I WILL BE DISCUSSING THE STAR TREK TO RAISE FUNDS FOR MUTUAL AID YOU WANT TO BE THERE, YES YOU DO

Can historians benefit from creative works for historical research? In this @hsnatsci.bsky.social short piece, I share how I worked w/ different types of making to research and write my recent book on 17th-c. florilegia. Thank you @dominikhhh.bsky.social & @mbaldwin.bsky.social for the invitation!

Great piece out today in Physics Today on historical origins, contemporary relevance, & fundamental irreplaceability of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, which remains at imminent risk of dismantling for partisan political reasons.

In response to the disruptions and uncertainties in federal funding for science, researchers are knocking on the doors of philanthropies. But they can pick up only some of the slack.

Thinking about this because I’ve spent my entire career competing with and being evaluated by men who say “yes” to what @seanmcarroll.bsky.social is describing here and also being framed as “problematic“ by people who would literally say yes to this kind of shit and worse 🫩

This great piece is part of a collection of exciting essays on Historical Practice I had the great pleasure of co-editing with the wonderful @mbaldwin.bsky.social for @hsnatsci.bsky.social . #HistSci #HistSTM

1) this from @kfullagar.bsky.social and @austhistassoc.bsky.social is awesome. A great model for scholarly orgs to place member writing in mass media. theaha.org.au/publicising-...

dear peace monks, you don’t know me but DO NOT GET ON THAT BUS

You’ve seen the halftime show … now read my friend Petra’s new book from @dukepress.bsky.social about how Bad Bunny became the global voice of Puerto Rican resistance! 👏🏽👏🏽 www.dukeupress.edu/p-fkn-r

Okay winter, we get it. Now would you PLEASE fuck off.

@theonion.com is so worth the subscription for this

Internal White House meetings going on, like, "Hopefully the racism will distract from the pedophilia which will distract from the killings which will distract from the pedophilia again which will distract from the economy which will distract from the pedophilia a third time"

This is a person who has no business teaching 18-year-olds of any gender. "This is how men behave"? Only if you teach them that this behavior is OK and expected.

6/ The Post has lost over 375,000 subscribers in just over a year. If 10% of those readers subscribed to The 51st instead, we could hire 10 reporters and five editors, dramatically scaling our coverage of the city at this critical time. 51st.news/signup

Total meltdown. Unbelievable, yet believable!

God forbid a woman have hobbies.

My kids’ art teacher did this on the school field! Brought his hockey skates and stick and waved to all the kids while skating around during dropoff. And yes, this stuff is that hard and frozen.

Bravo, @dcpubliclibrary.bsky.social, bravo.

It is unforgivably appalling that someone who has regularly displayed these qualities & behaviors for decades on end was allowed to become the most prominent public-facing economist in the entire country, with access to the commanding heights of academic power & unlimited elite media platforms.

HE HAS HIS BACKPACK

GIVE HIM HIS HAT AND BACKPACK BACK YOU GHOULS

Here’s Duke behavioral economist Dan Ariely asking Jeffrey Epstein for “the name and email of the redhead that was here with you.” This is four years after Epstein’s 2008 conviction for procuring a child for prostitution.

Never mind the jobs you had, tell me five classes you took in college: 1. Music of the United States 2. The New Testament 3. Differential Equations 4. The US in the 1950s 5. Physics Without Calculus*

So what I'm hearing is that, in the last five days, two Black Members of Congress have been assaulted in apparent support of the regime's deportation diktat (Rep Frost, punched at Sundance & told he'd be deported; Rep Omar at an ICE townhall) & the regime has arrested four Black journalists. Huh.

Catherine O'Hara is as much of a "good in absolutely everything, no matter how good the thing itself was" actor as Philip Seymour Hoffman.

Damn, our members look good on @usatoday.com's front page! www.usatoday.com/story/money/...

a phd

Do it do it do it

...and if it's the same "prison" or detention center in Texas where ICE has been sending people, there isn't enough food, and everyone is crying and screaming, and people can't get their medications, and no one can get in to help them. A FIVE YEAR OLD.

I know I don't have a ton of media followers, but I'll put this out there anyway: if you need someone to comment/offer context on the removal of the slavery exhibit at the President's House site in Philly, get in touch. I just finished an entire book on Americans' fight over Washington and slavery.

Dang, if I'd know this would be a hit I would have made a better post. You Are Reviewer 2 A solo d6-based "game" to discover why you're so bad at giving academic feedback and why none of your colleagues like you. midnitelibrary.itch.io/you-are-revi...

US federal agencies were gutted in 2025, losing ~20% of their staff relative to 2024.

I just thought everyone should see this

Area Mom looks up flights to Cancun, realized she doesn't want to share her snow days with Ted Cruz.

Worth remembering, too, that Lonsdale has an axe to grind with Stanford because he was once banned from their campus for sleeping with a student he was supposed to be mentoring. www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/m...

PSA, if you, like me, suddenly started getting AI-generated overviews above emails in Gmail and do not want them (but would still like to keep the useful AI-assisted mail sorting of promotions, etc.): Go to settings and disable "Google Workspace smart features".

Sponsored by [insert AI concept art here]

“This article urges a fresh view on [AI large language model] hallucinations by arguing that, rather than being errors in any conventional sense, they are evidence of a probabilistic system incapable of dealing with questions of knowledge.”

If you follow me I'd love you to also follow @contingent-mag.bsky.social, the history magazine I co-edit. We pay all of our contributors and publish some neat stuff.

hey! hey!!! if you are an academic of any rank in the critical tech studies space who cares about how money, finance, and business structures work in science and technology, i want to see your abstracts for a collected volume! they're due tomorrow!!! https//oddletters.com/tech-money/

There are very few surviving portrait of Johannes Kepler and each of them has a question mark hanging over it for some reason #histsci thonyc.wordpress.com/2025/12/27/c...

Visited a regional branch of the National Archives, and the mss I wanted to look at were in a filing cabinet for which no one could find the key. They called a locksmith on the spot, who drilled out the cylinder to get them to me. Archivists are the best! 🗃️

My forthcoming book— For which I began research in 2006. Is now posted on the website for Princeton University Press. Cover will be added soon. The King’s Slaves: The British Empire & the Origins of American Slavery

In this issue: -Articles on infrastructure & astronomy (Eun-Joo Ahn) & ocean drilling (Beatriz Martinez-Rius) [email protected]'s review of books by @patrickmccray.bsky.social, @ccmmody.bsky.social & Mark Solovey -James Hofmann's essay on the current state of Ampère historiography #histSTM

when someone tells me not to use em dashes because AI uses em dashes

Someone sent this to me as proof that *i* am wrong about my own self. Anyway, all of this fabricated. Just untrue and not even close to the direction of truth.

"We are throwing half of our money in a well that legend has it will reward our tributes by making our wishes come true. We simply do not have any choice but to now throw the other half of our money in there too."

So-called "smart" devices are pushed heavily for the holidays, but be mindful of what you're opting that gift recipient into. www.eff.org/deeplinks/2...

I agree. Summers has said repeatedly, both in public and private, that he believes women are not as smart or talented as men. He has no business in a classroom. FEEL FREE TO REPEAT THIS INSIGHT.