omg, this! I struggle with getting students to explore anti-abortion thought seriously, anti-suffrage thought seriously, anti-vax thought seriously. My famous refrain in all of my classes is, "We have to take our historical actors seriously!"

Sometimes you need to bludgeon!

Ah, thank you. BTW, the king always wins.

"Despite our rhetorical commitment to 'critical thinking,' we typically present one side of an issue — the left-wing side, almost always — and call it a day."

let me stop you right there; who's "we"

My students just conducted an argument about the execution of King Charles I in 1649. Some were assigned to support the King, others to support Parliament. Which side were we missing?

Perish the thought that they speak to historians. The party knows better. 🤦‍♀️

Manages to get through a call for focusing on teaching and civic purpose without even glancing toward contingency and adjunctification of faculty as perhaps a factor in the problem. A call to change without examining the structures that control higher ed is performative B.S. at this point.

The cyberattack on The British Library in October 2023 knocked out ebooks and almost ever other computer thing there for years.

Ebooks just came back. They were knocked out everywhere using the BL’s license (legal deposit libraries I think? More libraries?)

Distributed physical copies matter.

The destruction of UK higher ed breaks my heart. And the centralization means it’s happening in so many places. Here, the red states are suffering, and there’s AI and budget cuts, but somewhat less dire.

The general response to my upcoming retirement is either ‘you’re getting out just in time’ or ‘I wish I could’.

😂 @cordeliabeattie.bsky.social everyone knows that 40 years in the 17th century is the same as one year in the 21st!

Do such posts exist? @racheljweil.bsky.social might know if they do.

I know historians aren’t supposed to predict the future, but sometimes the patterns are really clear.

So glad you could come!

Reposting this with a few hashtags to try and catch more interest! #earlymodern #skystorians #16thc #premodern #bookhistory #materialculture #RenRef #Reformation #medievalsky #medieval

Comic cover with the title "What Does HIV Mean?" by Jordan Collver & Jaime Garcia Iglesias featuring a patchwork quilt.

Comic Page 1: A young man accompanies his boyfriend in a clinic waiting room. His phone pings with a reminder for an upcoming Queer Sewing Club session. He kisses his boyfriend goodbye outside the clinic and arrives at the sewing club, holding a Vintage City bag and waving to the instructor. He pulls out an old denim jacket from the bag and and excitedly tries it on. It's covered in badges/patches and a bit tattered but still cool. He feels good in it, but the instructor notices and appears shocked with recognition. TEXT: Most gay men in the UK have been touched by HIV in the UK in some way, whether they live with the virus or not. A central strand running… through the community… but unique to each person. Today, people with HIV can live full and healthy lives. Although there is still no cure… [background sign]: CLINIC thanks to medication like pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) and effective anti-retroviral treatments, HIV is a preventable and manageable condition. [phone message]: Reminder: Queer Sewing Club - 1hr And people living with HIV can’t pass on the virus. [building sign]: CLINIC ENTRANCE For many young gay men who have grown up having these options, it’s the only reality they’ve known. [handbag]: VINTAGE CITY “When I first came out… coincided with PrEP becoming more available.” (Caleb, 30, white, HIV– on PrEP) Clinic visits for testing, prevention and treatment are part of everyday life. “The issues of sexual health […] lots of people in the queer community go through as a rite of passage” (Tyler, 35yo, HIV neg) Seen as a matter of routine and responsibility. But it wasn’t always this way.

Comic Page 2: A colourful 80s flashback of the instructor as a younger man wearing the same jacket... it was his! He looks up anxiously at an imposing hospital building and is ushered in through the back entrance by medical staff in PPE. He sits alone in the waiting room. We next see him standing in the middle of a lively dancefloor surrounded by men dancing and chatting. He turns to his right and sees a man unravelling like a spool of thread, followed by a closeup of him stitching a badge onto his jacket with that same colour thread. He turns to his left to see another man in a different colour also unravelling, followed by another badge in the same colour. He is left holding several different coloured threads with a jacket covered in badges. Now he is sitting at a table with a small group of other men who are happily painting some protest signs. Some chat, while one lovingly puts some paint on another's nose. TEXT: Far from it, when HIV was first identified in the early 80s… [sign]: HOSPITAL it was a matter of life and, very often, death. [sign]: STAFF ONLY [sign]: DON’T DIE OF IGNORANCE For many gay men who lived through the 80s and 90s, HIV represents fear, loss, grief – “The AIDS Crisis.” “Literally loads of my mates died in the eighties… I was just going onto the scene at that time and the people that you would bump into…” “…suddenly they just wouldn’t be there…” “and no-one really talked about it.” (Brian, 56yo, white) “It was a fear-filled time… But…” “…there were still times when people showed incredible love to each other… I think it would be wrong to see the whole of the 80s and 90s in one big black cloak of doom and gloom. It wasn’t that.” (Paul, 64, white)

I've just been given the go-ahead to share the new comic I made with @jgarciaiglesias.bsky.social about his research!

"What Does HIV Mean?" 1/2

I saw it when it came out, I was maybe 16 or 17. Terrifying. Haven't wanted to see it since.

Yes! We went there on our honeymoon (just a weekend, but still!)

It's a problem if women are pregnant outside of marriage. She's fine with girls being married off at 16 and having kids.

It's early for this sort of thing...

One of the portraits of Prince Henry appears to have him with a Black attendant, IIRC.

So many questions, but I’m looking forward to seeing it. (And since I’m currently trying to track the identity of Black children in portraits, I’ll be curious what the full court press finds!)

Yes, this one will explode.

‘Hungary, Europe!’ Spontaneous chant I just heard on streets of Budapest … Supermajority means Tisza really can dismantle the Orban system… and Orban has conceded… It will be a tough road ahead but truly hard to imagine a better result… I’ll be writing about it soon…

Yes. Everyone who started the Episcopal church started in the C of E. TEC is what happened when it became American. But that doesn’t mean the Episcopal church didn’t come out of the C of E.

Yes, but that’s only because they didn’t recognize American independence - he’d been ordained by the C of E. But I have a soft spot for Sam: he looked at medieval portraits and decided to have a mitre made (not worn in the CofE then). The first one was made of wood!

It’s why I was advised to get a Sears card to build a credit history in the late 70s

Mayor Mamdani sits in the back of an ambulance listening to an FDNY paramedic explain their process.

Mayor Mamdani meets FDNY EMTs, paramedics, and EMS officers.

Around 11:30 PM, I dropped by FDNY’s EMS station in Elmhurst. These stations are centralized hubs where FDNY EMTs, paramedics and EMS officers come to pick up their equipment to restock ambulances.

This thread.

Or perhaps a lap cat for a few minutes?