William Walker, a doctor from Tennessee, was sort of a DIY imperialist in the mid-19th century. He carried out several cockamamie plans to make himself the ruler of a Central American nation and, improbably, succeeded in conquering Nicaragua for a short time. 🗃️ 1/2

The most fascinating thing about the disappearance of Amelia Earhart in 1937 is that Donald Trump and his Republican Party are doing everything possible to avoid the full and unabridged release of the Epstein files in 2025 and to make you think about anyfuckingthing else.

I do not regret to inform you that we are going to win www.cnn.com/2025/09/22/e...

Found this in a 1916 newspaper duringmy perusings recently...oof.

Radium Chocolate image.geo.de/35094194/t/P...

This is very interesting as a Mexican. Mexico's major 20th century painters were internationally influential muralists, and below I see how their murals fit in, appropriate, and subvert a paintings-as-spectacle tradition. Their murals coopted entertainment culture for political mobilisation projects

A century ago, a new wellness trend captivated people around the world. Just a small dose of newly discovered supplement could cure almost anything — from gout to headaches to “lack of bodily vigor.” 🧵🗃️

I had some thoughts about people saying that "debate me bro" trolling is somehow the height of democratic discourse.

i am pretty sure that most people in this country are not prepared for this change in the freedom and openness we've enjoyed as a civil society. but there's only one way to interpret this statement of vance and it's an open threat to our fundamental democratic rights.

at the center of the efforts to destroy civil society in russia, hungary, georgia and elsewhere is the stigmatization, harassment, & criminalization of NGOs. that's what this is about, a full-on assault on democratic debate & freedoms. this is not hyperbole. it's right here.

The Tokaido was just a road, stretching between Kyoto and Tokyo. But it came to symbolize much more. It was a political tool, allowing shoguns to keep control over their nobles. 🧵🗃️

Community note on X

Charlie Kirk was a horrible bigot who spewed dangerous conspiracy theories and misled many young people. He marched for Trump’s authoritarian agenda. None of this justifies violence or murder. Political violence only escalates and makes us less safe. Sadly, we dont have a leader but an arsonist.

I give you gigantic "The Trial of Red Jacket" by John Mix Stanley: www.buffalospree.com/app/buffalos...

Common theme of people I've interviewed recently. At universities, in research centers, in diplomacy, in the legal system, dealing with refugees or immigrants: The reality inside is much worse than you would think from the outside.

Excellent! I gave a talk on panorama comics (and panoramas as a visual form) last year and think these exhibitions are a key part of visual culture that we have mostly forgotten: www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/v3h9j...

Before the age of moving pictures, non-moving pictures were the blockbusters. People flocked to buzzy displays of notable paintings — the bigger the better. The “Great Picture” could be a lucrative public event. 🧵🗃️

"'I'd respect you more if you told me you actually believe in this crap and that's why you were supporting the bill. But to tell me you don't believe in this stuff, you think it's going to hurt your own constituents, and vote for it anyway, that's cowardice.'"

The President of the United States is threatening to go to war with an American city. This is not a joke. This is not normal. Donald Trump isn't a strongman, he's a scared man. Illinois won’t be intimidated by a wannabe dictator.

Would suck if at the US Open tomorrow chants of “Epstein” broke out while Trump was in the crowd.

If a teacher colleague told me they used AI to do something our brains should be able to do, I would consider it a self-own -- unless it was a new teacher, in which case I would blame it on bad administration. Replacing mentorship and training with telling new teachers to use AI is malpractice.

Does...does fucking anyone quotimg Leonidas know how that battle ended or what happened to Sparta after that war

Whether you like it or not, plastic is everywhere. It’s a versatile substance that’s probably in your furniture, your clothes, your electronics, and pretty much everything else. So what did we do before plastic? 🧵🗃️

tottenham being felled by cherries like another institution beloved by a strange number of Americans, zachary taylor

Them: “Cities are all rotting hellscapes!” Cities:

We could stop all this but Republican politicians and judges don’t want to

Dogs in advertising, an occasional series www.loc.gov/item/2004671...

In honor of National Dog Day, may we suggest one of these authentic and delightful medieval dog names for your next pet? Tell us which is your favorite in the comments 👇

If Trump only had the ability to lift anything over five pounds, we'd have seen this here too.

The French king, Louis Philippe, disappointed his liberal supporters when he started to renege on his promises to honor basic liberties. So France’s acid-penned cartoonists took him to task (here he blows ephemeral bubbles with liberal promises on them). 🗃️🧵

running is great because in what other sport is "it's a beautiful sunny day" an absolute death sentence for you, the person doing it

need people to understand that accepting or conceding that he has the authority to do these things is tantamount to giving him the authority, and so your preemptive dooming is actively counterproductive

Corruption is a tough political problem, and one of the things that makes it tough is that it’s often complex. Shady backroom deals and complex financial arrangements give politicians plausible deniability and make it hard for the public to tell what’s really going on. 🧵🗃️

These two things cannot both be true: 1: throwing a sandwich at a federal officer is a violent assault worthy of prosecution. 2: raiding the Capitol grounds, assaulting police offices & vandalizing federal property in an effort to interfere with an election is a harmless protest worthy of pardons.

The 100yr cycle from mid 20th c to the mid 21st that goes “these British seaside towns were rich because people went there for holidays for sun - these British seaside towns were poor because people went to Spain for more sun - these towns were rich because Spain had too much sun” will be wild

For the sake of balance, here is Beer Street

There was a new intoxicant loose on the streets of the big city. It was stronger than anything people had seen before — and cheap, too, which meant it was suddenly everywhere…. Welcome to England in the throes of the “gin craze!” 🗃️ worldhistory.substack.com/p/the-birth-...

A DOGE kid gets beat up in DC and it’s DefCon1; hundreds of bullets into federal buildings with officer killed in Atlanta and it’s crickets; violent mob attacks Capitol wounding dozens of officers and it’s pardons for all.

Imagine being so wedded to a certain style of horse-race political analysis that you "nothingburger" away the very likely possibility that the current President of the United States *raped children* and is using the vast and powerful apparatus of the government he controls to cover it up.

When Europeans started to make contact with the Ottoman Empire, their depictions of the Ottomans varied. Sometimes they depicted the Ottomans as bloodthirsty brutes. 🗃️🧵

civilization vi leader two turns before you destroy his lone attacking trebuchet unit with a missile cruiser

Just wrote about Stalin's do-over of the Census of 1937, after he saw some numbers he didn't like... medium.com/p/478bb5beea4a

Eighty years ago today, an American atomic bomb destroyed Hiroshima in a matter of seconds. But that was only the beginning of the story. How did the city and its people recover from utter devastation? 🗃️ worldhistory.substack.com/p/after-the-...

Fascinating historic predications of the future, mostly dystopian, almost always wrong, but with intriguing insights into expectations, assumptions, values, along with keen insights into the elements that did come to fruition...how their future, our past & present, has played out. Love this genre🗃️

I’m a sucker for predictions of the future made in the past. Some my favorite come from Albert Robida, a 19th century artist who predicted that the future would be a time of terrible warfare in the sky and under the sea... 🧵🗃️

I’m hearing my Trumpy senator Bernie Moreno saying he thinks Cincinnati should be put on some “watch list” and that he doesn’t visit Chicago anymore because of the crime. Fine asshole don’t visit here either then

These assholes don’t care about any of that! They just want to go viral about it Fine, don’t visit Cincinnati either, you car dealership owning nobody, not very many people here want you here anyway