Great news! JSTOR now have a free account with an Independent Researcher category. You can access 100 documents per month www.jstor.org/action/showL...

🎶 Take a look, it's in a book 🎶 🥹 After nearly 20 years... Reading Rainbow is returning to motivate, help, and encourage kids to become avid readers with new episodes, new friends, new projects, and of course... new books! Make sure to follow the rainbow 📚🌈 #FollowTheRainbow

Birthright citizenship's scope is not unclear in constitutional law. The words of the Constitution do mean what they mean and doctrinally, the issue has been reinforced by many legal precedents over and over at SCOTUS. Here's a brief by two historians tracing the history. 1/

One instinct in response to propagandistic lies is to try to fact check them away. Fact-checking can help maintain shared reality among those already not adhering to propaganda—but it is NOT an antidote to propaganda itself. Propaganda is IDEALOGICAL TRANSMISSION: Facts are secondary to narrative.

I get that the news cycle is packed right now, but I just heard from a colleague at the Smithsonian that this is fully a GIANT SQUID BEING EATEN BY A SPERM WHALE and it’s possibly the first ever confirmed video according to a friend at NOAA 10 YEAR OLD ME IS LOSING HER MIND (a thread 🧵)

In which Meerkat confronts the horror of being RINSED, and stops speaking to me.

Poetry!

Some people think ChatGPT has a place writing things like news briefs, stuff written to a specific style and tone and, y'know, kinda boring. So Science did a study. ChatGPT failed. Why? It got stuff wrong. "Also, extensive editing for hyperbole was needed." www.science.org/content/blog...

we have gone from a world in which we were told not to cite wikipedia because it was unreliable to a world where wikipedia might be the only reliable source left on the internet and we all owe a lot to the pedantic nerds who got us there

Pisces: Death is inevitable, but with enough glitter, you can at least make the inevitable fabulous.

Aries: You only get one chance at life and what a terrible mess you’re making of it.

I’m having intro chats with dissertation students this fortnight, and one of them asked which historians I’d recommend for beautiful writing they could absorb to further develop their own writing style. So, gang, which are your favourite *writers* among historians, any time, any topic, any place. 🗃️

if you must be online may i point out that project gutenberg is still around and still has basically every book written before 1910 for free

Our hybrid lecture series, 'Silk Roads: Empire and Everyday Voices in the Medieval Islamicate East', with @oxlifelonglearning.bsky.social starts Monday 13 October. For more information, and to book, visit: bit.ly/SilkRoadslectures #skystorian #silkroads #lifelonglearning #studyatoxford

Academia dot edu licensing agreement says it can use your likeness and voice and publications in any manner they want, world wide.

Something bad is going to happen.

It's almost here! The class we've been looking forward to for MONTHS! Join us tonight at 8:30pm ET with Ruqayyah Daud at Hachette Book Group to learn how the worst part of pitching ("So, what's your book about?") can turn into your creative superpower. hook-of-your-book-class.manuscriptacademy.com

My boxing drills (with footwork!) Elicited a Gooood. Niiice. from one of the pro fighters at the gym.

Really is unfortunate how easy it is to forget how little the internet truly reflects the values of the real world We have to remember that the reason so many people online are horrible human beings is because they aren’t accepted elsewhere

Look I got into the academic study and teaching of history because contemporary politics and security studies felt too real and suffocating, please stop making my historical study and teaching so damn relevant please and thank you.

If the only people listening to you are people who already believe what you believe, it's time to stop yelling about how bad the bad guys are (they know) and start yelling about how we can all be better good guys.

I am a hypermasculine and extremely powerful alpha male. As such my greatest fears are seed oils, rainbows, people who don't look like me being on TV, and preventative medicine. I cannot explain any of these fears and consider that to be your fault.

The “problem” with vaccines? They so effective at preventing deaths that they create generations of people that question whether disease was a problem in the first place because they have never experienced the horrors of a world without vaccines.

Wait, Loretta Lynn and Crystal Gayle were SISTERS???

Found a new silly little game where you have to solve clues between brackets to get to other words to find a fun fact about this day in history www.theatlantic.com/games/bracke...

Quote post a pic of you from another era

Social Security’s chief data officer, Charles Borges, submitted a whistle-blower complaint this week detailing how DOGE uploaded the confidential personal information of hundreds of millions of Americans to an insecure cloud server (NYT story below). Today Borges resigned, citing his persecution.

I did not know that #knitting came to Japan in the 17th century with the Portuguese, and that the lower-ranked samurai did it to earn money (3:26 min): youtu.be/61DwQ1M3q-I?... (This is not novel research; I just found it interesting.) #craftsky #Japan #Japanesehistory

ISO a commentator on a Civil War in global perspective panel, as well as a moderator (grad students encouraged, especially for the latter role).

being two-spirit, transgender, any gendered "other" is neutral ; it is netural in the way nature is neutral. untamable, fecund valleys that produce both storms and harvests. there is no "ideology" but existence, growth, metamorphosis. and man hates what he cannot constrain, pathologize, settle.

According to the techno-authoritarian state's own tool, ChatGPT (I am not endorsing AI here, making a point), transgendered people account for so few mass shootings that it approaches irrelevant as a data point statistic. So, if that's the case, why do we see this? 
 You know why.

I think one of the problems is that media has conditioned people to believe that fascism comes along with dark skies and ominous music. People don’t recognize authoritarianism when they see their neighbors walking the dog on a sunny day with chirping birds.

I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones. - Albert Einstein Good morning.

This is infuriating. It is also important, and I strongly suggest it as your next longread

Keep a paper journal.

Rock Looked Way Cooler Wet

When our Christianity makes the ultra wealthy and powerful feel safe and supported and the poor and powerless feel unsafe and unsupported, that is when we can be sure we are following someone other than Jesus.

James Baldwin’s message was simple: we’re afraid of love, because we’re afraid of exposing our true selves.

Tag yourselves. You know what to do.

on the one hand I should absolutely put my phone down but on the other hand what if the forces attacking democracy operate on weeping angels logic

The real power of writing isn’t in being read. It’s in the act of translating your inner world into language, and realizing you can. That you’re real. That your thoughts can manifest in the physical world. That words have power. That it doesn’t all have to be in your head. That it can come to life.

The reason politicians want you to live in fear of everything, is so when they want you to buy something, you will, and then they want you to die for something, you’ll sign up, and when they take power and control from you, you’ll say that it’s just for the best. They aren’t scared. They’re abusers.

Remembering Joe Strummer on what would have been his 73rd birthday. Celebrate Joe’s remarkable life with Clash biographer Pat Gilbert’s selection of his finest albums, encompassing The Clash, The Mescaleros and The 101ers...

Science is hard. You gotta prove it, test it, and reproduce the results. Pseudoscience is easy. You make it up, add some fear, and watch ignorant people spread it.

HAPPY 5 YEARS, OVID NOT COVID! 🎉 This week it's 5 years since I finished my first series of classics videos. To celebrate, we've put them on YouTube! Fill your boots. Now I've got a YouTube channel, who knows what else might go on there - subscribe to find out... www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...