I’m struggling to find words for how callous, horrible, and unsettling this is.

Saying the work of government agencies should be more visible to the public: Good and Correct. Saying the Artemis II launch is the kind of visibility government work needs: Lmao, guy what are you even SAYING.

One of the biggest labor battles in the US is happening right now in Los Angeles, at USC, where our faculty-union campaign with majority support is being met by nasty, corporate-grade administrative resistance, and national press won't cover it.

Just confirming that Made by History will now be back up and running in the next few weeks with a new home and new partners at the Philadelphia Inquirer. Exciting! So, if you have pitches, now's the time to start sending them to [email protected] 🗃️ #MadebyHistory #HistoryMatters

Part of the reason that folks are more likely to cite women not being able to open bank accounts than laws permitting marital rape as proof of structural misogyny is that consumption is essential to US culture. We are more than buyers, and political equality cannot be achieved via markets alone.

This is the right take. Yes, the pressure to skim, rely on book reviews, and cite material we haven’t read has increased as our institutions demand more research. No, that doesn’t mean we can stop doing the reading or, worse, let AI review the literature for us.

Arson: “At an internal all-hands meeting on Friday, NSF leaders announced that they would dissolve the agency’s Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences directorate based on the budget request, according to two NSF staff members who shared information anonymously in order to speak freely”

This would be absolutely devastating. Public and private funders have already cut humanities, social science, and arts funding to the bone. These decisions can only be interpreted as indifference or active malice towards our disciplines.

I wonder if T.S. Eliot considered April the cruelest month because he spent so much time around academia… I am very tired this week.

Call for Proposals! I’m co-editing a collection on “The Extractive Midwest” with @brianleechphd.bsky.social, Jeff Schramm, and Sarah Mittlefehldt. We seek 300-500 word abstracts for book chapters between 6,000-8,000 words (not including notes). Send us your submissions before August 30, 2026!

“But after tens of billions of dollars of school spending…studies have found that digital tools have generally not improved students’ academic results or graduation rates. Some researchers &organizations like UNESCO even warn that overreliance on technology can distract students and impede learning”

U.S. higher education is imploding, but it’s heartening to see graduate worker, staff, and faculty unions fighting for—and winning—better conditions.

I am amazed that the stock market and some political analysts are still treating Trump as an oracle when he’s actually Pandora with worse hair and a shelf full of boxes.

Another university getting rid of things you could only ever do at a university and replacing them with stuff a 13-year-old can do on a phone

If Kafka were alive today, the D.C. airports would be the first thing he would write about.

Yep. In fact, the real failing of students was when we stopped requiring them to regularly search a library catalogue for their reading and instead produced lists with hyperlinks that students simply had to click. As soon as they have to go off list, they’re lost.

Then there's Christy's, @safetyworkhstm.bsky.social and Iro Filippaki's agenda-setting article on injury studies! A truly interdisciplinary emergent field (and a powerful network, check them out!) that has the potential to disrupt some of the most established concepts in #medhums and #histmed

So excited to see this online! We hope folks find the essay useful and encourage anyone working on injuries to check out the Injury Studies Network website and / or to contact me to join the mailing list! injurystudies.org

Daylight has been saved, but at what cost?

for what it cost for our allies to shoot down three of our own planes by accident in a murderous illegal war we could have funded the NEH at 150% of its historic peak funding for a year

87% of NPs are primary health care providers. “Yet an obscure committee now promises to strip them of access to educational funds, putting the healthcare system, the nursing workforce, and patients at risk,” writes Cory Ellen Gatrall in this week’s ER essay. nursingclio.org/2026/02/23/p...

The Consortium for History of Science, Technology and Medicine invites applications for research fellowships in their eponymous topics. For more details see: www.chstm.org/fellowships #histmed #histstm

Reposting with tags because I’m incompetent: #HistSTM #STS #HistMed #InjuryStudies #HistSci

Why are so many commercial toys made of plastic? My new essay for The Strong National Museum of Play shows how safety concerns have alternately fueled and slowed the spread of plastic toys since the 1950s. www.museumofplay.org/blog/problem...

Thanks to everyone who was able to attend my Grand Rounds talk today! You can access the recording downthread, but folks have to see this R.J. Matson cartoon poking fun at the toy trains pulled from the market for lead contamination during the “Year of the Recall” in 2007:

Stay tuned for an amazing political cartoon about an influx of imported toys that led U.S. media to refer to 2007 as “The Year of the Recall.”

Thinking about the impact of LLMs on the way I earn a living - writing - and I wonder what the long-term impact will be. On the one hand, LLMs do not seem capable of producing *good* writing, in the sense of original, engaging writing (they can manage clarity, though). But they can do *quantity.*

Once again, people who have no experience with history (or, for that matter, translation, “writing,” and archival work) insist that we’re replaceable. AI can compile information, but it’s terrible at two of the most important historical skills: contextual analysis and asking the right questions.

Well, let's give it a shot again and see what we get.

Ironically, this is also why LLMs are terrible for historical analysis. They tend to overgeneralize instead of carefully interpreting specific primary sources and pass off the claims of previous researchers as new insights.

“Job placement” jfc The commodification of a degree is now complete. Come to school for four more years to make sure you get a job, or your teachers will all get fired…

eighteen times the amount of money that was cut from the NEA last spring

A sneak peak of our new book, Sick Jokes, which shares some of the best medical humanities research happening around visual humour & health! It's been so great to work on this w/ our contributors. On the @manchesterup.bsky.social website come spring 🌱 @slobogin.bsky.social @lauracowley.bsky.social

in case you're curious about how angry Minnesota is about ICE, it was -20 today

I don't post about work super often on here, but here's a short essay I wrote for our weekly newsletter on the more than 60-year effort to make the Parker Solar Probe the first spacecraft to touch the Sun.

I'm assembling a list of scholarly histsci (and adjacent) virtual events my undergrads could attend during the spring semester. Help me out by advertising your event in this thread! #histsci #HSTM

We could have paid teachers at any time. We could have simply offered a dignified wage to do any of the work we need done at any time. San Fransisco could be clean right now. It was always a matter of political will.

Why should historians be writing op-eds? @geraldo-cadava.bsky.social was spot on here 👇🗃️ #AHA26

The Organization of American Historians is conducting an oral history open to those who worked for the federal government or were contractors. This includes those who retired or were forced to leave because of changes since January. www.fecohp.org

It's illegal for the president to relieve student loan debt. It's completely fine for the president to unilaterally decide to have the head of a foreign nation black bagged on foreign soil.

I sincerely hope this appeal leads to the exoneration of Ms. Curth and a formal apology from the OU administration. It remains an embarrassment that the university took this complaint seriously in the first place.

Quote this with what you accomplished in 2025, no matter how big or small Published three articles Set up our Adv. Certificate in Health Humanities program Became an editor for the Pediatric Humanities section of JPeds Launched the Injury Studies Network website Saw ten movies at The Little!

To reiterate: it doesn’t matter if you’re an expert. Unless you have formal labor protections, universities are more than willing to discard their instructors, especially if they’re not straight white men with the right politics.

As soon as a contingent instructor becomes the subject of an official administrative review, even if they’ve done nothing wrong, their job is in jeopardy. This is one of the many reasons TT faculty should support graduate student and adjunct unionization.

The news has been… bad. In an effort to bring SOME cheer to the holiday season: what’s one thing (professional or personal) that you’re proud of this year? I’m glad to have written about the reasons why healthcare professionals should care about product safety. jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

Constantly rehiring and retraining people every 18 months due to churn is a way bigger resource sink than building a high retention culture, but there’s a certain kind of brain which is incapable of viewing employees as nonfungible

RFK Jr. is dismantling our already broken healthcare system, and Congress and the president are aiding and abetting his project to make us all less healthy, less safe, and less prosperous.

It’s feeling very real!!! Publication date: June 16, 2026. @pennpress.bsky.social

Excited to learn about the launch of the Injury Studies Network. Lots of talented scholars are involved, including @safetyworkhstm.bsky.social, @bachynski.bsky.social & @slobogin.bsky.social! (Many thanks to @neurotimes.bsky.social for calling attention to this group on LinkedIn!) #histSTM #STS 🗃️