A *2,000* acre data center right next to the Manassas National Battlefield. I hate this shit so much.

We just had a wild line of storms last night in Nebraska, with more expected tonight. This news does not fill me with confidence (now or in the future).

This is weird.

My colleague Sam Lebovic writes about Socialist leader Eugene Debs' arrest and sentencing to prison for criticizing WWI to introduce his new four-part teaching guide on free speech in America, offering close readings of primary sources, contextual essays, and classroom exercises.

A few things: We nearly eradicated wolves in the American West because of moves similar to this. It wasn't good. Second, this will have knock-on effects: the poison doesn't stop with the poisoned animal, it gets passed on to the next predator or scavenger. Third, coyotes have survived worse.

NEW: An Oklahoma family was forced to abandon their home after it filled with slick, black goo, reaching gas concentrations at explosive levels. Despite ample evidence of oil and gas pollution, state regulators say they cannot help.

It’s a golf ball size hail kind of thunderstorm.

This smoked chicken.

“For many Montanans, the swap has come to symbolize the growing influence of wealthy private interests spreading across America’s public lands and provides a glimpse of what could come under the Trump administration.”

“After years of hearing that these platforms tanked everything but rightwing content, you had everyone down to the golf influencers referencing Pretti being ‘murdered by masked agents of the state.’” www.liberalcurrents.com/rather-than-...

Critical fire weather is expected Friday across the Northern Plains, Upper Midwest, and southern High Plains due to gusty winds and low humidity. Severe thunderstorms capable of large to very large hail, wind damage and tornadoes will be possible Friday and Saturday in the central Plains.

For the other @tropy.bsky.social users out there: you might be interested in this plugin I wrote over the weekend called Tropymd, which lets you export Tropy items and their notes as individual markdown documents. github.com/hepplerj/tro...

For the other @tropy.bsky.social users out there: you might be interested in this plugin I wrote over the weekend called Tropymd, which lets you export Tropy items and their notes as individual markdown documents. github.com/hepplerj/tro...

Hi @mozilla.org you can start by linking to and crediting the 8000 word article by @robin.berjon.com and me which you have said is the inspiration for your conference. Ideas are meant to be shared. <Work> is what writers, artists and technologists do to live. Work needs credit and support.

Tough time to be anybody working in or on public lands right now.

Tough time to be anybody working in or on public lands right now.

Super pleased with how the redesign of the RRCHNM website turned out. I hope you'll check it out! When you redesign and migrate a site with this much content there's bound to be issues. If you spot any, it'd be swell if you'd let me know.

did they interlock their pinkies as they said this, too?

did they interlock their pinkies as they said this, too?

First garden harvest!

Author, bookseller, and publisher friends: Please keep posting your positive stories about selling books through Bluesky, and I'll package them up and show them to publishers so that we can get more book publishers and even more authors and book conversation here!

Good book day. @eladiobobadilla.com @coryhaala.bsky.social

Historians, the best way to support efforts like this is to join the AHA. We also are suing the administration over the Presidential Records Act, and your membership supports such efforts. historians.org/join You can also donate to support our work: historians.org/donate

Chicken check-in.

Before / after

Chicken check-in.

The publishing industry views Bluesky as some tiny unimportant island out somewhere in a far-off ocean. It's not worthy of their attention like Amazon Algoland or The Republic Of Instagram Influencer Collaborativepost is. What they don't realise is just how much the island's inhabitants love books.

*And* a massive LMS hack? In this economy?

Kids don’t get snow days but they do get Canvas hacks

"The Government cannot escape liability for DOGE’s work by scapegoating ChatGPT." A US judge slammed DOGE's use of AI in a decision today blocking the termination of $100M in humanities grants, finding DOGE lacked authority and unlawfully based decisions on race and viewpoint buff.ly/Qw0qcDH

A federal judge granted the motion for a summary judgment on all counts in favor of the AHA, @acls1919.bsky.social, and @modernlanguage.bsky.social in our lawsuit to restore the NEH, ruling that the mass termination of grants was “unlawful, unconstitutional, ultra vires, and without legal effect." 🗃️

ACLS / MLA / AHA / Authors Guild won the NEH case against the mass termination of grants.

An important step in restoring the integrity of the NEH and affirming the value of the humanities in our society. I am very grateful for the efforts of my colleagues, our members, our collaborators, and our legal team.

A quarter of American farmers do not have fertilizer on hand, and an American Farm Bureau survey says up to 70% can’t afford enough fertilizer for the season. And this is after we saw farm bankruptcies increase 46% in 2025.

A quarter of American farmers do not have fertilizer on hand, and an American Farm Bureau survey says up to 70% can’t afford enough fertilizer for the season. And this is after we saw farm bankruptcies increase 46% in 2025.

Hi! I'm a farmer! This NYT article is sweet, saccharine bullshit. Farmers knew Trump was going to hurt our business. Because he already did a trade war in his 1st term. I even did a video on why so many farmers support Trump, WHILE knowing he'd hurt our farms.

This means that hundreds, if not thousands of labs all over the country will close. Tens of thousands of jobs will be lost. This is in defiance of Congress's will and in defiance of good stewardship of the US economy. This is entirely because Russ Vought hates science

Fun night at the college rodeo!

In 2020 @yaelrice.bsky.social and I authored this article to dispute this kind of pseudo-scientific research, which regularly gets press attention, precisely so that others don't have to cope with the tedium of refuting it. Here's the refutation you need! hyperallergic.com/how-scientis...

Another example of the continuities I feel researching folks in the Reagan Administration compared to the current administration. This could describe half a dozen current cabinet members: yelling at staffers to get your way.

Later this morning I’ll be joining the DHTech meetup to talk about using generative AI to fix legacy projects and resilient digital history.

In my new piece in @theatlantic.com, I argue that the consensus about birthright citizenship extended far beyond elite legal circles to readers of newspaper advice columns and letters to the editor pages for well more than a century. nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com?url=https%3A...

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!

I’ve realized I have another book to write, alongside the one I’m already working on. The good news is the archives I’m using completely overlap so there’s no reason to not do it!

DROUGHT FACTS: As wildfires ignited last week, property owners in western and central Nebraska aren’t just praying for rain. They’re preparing for how much worse this year could get. From Jackie Ourada of Nebraska Public Media News via the Examiner:

For example, here’s a chart of farm bankruptcies over the past century. (This only tells part of the story since the other way farmers exit the market is through consolidation).

Backers of the massive data center campus say at full buildout it will consume 9GW of electricity, more than double the entire state of Utah’s current energy use. They say they intend to burn fossil fuels on site to make all that electricity. Box Elder County will vote on the proposal Monday.

For example, here’s a chart of farm bankruptcies over the past century. (This only tells part of the story since the other way farmers exit the market is through consolidation).

I’ve recently been working with some historical data on farm bankruptcies over time, this is a very troubling number.