Carla D. Martin

Episode 422: Seth Rockman, Plantation Goods: How Northern Factories Fueled the Plantation Economy Discover how hoes, shoes, and cloth linked New England factories to Southern slavery in early America with historian Seth Rockman.

Today is @bfworld.bsky.social’s 11th Podversary. The first 4 episodes debuted 11 years ago.
So it’s fitting we have a great new episode to celebrate!

How did Northern manufacturers support Southern slavery?

Seth Rockman joins us to talk about “plantation goods” and slavery’s hidden supply chain.

Claim: 10 cars rammed ICE
Truth: No cars rammed ICE

Claim: She boxed ICE in
Truth: ICE boxed her in

Claim: She shot a rifle at ICE
Truth: She did not have a rifle

Claim: ICE returned fire
Truth: Only ICE fired

Claim: She drove herself to the hospital
Truth: Paramedics found her

Everything Is Becoming a Bank Most major corporations — from airlines to social media platforms — now aspire to become unregulated banks. Bankification today accounts for the highest profit margins in the US economy, crippling pro...

"Starbucks holds nearly $2 billion of customers’ money in its rewards program. That’s more than the total deposits managed by 85 percent of chartered banks, making the coffee chain one of the biggest financial institutions in the country."
jacobin.com/2025/10/bank...

About 1 in 4 U.S. adults worry they or someone close to them could be deported About four-in-ten immigrants (43%) say they worry a lot or some, up from 33% in March.

About 1 in 4 U.S. adults worry they or someone close to them could be deported, according to a June @pewresearch.org survey.

a lot of pandemic histories omit or speed past the massive, right wing billionaire-financed disinformation campaign waged against public health policies and officials. jonathan is doing critical work here. looking forward to reading it.

A new book encourages visiting where Black history was made in Hampton Roads “A Trail of Trials and Triumphs: Unveiling Black History in Hampton Roads” showcases sites across the region.

A new book, “A Trail of Trials and Triumphs: Unveiling Black History in Hampton Roads,” showcases sites across the VA region by suggesting tours of historical sites and organizing stops in the best order for the day.
www.whro.org/news/local-n...

Today marks the first day in public media’s history without federal funding. And we’re not going anywhere.

Listeners like you keep our mission alive. Protect one of the last places where America comes together to hear itself.

Stand with us today. Donate at this link: n.pr/46wamAj

This is *chef's kiss* Somerville representation!

quick while the government is shut down let’s all switch to metric

Finishing a Ph.D. on slavery in early American or Atlantic history this year? Consider applying for the University of California's President's Postdoc program. I'd love to sponsor at applicant if working with me @ucsantacruz.bsky.social might be a good fit!
ppfp.ucop.edu/info/how-to-...

Took about 20 years. And I never thought a book about enslavers using deputization to give themselves policing power would be relevant to our times. But we are where we are.

My book, White Power: Policing American Slavery, is now available for preorder.

a.co/d/29c7EIP

The Crimson covers our team's report on Black History at the Vassall Estate, emphasizing our focus on co-designing the research with the descendant community.

Read the report: doi.org/10.36967/231...

Watch a virtual presentation: www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZyv...

@caitlindeangelis.bsky.social

We Who Believe in Democracy Must Fight to Make It Real We wake daily to new spectacles of violence and humiliation: kidnappings in broad daylight, attacks on unions, LGBTQ people, women, and immigrants, the erosion of long-cherished rights. It’s no longer...

"We may live in a formal democracy, but in practice we’ve been disempowered for a long time—denied real control over the decisions that shape our lives...That’s why we must commit to a fuller vision of democracy," writes @lfelizleon.bsky.social labornotes.org/blogs/2025/0...

Early last semester, Droubi said, students began approaching Cheyfitz with complaints that a graduate student in the “Gaza, Indigeneity, Resistance” class appeared to be recording them, possibly to “gather their names and comments” and intimidate them. “We believe that a student came to the course for the sole reason of surveilling and potentially harming students in the class,” Droubi said. “That ended up proving itself to be true because multiple students came forward and shared their concerns with Professor Cheyfitz.” Cheyfitz said one Palestinian student quit the class after telling him she felt upset and frightened. Current Issue Cover of October 2025 Issue October 2025 Issue According to Cheyfitz, the graduate student often steered conversations away from the assigned readings—which at that point mostly focused on definitions of genocide and international law on Indigenous rights—to defend Israel’s conduct in the war in Gaza and argue with others in the class. “He clearly had not done the readings,” Cheyfitz said. “It was disruptive.” Cheyfitz said he met with the graduate student in late January and spoke to him about concerns from his classmates. During the conversation, he asked the graduate student to drop the course, and by the next class, he did, Cheyfitz said. The graduate student, Oren Renard, a PhD candidate in computer science whose identity was confirmed by other students in the class, previously served in Israel’s elite military surveillance agency, Unit 8200, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Cornell is cancelling a distinguished professor's classes on Gaza and suspending him because of the complaints of a student who previously served in Israel's military surveillance agency and was literally recording the comments of other students in class and deliberately derailing discussion.

Abstract: Under the banner of progress, products have been uncritically adopted or even imposed on users — in past centuries with tobacco and combustion engines, and in the 21st with social media. For these collective blunders, we now regret our involvement or apathy as scientists, and society struggles to put the genie back in the bottle. Currently, we are similarly entangled with artificial intelligence (AI) technology. For example, software updates are rolled out seamlessly and non-consensually, Microsoft Office is bundled with chatbots, and we, our students, and our employers have had no say, as it is not considered a valid position to reject AI technologies in our teaching and research. This is why in June 2025, we co-authored an Open Letter calling on our employers to reverse and rethink their stance on uncritically adopting AI technologies. In this position piece, we expound on why universities must take their role seriously toa) counter the technology industry’s marketing, hype, and harm; and to b) safeguard higher education, critical thinking, expertise, academic freedom, and scientific integrity. We include pointers to relevant work to further inform our colleagues.

Figure 1. A cartoon set theoretic view on various terms (see Table 1) used when discussing the superset AI (black outline, hatched background): LLMs are in orange; ANNs are in magenta; generative models are in blue; and finally, chatbots are in green. Where these intersect, the colours reflect that, e.g. generative adversarial network (GAN) and Boltzmann machine (BM) models are in the purple subset because they are both generative and ANNs. In the case of proprietary closed source models, e.g. OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Apple’s Siri, we cannot verify their implementation and so academics can only make educated guesses (cf. Dingemanse 2025). Undefined terms used above: BERT (Devlin et al. 2019); AlexNet (Krizhevsky et al. 2017); A.L.I.C.E. (Wallace 2009); ELIZA (Weizenbaum 1966); Jabberwacky (Twist 2003); linear discriminant analysis (LDA); quadratic discriminant analysis (QDA).

Table 1. Below some of the typical terminological disarray is untangled. Importantly, none of these terms are orthogonal nor do they exclusively pick out the types of products we may wish to critique or proscribe.

Protecting the Ecosystem of Human Knowledge: Five Principles

Finally! 🤩 Our position piece: Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia:
doi.org/10.5281/zeno...

We unpick the tech industry’s marketing, hype, & harm; and we argue for safeguarding higher education, critical
thinking, expertise, academic freedom, & scientific integrity.
1/n

I can’t tell you how much good could be done right now by average citizens socially cold-shouldering anyone tangentially working for ICE.

Nothing says colorblindness like demanding race data

Fossil fuel billionaires are bankrolling the anti-trans movement An investigation shared exclusively with Atmos and HEATED finds that 80% of anti-trans organizations receive fossil fuel funding.

Excellent reporting from Heated and Atmos.

It looks like some of the biggest investors in the anti-trans movement are fossil fuel billionaires who are trying to use trans issues to ensure that Republicans pass policies favorable to their industry.

heated.world/p/fossil-fue...

I Filmed the ICE Officer Who Shoved a Woman. It Felt Like the New Normal. I arrived in the U.S. eight weeks ago to report on how the administration’s immigration crackdown was playing out from the front lines. What I saw Thursday was the culmination of ICE’s aggressive behavior.

NEW: I arrived in the U.S. eight weeks ago to report on how the administration’s immigration crackdown was playing out from the front lines.

What I saw Thursday was the culmination of ICE’s aggressive behavior.

By @tilleckert.com

Confirmed: Assata Shakur has joined the ancestors.

cubaminrex.cu/es/nota-de-p...

Returning to a subject I was discussing this morning on X, I think a single video like this does more to radicalize people against ICE than any loaded rhetoric any politician has ever used, and DHS should think very hard about the consequences of supporting this kind of behavior from its agents.

Yes, it will! It will go up on the Longfellow House YouTube channel

In one hour! Join us!

This summer, I wrote about Paul Dama, a Boko Haram survivor and award-winning restaurant manager who had been detained by ICE.

Yesterday, after 3+ months in custody, Paul was granted asylum (!!) He's still in detention - DHS has until Oct 23 to appeal.

Stephen Mullen's excellent book on this topic, The Glasgow Sugar Aristocracy: Scotland and Caribbean Slavery, 1775–1838 is available to read for free from our website:

uolpress.co.uk/book/the-gla...

#OpenAccess #History #Slavery #Scotland

I see the okra slander is back.

Ppl using the colonial "s"-word to describe the rich and nourishing texture that gives this greatest of pods its full expression.

Miami Herald: Two-Thirds of Immigrants Held at “Alligator Alcatraz” in July Have Disappeared In immigration news, hundreds of people who were once detained at the troubled immigration jail in the Florida Everglades dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz” have disappeared.

Miami Herald: Two-Thirds of Immigrants Held at “Alligator Alcatraz” in July Have Disappeared

NCPH had the pleasure of helping to shepherd this project, and it was exciting from start to finish.

The image has pink and brown design elements, the JCB logo, and the text "Fellowship opportunities- Apply now!"

We have just launched our new application cycle for long- and short-term fellowships at the JCB!

Details at jcblibrary.org/fellowships/...

The link still works!

Join us this Thursday, Sept. 25 (6:00 Eastern) for a presentation introducing our report on Black History at the Longfellow House-Washington's Headquarters National Historic Site.

free and open to the public, but registration is required:

harvard.zoom.us/meeting/regi...