Once your critical eye becomes so keen that you start to criticize history of the ground you walk on and the land around you, you are in real trouble. Its productive trouble, but can also be maddening.

Great episode until the end when Luigi falters on American slavery. Its unique evil was the buying & selling of black bodies & defining who could be enslaved: children of enslaved women. This embedded racism into American capitalism long after emancipation www.capitalisnt.com/episodes/the...

A new study suggests that industrialization has created fundamentally unhealthy environments for humans. “A growing body of observational and experimental evidence suggests that industrialisation negatively impacts key biological functions…” doi.org/10.1111/brv....

“AI doesn't do… engineering, it writes chunks of code. You can’t get an LLM to think … about what happened before & what's going to happen and what's happening adjacently. That is geometrically more computationally expensive than… writing one routine.” www.capitalisnt.com/episodes/how...

As somone who has become obsessed with property rights recently, this episode was both amazing and infuriating. I can’t believe I never heard of corner crossing before! 99percentinvisible.org/episode/650-...

Got to keep everyone aware of the hum of the background traffic violence in our nation. www.qcnews.com/charlotte/pe...

China has planted so many trees in the last five decades that it is affecting global water cycles. www.livescience.com/planet-earth...

This is the best podcast to cut through the #AI bullshit machine. It’s also hilarious. In short, we are a long long way off from ai agents replacing humans at even the simplest work tasks. www.iheart.com/podcast/1119...

The fact that you can’t punish or reward #AI agents and that makes them ineffective reveals that the economy runs on worker precariousness.

This Day in Labor History: December 5, 1955. The American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations merged into the AFL-CIO. It brought labor back together, but that happened mostly because of the anti-communism purges that crushed the left wing of the CIO!

Beckert’s new book _Capitalism: A Global History_ is 1,300 pages, takes 42 hours to listen to, and required 4 narrators. Might have to run this one at 1.5x speed!

Today we have "Seeing like a Peon: Warcraft and Perspective in Forest History" by @jason-l-newton.bsky.social This is the eighth article in the Playing Inside: Board Games, Video Games, and the Indoors series, edited by @theliftline.bsky.social niche-canada.org/2025/12/03/s... #envhist

I wrote a blog post on a game I love and narrative perspective in forest history. Really I think this is a broader critique on the synoptic perspective that most historians take. I’m trying to think about alternative forms of narration for my new project. niche-canada.org/2025/12/03/s...

Is the real question of our era “how much compute/energy will it take to win the culture war?”

This interview really got my mind jogging. A new, unexpected and critical take on wilderness. I'm going to have to read this! newbooksnetwork.com/wilderness-m...

The "now you do the job that someone else used to do" button.

It’s John Brown’s death day. I picked up this sick print at Red Emma’s book store in Baltimore a few days ago. Going in my office.

Cutting through the bluster and rhetoric: Mangione is so young and could have done so much more good for the cause as a free person than he will be able to do in prison.

YIMBY logic can drift into the “repugnant conclusion” in urban planning: if the only goal is more units, we can justifying poor quality units, less amenities, and worse environmental conditions etc.— as long as the total number housed goes up.

Can’t believe kids these days have their entire value systems altered by short form video. Why can’t they be like us and have their entire value systems altered by long form videos?

Could this explain some of why construction is more expensive? Because it’s safer for workers and safety is expensive?

Thompson and Klein do an amazing thing in _Abundance_. They both strawman Hickle and degrowth while also admitting that of course degrowth is ultimately correct.

Do those who argue that nuclear is cheap consider the costs of best practices for waste containment and spill remediation? My understanding is that these things are expensive.

"I hope no one draws from this the conclusion that my views are shaped by nostalgia for an age that cannot be recaptured. Rather, my views about work are governed by nostalgia for an age that has not yet come into being..." Braverman

Can I criticize the terms "more-than-human" and "non human" which are used in environmental humanities? "Nature" is so imprecise as to be meaningless BUT more-than-human can also describe institutions like corporations and that is not what we mean when we use it. Other ideas?

More data on the economic effects of migration raids. www.axios.com/local/charlo...

Warning: There is a movie on Netflix about early 20th century logging. Its based on the book _Train Dreams_ by Denis Johnson. The book was great! www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Nk8...

A former UNCC graduate student & I won a grant to fund a mural on the history of North Charlotte textile workers and their labor actions between 1919-1934. We are currently looking for muralist to complete the work. You can find more information here: pages.charlotte.edu/jasonlnewton...

Maybe I should start a forest history podcast… 🧐

We are trying to cool data centers on a warming earth and the energy needed for those data centers are further warming the earth.

My podcast queue today 🧐

Finished Death by Lightning. They wanted to make this a relatable political drama instead of focusing on how weird it all was. The Oneida Community was a sex cult but it was stranger than depicted. The weirdness of the past was what made me fall in love with history. www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jop...

There has been a lot of talk recently about #agi and the paper clip maximizer problem meanwhile everyone is forgetting that humans have already created planet-devastating, runaway CO2 emissions maximizers (ie industrial corporations)

I’m not a fan of urban sprawl but I think right now in Charlotte sprawl is protecting a lot of immigrants from deportation. It take 50 min to drive from one end of this city to another. It is impossible for border patrol to effectively patrol the area.

This is kind of what I’m thinking about. Stores closing because of the raids. www.charlotteobserver.com/charlottefiv...

Is anyone doing natural experiments on the cities being affected by border patrol? We have a roving force going city to city arresting and intimidating entire sectors of the working class. How is this negatively affecting urban economies?

The people of Charlotte, for the most part, do not want border patrol here

As of this morning, Starbucks workers across the country are officially ON STRIKE. And we're prepared for this to become the biggest and longest ULP strike in Starbucks history. Say #NoContractNoCoffee with us: DON'T BUY STARBUCKS for the duration of our open-ended ULP strike! $SBUX

This historian seemed to be able to get an #AI to "think" like a historian, using historical context to make a correct inference about a transcription choice.: generativehistory.substack.com/p/has-google...

Sometimes I wonder if I really actually liked some places I used to live in like Portland, ME or Salem, MA or if I just liked being younger.

Would it be fair to say that people’s connection to other people and other things in the world is on average more complicated now then ever before? In other words, is society (including the economy) more complex and difficult to understand today than ever before in history?

Ban guns.

Folks say "work smarter not harder" but if you work in brain work like me isn't working smarter the same as working harder?

This Day in Labor History: November 5, 1916. Cop thugs opened fire on a group of IWW organizers and workers attempting to land in Everett, Washington. Let's talk about the horrors of the Everett Massacre and the murderous ways of cops.

We saw big victories for public transportation this election cycle in NYC and my home city of Charlotte. Keep in mind that investment in public transit is progressive, helping poorer people more (even if it’s funded by a flat tax like in Charlotte)

Man I can’t wait to be retired so I can actually have the time to get some work done.

Our @aaup chapter put out a statement on CPHE accreditation. Please read, share, and join AAUP! www.ninertimes.com/opinion/lett...

Say what you will about broken American institutions but you can get those Amazon items super quick here!

I kinda wanna get all ahistorical and pull a Dinesh D'Souza and make a doc about how the Republicans were the original nanny state party (cuz of their moral crusading)

*mic drop*