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Brian Leech

@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

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Latest posts by Brian Leech @brianleechphd

we have saved daylight

but at what cost

08.03.2026 12:30 πŸ‘ 2464 πŸ” 433 πŸ’¬ 50 πŸ“Œ 25
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Current Approaches to Roman Frontiers (LIMES XXV volumeΒ 1) @ Sidestone Press This publication – Current Approaches to Roman Frontiers – is the first volume of the LIMES XXV’s congress proceedings arranged around the original sessions, in order to form coherent thematical colle...

The new _Current Approaches to Roman Frontiers –thr first volume of the LIMES XXV’s 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...

04.03.2026 12:12 πŸ‘ 23 πŸ” 5 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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Is A.I. Changing the Way You Teach Writing? Tell Us.

The NY Times is looking for teachers to share how they’re adjusting to teaching writing in a world with AI. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/23/u...

24.02.2026 19:56 πŸ‘ 12 πŸ” 5 πŸ’¬ 3 πŸ“Œ 1
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Openverse Search over 800 million free and openly licensed images, photos, audio, and other media types for reuse and remixing.

Looking for public domain & open license images? β€œOpenverse 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€œ Also, attribute authorship with one click πŸ“Έ

24.02.2026 12:31 πŸ‘ 242 πŸ” 93 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 4

Person emails me: β€œThanks for your grant application, but we’ve chosen someone else for this award.” Me, types reply: β€œI plan to use this rejection as evidence of your malice towards me. I will not be speaking to you the next time we meet.” Then erases it in favor of β€œThanks for letting me know.”

25.02.2026 03:20 πŸ‘ 6 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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Episode 87: Andrew Edwards Wants to Make You Feel Something About Money Kate Carpenter interviews historian Andrew David Edwards about his researching and writing his new book, Money and the American Revolution.

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...

17.02.2026 15:03 πŸ‘ 6 πŸ” 3 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 2

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
● $1,500 per year
● Free AAHM membership
● Free registration for the AAHM annual meeting

21.02.2026 18:12 πŸ‘ 22 πŸ” 21 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 1
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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...

15.02.2026 16:31 πŸ‘ 12 πŸ” 8 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 1

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...

09.02.2026 15:51 πŸ‘ 5 πŸ” 2 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

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...

11.02.2026 06:22 πŸ‘ 5 πŸ” 2 πŸ’¬ 2 πŸ“Œ 0

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...

10.02.2026 15:26 πŸ‘ 5 πŸ” 1 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 1
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Ghosts Behind Glass: Encountering Extinction in Museums Encountering Extinction in Museums

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...

09.02.2026 16:03 πŸ‘ 8 πŸ” 4 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
Online book talk: Jones, Invention of Infinite Growth – The Greenhouse Book Talks

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.

01.02.2026 21:15 πŸ‘ 16 πŸ” 9 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
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To avoid accusations of AI cheating, college students are turning to AI Students are taking new measures, such as dumbing down their work, spying on themselves and using AI β€œhumanizer” programs, to beat accusations of cheating with artificial intelligence.

β€œAmid accusations of AI cheating, some students are turning to a new group of generative AI tools called β€˜humanizers.’ The tools scan essays and suggest ways to alter text so they aren’t read as having been created by AI. Some are free, while others cost around $20 a month.”

28.01.2026 12:10 πŸ‘ 58 πŸ” 25 πŸ’¬ 7 πŸ“Œ 24
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Call for Participation: Food in Collections Survey We are a group of archivists and librarians at Oberlin College working to quantify the impact of food in collections. We are asking you to consider participating in a brief Qualtrics survey about f…

Food in Library Collections! πŸ“œ
archivespublishing.com/2026/01/26/c...

28.01.2026 12:26 πŸ‘ 7 πŸ” 7 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 1
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Calls | ICA Mobile Current calls at the ICA Mobile Communication Division

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

23.01.2026 17:27 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 1 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

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...

20.01.2026 20:09 πŸ‘ 7 πŸ” 4 πŸ’¬ 2 πŸ“Œ 0

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 informationπŸ‘‡

19.01.2026 11:52 πŸ‘ 21 πŸ” 31 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 1
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 Berry’s A Map of New England New Yorke New Iersey Mary-Land & Virginia (ca. 1676).

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 Berry’s 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

05.01.2026 12:20 πŸ‘ 106 πŸ” 40 πŸ’¬ 3 πŸ“Œ 0

🧡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

22.12.2025 12:53 πŸ‘ 57 πŸ” 10 πŸ’¬ 2 πŸ“Œ 2
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#ScholarSunday Thread 255 (12/21/25) – Black and White and Read All Over 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 sha...

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! πŸ—ƒοΈ

blackwhiteandread.com/scholarsunda...

21.12.2025 13:20 πŸ‘ 62 πŸ” 42 πŸ’¬ 3 πŸ“Œ 20

Me to elementary kid: How was your last day of school before winter break?

Kid: Great! We did no learning!

18.12.2025 20:55 πŸ‘ 5 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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Customers safely remove deer from Menards A deer was removed from a Menards store Monday after it ran into the building.

A deer carries out of my local Menards? Hard to think of a more Midwestern news story.

17.12.2025 01:28 πŸ‘ 3 πŸ” 1 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 2
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Five ways to keep your home warm this winter If you live in a poorly insulated home, and many of us do, you could spend thousands this winter on energy bills. But our ancestors had many ways to keep snug at little or no cost. Now, thanks to mode...

If you’re 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 you’re actually saving money every time you buy a book.

15.12.2025 19:58 πŸ‘ 4 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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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!

11.12.2025 15:04 πŸ‘ 2 πŸ” 2 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 1

Historians - What are your top assigned reading recommendations for a grad level 20th century US History seminar? πŸ—ƒοΈ

11.12.2025 01:59 πŸ‘ 13 πŸ” 9 πŸ’¬ 11 πŸ“Œ 0
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Augmenting Christmas: Artificial Trees and the Lure of Perpetual Nature Artificial Christmas trees evolved from feather and aluminum novelties to plastic simulations, revealing desires for safer, cleaner, β€œbetter” nature and modern convenience.

I heard @historiamagoria.bsky.social talk about this research at #eseh2025 this summer, wonderful to see a post on it before the holidays! #envhist

11.12.2025 13:42 πŸ‘ 18 πŸ” 6 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

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.

25.11.2025 19:01 πŸ‘ 43 πŸ” 13 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 1

According to this article their student regent’s votes don’t actually count either.

07.12.2025 05:30 πŸ‘ 2 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
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BREAKING: β€˜This hurts’: UNL eliminates 4 programs despite faculty, student pleas The University of Nebraska-Lincoln eliminates the Earth and atmospheric sciences 8-0, educational administration 7-1, statistics 7-1, textiles, merchandising and fashion design 7-1 programs.

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 they’ll be eliminated to save later embarrassment.

07.12.2025 05:16 πŸ‘ 10 πŸ” 2 πŸ’¬ 3 πŸ“Œ 2