A historical photo of farm workers working using the short handle hoe
Today in UFW history—April 17, 1975: Farm workers called the short-handled hoe el cortito (the short one) or El brazo del Diablo (the devil’s arm) since it forced them to toil hour after hour bent over weeding or cultivating, causing crippling back and skeletal injuries. 1/
Oceanographers, simultaneously the most mild-mannered and the most terrifying people you’ll ever meet
As promised, we are excited to share @jeelyachar.bsky.social's response to the six CSSH authors who engaged with "the semicivilized" in last month's In Dialogue! Don't miss "More #Ottoman Heuristics – A Seventh Take on the Semicivilized."
sites.lsa.umich.edu/cssh/2026/04...
Harvard CMES Disaster Studies Initiative Colloquium is taking place this Friday.
Edanur’s illustrations for the Initiative depicts Soma coal miners engaged in earthquake search-and-rescue efforts, based on oral history interviews I have been conducting since 2024.(1/6)
Image from Tuktuit (Lindsay McIntyre, 2025)
Image from Tuktuit (Lindsay McIntyre, 2025)
Image from Tuktuit (Lindsay McIntyre, 2025)
Currently on @criterionchannl.bsky.social, Tuktuit (Lindsay McIntyre, 2025) is an experimental short created using emulsions made from caribou gelatin and developers made from lichen. It looks unlike anything I've seen before. It's Inuit ecocinema that reworks film down to its chemical processes.
I haven’t been this excited about a collaboration in a long time.(6/6)
The Independent Miners’ Union, founded in Soma(Turkey) in 2018 by several of my interlocutors, has since played a transformative role in working-class politics in Turkey and beyond—demonstrating to organizers worldwide that worker-led organizing is the most powerful force for historical change.(5/6)
Soma miners’ remarkable ability to mobilize so quickly after the quake is rooted in their unionization.(4/6)
after which at least 55,000 people in Turkey alone lost their lives—deaths widely attributed to lax regulation dating back to before the 1999 Marmara earthquake, and a corrupt construction industry that has been central to the formation of a pro-AKP capitalist class since the early 2000s.(3/6)
Drawing on their underground mining expertise with extraordinary courage and determination, miners saved many lives in the absence of competent state search-and-rescue response. This took place in the wake of the 2023 twin earthquakes that struck Turkey and Syria,(2/6)
Harvard CMES Disaster Studies Initiative Colloquium is taking place this Friday.
Edanur’s illustrations for the Initiative depicts Soma coal miners engaged in earthquake search-and-rescue efforts, based on oral history interviews I have been conducting since 2024.(1/6)
Creativity and aesthetics have long been studied as two independent topics, and yet there is growing recognition of the reciprocal ties that bind them together. A new Research Topic aims to advance a scientific understanding of the interconnections.
www.frontiersin.org/research-top...
Please repost!
These blackberry plants were planted in February. Workers are removing the weeds around it so there's no competition for water and nutrients so the plant is strong and healthy and produce good fruit. #WeFeedYou
Earthquakes in Human History: The Far-Reaching Effects of Seismic Disruptions by Jelle Zeilinga de Boer and Donald Theodore Sanders
The new Princeton Science Library edition of Earthquakes in Human History by Jelle Zeilinga de Boer and Donald Theodore Sanders is now available!
Learn more and order yours: press.princeton.edu/books/paperb...
#EarthScience #History
The Origins of the New: Novelty and Innovation in the History of Life, Culture, and Technology by Douglas H. Erwin. A visionary look at how novel attributes arise and become transformative innovations in nature, culture, and technology.
The Origins of the New by Douglas H. Erwin reveals how the forces of novelty & innovation are the same across nature & culture, continually producing new forms & refashioning the world as we know it.
Out now (14 April UK pub). Check out a free preview:
press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...
#Biology
Finally getting to the @criterionchannl.bsky.social's Sudanese Film Group program and it is predictably amazing. In addition to A Camel (see below), I just watched It Still Rotates (1978) by Suliman Mohamed Ibrahim Elnour, which depicts a new school in one of the deserts of post-colonial Yemen.
"Anna" shares, "I'm a student. During strawberry season I work in the fields with my brothers to help my mom with the rent. It is very hard because we work piece rate for 2 months-going as fast as we can. There's little work for the next 4 months so we need to save." #WeFeedYou
Congratulations to @fbille.bsky.social, whose book "Somatic States" has won the 2026 Julian Minghi Distinguished Book Award, given by the Political Geography Specialty Group of @geographers.bsky.social!
Folks, if you are in Boston/NE/NYC, we have an amazing conference next week with keynotes by Judith Brunton and Angelo Baca, plus two panels about endings and futures. Registration QR code is on the flyer. Please share widely.
A photo of the line of the march from the 1966 pilgrimage from Delano to Sacramento
3/17/66: 77 Latino and Filipino grape workers -- six months into their 5 yr long strike -- set off from Delano on a 340-mile march, or pilgrimage, to place generations of farm worker grievances before the governor and Legislature in Sacramento. 1/2
“AI can never be AI without humans. It is not artificial intelligence. It’s African intelligence...We are training our own death. We train ChatGPT and it’s killing us slowly.”
www.404media.co/ai-is-africa...
How did the COVID-19 pandemic lay bare and also exacerbate tremendous changes in labor around the world? Check out our new series rethinking work: www.culanth.org/fieldsights/...
In his new book, the celebrated author explains why we need ‘consciousness hygiene’ to defend ourselves from AI and dopamine-driven algorithms
Study finds ChatGPT Health did not recommend a hospital visit when medically necessary in more than half of cases. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
Gen Z is reviving DVDs and Blu-rays, with local video rental shops reporting record months and membership numbers as young people embrace physical media.
Read more: www.latimes.com/entertainmen...
Fellowship Opportunity!
Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition, Yale University - 2026-2027 Gilder Lehrman Center Fellowships
networks.h-net.org/jobs/69786/g...
Spinoza died on this day 349 years ago. Here is what I wrote about his famous claim that a "free man thinks of nothing less than of death," and we can learn and not learn from our finitude.
www.unemployednegativity.com/2025/01/noth...
Winning their first contract is another major landmark for Volkswagen workers in Chattanooga, Tennessee, who made history in 2024 by becoming the first auto plant in the South to unionize through an election since the 1940s, and the first foreign-owned factory in the South to do so 2/2
#cfp We are seeking papers for both a pre-conference workshop for New England-based anthropology PhD Students and early career faculty (March 27) and paper proposals for two panels (all ranks) (March 28). Due by 02.23.2026. docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...
“I hope that the other plants here in the South are watching,” said bargaining committee member Yolanda Peoples, who works on the engine assembly line. “We now have our seat at the table, and it’s going to be life-changing for a lot of people in our plant.”
labornotes.org/2026/02/majo...
