Final bits and preparation for the talk are proceeding apace.

Tori Amos touring in 2026 and not having a Canada date (for the first time since 1991?!) is a kick in the shins. The Toronto date on the last tour didn't align w/ my schedule and I drove to Lewiston, NY instead but there is no bloody way I'm doing that now with an x gender market on my passport. 🙃

I'll be delivering the next lecture in our McCaffrey Seminar Series next week! It's a hybrid event and if anyone would like the zoom link please let me know or rsvp to [email protected] If you're local and would like to attend in person, send me a message and I'll provide the room details.

Books, caffeine, repeat. (I will begrudgingly admit this is pretty good.)

Written by PhD candidate, Mary Baxter broadview.org/new-age-of-n...

"Historians would have called them roommates but today we call them computers." Thank you to @megankap.bsky.social for knowing that Imitation Game nonsense posts are catnip to me.

Hey, I know them! We spotted this right as we drove in but didn't have time to see if there was more in the park. 🤔

The HGSA is extending conference submissions to January 16th, 2026. Submissions should be sent to [email protected]

Happy "Let's circle back in the New Year" eve. How your email finds me:

I'm always fascinated to know what people call these resources because they're wood, clay, sheep, rock, and wood to me. 🤔 (Wild New Year's Eve plus dog tax)

Ok the real joke is on me for thinking I could get this reframed for less than $400 aka three times what I paid for it. 😬

Paper wasn't accepted for the CHA annual meeting but I'm now trying to justify a maritime vacation this summer anyway. 🤔

Daily winter game of "spot the greenhouse" on my way to work. Nowhere safer to be in a pending wind/blizzard/freezing rain storm than a building with plastic walls and a glass roof. 🤔

Unexpected new season of Shoresy = morning sorted.

RIP to the $40 crockpot we received as a wedding gift in 2007. I didn't notice the cord was wedged between the ceramic pot & metal base. One calamitous crack, some melted wires, and a destroyed socket later, we had lukewarm meatballs for dinner. I see a Boxing Day special Instant Pot in my future.

I have discovered Blue Prince and I love a video game that causes me to get out pencil and paper to solve puzzles and draw maps. My spatial reasoning is terrible so I'm likewise so bad at this game.

I am at the point in my comps reading that I just requested a book as an inter-library loan, cursing whomever had it checked out over the holiday only to look down at my feet after and see it stacked beside my desk on the floor. It's me, hi, I'm the problem, it's me.

Show me how your 2025 went. (The highs were high and the lows were low. No real middle ground here!)

A&W doesn't have the Beyond Burger anymore? Say it ain't so. 😭

Important information:

A dream we can all aspire to. See also: @orkneylibrary.bsky.social and its balls.

Very Good Day™️ at the antique store. Picked up this absolutely massive 1916 yard photo of the First World War CEF 242nd Forest Battalion. I love that the dog was included in the portrait. Now it's off to LAC's digital archives to find out a bit about them. 🗃️ #cdnhist

Oops I gave up doing tea reviews and I'm behind on even opening my advent calendar because I am behind on everything this month. Can't wait until I can embrace the Pancakes lifestyle™️ in April 2026.

Larian just announced a new RPG that is more ambitious than Baldur's Gate 3. The trailer looks creepy but still....this game can't come out before 2029. 🫠

Tori Amos fans keep clamouring for a remaster of From The Choirgirl Hotel with any unreleased songs + the live shows that were all recorded and she is doing her damndest to toss out everything but that. Anyway, here's wonderwall. I mean a 25th anniversary re-release of Strange Little Girls.

A heartfelt thank you to @zinelib.bsky.social for a blistering turn around time on this request. Another reminder for all of us historians to thank and appreciate archivists/librarians/curators for all they do. I am going to have entirely too much to talk about in my comps meeting tomorrow.

I feel like there is an incongruity with the label Indigo/Chapters chose to put on here and the subject matter. 🤔

Is anyone with access to Columbia University's library system willing to submit a scan request for me? I'm in the zines portion of my alt-press comps & CU has copies Cyanide #1&2 from an ancient late 90s online friend which I lost a good 20 years ago. Obviously will pay for any associated costs!🗃️

Check out the CFP for our graduate history conference!

In a surprise twist, Hayley Williams comes from behind to take the individual song title from Tori Amos. I feel like Eusexua is only on there because Perfect Stranger is the first song on my "Run Jamz!" playlist. 🤔

Therapist: "It's ok Kristen, Benedict Anderson is no more real than the communities people claim he imagined. He won't appear in any other readings." Benedict Anderson:

Long ago (2013-2015) my friend and I had a tea blog. (On tumblr, naturally.) We'd buy the David's Tea advent calendar, or similar collections and then review them.

Fantastic thread and my expectations for any outdoor theatre in the future are going to be severely inflated.

The best marking assistant.

Excellent thread. Of the three years I've TA-ed intro history classes, this year is far and away the worst for disengagement. I use powerpoints, email reminders, and verbally explain assignment requirements in class for weeks prior to the due date and am still greeted with utter bafflement.

Someone in Lawson Hall must have watched Twin Peaks for the first time.

My workplace is starting a "women's empowerment group" with undetermined goals, structure, or a mandate. They also need volunteers to run & design it. Alas, it is decidedly "only for people that identify as women." I can only guess gender diverse/non-binary empowerment is a 2026 Q2 goal? Maybe?

Prof. Cody Groat's new publication, "Always a Part of the Land: The Federal Commemoration of Indigenous Histories" is available for pre-order. www.mqup.ca/Books/A/Alwa... @westernulibs.bsky.social

Based on the comment section walking is somehow capitalist, anti-social, problematic, performative, and just a generally asinine thing to do with ulterior motives. www.theglobeandmail.com/life/article...

Give me the confidence and self worth of McCain Foods who think a Deep and Delicious Cake is valued at $5.99. (That terrible nostalgia brick has no business being more than $2.00)

Getting real tired of marking chatgpt essay proposals with the same bloody sub headings, lads.

I saw Aly give a great presentation on "patriotic drag" at the Laurier Military History Colloquium last year and I'm so happy to see their work on active history!

I am several years late on Slow Horses but I am enjoying every crude minute of Gary Oldman.

Fun occurrence today when I had to set up a powerpoint deck remotely from my laptop and everyone got to see my remote desktop launcher is called "portal to Avernus" (aka the first layer of Hell in the world of DnD)

A fun benefit of being an "extremely online person" with a partner who is decidedly not so is that I can say a sentence like "You don't understand, Mr Fantasy is the DJ Crazy Times of 2025" to Jay and he will wearily allow me to explain.

You've got that footnote day dream look in your eye And I've got that eighteenth version thing that you like And when we try APA we come back every time Cause we gotta use Chicago style We gotta use Chicago style

Today I'll be thinking about William Dawson, CAMC & Harry G. Dickson Jr, RCAF who died in the First & Second World Wars. Both from London, Ontario, and the same age (22/20) as many of the students that I teach today. It's a privilege to share William & Harry's stories with them every year 🗃️ #cdnhist

Always amazed at the amount of research that can be done entirely online these days. A thread: 🧵 I was looking at a piece of digitised archive film (IWM AYY / www.iwm.org.uk/collections/...) which includes these shots showing a ship transporting British soldiers to France in 1939:

History postdoc researcher Eric Story is uncovering the remarkable 1923 journey of George Hincks and Marshall McDougall — two disabled WWI veterans who hiked over 2,000 km to raise awareness of veterans’ challenges after the war. Featured by CTV Winnipeg: www.ctvnews.ca/winnipeg/art...