🚨 NSF is already quietly eliminating the SBE Directorate, despite Congress’ mandate that NSF support the behavioral & social sciences.
Steps to counter this are in motion.
If you
- have an SBE proposal under review
- serve on an SBE grant panel
You can help! Fill out this form: shorturl.at/xuKw2
The fact that nobody seriously believes there is an institution in this country that will check the president—that we’re all just sitting here hoping that he gets distracted and fails to follow through on his genocidal threats—is the most damning indictment of our political system I’ve seen yet.
You have more in common with the people of Iran than you do with anyone in this administration, any member of the technocracy, anyone who is profiting from this war, or any billionaire. When you see Iranians forming human chains outside key infrastructure sites, you should feel a sense of kinship.
The Moon: oh wow you guys decided to come back
Artemis II crew: earth’s haunted
This is very very big. Like a big deal and massive cuts. These can’t even be seen as budgetary since you don’t get much savings in the context of trillions budget. They want the US out of R&D out of science research.
I used to write the WaPo editorials on US-Africa policy, as well on as human rights and politics on the continent.
To describe hundreds of thousands of deaths on the continent as “messy” is an absolute abomination.
I know that there are a lot of different ways to be in the world, but I actually cannot comprehend how anyone who uses GenAI to do some of their research and/or writing thinks of themselves as a thinker and writer.
The thing that makes me a writer is that I do my writing. I also do my prep for it.
Thanks! I appreciate it! I'm hoping once I get into it it'll flow easily; right now I've got those "wait I've forgotten literally everything I've ever known how does one make the words again" nerves
Giving my first ever public talk in an hour on my dissertation research for the Fairfax County Historical Society! I'm incredibly nervous and worried that I'm gonna come across as unhinged. 🫠
Y’know, that was largely my experience too last summer. I’m pretty sure my blood was 50% mango juice by the time the season was over.
Science does not work in the way that an easy phrase like “gold standard” suggests—and treating scientific outputs as if they were competing on a single quality scale misunderstands their purpose.
Ignoring bad science doesn't stop bad actors from using it to support their own ideological narratives, often causing very real harm in the process. It's dangerous to ignore bad science on multiple levels. (2/2)
To add on to this: It's also important to note that the pseudoscience grift relies heavily on older, bad science "bollocks" models to give it a veneer of legitimacy. Previous eugenic/race science frameworks are often used as evidence to support modern white supremacy and hyperdiffusionism. (1/2)
Bad science (aka bollocks) cant and should not be written out of the history of science because it came to be revealed as bad or incorrect science.
This sets us up to believe that science is infallible, a dangerous and ahistorical framing.
I describe it as such as a historian of disability because I want to remind scientists and the world that the history of science IS the history of eugenics, scientific racism and medical racism, and more.
I’m not comforting them with the idea that it was a ‘pseudoscience.’
This is your history.
💯 And this cannot be overstated.
The erasure of a society's collective identity through the systematic destruction of their heritage has long been the weapon of the oppressor.
Yet, even as the effectiveness of ethnocide is widely recognized (see TRC 2015), very little is being done to stop it.🏺
🚨🚨🚨 🇮🇱 BOMBED NEXT TO THE UNESCO SITE OF BAALBEK
This adds to the 🇺🇸🇮🇱 axis targeting of a series of heritage sites in Iran, Palestine and Lebanon over the past week (see post 👇 🧵)
It’s weird how much it upsets people when I talk about how the American apparatus has had and continues to have a genocidal attitude toward Black people and its not because they’re upset about the genocidalism, it’s that they don’t want to confront their own normalization of anti-Black violence
Writing out a conversation I’ve been having a lot at this conference:
Things in US science are far, far worse than people know.
Far worse than even other scientists know.
1/
Meet Bes, one of the most beloved household gods of ancient Egypt.
Inspired by vessels discovered at Saqqara, these expressive jars brought the fierce protection and joyful spirit of Bes directly into the home.
Explore this replica in our shop:
potted-history.co.uk
#HistoryInHand
Aaah I love it!
Why is it 250 bucks to re-up a membership and pay for a conference registration as a graduate student in this economy???
The field of archaeology was developed as a tool of imperialism and settler colonialism and every attempt to depoliticize archaeology is an abdication of our responsibility to actively undo the harms of our predecessors through reparative justice🏺
Ugh. I know rejections are much more statistically common than job acceptances in academia and that it is largely no reflection on my actual merits as a scholar, but boy does it still sting when the form email comes in.
Columbus introduced sugar cane to the Caribbean and his son opened the first plantation. They were the originators of this brutality.
So many Caribbean people died on these plantations that they eventually had to start bringing in slaves from Africa.
Average lifespan once there was only 7 years.
Any doctoral student or early career scholar want to give an online guest lecture on Marcion (preferably) or second century Christianity (but not gnosticism) more broadly?
I think I can offer you a $100 stipend for a 45 minute talk. Needs to be MWF 10-1050.
I'm local to this; lots of confirmed exposure sites in the greater tri-state area. Mask up, and if you haven't yet, check your vaccination status to make sure you're up to date.
This got stuck in my head something awful while in the field and I hate you for it lmao
A friend in MPLS sent me some resources to spread around to help support the folks under siege, so please give if you are able:
www.standwithminnesota.com (resource hub)
linktr.ee/mplsmutualaid (resource hub)
linktr.ee/ICEOUTmutual... (food distribution, immigrant support services)
1/3
On my first day as a PhD student at Chicago, I was gifted a copy of Von Däniken’s Chariots of the Gods by a senior archaeologist who said to me: “May this serve as a reminder for why teaching real archaeology to the public matters”
The hagiographic obits for him are absolutely wild
