This is the enduring legacy of authoritarian regimes, even after their fall: the destruction of trust and social capital.

Quite likely my NEH grant (also terminated in April 2025) was one of these.

DOGE allegedly used ChatGPT to identify 1,400 NEH grants it said were DEI. Grants were terminated April 2025, according to a court filing. E.g. Film: 1873 Colfax massacre Film: first female pilots flying for U.S. military in WWII Film: “Untold Story of Jewish Women Slave Labor in the Holocaust"

The deafening silence of space policy people (or space journalists) on this is bizarre. He's a straight-up white supremacist, and we're still talking about "Elon's plans for Starship" or "Elon's take on space colonization" without a thought as to his core beliefs. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Nearly 60 million people (c. 50% of eligible voters) voted today in Bangladesh. Moderately hopeful. www.bbc.com/news/article...

There is increasing evidence that the atrocities committed by Russian forces during its escalation of Ukraine were a systemic effort to terrorize Ukraine and Ukrainians. www.spiegel.de/internationa... (1/2)

Sure.

Heated Rivalry exists in the universe of a romance novel. The characters we love will never die and will never be hurt in a truamatic way. We live in the real world, not a romance novel, this world is full of hate, and real people will do horrible things to people just trying to live their truth.

BREAKING: “in my 24th year of my quest to settle the planet Mars, I have just been informed of a basic fact of celestial mechanics.”

If this halftime show doesn’t make Stephen miller wade into the sea

Beautiful and moving piece by playwright Liv Pederson about ICE, Minneapolis, and the music of the greatest export from that city, the Replacements (who happen to be my favorite band of all time). (You can skip the intro in italics): theapologistzine.substack.com/p/my-neighbo...

RIP one of the greatest bassists from one of the greatest bands of all time. #television

In today's AIP History Weekly Edition, Anna Doel interviews Ankita Anirban about her interview/book project on the successful push at Bell Labs to elevate black scientists. At a time when such efforts are on the back foot, it's important to know more about these examples.

Story on new short film on French atomic testing in Algeria: "Boomerang Atomique" directed by Rachid Bouchareb and featuring archival footage of the 17 nuclear tests carried out by the French in Algerian Sahara.

#Space #NASA #Artemis From #FloridaToday: "NASA's last major test of the #Artemis2 moon rocket did not go as hoped ... As a result, the launch was pushed back to no earlier than March 6." www.floridatoday.com/story/tech/s...

Full set of reports here. Powerful, moving, eye-witness accounts

This cannot be something a civilian law enforcement agent is allowed to wear in the US — and an agency that has a culture that tolerates this cannot be saved.

this is what i am looking forward to this weekend

What’s to become of my medieval women class now that TAMU has eliminated the women’s studies program? I don’t know. The audit of my syllabus is not done but it’ll probably be flagged because it has J Bennett’s “lesbian-like” article. Students are aware that free speech is a thing of the past in TX.

You can’t tell me we have a functioning economic system when the richest man in human history is one of the most profoundly stupid people in human history

This week, I had an incredible opportunity to gather with some of our district’s Bangladeshi community leaders to discuss issues impacting the community. I look forward to our continued collaboration in NY-14.

As a graduate of Texas A&M, I can say that the university is essentially giving up on its mission of higher ed. When you vet every single syllabi for 'ideological' content--not to mention terminate an excellent women & gender studies program--you might as well not pretend to stand for anything.

🔊 We are seeking an outstanding academic leader to join us as Director (Head of Department) of UCL SSEES. 📍 Location: London (hybrid) 🗓 Closing date: 15 February 2026 🗣️ Interviews: 9–10 March 2026 ➡️ Apply here: www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/...

Sal Buscema (1936-2026), who died last Friday, was not my favorite Silver Age artist but he was probably the one I read most of the time. A beautiful ability to evoke motion and emotion on the printed page at the same time. RIP. #salbuscema #marvel #dc www.marvel.com/articles/com...

Legitimately a feat of carefully calculated writing to issue a Holocaust Remembrance Day statement of this length without mentioning either (1) the people who perpetrated the Holocaust or (2) the people against whom they perpetrated it

She was almost 90 before she received any recognition for her work. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/27/s...

Some thoughts: 1. The deadline for nominating a person or group for the Nobel Peace Prize is Feb. 1. 2. History professors are qualified nominators. 3. The people of Minnesota have been awe-inspiringly peaceful in the face of state violence. 4. He would be so mad.

Reminder that, as of the latest reports, Liam Ramos is still in prison in Texas - now for 5 days. His parents are legal asylum seekers with no criminal record.

“For weeks, Democrats have pushed to require ICE agents to obtain the necessary judicial warrants ahead of any murders they plan to commit,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) said in a joint statement on the current Homeland Security funding bill

Well it was bound to happen. Pitchfork is introducing a paywall for their album reviews. Steven Hyden has a pretty reasoned take on it, basically that all critical writing is going that way. Also, the banger: "People care about this brand. Especially the people who loudly claim they don’t care."

In the second installment of our “10 Questions for the Historian of Science,” I interviewed Audrey Truschke about her research, the state of the history of science, and public engagement within broader global debates. www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/feature-stor... @mpiwg.bsky.social

Memories from my childhood: "Flying traditions: Sakrain and the shared life of Old Dhaka." Article by Anjuman Ara on the annual kite flying festival in Bangladesh, whose roots trace back to the Mughal Era: www.thedailystar.net/slow-reads/b...

One of the things I learned in writing README is that no author is happy with how the publisher's marketing people handles their book... @mitpress.bsky.social mitpress.mit.edu/978026255348...

And one more thing. Students. If you have a professor who is, for some reason, outsourcing their own job to ChatGPT....drop the class. If they tell you to "ask ChatGPT" for sources, drop the class. Because they apparently don't know their own discipline well enough to teach it.

Managed to find an original of Peter Gabriel's fantastic 12" single released in 1980 of the song "Biko" about the great Steven Biko, murdered by the South African apartheid government in 1977. The single includes the actual songs sung at his funeral. Worth reading the liner notes by Gabriel.

Sobering to have to tell your 18-year old kid (born and raised in NYC) to carry his passport around with him at all times because he's not white. Or for that matter, myself too, a U.S. citizen. Reminds me of visiting Russia when I would get constantly profiled by cops and asked for dokumenty.

how all youtube ads sound to me

It’s pretty wild that the most rabidly anti-immigrant administration in recent memory is comprised of a President married to an immigrant, a VP married to the daughter of immigrants, an assistant AG in charge of Civil Rights who’s an immigrant (Dhillon), & it was all funded by an immigrant (Musk).

The Left Hand of Darkness showing up in Pluribus

If you’re wondering why your friends in academia are a little on edge right now, it’s because an eighteen-year-old who hasn’t done the reading, doesn’t look at the assignment, and has does no critical thinking skills more complex than “because I think it’s in the Bible” can literally end your career

“If a professor were to record something that a student said in the class and put it on social media, the professor would be fired,” Greene said. “If a student were to record something that a professor said and put it on social media, the professor would be fired.” #academicfreedom

I wish just for one fucking day people would stop killing other people.

“American Higher Education Restoration Act” takes aim at what it describes as “a glut of academic ‘research’ that almost no one reads and which does not meaningfully advance human knowledge.” #academicfreedom #RAdminSky

The fact that a second strike like that in an armed conflict is definitely a war crime should not completely negate the fact that *there is no war* and ALL the strikes are cold-blooded murder. The whole chain of command are murderers.

"David Graeber wrote about the rise of 'bullshit jobs'---work sustained...by institutional inertia. Universities now risk creating their academic twin: bullshit degrees." Read this sobering look at how both universities and Silicon Valley are cashing in on AI: www.currentaffairs.org/news/ai-is-d...

The end of academic freedom, Flowchart Edition.

The news has entirely failed to grasp the unprecedented scope of the ICE and DHS budgets. Nothing like it in modern history. A galaxy of public/private surveillance and caging institutions for $100,000,000,000s unleashed on a public that will be forever changed. www.brennancenter.org/our-work/res...

This Tuesday, December 2, you can buy my book about books about computing... Treat yourself...😀 mitpress.mit.edu/978026255348... 🗃️ #HistSci

Let me fix that for you: Texas A&M is limiting how instructors may discuss gender identity and race in classrooms in an assault on academic freedom unseen in America since the Red Scare.