Boston 's Leslie Knope

it's weird being a not very religious person who also believes short form video is essentially the work of the devil

In 1859, an Ecclesiastical Map of Ireland was published with an accompanying legend. This provided details of each parish & chapel on the island. It gives us a fascinating picture into the post-Famine Catholic world. The totals - 1030 parishes and 2046 chapels! #speirgorm

“It’s not shocking. It’s exactly what you should expect.”—the ghost of Louis Pasteur
(and everyone with working brain cells)

If you want to learn about married women’s dependent citizenship in the early 20th century & the birthright citizens who lost their citizenship by marrying an immigrant, check out “Forgotten America” on The Great Courses Plus or Audible. 🗃️

bit.ly/4omm0oi

A fun reminder that a loss of 60,000 jobs in and around academia is ~50% more than all coal mining jobs in the entire country.

I think the use of chatbots for stuff like this is intended to train people to use it to avoid everything that’s painful or hard. It can write the obituary, the breakup text, the complaint letter. It’s meant to separate humans from their difficult feelings. Seems bad.

Let Burns Library plan your next literary themed holiday.

How in the world does this work to combat antisemitism?

A letter to Reagan Admin official Morton Blackwell, in which a grade schooler calls him "dumb" for closing a church.

A child asks Blackwell to do him a favor and keep the Christian schools open

Spending my Saturday evening in the Reagan archives, reminiscing on that whimsical time evangelicals organized a childrens letter-writing campaign to the White House in defense of a Christian Identity preacher who was arrested for operating an unlicensed school in defiance of court orders.

Adopt A Station - Rescue Public Media Help preserve independent journalism and community programming across America by adopting a public media station. Congress has voted to rescind public media's funding.

Mostly small stations in rural areas that are news deserts; residents rely on them for local news, emergency warnings (radio works even when cell service doesn't). Mostly in Alaska or serving tribal communities. There are stations in CO, WV, NM, and AZ. One station lost 97% of its budget.

That's how you can tell human authors from AI.

AI will put in some em dashes, then apologise and take them out when told off.

Human authors will climb the filing cabinet, hissing, and defend their right to em dashes with a loaded stapler.

one of the single best deals in streaming. i've been paying for PBS Passport for years. it rules

Okay, longest of long-shot historic crowdsourcing. During WW2 my grandfather was stationed in London serving in the Adjutant General's Office of the US Air Transport Command (at least according to his local Ohio newspaper in 1946). Does anyone have any idea *where* in London he would have worked?

Building an alternative to the manosphere and it’s the VULVADOME. Guitar solos and mimosas and kickboxing while we karaoke Heart songs and wear LISA FRANK ALL DAY ALL NIGHT.

I am now pretty much only using Duck Duck Go because I absolutely hate AI

Visiting my parents and it has come out that when my dad was a child, his familu took a seemingly normal family vacation to Block Island. But then they went to a local town meeting for fun. If we were wondering why I am the way I am

Screenshots from Josephine Bowen's first entry in 1920 Boston Register of Woman voters, showing her name crossed out and "no papers." Top image says "Register of Women Voters."

Why was this woman’s voter registration crossed out? When Josephine Bowen tried to register to vote in Boston on September 8, 1920, her attempt was rejected because of the clerk’s note: “no papers.” At that time in the United States, a woman’s citizenship status was tenuous. @universalhub.com

Three formative events for me as a young woman in the 1990s were all centered on Americans absolutely trashing different women for different circumstances: Anita Hill, Monica Lewinsky, and Chelsea Clinton.

She's okay - but didn't sleep, got choked by tear gas etc etc. Not great for anyone but especially not someone recovering from surgery

A friend who was recovering from a major surgery lives in this building. She didn't know what was happening when the gas seeped into her apartment and thought the building might be on fire. I am aghast

It should surprise no one that residents of the neighborhoods w/the highest concentrations of wealth in Boston do more online/home delivery shopping than anywhere else. This data affirms this phenomenon. Overall, this is great news for neighborhood-scale revitalization. @leungboston.bsky.social

Head and shoulders photograph of W.B. Yeats with glasses and slightly disheveled hair

🚨Digitization Alert!🚨

We’re excited to announce that we have digitized poetry, notebooks, and unpublished manuscripts by W.B. Yeats. These materials live in the Boston College Collection of Yeats Family Papers and we are delighted to make them more accessible!

brb quickly gaining a PhD for this great opportunity [i cant do that, of course, but you should apply!]

This is a perfect example of how an unfettered presidential removal power can undermine accountability (despite unitary executive theory claims to the contrary). How can you hold the President accountable for economic conditions if the President can keep us from knowing about those conditions?

Meanwhile, in “letters I am accessioning today” we have ee cummings’ 1954 take on Harvard collecting his manuscripts.

For this reason, I think its wise for those of us in wealthy cities to contribute to rural public radio and tv

Screenshot of the website header for slavesinparis.org comprising a drawing of the Place des Victoires in 18th-century Paris

"Slaves in Paris: A Digital Mapping Project" - a partnership between Miranda Spieler and Colonial Networks slavesinparis.org. Created with the support of our Kress Foundation Digital Art History Grant. Officially launched today in Paris at #GCFHSResist

This is one of many reasons why student evals should be among the least important inputs on a professor. They're good for long-term identification of trends to see who's good or bad in the classroom, but beyond that, they are often worse than useless.

I am increasingly sick and tired of businesses trying to force me to install their proprietary apps! My phone is full! Let me print my boarding pass at the airport! Let me get a posted paper schedule for the con! YOU ARE NOT MORE IMPORTANT THAN 5,000 PICTURES OF MY CATS!

Another fantastic job opening in Religious Studies, this one a tenure-track assistant professor in Early Christianity in the Department of Religion at Princeton University!