I don't have a personal stake in any of this, but as an early modern historian I just want to say it's been too long since there's been a good schism.

Watching the ice floes go upstream on the Hudson is fun. You don't usually get to see the effect of the tides.

The first option is the only way if we want to save the republic. And it has to involve real consequences for all of these assholes.

Not quite ready to walk over to Manhattan, but we're getting close.

Raze it and salt the earth. It's the only way to be sure.

He's absolutely going to have it demolished.

This one feels almost cruel. The "our job is to make the subject look good" part was magnificent.

Never mind the jobs you had, tell me five classes you took in college. The History of Mathematics in 20 Proofs Silver Age Latin Poetry The History of Genetics Accounting Augustine (City of God and Confessions).

Please buy books that are coming out this year. Doesn’t have to be mine. But there is a stellar release calendar this year especially of Black writers and it would be a shame if one of the fascist victories was people not buying those books (from the indies that are in the fight with us). #BookSky

So has Bari Weiss said anything about the arrest of a CBS journalist? Ha, ha. Just kidding.

Is it cold in NYC this fine sunny morning? Why yes, yes it is.

This is why we are going to need a Nuremberg style tribunal if we get to the other side of this. This can't be a Truth and Reconciliation process, or even worse "let's just look forward." Looking forward is going to require that people who committed crimes against humanity pay for it.

An open movement, that’s huge and universal, will be more effective than a closed movement that is tiny and paranoid. If we let a fed spy into rapid response, who cares? For every one of them we get 300 neighbors. All they can do is listen as we swarm them.

Another friend put it to me like this: "ICE has made the classic Nazi mistake. They've invaded a winter people in the winter."

Roger and Me With Big Naturals

I'd like a constitutional amendment requiring every member of the executive branch to be able to correctly identify the site of a proposed military action on a map before proposing use of force, and the legislative branch to be able to do the same before they are allowed to vote to authorize it.

I've been saying for a while that if we get to the other side of this, I don't want truth and reconciliation. I want Nuremberg.

What is the process server going to say to the bear? Ursine here please.

Hall of Fame bad response to the JH thread. JH's cardinal sin as a scholar was that he did not recognize anything outside of his own interests as legitimate. If your response is that what he worked on was obviously unimportant, then you are exactly as narrow minded as he is. Congratulations.

For the end of 2025, I just want to say that I didn't like Hankins or the AI boosters before, but now I am extra resentful at both because I had to do two serious threads in a row, when my real reason for being here is to make bad jokes. Happy new year everyone.

It's a pervasive problem in academia. Definitely not limited to any one discipline.

When Hulk Hogan died. bsky.app/profile/thea...

A really important thread. As we scholars age, our fields evolve. Some older scholars evolve with them. Some gracefully accept the changes happening while continuing to do "old-fashioned" work. And, unfortunately, still others rage against the changes and craft declension narratives to explain them.

This is a much more economical way of saying what it took me twenty posts to say. It is endlessly astonishing to me that they can't see how they're just handing the arsonists a jerry can of gasoline and offering to lend them a lighter.

The politics here are reprehensible but also really sad. He was a great scholar once. He had philological skills that no one has anymore. There are very few people who could produce that kind of work today. And to some extent, that's what this is about. He's mad that our field lost its former status

Charles Grodin was taken from us. And that still makes me sad. The rest of this is just trolling for trolling's sake.

Haloti Ngata failed my class.

You just opened a Star Trek themed restaurant. What are you calling it? Balance of Terroir

Make a Bond movie academic From the IRB with Love

I have not seen it. Although there's a diner on Capitol Hill in DC that for a long time had a couple of objects from the set of the movie along with an autographed still. I ate there a lot. So I feel like I've been reminded over and over again how I've never seen it.

Search your first name and then "glamour shot" and post a photo.

I'm out. I ca't believe I had to tap out on the last day. #whamaggedon

I started this thread because some folks had suggested that Historians could do their research using LLMs, and anyone who disagreed was ignorant. I wanted some stories that illustrated why that's not true. The results exceeded my expectations. Most of the replies are in the form of quote-skeets.

Well, they wouldn't want you falling asleep and drooling on the documents.

So they're going to spray paint a radio controlled toy battleship gold and let him play with it?

I think we need a mega thread of everyone's craziest archive stories.

Or in a barn. There's a true story about the archives in Vicenza and a now retired historian, Jim Grubb. The archive got a call from a farmer asking whether they would be interested in a pile of old paper in his barn. So they sent someone out to look.

Counterpoint: it's almost certainly wrong, so no one should care that it is being kept under wraps.

Waiting to board my flight back to the US, and I just realized that I am going to have to watch that fucking Kristi Noem video when I get there.

Never change, Brooksie. You're beautiful just the way you are.

Palate cleanser, for those who need one. Venetians on ice.

Okay, sure. But $638K for two mattresses? How is that even possible?

Today on the Ponte degli Scalzi (the bridge over the Grand Canal near the train station) I saw a mother making her daughter, (who couldn't have been older than five) take multiple and multiply posed pictures of her. I remember when it was the five year olds begging for attention from the parents.

Obviously a joke, but somehow just plausible enough that you kind of wish it were true.

Working on eighteenth-century sources is usually relatively easy. Then every once in a while there's some secretary who was apparently mad at posterity.

It's been unseasonably clear the past couple of weeks. This is what Venice in November is supposed to look like.

It's 100 miles to Fossanova, we've got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark, and you're wearing a reliquary. Hit it!!

Flipping the sign to "Zero Days since the Last Typeface Wars." Also, Minion Pro or go home.

She just invented DeVry.