History Is Running Backwards Why reactionaries are taking over the world

www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202...

Feeling cute, might finish this dissertation or whatever

✨🌱🌙Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—🕯️🗃️✨

A reminder to partner, uplift community voices to speak for themselves, hold consent as a non-negotiable value, and never ever extract

April 9 is a significant date. On this date, Lee surrendered to Grant, Marian Anderson sang her famous concert at the Lincoln Memorial after the DAR denied her the use of their hall, and the Nazis executed Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
These three events are more connected than you might think.

How fascinating - I wonder if Walter Scott is part of this narrative.

We would have zero tolerance for people of the past who said “we did nothing because we couldn’t tell if he was joking or not.”

Yes and this is probably misunderstood because the general public gets tested and pop-quizzed about "history facts" early in their educational journey. Those are tools to assess whether you did your homework, Brad, not assertions of forever facts!

Perhaps the true scope of History (from the academic historians' view) is best introduced as similar to the butterfly effect: information around, about, parallel, perpendicular, direct, indirect etc impacts a subject of inquiry in unpredictable and exciting ways.

This happens every. single. day. 🗃️

The public view looks something like the scaffolding of textbook history (until HS or college, depending on a variety of factors) across age and appropriateness and it still doesn't come close to the amount of debate/discussion in the field.
bsky.app/profile/grah...

Right but it is also difficult to explain because in doing so we give up the juridical power of History.

History is not a settled field. We remain in discussion, debate, and research on every event in the past and are likely to forever remain uncommitted to one singular “true” version of the past.

Currently Frames of War, but ask me again tomorrow

I can think of 1 million more interesting conversations to spy on than grok on grok

100%. Also, they’re terrible at holding new input which means they only work well, at present, when the programming can lace 500 years of human academics directly into the artificial veins of a chatbot.

Hallucinations are the result of this.

I bring this up often, the AI input cliff when the world has scratched the bottom of its JSTOR raid and no new information is fed in

Wish we could listen in! I bet it’s remarkable.

It’s the soul of a botnet. I mean, I’m not sure what else is going on out there but it’s not human.

Today’s deep question on why education still matters in the era of AI.

On the anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, John Sloan's searing March 1911 illustration for the New York Call, a Socialist newspaper, responding to the tragic event

I wonder how many archival documents are never used because they're only available on microfilm and historians come to the reasonable, measured conclusion that life is too short?

So. Many.

The destruction of schools and universities is an attempt to destroy the possibility of imagining a future.

Judith Butler, Barnard College, Feb. 28, 2026 (paraphrased)

Thank you! I hope we get access back soon and I hope it resolves well for everyone involved.

John Quincy Adams had zero Fs to give when he sat for this daguerreotype c. 1843. Elected to Congress not long after his term as president, JQA spent years bashing the Slave Power on the House floor.

@lmchervinsky.bsky.social for
@inpursuitusa.bsky.social

inpursuit.substack.com/p/john-quinc...

Isn’t there a place to consider these policies as broad skepticism finally eating itself? If nothing matters then the freedom to consider value also matters not and so on…

When an entire generation’s motto is “whatever” it’s not surprising their kids’ motto is “f- it”

My PhD thesis is on "Yo what's up!" on youtube. My degree has three copyright strikes and is now demonetized.

Anyone know what's going on with Newspaper Archive? 🗃️

We're writing a publishing joke, but we need to get the copy right

Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei killed, senior Israeli official says Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who turned the country into a powerful anti-U.S. force and extended its military influence across the Middle East while crushing repeated domestic unrest,...

Ayatollah Khamenei killed, Reuters reports

www.reuters.com/world/middle...