Miguel Angel Chavez

My hand holding a shortbread cookie in the shape of an airplane. There are red sprinkles in the pattern of the survivorship bias plane.

A plate of the same cookies.

Does anyone want a survivorship bias shortbread

Restoring our services – November 2025 update In the coming weeks and months we will be restoring a number of key functions.

Latest update from @britishlibrary.bsky.social says they are launching a new version of their main catalogue on Monday 8 December and around that time also launch an interim version of their Archives and Manuscripts Catalogue. Hooray!
www.bl.uk/stories/news...

Plans to house asylum seekers in Crowborough army camp explained The latest Home Office figures state that 540 men will be housed at the army camp in Crowborough.

Far right activists descending on my area to demonise people seeking asylum is a far greater threat to locals than single men being housed in a barracks because the same far right activists don’t want them in hotels.

Your Questions: Asylum plans in Crowborough www.bbc.com/news/article...

A fantastic and potentially very teachable book, asking what do people who resist eat, Mastrogiovanni writes moving chronicles departing from recipes by people fighting violence and extractivism, alongside with personal recipes tied to his personal memories. recommended for the food studies peeps.

Yes! The thing abt public libraries that is so beautiful & crucial is the idea that *anybody* could do this — you need no credential, there’s no gatekeeping, literally any person can be an intellectual. You can come from absolutely nothing & yet, by means of curiosity + work, create real knowledge

A relatively small number of people in certain jobs say that ChatGPT and other LLMs have made them more productive at work. But in the overall economy, it does not look like net productivity is up.

Most of the supposed value is in sci-fi speculation. “Imagine a machine that cures cancer.”

On one hand, there are the white supremacists who feel threatened by highlighting Black achievement - that their self-worth depends on believing Black people are lesser.

Then, apparently, there are the white supremacists whose self-worth is threatened by Black gravediggers.

I can that this week is the first of the semester where I don’t feel absolutely harried by work. I was able to do some gardening, spend time with my partner, and read.

Things will pick up again this week, but I’m at least grateful for the respite 🙂

#academia 🗃️

Routledge are having a Black Friday sale so use the code ‘BF2025S’ to get 25% off my books!

www.routledge.com/Histories-of...

www.routledge.com/No-Platform-...

UNTIL IT’S DONE, Ep. 5: Vito Marcantonio

There are many who dismiss our vision for New York as impossible. To them, I say we need look only to our past for proof of how we can shape the future.

Tomorrow is Election Day. And this is the final Until It's Done of our campaign.

“Tell your children who the cowards were.”

The other panels I went to also dealt with the theme of pedagogy - albeit in vastly different contexts. But even with those differences, I can see through lines in Victorian assumptions of teaching, social mobility, and on belonging.

Tomorrow’s panels should also be great!

Yesterday I presented my paper at the MWCBS conference at @elmhurstbluejays.bsky.social

It went really well! 🙂 I was especially appreciative of the comments and recommended readings to further develop my work on the use of pedagogical violence in British-led exploratory missions to Africa

I’m having intro chats with dissertation students this fortnight, and one of them asked which historians I’d recommend for beautiful writing they could absorb to further develop their own writing style.

So, gang, which are your favourite *writers* among historians, any time, any topic, any place. 🗃️

Invoking Empire with Darren Reid | NACBS Join NACBS to hear more about Darren Reid’s latest publication, Invoking Empire: Imperial citizenship and Indigenous rights across the British World, 1860-1900. Alan Lester will moderate the event. In...

📢Book Event📢

📗Invoking Empire with Darren Reid
📅Sep 18

Join us to hear more about Darren Reid’s latest book, Invoking Empire: Imperial citizenship and Indigenous rights across the British World, 1860-1900. @alanlester.bsky.social will moderate the event

RSVP here: www.nacbs.org/event-detail...

In the current climate, we have gone back to basic science is good and science is objective kind of public discourses.
How do we continue to write critical histories of science and medicine in this situation? How do we keep developing the sophistication of our critique over the last 50 years?

A new reason for not being a member of the AHA, which I long have felt does not represent historians at small, public, primarily teaching colleges in the slightest. This strikes me as lazy committee think from an organization that has failed to anticipate any of our problems as a profession.

Palestinians are prisoners of geography, but statehood is possible France, Canada and the UK will recognise Palestine. But it is unclear if this will revive the stalled two-state solution

1/3 It’s a strange thing to say that anyone is a prisoner of geography. People are imprisoned by other people. Prisons are not natural, geographical features. We have to ask who created them and why. www.thetimes.com/world/middle...

This is a reason why I juse an Apple TV box for my TV. The one I bought in 2015 is still updated and works well!

I’m sure you can find one (or an equivalent product) for cheap and keep your tv as is.

Post from "The Rundown" July 18 at 5:30 PM · DuckDuckGo has introduced a new feature allowing users to filter out AI-generated images from search results, addressing growing concerns over synthetic content overwhelming authentic visuals online. The filter can be activated through a dropdown in the Images tab, search settings, or by using a dedicated AI-free domain: noai.duckduckgo.com. The system relies on curated blocklists, including uBlockOrigin’s Huge AI Blocklist, to detect and suppress AI-generated imagery. While not perfect, it significantly reduces synthetic content visibility. This move sets DuckDuckGo apart from competitors like Google and Bing by giving users direct control over their exposure to AI-generated material. Source: TechCrunch

DuckDuckGo has added a feature to filter out AI images from search results.

Anyway I came on here to BEG academics to stop using AI in their journal submissions. Yes, that includes for proofing, arranging reference lists etc. I am currently staring at a perfectly decent article, written by a human being, with a useless AI-generated bibliography full of errors.

"...adopting a critical approach to settler family histories helps challenge the myth of Canadian benevolence, solidifies our understanding of the foundational violence of settler colonialism, and exemplifies the truth–telling that needs to come with settler reconciliation to Indigenous Peoples..."

I do firmly believe that refusing to outsource your basic cognitive functions to LLMs right now - as so many are stumbling over themselves to do right now, like hogs trotting to a pile of slop that’s been set up inside of a butcher’s delivery truck - will very much pay off in a few years.

This is why I bang on, whenever I can, about the value of having a browseable archive catalogue, and, you know, browsing through it: rather than thinking you can just zap into a specific target.

Darlings, the first time I'm seeing it in print. Thank you to @dr-di.bsky.social for the photo. Have so many feels. Still awaiting mine.
Please share pics when you receive yours. And, request your libraries to order it.
All royalties donated to Gaza.
Onwards comrades.
us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/th...

Prepping for my trip to London & Brussels in a couple of days! 🇬🇧 🇧🇪

To be back in the archives! And to escape this Tennessean heat! 😆

Today @nichecanada.bsky.social I introduce *A Cold Colonialism* — its origin story, its main characters and arguments, and its potential to shift how we think about exploration, the North, and colonialism’s relationships with both. Enjoy! #cdnhist #envhist #Arctic niche-canada.org/2025/06/03/n...

Imperial Island Imperial Island shows how empire, its disintegration and its ever-present aftermath have profoundly shaped the British people, their culture, society and politics, throughout the last seventy years. ...

I wrote a book -- during lockdown and maternity leave -- about imperial culture in contemporary Britain, exploring how the empire shaped British society, politics and ordinary people's lives -- from the stuttering run up to the Second World War, to the televised end of the second Elizabethan age.