniclark.bsky.social read in @coyotemedia.org this morning about a kind of neighborhood watch I can get behind: Looking out for the safety of day laborers.