The Virgins’ Malady: How Marriage Became a Medical Treatment “Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon, / Who is already sick and pale with grief /… / Be not her maid, since she is envious; / Her vestal livery is but sick and green / And none but fools do …

Today we have a fantastic essay on medicine’s patriarchal assumptions in treating women’s bodies. nursingclio.org/2026/03/25/t...

Rebecca Solnit Says the Left’s Next Hero Is Already Here

“One of the great weaknesses of our era is we get lone superhero movies that suggest that our big problems are solved by muscly guys in spandex, when actually the world mostly gets changed through collective effort, more like caregiving than it is like war.”

www.nytimes.com/2026/03/07/m...

“The Unwillingness to Call This Illegal Is a Terrible Mistake”

Five Questions to Oona A. Hathaway

Read it in English here:

verfassungsblog.de/the-unwillin...

And in German here:

verfassungsblog.de/die-weigerun...

Publicly supporting women is nice, but what really matters is what men do behind closed doors. What matters is how they hold each other accountable.

The men’s hockey team shouldn’t get a pass because they were in the locker room—that’s where women need their support the most.

Legendary founder of NPR programming Bill Siemering is enjoying Zoom visiting with students so much that he's asked me to put a second call out. No honorarium necessary. Any takers?

Star Tribune identifies ICE agent who fatally shot woman in Minneapolis Jonathan Ross was dragged in a separate incident last year by a fleeing driver, according to court records.

his name is Jonathan Ross and he shouldn't get a good night's sleep for the rest of his life www.startribune.com/ice-agent-wh...

Opinion | A Coup at Carnegie Mellon? The university is replacing the humanities with more computers.

Excellent new essay about the systematic destruction of the Humanities at CMU and the students/faculty who are trying to resist. Really proud to call its author, Catherine Evans, my friend: www.chronicle.com/article/a-co...

I do think we have a pretty good chance of turning gambling into a genuine popular moral crusade 19th century style, because it's becoming a social evil that's destroying young men's lives in particular but also making sports coverage really shit.

East Wing lobby from 2023

This is what it used to look like inside the lobby area.

Say it!

Neighbor shielded 7-year-old during South Shore federal raid: ‘I didn’t want them to take her’ During the Sept. 30 raid one tenant protected a terrified girl and her mom. Remnants at the complex, including a detailed map of all the units, offer clues to what authorities may have known before th...

During a military-style raid on a building in Chicago’s South Shore, one resident heard a knock on his door. 

It wasn’t the feds —  it was a mom and her 7-year-old daughter, pleading for help.

He let them hide in his unit for the next 3 days.

chicago.suntimes.com/immigration/...

Only an administration intent on committing war crimes in the present and future would stoop to calling Wounded Knee a "battle" rather than what it truly was: a massacre of over 250 Lakotas, mainly women, children, and the elderly. 1/

Hillary Clinton Sees a Dangerous Moment for Women’s Rights, and Democracy

We are in an all-hands-on-deck moment for women across the world.

I spoke to the @nytimes.com about the strong forces trying to turn the clocks back and how we can all fight for women's rights and futures.

www.nytimes.com/2025/09/22/u...

"How Are the Very Rich Feeling About New York’s Next Mayor?"

A Dramatic Reading of The Recent New York Times Dispatch from the Hamptons.

Presented by The Gilded Age's Morgan Spector.

this is fixable and the way you fix it is with public trials

Ice used Marriott chain to detain immigrants, despite hotel’s 2019 pledge not to cooperate Sheraton in Louisiana held father and teenage son this month in apparent contradiction of former position

In 2019, commercial hotels like the Marriott pledged not to work with ICE to detain immigrants.

Now, about 6 years later, reporting shows they are holding people pre-deportation.

Such important reporting from @oliverlaughland.bsky.social + @skirchy.bsky.social
www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

"Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves; and, under a just God, can not long retain it."

- Abe Lincoln, 1859

This from @tressiemcphd.bsky.social hit me over the head like a mallet of truth. This is the thing. This is what I’ve been trying to warn people about perfectly crystallized. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/12/o...

From a report today on @npr.org: People held at Alligator Auschwitz have no legal path out. ICE says they're held on state charges, so Federal immigration judges can't hear cases for bond or anything else. The state hasn't charged them, so state judges can't hear the case because there's no case. 1/

Victim’s Haunting Words Show Maxwell Can Never Be Truly Free Even if Ghislaine Maxwell pulls off a pardon, the words of the late Virginia Roberts Giuffre will follow her always.

Read This: "Victim’s Haunting Words Which Show Ghislaine Can Never Be Truly Free" www.thedailybeast.com//victims-hau...

Thank you to @pw4d.bsky.social for sharing this video: www.facebook.com/share/v/1FEQ...

What’s a technology that you think is overhyped? I’m going to give a sideways answer to this, which is that the venture capital business model needs to be understood as requiring hype. You can go back to the Netscape IPO, and that was the proof point that made venture capital the financial lifeblood of the tech industry. Venture capital looks at valuations and growth, not necessarily at profit or revenue. So you don’t actually have to invest in technology that works, or that even makes a profit, you simply have to have a narrative that is compelling enough to float those valuations. So you see this repetitive and exhausting hype cycle as a feature in this industry. A couple of years ago, you would have been asking me about the metaverse, then last year, you would have asked me about Web3 and crypto, and for each of these inflection points there’s an Andreessen Horowitz manifesto. It’s not simply that one piece of technology is overhyped, it’s that hype is a necessary ingredient of the current business ecosystem of the tech industry. We should examine how often the financial incentive for hype is rewarded without any real social returns, without any meaningful progress in technology, without these tools and services and worlds ever actually manifesting. That’s key to understanding the growing chasm between the narrative of techno-optimists and the reality of our tech-encumbered world.

Stand by this: www.politico.com/newsletters/...

Opinion | I Watched It Happen in Hungary. Now It’s Happening Here.

"After years watching Hungary suffocate under the weight of its democratic collapse, I came to understand that the real danger of a strongman isn’t his tactics; it’s how others, especially those with power, justify their acquiescence."

This is painful to read and it feels exactly right.

Historian Friends! @shgape.bsky.social is holding a conference next June in that great GA/PE city, Chicago!

See link to CFP below!

The Writers Guild of America is calling for an investigation into Paramount after ending The Late Show.

Link: www.wga.org/news-events/...

Also, I love my friends who know I am deep into research and keep me up to date. It takes a village to write, research, and stay on top of this chaos

The Legacy of Robert La Follette's Progressive Vision Robert La Follette saw politics as a never-ending struggle for democracy and fairness and preached perseverance.

Timely insights & continued relevance: progressivism, reform struggles, the Gilded Age & Progressive Era, & political philosophy. On the Legacy of Fighting' Bob LaFollette's Progressive Vision by Nancy Unger #madebyhistory TIME Magazine @shgape.bsky.social 🗃️ time.com/7293419/robe...

HBO should fire Bill Maher and give his time slot to Stephen Colbert.

CBS canceled Colbert’s show just THREE DAYS after Colbert called out CBS parent company Paramount for its $16M settlement with Trump – a deal that looks like bribery.

America deserves to know if his show was canceled for political reasons.

Watch and share his message.