Rosalind Franklin died at 37 of ovarian cancer attributed to radiation exposure from the methods she & her assistant used to photograph a cross-section of the DNA double helix. Meanwhile, Watson won a Nobel off that work & survived to the ripe old age of 97 by simply: stealing those notes!

Today, @danielmacfarlane.bsky.social on "Finding Environmental History in 'The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.'" The Edmund Fitzgerald sank on November 10, 1975 in Lake Superior. niche-canada.org/2025/11/07/f... #envhist #musichistory #greatlakes #envhum

I’m skeptical of @columbiasportswear.bsky.social’s climate-denying ad campaign.

I would like to hype a new book that just came out!! It is a collection of memories by Metis writer Marie Rose Delorme Smith (1861-1960), with context by Doris Jeanne MacKinnon. AFAIK, this is the first time writing by a Metis woman who experienced buffalo hunts has been published as a book.

Can't wait for the researchers we attract to realize that research in Canada is ALSO woefully underfunded.

Good things are possible and we don’t have to settle.

”your struggle is ours, too” is such an amazing moral vision and an actual alternative to those who cant abandon marginalized people fast enough

68 years ago today the dog Laika was launched into orbit, the first living being to break the bonds of gravity. Unfortunately she died soon after. I found the previously classified document on her fate in a Russian archive. Here's what it said about her fate #laika (1/n)

New Master in Public Environmental Humanities - @greenhouseuis.net 2-year masters program for students who want to study today’s environmental challenges as deeply rooted in culture and history Info sessions on November 11 & 21 niche-canada.org/2025/11/01/n... #envhum #envhist #envstudies

As @cathamclarke.bsky.social said to me the other week; it’s clear there’s a NEED for history - just look around you. But there’s a disconnect between that and the realisation that there’s a need to train historians.

There are now 183 videos of our Greenhouse #envhum book talks available to view via our Vimeo showcase. This includes our most recent talks. You can also listen to the audio-only podcast, which is slightly behind with 154 episodes available: newnatures.org/greenhouse/f...

Happy #Halloween! A few years ago, midwives at the Royal Oldham Hospital in Lancashire created "dilation pumpkins" - and I don't think I've ever seen anything scarier in my life.* 😂😩 *Posted with apologies to anyone who is pregnant.

This has chilling implications far beyond awarding research grants. If the Tri-Agency has to hand over private and confidential information then that puts in doubt the security of such information *in* research studies (say, a clinical trial) and other gov't agencies--this is unsafe & erodes trust.

There's so much being researched and published about GenAI that I update the 'Against Generative AI' resource list almost every day. Check it out catherinedenial.org/blog/uncateg...

“Higher education aims to create cognitively mature adults, which..requires us to ensure students learn to read, think and write all on their own. It is easier than we think: Creating tech-free spaces and incentivizing students to spend time in them requires no new resources. All it takes is will.”

This is important, #HigherEd 👇

For @academicaunties.com , @aadita.bsky.social & I chat about the difficulties of supporting projects that break academic norms even in interdisciplinary environments. We also talk abt research undertaken outside the academy & why it can be more cutting edge! www.academicaunties.com/episodes/col...

🚨We are launching the 6th edition of the NEXTGATe Writing Support Program! Are you an early career author looking for feedback on your writing in a supportive peer-group plus expert advice? You have come to the right place! For more information and how to apply, see below 👇 #envhist #envhum

The great irony of all of this? Most of these climate change impacts will be borne, most immediately and acutely, by poorer nations in the Global South--precisely those on whose behalf the memo authors are ostensibly advocating. That's why this memo makes me viscerally uncomfortable. [13/n]

3C of global warming means droughts, & floods, of historically unprecedented magnitudes across broad swaths of the planet. It means the collapse of ecosystems, and possibly even cascading effects that could trigger any number of critical Earth system "tipping points." [12/n]

3C of global warming means many feet of sea level rise, fundamentally altering coastlines and swamping megacities home to 100s of millions. It means heatwaves that in humid regions could become, literally, unsurvivable for those outdoors without access to active cooling. [11/n]

Here's the thing: 2.5-3C of global warming is actually still really bad news. Is it better than 3-5C of warming? Undoubtedly. But I don't think many folks, apparently including Gates & advisors, appreciate just how radically transformed a 2.5-3C warmer world would be. [10/n]

It is also true, as is stated in the memo, that our current warming trajectory is less extreme than the one were potentially going to take. We're now most likely on track for somewhere between 2.5-3C of warming by 2100 vs. 3-5C of warming extrapolating from ~20 years ago. [9/n]

For this reason, the Gates memo presupposes a false dichotomy regarding climate outcomes: The choice we are faced with is not between "good for us" & "the end of the world," but instead how much harm we are willing to tolerate, and endure, in the years to come. [8/n]

In fact, the preponderance of scientific evidence in recent years points increasingly toward each increment of warming being MORE consequential, and harmful to both human systems and societies and ecosystems, than previously believed--not less. [7/n]

Join us for our next event! Mon Nov 10 Indigenous Love & Rage: Resistance to Settler Colonialism. Meal at 6 pm, childcare available, ASL-English confirmed, Masks required (we are all volunteer collective with no funding, email to get involved & help out!) www.weavingourworlds.ca/indigenous-l...

hosted in Simon Fraser's namesake institution and you better believe we're going to talk about his appearance in "We Survived the Night"!!

Ooh, Simon Schaffer reader coming down the pike. I blogged through a good chunk of his oeuvre back in the day, which was really illuminating. Too bad they didn't include "The Show That Never Ends" (on perpetual motion), which is probably my favorite: doi.org/10.1017/S000... #HPS

The past week has also reminded me of a couple of things that I always knew. One is that history matters. The other is that making histories - telling stories about the past - is always a collective and collaborative endeavour. Thank you.

Thread

this is a hugely helpful list of possible countermeasures against AI, but (yet more helpfully!) lists the counter-countermeasures students could take to cheat anyway. overall, an indication of how dark & exhausting things have become for those of us trying to get people to actually think & read

I don't 100% agree that a student submitting an LLM-generated essay means they don't care. I think it also tells us a lot about illness, disability, students overburdened with part-time jobs and the insufficiency of existing student support. But this is an excellent resource.

Discussing assessment in the light of AI today. Conclusion seems to be that every innovation introduced to make assessment fairer to those with English as a second language or different learning styles are going to be sacrificed to make assessment mean anything at all. Back to 1970s exam halls.

Normal day for a historian

After the B.C. Supreme Court recognized Quw’utsun title to Tl’uqtinus, their former fishing village on the Fraser River, the province and Richmond moved to appeal. Some say the ruling threatens private property. Others call it a long-overdue recognition of Indigenous title. Check out deep dive ⬇️

My new book, "Ripples on the Cosmic Ocean," was published today! And here's a new article in @theconversation.com that explains how #solarstorms have influenced #history, and may threaten our future. Spoiler: it's really not a good idea to cut science at NASA. theconversation.com/solar-storms...

We were researching the history of Rothera Research Station, and stumbled across this incredible photo. It's giving Batcopter 🚁 The UK's first major aerial survey of the Antarctic Peninsula was 1955-57. The Falkland Island Dependencies Aerial Survey Expedition used flying boats and helicopters ⬇️

We've posted another new piece ahead of print in 'Environment and History', being Claudia Leal's article 'Tenacious: An Alternative History of Dogs'; online here: doi.org/10.3828/whpe... #envhist #dogs #mongrels #colombia #latinamerica @eandhwhp.bsky.social

I have back-to-back meetings tomorrow which will require me to move quickly from queer-history brain to oil-history brain. I feel like this will be a good test of how well I can toggle between these two disparate programs of research more generally 😅

I did a new assignment this year in my 100-level class where students print out a copy of a secondary source, annotate the crap out of it, and then write a reflection paper on what they learned. I'm not sure I have the reflection part quite right yet, but the physical annotations part is AMAZING.

Yikes! Reason #11,760 why the world needs more #envhist ⤵️

Witty part of academic paper title: Serious description of what the paper is about

nobody wants this NOBODY WANTS THIS

My sustaining donor spiel: If you have a enough money to keep forgetting to unsubscribe to something, I highly recommend becoming a sustaining donor at the food bank (or other org) of your choice.

Very sad news about the loss of historian Tim Cook, who died far too young. His impact on our understanding of Canadian military history was just massive. An outstanding historian. He will be missed. www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

Historians love to put ‘Towards a’ in the title of a paper

had a mentor warn me that eventually you're gonna have to teach your favorite subject for the hundredth time and then maybe during a divorce and maybe during the death of a child or spouse and when you're getting chemo the same day. still needs to be delivered by a human

i used to walk into my 1st year classes each morning with one interesting/fun story to ground whatever it is we were discussing that day. and if that didn't get the engagement I needed to feel confident, suddenly I'm on a stage doing improv :')

No, seriously. Y’all think that teaching is JUST conveying information? Fuck that: we have to perform to make the information stick. Shit is HARD.

as an English professor, I’d go as far to say these days I’m excited to see typos & fragments & run on sentences & page-long paragraphs & awkward word choices & any imperfection that suggests a human being sat down to do the very hard thing of writing a college paper.