Robert Suits

the dog owners' incredible memory for the location of every bin within two miles of their home

If so, mine, too!

Guidance for responding to 'A Fairer Pathway to Settlement' consultation We are Amnesty International UK. We are ordinary people from across the world standing up for humanity and human rights.

The UK government is proposing radical and punitive changes to settlement rules. This is settlement, not citizenship. The consultation is open until 12 February; please respond to it and oppose these evil proposals. Amnesty have a good guide: www.amnesty.org.uk/resources/gu...

Watch as a massive crack forms in the ice on Lake Erie.

An impressive view captured by GOES-19 earlier on Sunday.

Table of contents

In addition to an introductory essay by my co-editors and myself, the Raw Capital: More-Than-Human Business History table of contents looks like this!

You now have until the 15th of February to send in your applications for our upcoming workshop on historical approaches to the non-human, ran in collaboration with @northernenvhistory.bsky.social.

Some fantastic applications in already, we look forward to reading yours!
🌿 🕷️ 🐀 🦠

Ok now I may have to skip a panel

A wooden puzzle in the design of the cover for my book (The Hobo: A History of America's First Climate Migrants), out in June 2026!

@emilywebz.bsky.social got me a delightful birthday present this year

It’s the Economy, Stupid | Environmental History: Vol 31, No 1

A few of us got together for a forum on degrowth in
@envirohistory.bsky.social. Here is my bit: "It's the Economy Stupid." And check out the entries from
@fredrikjonsson.bsky.social, @matthiasschmelzer.bsky.social, and

www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

I'd absolutely agree that it would be incredibly alienating for non-scholars in a potential crossover audience.

I guess what I'm saying, as a reader, is that I am of two minds about this and would need to see it.

I also, to contextualize this thought, simply don't think people should bother with a book outline section of the introduction (though I occasionally find it useful). It does feel a bit like part of a broader trend toward including bite-sized summaries of chunks of books (e.g. chapter abstracts).

Hmmmm... I've never seen this before. On the face of it, it's not a bad idea (it could replace the book outline section of an introduction), but I think it would depend on execution!

Like... a table that resembles a bullet pointed list? I could see that working for someone in a productive way, but it's certainly not something I'd seek out!

Fuck yeah! Historians are close behind

". . . this essay examines the 'fetus protection policy' implemented at American Cyanamid’s Willow Island plant in West Virginia in 1978. The policy required women between the ages of sixteen and fifty to undergo sterilizations in order to keep their jobs."

Adding this to several of my syllabi

Explaining primitive accumulation in class today: We live in society where only goal is line go up. But why line start going up?

Genie: Listen closely. You only get three wishes, you can't bring back the dead, or make anyone --

Me: I wish that all books had a synopsis on the back of the dust jacket, not blurbs!

...what exactly are they spending the money on?

but this is just correct

Also applicable to sending me LLM text (email, assignments...).

When your D&D group is made up of a bunch of historians and history buffs, you naturally do age of sail homages @robertsuits.bsky.social

I absolutely agree!

I feel like a fundamental problem with AI speculation is that people think computers basically do not exist in the material world, aside from, occasionally, needing energy and water.

(Also no shade to Peter Engelke here -- he just does not write in in the subfields which I read.)

It's extremely easy reading. Will it tell you something you don't already know? I simultaneously would say yes (lots of data on many topics) and no (none of it is terribly surprising). If I sound harsh -- I actually quite like the lead author! But I don't think it should be a very high priority.

right now: The Thames
hometown: The Portage
in between: The Connecticut, the Platte, the Charles, the Calumet and the Chicago, the Bow, and the Wear

This is actually someone else's index of my book!

cover of my forthcoming book, The Hobo: A History of America's First Climate Migrants

Anyway, smooth transition to shameless plug: you can read more about Starke, Dick (Wobbly), and hobos in general in my book, coming out this summer: press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...

Helen Card wrote another book, and a handful of shorter pieces. But she largely passed into obscurity. Sister of the Road, or Touch and Go, is, in my opinion, perhaps the most fun piece of hobo literature that exists -- and honestly a delightful primary source for thinking about 1920s America.