The US taking Venezuela and saying it will run it until an appropriate transition can be done is so reminiscent of the aftermath of 1898 in Cuba. Is there a Venezuela Platt amendment coming to guarantee US companies access to oil?

Las embajadas de Estados africanos a países europeos tenían objetivos políticos. Tras la conquista neerlandesa de Loango (1641) se dispararon las disputas entre diferentes facciones políticas. D. Miguel de Castro fue el embajador enviado a Países Bajos para buscar mediación.

Los historiadores llevamos décadas diciéndole a señoríos que basta ya de historia de grandes hombres y que prestemos más atención a la gente común, hombres y mujeres. Pero no me crean a mí. Pérez Galdós ya lo dijo en 1875, en su novela “El equipaje del rey José.” Capítulo 6.

It's graduate school admissions seasons all over again, it's time to remind fellow professors that if you are not willing to put the work to write a good letter for a students, please spare us all your half-assed attempt to pretend you did your job, and help your student by not writing the letter.

The BM is renowned for it too.

Thank you @jendiagammon.bsky.social for the beautiful dedicated copy of her book, including a ton of other beautiful printed goodies, and beautifully wrapped. A perfect late Christmas present for me!

By pleasure book reading list for 2025, with some missing. Not many books, but some monsters in numbers of pages there!

When we say "no, everything hasn't been digitized," I need you to understand that we really mean is that virtually nothing has been digitized. This is because the realm of primary sources that historians use is incomprehensibly large.

Dear doctor I visited last week: no, I’m not rating your services no matter how many emails you send me. Since your time is valuable and we need to pay for it, mine is too, and I will not give it to you for free. Isn’t that the rule of the marketplace? Or is that only supposed to work one way?

Absolutely right. AI might be able to summarize (poorly) what we currently know, but a major goal of historical research is to find the hidden surprises out there. Let me illustrate …

Academics, in what camp are you, in the “work emails in the weekend are rude” or in the “I don’t care when people send me work emails as long as they don’t expect me to respond” camp?

This is insane, and so so dark

So many activities in my children’s elementary schools (2 different schools) for Christmas, and in both of them, with exception of the pt teacher (who is always a man) the entire workforce is composed of women. We need more women in all other jobs, but in elementary teaching, we need more men.

This is like saying: “from now on, no undergraduate course will teach or use the number 5. It’s completely forbidden, except in some non-core curriculum and graduate classes.”

This arrived today. Early Christmas present!

There have been at least 159 shootings at schools in the US in 2025—resulting in 53 deaths and 148 injuries nationally. America’s epidemic of school shootings is a policy choice made by lawmakers who would rather cower to the gun lobby than support gun safety measures that are proven to save lives.

The most successful crowdfunded boardgame of the year, by a lot. And it does look amazing. gamefound.com/projects/go-...

ICE pepper-sprayed this 1-year-old girl. Once at the hospital, the doctor had to call in a poison control specialist. They had never seen anyone that young pepper sprayed. Another horrific story. More details below.

At some point the “patriots” are going to have to accept that in some ways this country is great, but in many others it absolutely sucks, is well below others, and we could do a lot better if we just tried.

Warmongering 101.

Earlier this year, my article Indicators of Toxicity: Cattle and Petrochemical Residues in Cold War California was published by Agricultural History journal. It covers DDT, cattle bodies, and the new ecology of residues after WWII. read.dukeupress.edu/agricultural...

Historically, many Latin American elites have been in favor of US interventionism to preserve their own privileges, even at the cost of lives of their poorer compatriots and the national sovereignty of their country. She fits the model perfectly. The US knows it’s found a powerful ally

Pro-tip for paper and grant reviewers: your job isn't to be an asshole

Jodida obra maestra youtu.be/1CJVV5DupLk?...

entenario, celebrad, Las mujeres y los niños por igual Celebrando masacrar Las mujeres y los niños por igual

Estoy haciendo una peregrinación por la discografía de Extremoduro y Robe Iniesta. La ocasión lo merece.

Robe Iniesta, DEP. Lo más grande del rock español

But we have football, dont we? www.al.com/education/20...

“I brought this horrid creature into the world, and now I must take him out!” Winfrey said

Many of you may be interested in this. guides.uflib.ufl.edu/lac-dh-sympo...

Someone was fined and is hitting the ketamine harder than usual

Kavanaugh stops.

Your Netflix subscription is about to get a lot more expensive. Also potentially even more worth it for you than before

In our last class of our Colonial Latin American survey, of course we talked about the Mexican independence, and at the end of the class, a student gave me this ❤️

You gotta love those emails asking you to share it to the graduate students of your department. Emails asking for "volunteers" to create some programming for community events in which the volunteers do a lot of work but do not get any remuneration for their efforts...

That tracks. www.spotify.com/wrapped-shar...

In the run-up to the publication of my new book, The Great Resistance, on 6 Jan 2026 (link in bio), I’ll have a daily post featuring photos from research trips, along with a snippet from each of the book’s 35 chapters. Today: Olinda & Recife, Brazil. 💙📚#booksky #thegreatresistance #history

For those fans of the Witcher series, there is a board game in Gamefound that promises to be absolutely epic. I am really looking forward to this one. Check it out: gamefound.com/projects/go-...

I'm feeling a bit bereft of enthusiasm these days, so in my quest to nurture it I'm going to do a weird little #adventcalendarofcuriosities to find and share at least one thing, every day this month, that lights me up even a little bit (also allowed: things that get me enthusiastically annoyed).

The Secretary of War hard at work.

Please sign the petition: sign.moveon.org/petitions/re...

This is truly awful. I have served in the university media board for 3 years and saw how brilliant and committed the student editors of these magazines were to quality and integrity. This is such a loss for the university community at large. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/02/u...

I like listening to Pivot. I think Scott Galloway can be really really good when he talks about business and the economy, but boy he can be so wrong about pretty much anything else. His latest diatribe against therapy was just the perfect example.

I have used Apple Mail for decades. I abandoned it this year for Outlook, for several reasons (our university uses Microsoft mail, I can use Bookings with my Microsoft calendar, etc.), but the most important reason: you can pin pending emails to the top of the inbox. Why can't you do this with Mail?

La impunidad que algunos han tenido y tienen en este país que se quedaron con dos estatuas del pórtico de la gloria de la catedral de Santiago, y la han tenido durante más de 40 años de democracia.

The Irish, maybe more than any other European state, has a clear understanding of colonialism. They understand Ukraine. They understand Palestine.

Gaetz heard they were having a bring your daughter to work day at the Pentagon and snagged a press pass

Great culture can save lives. Literally. Amazing letter in today’s @thetimes.com about Tom Stoppard