So unbelievably proud of my husband, Ben, who’s won the RSC’s 2025 Synge Award for excellence in the mathematical sciences! 🤩🥳

it's nice that the 12 foot skeletons will return from migration soon

This is a handy illustration of several things: a) the NW passage is not going to be a freeway anytime soon. Other Arctic pathways are more profitable b) The challenge for the Canadian military in the far north is rescue ops, not defence. c) Cannibalism is so in right now.

I'm already seeing a lot of "well this is a start! This is better!" on my feed. It's not!! Remember why this mess all started in the first place, and how this government is choose to single out what is "explicit" or "graphic."

To be clear, this move brings us back to the very pointed targeting of LGBTQ2S+ graphic novels that got us here in the first place. Books that were on the government's radar thanks to far-right advocacy groups like Action4Canada.

The IHPST is hiring! Assistant Professor - Philosophy of Science and/or Technology. jobs.utoronto.ca/job/Toronto-...

Don't miss my picks for environmental history worth reading and watching from August 2025! niche-canada.org/2025/09/08/e... #envhist

One of the most salient features about AI resistance is that people become *less* inclined to use AI the *more* they know about it. This even shows up in my own class, where genAI is banned for both pedagogical and ethical reasons. On that note, something interesting happened this week… 🧵

Ahead of new print alert! You can now read @elsadevienne.bsky.social's "Making Plastics Count: Citizen Science Beach Cleanups and the Ocean Plastic Pollution Crisis (1980s–2020s)" from the October 2025 issue. #envhist #envhum #pollution www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

If anyone is interested in speaking about the impact Joy Parr’s work has had on their own research over the next couple of days, please let me know! Currently making a film about this for the upcoming #SHOT25 meeting in Luxembourg and a spot has opened up unexpectedly. #histSTM #EnvHist

One month until publication for _Ethanol: A Hemispheric History for the Future of Biofuels_. Tom Rogers and I lay out the linked history of the US and Brazilian ethanol programs and explain why they matter for energy, climate, and politics. Pre-orders available now! www.oupress.com/978080619601...

That's how I feel about defenders of "AI literacy" in the classroom; you've added additional tasks for your students to perform critical evaluation of tools that nobody asked for (except administrators and LLM salesmen). 5/5

Shoehorning "AI literacy" into every single class strikes me as the same way "AI" and "productivity" is justified in the workforce. "AI" may save time (which it doesn't by many empirical studies), but the time taken on new tasks (e.g., checking outputs) has added much more time to the task. 4/

Be sure to join us for this book talk with Tina Adcock on Cold Colonialism online on Monday, Sept 8!

Join us online Monday to hear Tina Adcock discussing A Cold Colonialism. As always, you are welcome to ask your own questions too! Details below.

I’ve done this for 2 weeks now and it *absolutely rules*. Best class discussions I’ve ever had. Best engagement with readings. They write in this worksheet for 15 minutes, then talk about their responses in groups of 3-4, then groups share with the whole class, and *then* we talk about the readings

The banning of even the most performative and empty of gestures is... disturbing as hell.

Today on our site we have "Yellowknife’s Giant Mine: Canada downplayed arsenic exposure as an Indigenous community was poisoned" by @arnkeeling.bsky.social and John Sandlos niche-canada.org/2025/09/03/y... #envhist #mininghistory #cdnhist #indigenoushistory

Back at my printing night class (in-depth etching this time) and I will repeat my advice to academics: get a hobby. Preferably get a hobby that you can fail at and it doesn't matter. In facts it only makes it better.

Happening in 30 minutes ⬇️ There will be a recording if you can’t make it live (but I do give away freebies if you’re there in real time)

It goes without saying: if you work on literature or other environmental humanities, you're welcome to join us. We have room for 1-2 more. // Por supuesto, invitamos a nuestrxs colegas en literatura y en humanidades del medio ambiente.

I’ll be sharing some #envhum insights from *A Cold Colonialism* in a @greenhouseuis.net book talk next Monday, September 8th at 7 am PT / 10 am ET / 4 pm CET. Please join us! ❄️ Click below for more info, including the Zoom link ⬇️ #envhist #cdnhist newnatures.org/greenhouse/e...

Co-sign — this was a hugely entertaining read ☠️

On day 2 of the post-tenure sabbatical and the exhaustion is real, whew 😰

Heya. I got a bit bored by people asking me how to navigate away from the cycles of exhaustion and exploitation that the academia seems exceptionally well inclined to produce. So I decided to run a workshop on it. An antiwork-antishop, in effect. Sign up below. janabacevic.net/against-acad...

I’ll be sharing some #envhum insights from *A Cold Colonialism* in a @greenhouseuis.net book talk next Monday, September 8th at 7 am PT / 10 am ET / 4 pm CET. Please join us! ❄️ Click below for more info, including the Zoom link ⬇️ #envhist #cdnhist newnatures.org/greenhouse/e...

excited to share the call for the workshop EXTRACTIVE NATURES / NATURES OF EXTRACTION happening at @uobrisceh.bsky.social on 6-7 Nov 2025, 
made possible by the @britishacademy.bsky.social deadline: 10 September! full call below ⤵ #envhist #envhum

All beavers are heroic

These talks on rural #envhist (broadly construed) all look superb — and there’s an option to attend online! 🥳

Your global outrage worked. Now watch out for the bait and switch. The best ban is No Ban. Teach critical thinking and fund school librarians. Most school boards already have well established policies to deal with objectionable content in libraries. edmonton.citynews.ca/2025/09/02/a...

So exciting! Congrats, John and Arn!

My matest quarterly bibliography in Native American/Indigenous history. Enjoy. michaelleroyoberg.com/new-publicat...

The last comment in this thread brings an important student perspective to AI and teaching. ChatBots have ruined trust between students and faculty. When we read a strong essay we automatically wonder if the students cheated. I hate this terrible dynamic. activehistory.ca/blog/2025/06...

The Graphic History Collective has two chapters in this cool new book on labour art in Canada, The Art of Solidarity, being launched launched today in Hamilton at the Workers Arts and Heritage Centre. If you’re in the area, go check it out: btlbooks.com/events/view/...

Some of the brightest lights I’ve known have been forced to eat shit repeatedly in their careers. And they were the “lucky” ones—in that they were able to stay in the game. Many more just got completely pushed out and we never know about them except as faceless statistics.

There are more women academics—then and now—who go through this than I realized at the start of my career. Most don’t talk about it openly because they’re ashamed they weren’t able to beat the system, even though it was rigged against them.

She got into Radcliffe during an era when that was far harder than (men) getting into Harvard. She got into Yale for a PhD at a time when women were rarely taken seriously as thinkers. Even w/these credentials she struggled to get a permanent job until AFTER she won a MacArthur genius grant in 1989🫠

I remember speaking to Prof. Rossiter at a conference around the time she retired. She was gracious and keenly interested in the work younger scholars were doing, in a genuinely curious way that you often don’t see from senior scholars of some reknown. She will definitely be missed.

Smaller class sizes is the only real solution that maintains quality and rigour. And it is about as likely as shutting down access to LLMs.

In 2023 I had the privilege of speaking with artist about their advocacy to end violence against Indigenous Alaskans. I want to highlight their voices, always, but especially in light of the AKDPS’s refusal to assist Data for Indigenous Justice. Bobby Qalutaksraq Brower “Healing Stitches”

beautiful thimbleberry and mushroom spot in haines where the cold glacier water runs into the ocean there’s sockeye spawning here right now

An Unfinished Atlas consists of “essays by authors of color, each of whom has been asked to select a place — intimately known or not; famous or minor; historical or contemporary — and to write this place into the record of the continent we now call North America.” [via @placesjournal.bsky.social]

I also really appreciate this advice from @emilymbender.bsky.social and @karenhao.bsky.social, which tracks with my own experience teaching high school students and college students and talking with my own kids. Emphasize environmental costs and - once more - that GenAI is *not* inevitable.

“‘She uncovered the social experience of women in science’ — the lab assistants who never became managers, the geologists poring over data in government offices while their male peers were doing fieldwork, those who despite their advanced degrees didn’t get hired or promoted, or who were sidelined…”

And Marthe Gautier who discovered the chromosomal cause of trisomy 21 (Down syndrome) but had her work hijacked by a man who had funding to attend international conferences

And of course Professor Wangari Maathai who while fighting unequal pay and conditions at the department of Veterinary Science at the University of Nairobi in the 1970s, began her lifelong project of reforestation in Kenya. But, sadly, the list is endless.

Reminds me of the entomologist Evelyn Cheesman who, two generations earlier worked unpaid at the Natural History Museum, borrowing male colleagues' microscopes in their lunch breaks. She still discovered more than 200 species and theorised early ideas around plate tectonics.

This lock out was such a terrible decision. Universities do not (& should not) need to be such secretive places. Everyone claims that their purpose is teaching students & bettering our society through research. Open books and transparent management would end this toxic culture in #cdnpse.

They’re doing all this to prevent people from MEMORIALIZING A MASS SHOOTING