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.

Happy 80th Birthday to Neil Young. #neilyoung A towering figure who has produced so much beautiful sound. Long May You Run. Hard to pick his greatest song, so I'll just pick what's on my mind this moment: www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9Ck...

The new book... exists!!! Got my author copies in the mail today! Looks quite readable! Spelled my name right on the cover, even!!! harpercollins.com/products/the-most-awful-responsibility-alex-wellerstein

This is really good and captures precisely how AI, as a longstanding field of scientific inquiry dating back decades, has been coopted by tech companies into a marketing term for a specific set of practices that bring attention to them.

In my comics class today, I talked about Billy Graham (1935-1997), artist for Black Panther in the early '70s (and the first African-American artist to work for Marvel) who brought some incredible style to the idiom of comic art. #comics #comicshistory

Tenure-track opening at my institution in the urban history of modern Europe, with a preference for an interest in migration, the environment, and/or cultural diversity in the history of towns and cities in any area of Europe: networks.h-net.org/jobs/69160/f...

This is really great, about the NY Times, but about the media in general.

Finally got my copy of @historyasif.bsky.social book, Cosmic Fragments. Now time to ruin it with notes and highlights!

68 years ago today the dog Laika was launched into orbit, the first living being to break the bonds of gravity. Unfortunately she died soon after. I found the previously classified document on her fate in a Russian archive. Here's what it said about her fate #laika (1/n)

Gonna talk in entomology class today about how Jewish scientists forced to work in Nazi concentration camps secretly sent fake vaccines to the eastern front and managed to kill 4,000 Nazis with typhus.

Interview: Historian of science Michael Gordin tells us why he and Diana Buchwald felt there was room for another book on Einstein, why fascination with Einstein remains high, and new areas of Einstein research. popsciencebooks.blogspot.com/2025/10/mich... #interview #einstein #historyofscience

No.

Should humans colonise space? We asked five experts – four of whom said no. It’s not just a question of whether humans try to live in space, but also about how we do it. Here are their detailed answers. via @aunz.theconversation.com 🧪 🔭

Done. #nycvotes

POLLS ARE NOW OPEN. Find out where you early vote ⬇️ 🗳️ findmypollsite.vote.nyc

It is impossible to imagine people allowing this to go on (or even participating in it within the government) if he was ordering the murder without any process of French citizens or Brits or Australians on boats no matter what they were alleged to be doing.

Ilyas Chattha's *Citizens to Traitors: Bengali Internment in Pakistan, 1971-1974* (Cambridge UP, 2025) is one the most important books for contemporary subcontinental history in the last 15 years.

India's denial of entry to Prof Francesca Orsini is another marker in the grave threats to academic freedom globally.

This is absolutely the way to go. I used to have a no laptops policy but relented this semester. Total mistake. Never again. I also stopped using Blackboard/Canvas years ago. And with AI, have moved most fully to hand-written in-class testing which has been surprisingly refreshing.

This week we welcome Prof. Steven Shapin to the pod!🎙️ We explore his journey through interdisciplinary spaces, revisit Leviathan and the Air-Pump 40 years on, and explore how credibility, trust and expertise are shaped by the fragmentation of expertise and (recent) political & cultural challenges

Discussing 'Days of Future Past' (1981) in class tomorrow. Grim stuff about a genocide and a valiant battle to restore a different timeline (although the ending is a bit patchy). Looking forward to talking about Chris Claremont and John Byrne's flawed masterpiece. #x-men #daysoffuturepast

Definitely a lot of let's-critique-the-string-quartet-on-the-sinking-Titanic vibes on bluesky these days.

Cool exhibit upcoming at Cooper Hewitt here in NYC (from December 12) on 'Art of Noise', tracing the intersection between music technology and design. www.cooperhewitt.org/2025/09/10/a...

“F**k ICE forever.” — Chappell Roan at her show in Pasadena

#historyofscience #histofsci www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/1...

For more on the creation of Sputnik, see this collection of declassified and translated Russian documents:

job alert: My department is now running a search to fill a newly inaugurated endowed chair in the History of Technology. Please consider applying/share widely. I'm not on the committee, but happy to answer questions or connect you with those who are. Details here: recruit.ap.uci.edu/JPF09897

This is an absolute travesty. @durba.bsky.social is an absolutely brilliant scholar, writer, teacher, academic. Harvard is lucky that they can claim any connection to her work. In doing this, Harvard is making itself a fucking joke.

Me leaving any party

This happens at the largest university in the U.S. but barely a peep from media outlets yelling at us for years about attacks on free speech on campuses.

Heads up for this excellent special issue of BJHS edited by @actgeppert.bsky.social . Insightful contributions on the cultural construction of 'founding fathers,' 'prophets,' etc. of the space age, taking a very global approach w/ works on Clarke, Sarabhai, Qian Xuesen, etc. I have a small epilogue.

The IHPST is hiring! Assistant Professor - Philosophy of Science and/or Technology. jobs.utoronto.ca/job/Toronto-...

My epilogue to a special issue of British Journal for the History of Science takes on the 'founding figure' archetype in the history of space. Drawing on the work of Ellie Armstrong & Réka Gál (among others), I critique space history's fascination w/ 'great men.' www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

It would be hard to name a band that shaped my sensibilities more than Flipper. RIP Bruce 'Loose' Calderwood. A dadaist genius who trawled through the bottom of the barrel of modern life to find beauty in the banal, quotidian, trivial moments of our meaningless lives.

NEW: Tenure-track position in History at UC Berkeley in the GLOBAL HISTORY OF TECHNOLOGY. We are casting a wide net here: *all* periods, places, and fields are under consideration. I'm on the search committee, so do let me know if you have questions.

Immigration data on the arrival of international students in July show a significant decline compared to a year earlier, including a drop of almost 50% for students from India. www.forbes.com/sites/stuart...

I am defending my PhD in September 2025! Please send all relevant jobs my way! #envhist #envhum #sts

James Lovell, one of the last Apollo-era astronauts, passed away today. Selected as a NASA astronaut in 1962, he flew two Gemini and two Apollo missions, including the first historic Moon orbit flight in 1968. An absolute legend and rock star.