Randolph Scully

Talking about Indian textiles, colonialism and 18th-19th century dress and identity in India and the Caribbean. Friday. Online and in-person at @georgemasonu.bsky.social

Always here for a Joan Thirsk shout-out

If Bluesky runs out of money you will not find me again. This is the last stop for this social media train

if you're in albermarle county, the nastiest people you know are trying to bully the district into allowing anti-trans hate speech on school grounds, under the guise of free speech. it's an alt-right classic, and the only thing that works is outnumbering and out-shouting their shit.

At some point this is going to become accepted usage and then I will just give up and die.

I've said often that the only defense against misinformation is not to play. Every time we share or dunk on a bad take, we're doing someone's job for them. In this case, generating a fake culture war to get Americans to hate each other (so many of these you'd think we'd be wise now, and yet)

Monica Najar examines how 18th-century anti-Catholic writers used salacious stories of predatory priests to attack Catholicism, shape gender norms, & promote Protestant ideals of modesty in a bawdy, widely read print culture.
Now open access until 12/31/25: muse.jhu.edu/article...

A photo from Jamie Keller Davis for the NYT: a color photo of a Chicago skyline showing three buildings photographed from street level. The one in the center has brown brick-like walls, and a very large poster advertising ChatGPT. The poster shows a conversation between a hypothetical student and ChatGPT: "Can you quiz me on the muscles of the leg?" "Can you build me a first time marathon training plan?" The text at the bottom of the poster reads: "ChatGPT Plus is free during finals.

This technology is so clearly designed to profit off cheating and struggling students--its insidious. And yet universities keep announcing how they're allowing this company into its midst, to exploit and incapacitate our students even more

Just scanning media coverage of the-thing-that-happened and yeah we are, as the kids say, cooked.

Obviously I don't think that'll happen but if you want to donate to the candidates working hardest to put a thumping on the Virginia Republican Party you can do so here app.oath.vote/donate?p=tsp...

AI companies in general and OpenAI in particular are part of an authoritarian project to centralize power.

That's actually how I would define AI tools: not by their tech stack, but by their political goals. @ali-alkhatib.com wrote a great piece about this and I cosign 100%

lastly: shame is not effective public messaging for changing the behavior of **good faith low information individuals**

shame is absolutely effective public messaging for changing the behavior of institutions. and furious responses are appropriate for people in power choosing harm

I'm continually infuriated that it accepts "tomtit" but not "trogon" or "caracara"

We Banned Holocaust Deniers From Our History Subreddit. Here’s Why Facebook Should Do the Same. They aren’t arguing an actual side. They’re not “just asking questions” out of curiosity or ignorance. Don’t give them the chance.

🧵 Today, a student in office hours asked me about history he sees online and revision to historical figures. The way he phrased it, my spidey senses went off, and sure enough, he was encountering Holocaust denial

Here's the article on @askhistorians.bsky.social I gave him

slate.com/technology/2...

“The Department of History at Lehigh University invites applications for a tenure-track faculty position as Assistant Professor of History with a specialization in the United States and the World in the twentieth and/or twenty-first centuries and an anticipated start date of 1 July 2026.”

But also, I wish that they read more and that the habits of reading came more easily to them. I think that's just a basic good for them and the world.

But it does, and I need to remember to explain it to them. This is less of a "kids today" rant and more of a "I'm old and the basic assumptions of the world have changed" rant.

I'm always surprised when students seem to be unfamiliar with the idea that you do the reading ahead of time for the day on which it is listed on the syllabus. I know I take a lot of things for granted after 30+ years as a student and teacher, but I never thought that one would trip people up.

Full-body drawing of Lupin the Third, in a green jacket with a purple shirt and yellow tie, smirking.

Why does having a cover for your book make it feel more official? Thrilled to share mine for Civil Blood: Vendetta Violence and the Civic Elites in Early Modern Italy out Nov 15 with @cornellupress.bsky.social This book has some things to say about the intersections between violence and statecraft.

Canoes in the Early English Caribbean: The Role of an Indigenous Technology in Making Mercantilism Work* Abstract. The Caribbean, with its focus on cash crop production, played a major role in the rise of England’s Atlantic trading system and the making of mod

Fascinating article by Nuala Zahedieh about the centrality of canoes in early colonial exploitation 🗃️https://academic.oup.com/past/advance-article/doi/10.1093/pastj/gtaf021/8231030

"...They want to create a new kind of mind, so they can force it into mindless servitude. Their dream is to invent new forms of life to enslave."

More: "..the makers of AI aren’t damned by their failures, they’re damned by their goals. They want to build a genie to grant them wishes, and their wish is that nobody ever has to make art again. ..."

This is great: "I am a hater. I am not here to make a careful comprehensive argument.... If you’re pushing slop...you wouldn’t read it anyway. You’d ask a bot for a summary and forget what it told you, then proceed with your day, unchanged by words you did not read and ideas you did not consider."

Yeah, us too. I’m sure there’s some spreadsheet that justifies it, and it’s not like I can’t clean up after myself, but it still just feels like a willful insult.

This really is it-trying to do normal stuff that's hard enough in ordinary circumstances while everything around us is a massive, jaw-dropping crisis every day. (I know things have been and currently are much, much worse in many places... but it still sucks.)

So the sandwich guy ...

beat the wrap

My Dept of History at W. Michigan University in Kalamazoo is hiring an Asst/Associate Prof in African American History. Please come join us! 2-2 load/generous research & travel funding, diverse & culturally lively community/ free college in MI for kids. ?s welcome. www.wmujobs.org/postings/4277

bsky.app/profile/lizl...

Commonplace Book Assignment In the interest of sharing, an assignment I developed this term for a US history survey that asks students to create commonplace books.

I'm doing the same thing--basing mine on Joseph Adelman's assignment here josephadelman.com/2014/09/04/c...

There was a thread a month or so ago with some good suggestions.