Asif Siddiqi

A book cover with a poster at center showing a woman in a purple skirt, orange top, and black boots waving to a distant crowd, opposite a taller looming woman in white. At bottom is the book title, Circulating Subjects, in black and at top is the author's name, Philippa Hetherington, in orange type.

An incredible cover has landed for an incredible book - Philippa Hetherington's "Circulating Subjects: Sex Work and Migration in Russia, 1885–1935."

More on how to pre-order a copy of her "riveting" and "radical" @cornellupress.bsky.social book here: www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501...

No more stories about how the hero (always a dude) had to adopt the violent ways of the villain to beat them, then leading to endless heavy-handed rumination on the moral cost of being a hero.

That tie is wanted by the International Criminal Court.

Too early on a Monday morning to see his face.

I love hearing that from fellow historians....

This is genuinely ::chef’s kiss::

But you know, cool rockets and Mars trips and Starship launch windows and awesome space guy vibes

Seeing ppl circulate projects whose NEH grants were canceled by DOGE reaffirms my argument about AI as a permission structure. Some grants were canceled w/o a “no” from the generated summary. DOGE had a mandate to slash humanities funding & AI gave them the veneer of a rationale for their actions.

When DOGE Unleashed ChatGPT on the Humanities

There are much more terrible things going on in the world, but here are more details of the 2 dimwitted twerps working for that stupid fuck Elon Musk, who used ChatGPT (yes) to terminate last year's NEH research grants (including mine), causing so much havoc: www.nytimes.com/2026/03/07/a...

It should definitely be a bigger deal. This was an ironclad case.

"The Islamists oppose women getting an education," I mutter, as I aim my missile at the girls school

A judge just tossed out Columbia University's disciplinary actions against 22 students over the 2024 Hamilton Hall occupation, finding the school relied on sealed arrest records and held individuals responsible for group actions, violating its own rules.

iapps.courts.state.ny.us/fbem/Documen...

Men studying a dragon

ENDOWED PROFESSORSHIP IN HISTORY OF SCIENCE
My home department at Uppsala University is advertising an endowed professorship in the history of science. This is the best position in the field in Sweden, and probably in all of Scandinavia. Apply before 30 April 2026. www.uu.se/en/about-uu/...

Yup!

Neil Young - Theme From Dead Man View credits, reviews, tracks and shop for the 1996 CD release of "Theme From Dead Man" on Discogs.

Hard to believe that this incredible track was not actually included on the soundtrack album and was super hard to get at the time, found only an obscure promo CD: www.discogs.com/release/7644...

Yes, Memorial's work has been a beacon of hope in post-Soviet times. Heroes.

Russia Takes the Gulag Out of the Gulag History Museum in Moscow

Putin whitewashes the horrors of Stalinist forced labor camps by closing the Gulag History Museum in Moscow & replacing w/ one focused solely on Nazi crimes against the Soviets (which yes, there were), but memorializing one & effacing the other is an utter travesty.
www.nytimes.com/2026/02/20/w...

Amazing to think that it took until 1985 before she became Invisible Woman, which was, if I recall, during a John Byrne run. Claremont's depiction of women in the X-Men, while still occasionally problematic, was way ahead of the curve.

This is important y’all. This is our chance to save the stars.

We need her to make a tour stop in New Orleans so she can be in the next issue of UXM.

@denizcamp.bsky.social firing on all cylinders on so many titles (incl. 'Assorted Crisis Events' & 'Martian Manhunter'). Truly radical & challenging work, both in content & form. His 'The Ultimates' has put genuinely radical ideas about dissent, revolution & resistance into the superhero idiom.

The world's richest man is broadcasting eliminationist rhetoric about a tiny, vulnerable minority, and virtually no one is going to treat it as a scandal. It's just normal now.

The awesome @tombreihan.bsky.social does an excellent writeup on on of the absolute greatest albums of the early 2000s, The Knife's 'Silent Shout'

Fabulous album

"Cohabitations": New academic series for humanities and social science scholars at University of Minnesota Press: www.upress.umn.edu/announcing-a...

India’s ‘AI Impact Summit’ Promises Little More Than Spectacle The fourth in a series of convenings that kicked off in Bletchley Park in 2023, the summit is the first held in the Global South, writes Apar Gupta.

"Any claims of AI solving for population scale problems must be matched against the reality of the Global South, in which young boys were applying enamel paint on the railings... with their bare hands to prepare for the arrival of Silicon Valley CEOs." www.techpolicy.press/indias-ai-im...

I would include the Roland TR-808 drum machine which 'failed' emulate an analog drum sound and was discontinued, but DJs in Detroit (and elsewhere) repurposed its sound to generate deep bass drum beats for the explosion of hip hop and dance music in the '80s

Legend

This is the enduring legacy of authoritarian regimes, even after their fall: the destruction of trust and social capital.