we have saved daylight
but at what cost
@brianleechphd
Historian of American West, Midwest, environmental history, mining, energy, food, animals. Currently working on a book about the history of U.S. speed limits & another book about mining in popular culture. https://brianleechphd.net
we have saved daylight
but at what cost
The new _Current Approaches to Roman Frontiers βthr first volume of the LIMES XXVβs Congress_is out now open access. So many great articles on women & the Roman army; digital mapping of the limes; and a lot of articles on walls from Britain to China. www.sidestone.com/books/curren...
The NY Times is looking for teachers to share how theyβre adjusting to teaching writing in a world with AI. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/23/u...
Looking for public domain & open license images? βOpenverse is a tool that allows openly licensed and public domain works to be discovered and used by everyone... [searching] 800 million images and audio tracks from open APIs and the Common Crawl dataset.β Also, attribute authorship with one click πΈ
Person emails me: βThanks for your grant application, but weβve chosen someone else for this award.β Me, types reply: βI plan to use this rejection as evidence of your malice towards me. I will not be speaking to you the next time we meet.β Then erases it in favor of βThanks for letting me know.β
Andrew Edwards led many lives before finding his way to history, including as a financial reporter. His knack for explaining monetary complexities in plain English was crucial to writing MONEY & THE MAKING OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION @princetonupress.bsky.social. Listen: tinyurl.com/andrewedward...
Sharing for the weekend crowd. I am on the advisory committee for this so I'm happy to answer any questions. Please share widely!
Compensation
β $1,500 per year
β Free AAHM membership
β Free registration for the AAHM annual meeting
Online tomorrow Monday, 16 February 2026:
Greenhouse book talk with Kip Hutchins @songsforhorses.com on A Song for the Horses: Musical Heritage for More-than-Human Futures in Mongolia (University of Arizona Press, 2025) at 16:00 CET / 10:00 EST.
newnatures.org/greenhouse/e...
Check out William W. Culver's review of Christopher L. Carter's "The Long Shadow of Extraction: The Origins of Indigenous
Autonomy Demands," published in 2025 by @princetonupress.bsky.social; review now available @hnetreviews.bsky.social #envhist #envhum #extraction
www.h-net.org/reviews/show...
Check out Eric Clements's review of William Willingham's "Oregon Gold: A History of Mining from the Civil War into the Progressive Era," published in 2025 by @osupress.bsky.social; review now available @hnetreviews.bsky.social #envhist #energy #envhum #extraction
www.h-net.org/reviews/show...
Check out @brianleechphd.bsky.social's review of Martin Stupich's "Ore and Empire: Conquistadors to Guggenheims on the Camino Real," published in 2025 by @unmpress.bsky.social; review now available @hnetreviews.bsky.social #envhist #envhum #envtech #extraction
www.h-net.org/reviews/show...
Headed over to UK for a week of giving talks on encountering extinction in museum.
Did you know that if you are in UK, you can order Ghosts Behind Glass from uk.bookshop.org for only Β£16?!?
uk.bookshop.org/p/books/ghos...
Join us online for Chris Jones discussing his book The Invention of Infinite Growth: How Economists Came to Believe a Dangerous Delusion (Univ of Chicago Press, 2025) in the Greenhouse #envhum #book talk series tomorrow (Monday, 2 February 2026), 16:00 CET / 10:00 EST.
βAmid accusations of AI cheating, some students are turning to a new group of generative AI tools called βhumanizers.β The tools scan essays and suggest ways to alter text so they arenβt read as having been created by AI. Some are free, while others cost around $20 a month.β
Food in Library Collections! π
archivespublishing.com/2026/01/26/c...
Final call for Abstracts and Workshop Proposals for the 22nd Annual ICA Mobile Pre-Conference 2026 in Cape Town: "Mobile Communication and Inequalities in Context." Deadline 1/30/26.
@icahdq.bsky.social @icacat.bsky.social @icamobile.bsky.social
www.icamobile.org/calls
Dig dig dig through the archive with Mining Danger project's Heather Green as she seeks elusive traces of coal miner's black lung in the Nova Scotia coal industry @nichecanada.bsky.social
niche-canada.org/2026/01/02/f...
Two weeks left to apply for a postdoc position on my project!
I'm looking for historians, anthropologists, STS and Global Health researchers with a broad interest in #Brazil, #rural populations, #health, #medicine, and #zoonosis.
For more informationπ
Book cover depicting a map cartouche of four Indigenous people--two on land, two in a canoe--and a snippet from the map of yellow, pink, and green watercolor borders drawn by John Povey, clerk to William Blathwayt, on Robert Morden and William Berryβs A Map of New England New Yorke New Iersey Mary-Land & Virginia (ca. 1676).
Holidays are over, and I'm motivating myself through the marking and emails by sharing the cover for Claiming Land, Claiming Water: Borders and the People Who Crossed Them in the Early Modern Atlantic with @pennpress.bsky.social. Please indulge me! www.pennpress.org/978151282925... #skystorians
π§΅One of the more dangerous Terminally Online Types are people who think that all human knowledge (raw or processed) is on the internet and the only question is how to access it.
Thus, history, for these folks, is neither the seeking of new information nor the asking of new questions.
#genAI
Here it is, the final regular #ScholarSunday thread of 2025, my 255th thread of great public scholarly writing, podcast episodes, new & forthcoming books from the past week. Add more below, please share as widely as possible, & enjoy, all! ποΈ
blackwhiteandread.com/scholarsunda...
Me to elementary kid: How was your last day of school before winter break?
Kid: Great! We did no learning!
A deer carries out of my local Menards? Hard to think of a more Midwestern news story.
If youβre looking for a good excuse to buy books as gifts or for yourself, just know that bookshelves full of books are among the best insulators for homes. So youβre actually saving money every time you buy a book.
Today's the final day of our holiday book sale! Get 40% off with promo code SNOW at ohioswallow.com. Orders $50+ qualify for free US shipping!
Historians - What are your top assigned reading recommendations for a grad level 20th century US History seminar? ποΈ
I heard @historiamagoria.bsky.social talk about this research at #eseh2025 this summer, wonderful to see a post on it before the holidays! #envhist
Great piece, Dan. I can confirm: Over the years, this has indeed been a longstanding problem. I've helped fund numerous projects over the years trying to address handwriting recognition and it is exciting to see what we can do today.
According to this article their student regentβs votes donβt actually count either.
The statistics faculty reviewed the metrics being used to justify the elimination of their department and found those stats to be highly misleading if not outright wrong, with decimals in the wrong places, for instance. Good thing theyβll be eliminated to save later embarrassment.