This chip I’m eating kinda looks like Minnesota.

Look at my opposition party, dawg. I’m going to jail.

There’s a gator in the park by my house.

Currently writing a recommendation letter for a student who has lived through two mass shootings in their twenty-two years on earth. What are we doing here, folks?

Here are the promotional flyers for my Spring 2026 courses, America in the 1980s and the History of Reality TV.

H/t @renfro.bsky.social @wendymink.bsky.social The 1990s & today open.substack.com/pub/feliciak...

The only historians quoted in this piece are Jon Meacham (yawn) and Dan Carter, the latter of whom retired from academe nearly twenty years ago. 🗃️ www.nytimes.com/2025/09/13/u...

???

Hinckley’s assassination attempt on Reagan, the height of the war on drugs, mass incarceration, the LA uprising, Waco, a resurgent white power movement (Joseph Paul Franklin, The Order, Ruby Ridge, Oklahoma City, etc.), and the list goes on. 🗃️

I wrote it up here: World public opinion favored treating 9/11 like a crime. Elites ignored, torched their values & fragmented public opinion, with a significant fragment embracing rightwing identitarian politics—slightly more sophisticated white supremacy. www.randomlengthsnews.com/archives/202...

It’s a direct line.

Since everyone is offering their controversial takes, here’s mine: The Life of Pablo is better than My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, and it’s not particularly close.

Celebrating my birthday by drinking four (4) beverages in the ATL Centurion Lounge.

I am thirty-eight years old today. (This photo was taken yesterday evening, when I was still thirty-seven.)

This was a real treat—great turnout and fantastic audience questions in a gorgeous setting (on a glorious early-fall day in Rochester). Many thanks to @slobogin.bsky.social for the invitation and to everyone who attended in person and on Zoom.

I know there are tenured professors out there who breathed a sigh of relief when they saw that the A&M firing happened to a non-tenure-track faculty member. It’s going to come for you too, so maybe this is a good moment to do unto others etc.

Happening this evening! Come on by if you’re in Rochester, or join us via Zoom! 🗃️

Tomorrow! Hope to see some of y’all there. 🗃️

Still can’t get over the fact that @historians.org posted this job listing for a historian with ICE. Shocking but not particularly surprising. 🗃️

Happy birthday, king.

Uhh… 🗃️

The chair’s letter was very positive. Once the department delegate checks my file, it’ll be off to the area committee for review. More soon! 🗃️

I finished a draft of another chapter in the Atlanta book. Please clap.

Well, at least the academic job market is strong.

There’s a “stranger danger” reference on the new Sabrina Carpenter album, by the way.

Kerber x Blight collab 🗃️ www.desmoinesregister.com/story/opinio...

Congratulations, @danielle-wiggins.bsky.social! (And congratulations on the new job!) 🗃️

A week from today, I'll be giving a talk at the George Washington Corner Society for the History of Medicine. Swing on by if you're in Rochester! 🗃️

My parents were both fervent Blueskyists, so I guess you could call me a blue-diaper baby.

Today’s cycling fit:

I always thought twenty seconds was a sufficient amount of time to wash your hands, but I recently encountered a bottle of hand soap (Mrs. Meyer’s) that encouraged the user to wash their hands vigorously for thirty seconds. Which is it? This borderline hypochondriac must know.

Yuppies has a cover! And a release date! Out May 12 with @harvardpress.bsky.social.

Senator Bernie Sanders ( @sanders.senate.gov) pens New York Times op-ed calling for RFK Jr. to resign: "Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the secretary of health and human services, is endangering the health of the American people now and into the future. He must resign." www.nytimes.com/2025/08/30/o...

That’s a Florida dog right there.

Chatting with a spammer, part II.

Congratulations, @madameclair08.bsky.social! Can’t wait to read this.

Manning Marable writing in the Atlanta Voice in July 1981: "Reaganism represents at the level of politics and popular culture an attempt to organize a rightwing ‘White United Front’ on all important public policy issues of the day." 🗃️

If you want to know what a dog who just ate a whole lizard looks like, here you go:

Wanters of food

New at six:

"Your English teacher and your gym teacher are getting married"?!

This was a really excellent book about the cultural politics of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s/1990s, of who mattered in public policy and opinion, and why. Wide-ranging, well-researched, and very readable.

I’m not teaching my US since 1965 grad course until next fall, but I just couldn’t help myself. Here are the books I’m thinking of assigning. Let me know what y’all think! 🗃️

I’m at the doctor’s office.

Check it out! @uncpress.bsky.social is having a phenomenal flash sale over the next two days. Now’s your chance to snag a bunch of great UNC titles—including THE LIFE AND DEATH OF RYAN WHITE—at a 50-percent discount. Just use promo code 01NEWSITE50. uncpress.org/978146968085... 🗃️

Next, you'll want to check out @renfro.bsky.social fantastic The Life and Death of Ryan White. Beautifully written, it challenges our understandings of the AIDS epidemic, innocence, whiteness, and stigma: uncpress.org/978146968085...

Anyway, Radio Free Thomas has always been an asshole, and it’s a shame that so many liberals ever took him seriously.