Seth Rockman

Looking forward to talking to @tricksterprince.bsky.social about my new book Keeping Hold: A Cultural and Social History of Possession at 1pm today!

Always. There must be dredging! Thanks for this!

"Basically Church Type Stuff:" Old Timey Christian Americanism and the Rhizomatic History of American Fascism Or, the crucial but sometimes fuzzy distinction between a) being a White American Christian, and b) being influenced by a violent, White Christian Supremacist variety of conspiratorial, antisemitic Am...

I finally finished writing a long, winding piece on "America's distinctive political culture of vernacular fascism." It's about white country music, AM radio, paramilitary camps for Klansmen in 1960s Colorado, TPUSA, and a former chair of the OR GOP. rightlandia.ghost.io/basically-ch...

A crude articulation of an indisputable fact. As @salemelzway.bsky.social and Jason Resnikoff argue @laborlawchajournal.bsky.social (2024), automation discourse is always about positing the inevitability of clear human-- and thus, political-- choices about how to organize work in a given society.

I cannot say enough good things about this season. These episodes were done with remarkable care, sensitivity, and insight. I learned so much.

Wealth in Rhode Island: Who, How, What, and So What? – Local Return

We are so pleased to host this important RI250 conversation about the history of wealth in Rhode Island with four insightful conversationalists: Dr. Taino Palermo, @sethrockman.bsky.social, Lorén Spears, and Keith Stokes.

Stolen Relations: Recovering Stories of Indigenous Enslavement in the Americas Stolen Relations seeks to recover stories of Indigenous slavery in the Americas. The website has a database as well as a map, timeline, interviews, and curricular materials.

It is weird that a far more robust digital database was launched at Brown University last year, but somehow didn't get a mention in the piece. See stolenrelations.org

good morning ☀️ pleased to report that while other things are canceled, ✨this✨ event is still happening- please register if you’re attending #Brown2026 @mjrp.bsky.social

Wow!!!

Answering the question of whether Williams St. has been plowed yet...

It is hard to anticipate whether the parking situation will improve on College Hill, or whether the visitor lot at Thayer and Power will be cleared for use. Today is a mess still.

This should trigger a complete investigation at Brown University. Was this a failure at the admission office? Is this a shortcoming of the open curriculum? Is this a testament to what's being taught in certain sectors of the university? I want to know which courses this guy took, etc.

would it help if you used one of those spiffy Drafting the Past insulated coffee thermoses? Or maybe that is the problem...

Einstein - AI Homework Agent Einstein logs into Canvas and does your homework automatically. He has his own computer — he can watch lectures, read essays, write papers, and participate in discussions.

Is this bad

"Women adopt AI at rates 25% lower than men.

This isn’t a guess. It’s the finding of a Harvard Business School meta-analysis examining eighteen studies, over 140,000 participants, across multiple countries."

"Every AI Company Is Building a Different Wife"

abiawomosu.substack.com/p/they-built...

Yep! I'm typically an early adopter and really enjoy tech, odds are good I'd be really into "AI" tools if they weren't being pushed by the most reprehensible shitheads on the planet who's opening move was to steal my art and mock me for caring about it before moving on to killing a bunch of kids

People Loved the Dot-Com Boom. The A.I. Boom, Not So Much.

A note to provosts, deans, university presidents, etc.:

Most people think AI sucks-- not just in its current iteration, but conceptually. People are smart enough to realize this will not bring human liberation, but will move us in the opposition direction. Stop being so gullible.

The Misuses of the University - Public Books Have the funds that might have trained the next generation of scholars at the nation’s first research university have been blown on ostentatious new buildings?

“Maybe the leaders of our nation’s wealthiest universities can’t think a generation ahead anymore, beholden as they are to board members who think in terms of the next quarter….” - François Furstenberg @publicbooks.bsky.social
www.publicbooks.org/the-misuses-...

Moving Toward Freedom by Susan Eva O'Donovan: 9780593657041 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books A magisterial, groundbreaking new study of the lives of enslaved Americans on the cusp of the Civil War that places them—and their hard-won political knowledge—rightly at the center of the...

Here is my blurb for an important new book: “Like Julius Scott’s *The Common Wind*, Eva O’Donovan’s *Moving Toward Freedom* tilts our angle of vision, enabling us to see the histories of slavery and resistance in creative and inspiring new ways.”

www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/741144...

This is François Furstenberg's laughing/crying essay on the absurdities of the present-day research university-- from atriums to AI... and sometimes AI with atriums.

Scroll to the bottom for discussion of AI fostering administrators' fantasies while obliterating the core purposes of higher ed.

😢

part deux of my upcoming visit: asking folks to bring in examples of history (or representations of historians) from popular culture and social media, and then we'll analyze it together! I've been doing this with my own AU students and it's been a blast to see what they come up with!

friends in Providence, Boston, or anywhere near Providence! Brown 2026 has several exceptional events during the last week of February aka next week. highlighting three here that I hope you'll consider attending 🐻🤎 (1/4)

Now available for free! Please check out this important special issue. Now more than ever, the Civil War era provides us with important lessons for our harrowing current moment

This is perfect for @theotherrbg.bsky.social

Don’t know the answer to this —

Meanwhile our university is going to look like the most gullible bunch of saps ever as we blindly rush to do the work of the worst people on earth seeking to enclose our knowledge and sell it back to us!!’

Chilling piece by my friend and college classmate (vice dean for AI initiatives at Columbia)

A Facebook post from Jamie Raskin that reads: Rep. Jamie Raskin · Follow ndportSoes0h70 h 8l35i2 1 55g7 0 9m64ig295t059hg8f01392ua2m91ult44 · I just exercised my right as a Member of Congress to conduct an unannounced oversight visit of the ICE field facility in Baltimore. The staff I met with respected my right to visit, but what I saw was disgraceful. Kristi Noem has a budget of $75 billion she could use to ensure humane conditions, but we saw 60 men packed into a room shoulder-to-shoulder, 24-hours-a-day, with a single toilet in the room and no shower facilities. They sleep like sardines with aluminum foil blankets. Whether it’s for three days or seven days, nobody would want a member of their family warehoused there. The room set aside for dangerous criminals and violent offenders was empty. We’re demanding immediate answers and action.

Will @sethmagaziner.bsky.social or @amo.house.gov do this for the Wyatt Detention Facility in Central Falls?

And, if not, why?

This is creepy when we recognise contemporary AI is all humans all the way down, just obfuscated behind the screen or dashboard. Based on stolen data, stolen labour, stolen humanity... AI is not currently emancipatory and just serves the privileged and deskills those who think this is automation.