Eddie Valentin

AI cannot do history work

it has no capacity to do this work, at all, in any way

this is like claiming a zebra can replace an airplane pilot

As we all stagger home from vacations & begin working on syllabi in earnest, I’d offer my semesterly recommendation that @wcaleb.org's generic syllabus maker can generate a list of days your class will meet—all you have to do is delete any holidays, etc. from the list wcaleb.rice.edu/syllabusmake...

With data and mapping software being even more sophisticated today than in 2010, this is only going to get worse.

Book cover for Ratf**kedl by David Daley

Been thinking about this book over the last couple of days. It offers great insight into REDMAP and redistricting processes in 2010, which was a major turning point in how we ended up with a lot of these ridiculous state and federal legislative districts that we have today.

Important to remember that the state was already heavily gerrymandered before this, but now they’re making it even worse.

"The man who is not yet mayor is to blame for a shooting that happened under the watch of an ex-cop mayor who's thrown every available dollar at the NYPD," insists sex pest

Fact Sheet: The United States and European Union Reach Massive Trade Deal MAKING GLOBAL HISTORY: Yesterday, President Donald J. Trump announced a trade deal with the European Union (EU), fundamentally rebalancing the economic

Believe it or not, the EU-US trade deal just got messier.

The White House has published a fact-sheet about the agreement with claims that directly contradict the European Commission's version of events.

Let's take a closer look.

If we’re counting cartoons in this, the opening theme of X-Men from the ‘90s.

youtu.be/sAkL2-vh2Sk?...

I do not care that you are not “surprised.” Please. You have no idea how tiresome it is when you post that something horrible, fascist, authoritarian is “not surprising.” Nothing is “surprising” anymore. But a lot of it is horrible and frightening. Let’s deal with it together.

I want to see some evidence that the money is actually reaching states but this is very good news

If you don't know what funding the AG is talking about, here you go: www.npr.org/2025/07/01/n...

Most people are probably aware of this, but if you don’t want these awful AI summaries to even show up in your Google search results, type -ai after your search terms.

Example: Battle of Anzio -ai

And even though the book’s chronology centers on events occurring between the immediate aftermath of the Vietnam War and the mid 1990s, the themes are extremely relevant when you think about the continuous growth of far-right extremism and violence today. It’s terrifying stuff.

Book cover for the “Bring the War Home: the White Power Movement and Paramilitary America” by Kathleen Belew

Book 9 of 2025. Been on my list for a long time, but I finally got around to it. A heavy read, but it was really great.

Trump Administration Prepares to Drop Seven Major Housing Discrimination Cases Federal housing officials spent years investigating cities from Chicago to Memphis to Corpus Christi for putting industrial plants and unwanted facilities in poor, nonwhite neighborhoods. Now, under T...

NEW: Federal housing officials spent years investigating cities from Chicago to Memphis to Corpus Christi for putting industrial plants and unwanted facilities in poor, nonwhite neighborhoods.

Now, under Trump, the agency plans to drop the cases.

By @jessecoburn.bsky.social

I suppose the long-term scam could be to steal more of our data, increasingly infiltrate more aspects of everyday life, force people to become more reliant on AI, and THEN make us pay for it.

I can’t remember who pointed out, but if all these AI tools were truly worth a damn, they wouldn’t be forcing this stuff down everyone’s throats for free.

The National Guard troopers confirming what everyone suspected; they don't want to be there.

You are also absolutely right! We definitely need to step our game up!

History in the eyes of the general public:

Either no should do it or anyone can do it.

History’s just such a disrespected discipline. People either fail to recognize the rigor, value, and skills that come with it, or they think they’re “doing history” just by googling something or reading a couple of books.

When I was a museum curator, I remember a couple of occasions where managers floated ideas for STEM-centered museum programs for students. I would’ve been fine with it if there was also an effort to teach them about the historical discipline, the foundation of everything we did at the museum.

Parents insist their kids go to college to get business degrees. Administrators respond by defunding the humanities and social sciences, while hiring business profs at ~2X what historians get paid. Meanwhile, businesses say over and over that they want to hire humanities and social science majors.

Decades of mechanistic talk about university degrees as if they were bundles of 'skills' and 'prep' are about to be proved completely wrong (obviously). Want to get a real boost? Do History or English.

I'm a professor at the flagship university for the fourth whitest state in the US. Over 80% of our students are white.

The biggest barrier to access here is that due to lack of state funding, we have top 10 highest tuition per capita of public unis in the country.

We also have a food pantry.

Cover of book “The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine” by Rashid Khalidi

Book 8 of 2025. This subject certainly isn’t my area of expertise, but I really enjoyed this book! Understanding these events as an ongoing settler colonial project rather than simply viewing them as a “conflict” was spot on and made complete sense to me.

FEMA response to deadly Texas floods delayed & deficient with Noem in charge Staffers sound the alarm.

NEW from me — FEMA staffers say the response to the Texas floods is horrifyingly slow, and it may be because of DHS Secretary Kristi Noem's recent increased control over how the agency spends money.

"If this is how they are going to do a major hurricane response, people are fucked.”

This Sunday, Historians At The Movies is talking the Seven Years’ War, Daniel Day-Lewis, and going west to Kan-Tuckee. Join us on Prime Video this Sunday, July 6 at 8pm eastern for THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS (Defintive Director’s Cut).

Just stay alive no matter what occurs! #HATM will find you!

The sub memorial at Pearl is very sobering.

They sank a lot of Japanese vessels, but their success came at a really high price. Casualty rate for U.S. submariners during WWII was around 20 percent. If you rolled out on a submarine patrol, there was a good chance you weren’t coming back.