(insert Historian's rant about why the American people desperately need better religious literacy)

Incredible exchange on a number of levels.

I'm very excited to announce the launch of our new book series Radical Histories. We can't wait to hear about any relevant projects. Get it in touch!

Find out more: manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/blog/2026/04...

#RadicalHistory #History

Remember, Democrats have repeatedly advanced measures to ban partisan gerrymandering and Republicans have voted against them time after time.

This is the game Republicans wanted to play. OK, then.

So much false equivalence in media on gerrymandering in Texas vs California & Virginia. California and Virginia maps approved by the voters. That's a huge difference not enough people pointing out

This is glaringly obvious to everyone except for the faces of corporate media, who desperately want to walk a red carpet

Faculty Defect From Texas Publics, Citing Censorship Fed up with the state’s censoring of Plato, Joan of Arc and Romeo and Juliet, humanities professors are leaving Texas public institutions in pursuit of academic freedom.

'Texas A&M philosophy professor Martin Peterson is leaving the university after administrators told him in January that he couldn’t teach Plato’s Symposium in his philosophy class; they said the ancient Greek philosopher’s work violated the system’s restrictions on gender and sexuality content.' 1/3

yeeahh there's a reason why he's targeting places like Detroit and Georgia

www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/735353...

Photo I took of these wonderful people (the faces of whom I’ve blacked out) singing happy Birthday to their lovely old dog at a bar I was at tonight in Portland

I was at a dog-friendly bar in NW Portland tonight and a table behind me started singing Happy Birthday and then I realized it wasn’t for a person but a really old dog who was wearing a crown and he was old and fucking adorable and I love this city

📢 This week, i'm joined by @mikkibrock.bsky.social to talk about Elizabeth I's "magician", alchemist and all-round strange person, Dr John Dee - who talked to angels, demons and might well have invented the British Empire!
🗃 🎧 ⬇️ #history
podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/t...

Between the Trump as Jesus/Doctor memes and Pete Hegseth quoting the “bible”/Pulp Fiction, I don’t think I’ve laughed this hard since Four Seasons Total Landscaping. A golden age of gallows humor, truly.

Cartoon meme featuring a very round, smiley green frog playing an Ouija board (spelled “wedgie”). The background is a slate blue color, and curving above the frog is the following in black, all caps lettering: FUCK CHATGPT. I’M ASKING GHOSTS.

one of my oldest friends sends totally random monday memes. i thought the skyline would appreciate yesterday’s:

What if we just cleared Congress of all the abusers and sex pests this week

what is stopping us

who cares what party they are in

Candida Moss on CBS News discussing Trump’s truth social post casting him as Jesus healing a man.

This is why we need public scholarship. As soon as the @cbsnews.com.web.brid.gy newscaster asked about Trump saying the image was him as a doctor, @candidamoss.bsky.social cites the 2000 years of historical iconography that indicated to everyone that the AI image was meant to cast Trump as Jesus.

Who Gets Guggenheims? - Public Books Unfortunately, 100 years of data show that those whom such fellowships might represent the greatest departure from their everyday experience—that is, those not at elite institutions—are least likely t...

Woohoo, here's my essay with my fav co-author on 30,000 fellowship wins across the Guggenheim, Stanford CASBS, NAEd, National Humanities Center, RSF visiting scholar, and Harvard Radcliffe.

Spoiler: it's the people working at prestigious universities

www.publicbooks.org/who-gets-gug...

As a medievalist whose work has spanned the 7th through the 16th centuries, it is genuinely wild to see the general public and the United States government in particular discovering just how involved the Pope can get in international politics.

How do you even perform this during Model UN?

This is a great illustration of @larryglickman.bsky.social's point about how "backlash" framing lets the right play the victim.

In general, (re)orienting education wholly or chiefly to specific perceived market needs is always going to produce disaster once the near term passes. It also eviscerates institutions that might otherwise help people weather change, intellectually and in other ways

Everyone please welcome CBS News Immigration Analyst Viktor Orban.

even the most tenacious autocrats have a difficult time denying a landslide result against them

This reality check by Rebecca Solnit grabs you right from the killer first sentence. Do yourself a favor & give it a read.

Call for papers for the Western Conference on British Studies this October in Denton, TX. Deadline extended to May 1! 🗃️ www.wcbs.org/cfp

"Magataotao" on Twitter writes: "I am Catholic. This👇is not my Pope." Attached is a video of the Pope saying that we should search for peace and reject war. A community note under their tweet says: "You are not a Catholic if you do not accept the Pope, but rather a schismatic. Canon 751: “Schism is the refusal of submission to the Supreme Pontiff,” ie. the Pope. https://www.vatican.va/archive/cod-iuris-canonici/eng/documents/cic_lib3-cann747-755_en.html"

first in my bloodline to see someone get excommunicated by a community note

Oh I’d love to read this! Teaching my history of ghosts class this May...

New — I wrote about the terror and loss of the last few days, mostly so we don’t forget.

www.thehandbasket.co/p/trump-iran...

"Other countries are our property, and we dictate their behavior. You know, like women in marriage."

"Does it seduce you just a bit / into loving more / this odd hard world?"

From "The Otters and the Seaweed" by Teddy Macker, in Orion magazine, 2015.
orionmagazine.org/article/the-...

Oh. My. God.

Impossible to disagree with a single word that Ben Rhodes (Obama era NSC official) is saying here: