Do you all have any suggestions of (early modern) History podcasts in Italian? @stmoderna.bsky.social @caferro.bsky.social @steventeasdale.bsky.social @joanafraga.bsky.social @adapalmer.bsky.social @leo.vansnippenburg.nl @guidoalfani.bsky.social @maartjevg.bsky.social @carlamenegat.bsky.social

Cover reveal. It's about how & why colonies/states controlled international & domestic migration until 1888, why in the late 19th c the feds took over, & what it was like for politically disfavored groups to live under that arrangement of power. You can't understand voluntary migration history 1/

What’s missing in the article is a discussion as to why tech giants are doing that… (Gift article)

“Analysts at Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan estimate AI’s infrastructure push could drive up to $1.5 trillion in additional borrowing by tech companies in the coming years. UBS analysts forecast as much as $900 billion in new issuance coming in 2026 alone.”

There are no uninteresting topics. Only uninteresting historians.

The problem is that entry-level creative jobs are much more than grunt work. Working within established formulas and routines is how young artists develop their skills.Low-level creative jobs offer practice time and pathways for mentorship that side gigs such as waiting tables and tending bar do not

Updated Not that anyone cares, but that is my ranking of 2025 movies: Hamnet Sinners Bugonia Sentimental Value Rental Family One Battle After Another Frankenstein Train Dreams Marty Supreme Wake Up Dead Man F1 Weapons Still want to watch: The Secret Agent It Was Just an Accident Sorry, Baby

“The US blue-chip S&P 500 index is now more expensive on a cyclically-adjusted 10-year price/earnings ratio than it was before the 1929 Wall Street crash and well above where it was on the eve of the 2008 global financial crisis.”

Is there anyone with access to this Gale database that could check if volumes T 70/592 and T 70/593 (Royal African Company, 1718-21 and 1721-23) have available, and, if so, could download them for me? I've been trying to get my library to purchase it, but as usual for Gale, it is REALLY expensive.

“The Nuremberg trials showed us that normal people can commit war crimes for normal reasons, such as wanting to make a profit or to keep their job. What hasn’t been normal is to see them held accountable.” (Gift link)

Another rabitt hole I fell into this morning (I do not like to start writing as soon as I wake up, so I read or procrastinate) is this reference in the British Treasury Books to a Danish ship from India who stopped in Brazil and sold Asian goods there around 1710, the Printz Georg.

I'm always amazed by the random things that end up in special collections in US libraries. I just found out that the University of Kansas has a random cachet of letters of English diplomat John Methuen (of Methuen-Treaty-with-Portugal fame) while in Lisbon, bought at Southeby's in 1967. Why?!

Good overview of OpenAI’s challenges. “Leaked figures indicate that Openai expects to burn through $17bn of cash in 2026, up from $9bn in 2025, and that its losses will continue to pile up in each of the subsequent three years“ It does not add up without AGI or a massive reduction in inference costs

One more must read book: slavery, US, the Caribbean, and Brazil all in one volume! What’s not like? You all should stop publishing until I have time to catch up…

The major “AI” “startups” (OpenAI, Anthropic) might be vacuuming money to prepare for the winter after the bubble bursts - and then go on a buying spree to consolidate the sector. Still, I wonder how that would work with no path to profitability. Wouldn’t that just stave off the reckoning?

There are many topics I will never pursue but would love to read. One of them is a systematic cross-checking of Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro notarial records (partially online) between 1600-1640. One could write amazing work on trans-imperial trade and early Iberian slaving with these sources.

Not that anyone cares, but that is my ranking of 2025 movies: Hamnet Sinners Bugonia Sentimental Value Rental Family One Battle After Another Frankenstein Marty Supreme Wake Up Dead Man Weapons Still want to watch: The Secret Agent It Was Just an Accident F1 Train Dreams Sorry, Baby

The burst is gonna hurt.

I’m pretty sure someone said it first, but I’m really impressed that “A Man on the Inside” (Netflix) is one of the most realistic representations of US higher education than I’ve ever watched.

Dear Dutch historians, I'm trying to find Amsterdam price currents in the National Archives of the Republic of Indonesia. McCusker (1991) says that there are dozens of them, starting in 1734. I searched the website and did not find much, and what I did find I could not access. Any advice?

Always a treasure trove! Hard to keep up with everything they have.

An interesting piece - although I don't find that a LLM ability to generate passable imitations of short scenes upon command means much at all. Good book-length writing requires a level of coherence that is impossible right now because of the context window, besides a bunch of other limitations.

This is a good piece to understand the limits of LLMs: their training to average things out does not lend itself to creativity. They are useful in multiple ways, but not to produce outstanding research or art. I don’t think a LLM-generated article can pass any credible peer review in history.

Top tier joke

Professor's pro-tip for anyone with college-age kids: Tell your kids go to class. It's really that simple. If you show up, you'll do okay. You don't have to be smart, you just have to be there. Maybe stay off your phones for 50 minutes. Just listen. You'll absorb something. I have data to prove it.

Not a bubble, not at all, handing billions to a bunch of 20-something college dropouts is perfectly normal investing behavior.

This probably doesn’t count, but the only extant personal and business papers of a colonial Brazilian trader in enslaved Africans are locked in a Salvador convent. No one’s seen them in fifty years. I’m losing my mind (maybe one guy did?). I haven’t even figured out how to approach the nuns.

Thinking of changing textbooks, and I have to say that I’m really enjoying @zacharyschrag.bsky.social’s The Princeton Guide to Historical Research!

This, a thousand times over. And the same thing is true of education. It’s in the *process* - of reading a whole argument, story, or study, of wrestling w/ the unfamiliar, of exploring a subject & writing the paper yourself, of reviewing for the exam w/ your own brain - where actual learning happens

My chapter with Chris Ebert is finally online! We view the asiento from Salvador da Bahia—the South Atlantic's main commercial hub. Brazil was the largest destination for enslaved Africans, yet it's usually absent from asiento scholarship. We ask: why was Brazil never supplied by foreign slavers?

Not just a national asset but an international asset. Trashed, ignored, diminished.

Good thread on how historical research is deeply based on serendipity, context awareness, and tacit knowledge that it are impossible to outsource to LLMs (and it will continue to be, until they arrive at AGI, which won’t be anytime soon, if ever). Context windows are a major limitation.

Hi #skystorians, might anyone with access be willing to share a pdf of Nicole Breault's "Contests of Authority: Policing, Jurisdiction, and Violence in Occupied Boston, 1768–1770," New England Quarterly 98.3 (2025): 381-406? My campus subscribes but has an embargo on new articles. Thanks so much! 🗃️

And of course, the detective part is the most fun part of being a historian! Writing is pain, researching in joy.

Excellent overview. Going to assign it to my students in my Methods class.

Hard to imagine how to reproduce this in less exalted places like urban universities where most students work, but still worth a read.

I think this post nails the actual problem, for researchers at least—AI hallucinations would simply not be a problem in academic work if we’d not normalized citation-as-signaling rather than actual engagement—you can only cite a fake paper if you’re not in the habit of reading the papers you cite

This seems off. The big risk involving in getting an academic career these days is *trying to get one*. People who get a job aren't more daring. They didn't know which big risks to take. They worked hard - as hundreds of others did - and got *lucky* (I know I did, multiple times!).

***My department is hiring*** Assistant Professor of the History of Brazil networks.h-net.org/jobs/69649/s...

I had this conversation with an undergrad student this semester. She had no idea. I also have a great student in the job market this year. There wasn’t a single “Colonial Latin America” job this year - the handful of LA jobs are just LA, which means there will be hundreds of great candidates.

#skystorians, which journal article would you suggest on slavery and the American Revolution for a methods course? I'm thinking of pairing Finkenbine's "Belinda's petition" and @profmsinha.bsky.social's "To 'cast just obliquy,'" or using Pybus "Jefferson's Faulty Math" Suggestions welcome!

I guess we’re not getting replaced anytime soon…

People who aspire to be academics: I wish to live a life of the mind Actual academics:

This is sad on so many levels…

Grinnell College’s Department African Diaspora Studies invites applications for a two-year Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship beginning Fall 2026. apply.interfolio.com/179263

Job in Canada: come work with me!

me talking to friends and mentees: just SAY NO to all these unnecessary distractions and other people's projects! focus on your own book, prioritise yourself! me every time I'm invited to contribute to conferences, edited books, talks, random events of all kinds:

Very jarring when you grab an old Italian book from the library to check something and that’s the first page.

The New Netherland Institute announces a new, semester-long fellowship to study the Dutch in/and the American Revolution. Applications are due 2/1/26. For more information and to apply, visit www.newnetherlandinstitute.org/application/... Image: St Eustatius, View of Fort Orange, ca. 1860.

🗃️ My History Department is hiring for a tenure track position in Native American history. See link for details! jobs.colorado.edu/jobs/JobDeta...