"I’m comfortably asocial — a hermit in the middle of a large city, a pessimist if I’m not careful, a feminist, a Black, a former Baptist, an oil-and-water combination of ambition, laziness, insecurity, certainty and drive.” - Octavia E. Butler #HappyBirthday

Speeches are great but a reminder that what we're getting here in Canada so far is: * Tax cuts for the wealthy * Militarization and more surveillance powers * More oil, less action on climate change. * Austerity and cuts to the public service * Deals with authoritarian regimes

I really think one of the best things we can do for ourselves and our communities is to read any non-fiction history book. There is so much to learn from how our ancestors met the challenges of their times, and that's a source of strength the grokipropaganda brigade has cut themselves off from.

I can't believe I'm crying about a book on road ecology. People are good and do things like design road crossings that toads will like (Crossings by Ben Goldfarb)

Consultants, especially American ones, have no business shaping the future of postsecondary education in Canada. Chris Hurl wrote a great book on "The Consultant Trap", which speaks to their role in legitimating neoliberal shock therapy.

Archival find of the week! The chickens clamour for asbestos.

"We're going to create superintelligence" How about making outlook search work first. How about that

You should read it, some really cool scholars and artists are in it!

the comps notes are spending the night in a drawer, what a rush

I cannot stress how grounding and comforting it is to have a garden to tend and connect to while reading through my environmental history comps list #phdstudent #envhist

There were so many thematic parallels between Sunrise on the Reaping and Catching Fire I think Collins will write a sixth Hunger Games book, so that there are three stand-alone books that follow the arc of the original series. I have theories, ideas, topics, and suggestions #hungergames

Happy New Hunger Games Book day to all those who celebrate or will need to tolerate me today

I had a really interesting conversation with students I TA about what going to high school in Ontario during the Ford years was like. I'm not surprised that the election turned out the way it did, but I'm sad for the next generations of high school students who will be neglected and underprepared

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0 days since I called Benedict Anderson 'Benedict Arnold' in seminar 🙃

Community is seven strangers in a café watching a car parked on the streetcar tracks paralyze Queen St

On the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, we're spotlighting a fantastic project published in BDJ, which used the power of data to uncover the hidden stories of women in science and publish them as a freely available resource. blog.pensoft.net/2023/12/06/e...

Coming up next week (and then two weeks later): Small Things - where we talk about cross stitch (or any stitchery, really) as life writing, as storytelling, as activism - and make projects that we'll release into the world as invitations and provocations!

writer-in-residence day 25: one boy, one mother, one ship (or, more tangling with inconsistencies in archival transcription) stitchingempire.wordpress.com/2025/02/08/d...

Any environmental historians working on the history of potash in Canada?#envhist #canhist #potash

New study finds that frequent use of AI tools encourages offloading cognitive tasks and reduces critical thinking. Higher AI usage correlated with lower critical thinking skills, especially in younger users. www.mdpi.com/2075-4698/15...

Tired of being bombarded by AI propaganda? Concerned about the outrageous & escalating environmental costs of these technologies? Then register for this online talk by @apasek.bsky.social on Feb. 12 at 12:00 PM EST. #envhum @nichecanada.bsky.social More info & registration at link below.

the same crunchy little dog who sat on my lap while I wrote term papers from my parents' house is now helping me grade exams. thank goodness!

Happy Winter Solstice Spend some time with our Winter in Canada series, edited and organized by Blake Butler and @benbradleyca.bsky.social earlier this year. niche-canada.org/tag/winter-i... #envhist #winter #cdnhist

And way more: censored, edited, self-censored, unwritten...

me (writing an essay) and the cat (doing ??? that involves propelling herself across the floor upstairs) are both fighting our own demons this exam season

I spent the last two weeks researching how the top medical official in a Michigan county is using unfounded theories about the health impacts of solar energy to push for new restrictions aimed at killing development @heatmap.news heatmap.news/plus/the-fig...

Does anyone have a recent literature review on animal history? I'm writing a historiographical review on animals and epidemics as a term paper, and want to see how the literature I pulled intersects with new directions and themes in the field!

New essay out today (with @alanlester.bsky.social @adeleperry.bsky.social Omeasoo Wahpasiw) exposing residential school denialism’s transnational network, or how denialism in Canada is being used globally to defend empire and colonialism: activehistory.ca/blog/2024/12...

Please tell your kids, every damn day if necessary, that chatGPT is not a goddamn search engine and you shouldn’t believe a word it says. Tell the adults too, but it’s especially imperative to inoculate kids against this

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Here are 25 SUGGESTIONS on how anyone can contribute to a BETTER CITY FOR PEOPLE (only ONE of them is voting in local elections!) *officially these are #NewYearsResolutions for better cities that I wrote about in @FastCompany.com but who cares if its a bit early www.fastcompany.com/90287193/25-...

Bit nervous about South Korea declaring martial law - my very official and highly formulated statement as a historian of modern China

genuinely fascinated by the 1884 Rivers and Streams Act, any reading recommendations from Canadian historians?

Happy pub day to my bees! (link in comments)

The Environmental Humanities November 2024 issue came out a week ago, but I haven't had a chance to post a thread on it yet! I wanted to bring this massive amount of new #envhum scholarship to your attention. read.dukeupress.edu/environmenta... A thread...

Delighted to share the first of three posts @nichecanada.bsky.social on a cool assignment @lootina.bsky.social and I did in our co-taught graduate course on global #envhist this term. We asked students to reflect on "the place where you live": niche-canada.org/2024/12/02/t...

grading is rough, but undergrads are genuinely so smart and cool and curious and hardworking

We want to hear your stories of Keiko, the celebrity orca from "Free Willy," whose real-life return to the ocean is explored in our new podcast "The Good Whale." What do you remember about Keiko? Did you have a personal memory or connection with him? nyti.ms/3Zqvft7

In the past day I’ve heard two people who really should know better say they asked ChatGPT for factual info. ChatGPT is not a search engine. It is predictive text based on other people’s stolen writing; its whole job is to make stuff up. Please do not ask it for facts. Tell a friend.

I was deeply disappointed by the lack of nature/science/climate/enviro on many major end-of-year book lists—so I decided to make my own! Introducing: ✨🎁📚 The 2024 Holiday Gift Guide to Nature & Science Books ✨🎁📚 Please share: Let's make this go viral in time for Black Friday / holiday shopping!

Spain is increasingly either parched or flooded – and water-grabbing multinationals are profiting by forcing citizens to pay for it in bottles. Under capitalism, even climate collapse is just another profit opportunity. That's why it isn't being tackled. www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...

Revisiting my thesis for an article draft blatantly underscores how I wrote my MA thesis with a different brain. How was I at footnote 101 by page 22? What was I doing?

nobody told me to schedule 2-4 hours of laying on the floor and staring at the ceiling after reading the intro to Joy Parr's Sensing Changes, but okay I guess

ATTENTION: Our website is currently dealing with a bot attack and is VERY SLOW. We will be extending Editorial Team applications until the end of Monday, December 18th, for those unable to submit right now because of the attack. #envhist #envhum #histgeog

Our editor Jamie Murton chose "Tropical Disease in Untropical Places: Thinking of Malaria in Canada" by @gabtm.bsky.social as our latest Editor's Pick! niche-canada.org/2024/05/29/t... #envhist #histmed #cdnhist #wetlands

Solidarity!! Canada Post has been so key to keeping in touch with friends and family as I've moved around for school: their workers deserve working conditions and pay that reflect their importance!

Postal workers across Canada went on strike starting Friday over pay and working conditions. The work stoppage is expected to severely disrupt deliveries ahead of the busy holiday period.