Good morning! Texas is revising its K-12 social studies standards (TEKS) for 5.5 million kids, & the State Board of Education (SBOE) is meeting today to discuss their progress today. I will be live-tweeting (posting?) about anything that concerns social studies. Follow this thread for updates!

Loved working on this piece with @drwhit.bsky.social!

@acls1919.bsky.social, the AHA, & @modernlanguage.bsky.social filed a lawsuit in federal district court today, seeking to reverse the recent actions of the NEH to devastate the agency, including the elimination of grant programs, staff, and entire divisions and programs. 🗃️

It’s so weird how we’re all just working like this is still a normal country.

Totally agree with this. Flying a person to a third country that they may never have been to, directly into a prison where they are going to be forced to do hard labor, is not a deportation; it's something else entirely.

If you've tried accessing federal databases and have noticed anything limiting, missing, etc., tell these folks. And if you use federal databases, they're folks to follow on the status of those.

Do you have information on the health of the federal statistical agencies, or want to follow updates? Please visit this webpage, contribute information, & spread the word on this effort to help ensure the availability, credibility, & objectivity of federal statistics. www.amstat.org/the-nations-...

I’ve been playing Fallout 4 and have been surprised at how comforting it is to be POST-apocalyptic. Nice to be reminded that 1) there IS an after and 2) people will continue to live.

When it comes to written arguments, you have to choose your battles with people who respect the rules of combat. If you’re writing for people who read anything & everything you didn’t say into what you’re saying, you’re not going to win them over that way. Spend your time where it’s valuable.

Was Homer calling a cat?

Painful.

The AHA & the @oah.org have released a joint statement on the presidential executive order “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K–12 Schooling.” “We reject the premise that it is ‘anti-American’ or ‘subversive’ to learn the full history of the United States.” 🗃️

AI bots are using social media going to make these people seem more supported than they are. They plan to “staff” the government with AI, which is preposterous. Stop using it. Stop engaging with it. Using AI has always been a political act, but now it directly supports this takeover. Refuse it.

What’s the opposite of “no reason in particular”? “All reasons concievable”? Anyway, here’s Umberto Eco’s “Ur-Fascism.” www.nybooks.com/articles/199...

Kinda wild that of all the timelines, we ended up in the prequel to Looper.

r/askhistorians on previous times we have deported US citizens. www.reddit.com/r/AskHistori...

What has been done to government workers, just as employees, is the corporate sensibility the iconoclasts are bringing to the mix. All the evidence you need for why labor rights - putting rails around what is acceptable treatment by our bosses - is ultimately a *constitutional* safeguard.

The mood in the WFH office this morning.

ME: *writing in my journal with the sole aim of pissing off future historians and archaeologists* I returned to my home - which is built in the usual style - by the normal way, and prepared and ate dinner in the way I often but not always do

Honor his memory by doing something strange, unraveling a riddle within yourself, and working on your favorite projects.

My favorite line in the OG series.

RIP David Lynch. Truly sad to say goodbye. What a truly American filmmaker, and what a true artist.

Not completely unexpected, but certainly troubling and deeply annoying. Even if it’s previously been a quiet endeavor, openly embracing the mission of entertainment at a newspaper seems disqualifying. It’s all about access, which means it’s about money. The Post is a just a chess piece.

I've never lived in a multi-story dwelling before, which has given my daily "Where are my shoes?" ritual new dimensionality.

We’ve lost the joy of browsing as a culture. Libraries replacing bookshelves with e-book catalogs. Shelves of random movies at a video rental becoming market-driven “If you liked X, then you might like Y” recs. The internet packages “discovery” as just a widening circle of the familiar.

Funny how little has changed in terms of the grievance-bait. "Pious divines and tender-hearted poetesses" is 18th century speak for virtue signalers and snowflakes.

Hi new folks! Just diligently annotating the 2-inch margins of a printed out email before I type a response, which probably tells you a lot about me.

The theme of 2025 is "Pressure makes diamonds."

This is today! Excited to highlight some of the unsung parts of the report and engage with a terrific panel (and audience)!

"ProPublica identified 155 counties across the Deep South with private schools that likely opened as segregation academies...One in Amite County has never — over nearly 30 years of responding to a federal survey — reported enrolling more than one Black student at a time."

Now that I’ve seen it, the final stage of late stage capitalism IS The Masked Singer, right?

Okay, I’m as surprised as anybody, but Trap (2024) is a really good time!

Master Crowley's #1 on the Irish bouzouki for your leisure.

What's next for history in higher education? Join us at 3:00 PM ET on Dec. 6 for a free online event. I'll discuss the legislative and policy landscape for history education, both nationally and in the states, with Jeremy Young (PEN America) and AHA colleagues. www.historians.org/event/whats-...

Re: dismal literacy rates in the US: the finger gets pointed at public schools, but young adults who come of age today have been exposed to school choice and lax homeschooling laws. No doubt there are issues across categories, but it would be helpful to see that accompany headline stats.

Excited for a panel about American Lesson Plan at #NCSS2024 in Boston with Jim Grossman, Jennifer Morgan, and David Blight. We will discuss what we learned about how teachers teach, and steps the social studies community is taking to inform policymakers about what actually happens in the classroom.

Re: right-wing and right-sympathizing media: they have unlimited funding. The amounts of money responsible for propping up the right’s media apparatus is gobsmacking. Hardly any of them make the profit that would pay the enormous salaries we hear about. It’s subsidized all the way down.

Thought I was buying new readers, but they’re just blue light filters. tfw you need readers to be able to buy your readers

In 1,000 years, when archaeologists are excavating our civilization, where’s the proof of what’s happening in our material world? How much of the evidence of what has happened in US and world society over the past twenty years would just disappear if the servers went dead and the internet died?

great thread and this has been one of my obsessions in my column, to point people away from the european example and toward the american one.

Could the left’s Joe Rogan be Klippenstein, though? If it’s about finding models of masculinity, tough independent journalist who publishes stuff too hot for legacy media and recites his rights when the FBI comes to his door seems like some kind of archetype.

If the existence of a mandate depends on how you count it, then does it count as a mandate?

Victories have been won from deeper deficits.

404 is a good follow for tech news.

Are there good starter packs for US historians?

A revealing psychological portrait here.