Boston 's Leslie Knope
@archifydd.bsky.social
Former Local Government Archivist now in the Ivory Tower. MBTA green and blue line commuter. Once described as "insane in a great way"
In March 1760, fire razed much of Boston. 220 families lost their homes. Many then submitted claims to the Selectmen for their lost possessions. Their inventories would make for a great study of Atlantic consumer culture. At least one African American, Nehamiah Sampson, was successfully reimbursed 🗃️
Library friends: I'm planning a blog post about negotiating during a job offer. Will you share with me what you negotiated? Or what you wish you would've negotiated? I'd like to give people a sense of the range of things they can ask for. 📚
There is a white man podcasting on the orange line and I do not have time for that.
NEW: Israel has imprisoned an American teen. Soldiers raided Adam's West Bank home right before his sister’s grad party. They ignored his US passport. As they took him, they blew kisses at his mom. Adam is now the second American in Israeli prison. Trump just hosted Netanyahu for the eighth time.
Israel Has Imprisoned a 16-Year-Old Palestinian-American Boy for Two Weeks
Adam Karakrah is one of at least two Americans in Israeli prison – both held while Trump hosted Netanyahu for the eighth time.
zeteo.com
Oh
Sahil Kapur@sahilkapur.bsky.social · 3d ago"The Trump administration admitted that it terminated nearly 300 federal research grants 'solely because' the projects were connected to states that voted against Donald Trump in 2024 and had two Democratic senators in office, according to court filings." www.nbcnews.com/politics/tru...
Our #VoterOfTheDay is Dr. Carrie Ines Felch who claimed her right on Aug 2, 1920. Dr. Felch graduated from Tufts Medical School in 1906, the same year as her husband, Louis. According to the 1915-1916 Medical Directory of Greater Boston, both spouses worked out of the same office at 355 Mass Ave🧵
The future of mass deportation is small-town America. Check out little Mount Holly Springs, Pa. - just 2,300 people, 4 cops, and a whopping 32 immigrants handed to ICE in just 4 mos. after a 287(g) deal with the feds:
Will Bunch@willbunch.bsky.social · 7d agoGoodbye, Minneapolis, Chicago. Hello, Mt. Holly Springs, Pa., pop. 2,300 The inhumanity of mass deportation hits small-town America as a tiny borough with just 4 cops partners with ICE and pulls over dozens of drivers, turning over 32 for deportation My new column www.inquirer.com/opinion/moun...
Enjoy this article from a Minnesota newspaper in 1882 noting that Scandinavians love their home countries so much that it will take them generations to assimilate into America. www.loc.gov/resource/sn8...
Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · last mo.Tom Emmer: "Minnesotans are so afraid that you're gonna call us a racist, you're gonna call us an Islamophobe. You know what? I'm done being even the least bit careful. Somalis don't assimilate. And if they don't assimilate, then they should go the hell back to where they came from."
I just found out we are gilding statues in DC in gold leaf? What?
It’s wild to see this happening in a state that values local control to the point where we still have old style town meetings in so many municipalities. Listen to Lowell.
Miriam Wasser@miriamwasser.bsky.social · last wk.Residents of Lowell, MA, will be in court today to ask a judge to temporarily pause construction on a data center that's LITERALLY in their backyard They allege state regulators violated EJ laws by signing off on a plan to put 27 diesel generators on the site www.wbur.org/news/2026/07... @wbur.org
So many Haitian immigrants came to the U.S. seeking safety. The earthquake, the violence of U.S. made guns. And now they are no longer safe here. It breaks my heart. People have a right to be safe. No matter their country of origin. That shouldn’t be controversial.
Gabe Ortíz@tusk81.bsky.social · last wk."America is my home, and it has been for 31 years," Marlene told ABC News in April. "It took three years for me to get granted #TPS. So a lot of hard work went into this, just to have it potentially ripped away from me ... It's kind of cruel and inhumane to rip that away from us."
In the summer of 1914, a visitor to Cape Cod pasted this image in a photo album and captioned it “Among the desolate waste of sand dunes on Cape Cod, Mass.” For more images of Cape Cod sand dunes, check out the entire album: https://library.bc.edu/iiif/view/BC2023-014-168625
I will once again point out that "able to impress a tech bro" is not the same as "smarter than all humanity."
Al Jazeera English@aljazeera.com · last wk.The 'singularity' refers to the point at which AI outpaces human intelligence and becomes difficult to control.
Turns out that food companies were only checking their food because the government told them to, which is exactly why we need government regulations.
In 2018 I read about universities, libraries, and humanities councils in New England convening veterans to discuss The Odyssey to help them make sense of their own experiences and was blown away by what a good idea it was. Funding the humanities = good. www.concordmonitor.com/2018/03/14/h...
‘Homer can help you’: War veterans use ancient epics to cope - Concord Monitor
The trials of Odysseus are really not that different from the struggles of those learning to readjust after wars of today, modern veterans are finding.A small group of military veterans has been meeti...
concordmonitor.com
Did you know that the Red Sox used to play in a stadium off Huntington Avenue? From 1901-1911, the Red Sox (named the Boston Americans until 1908) played in the Huntington Avenue Baseball Grounds, a stadium located on the present-day Northeastern University campus.
The never wanted people to leave who were here illegally. They wanted every minority to leave. And this couple was threatened via their children despite their legal status.
RNS@rns.org · 2w ago(RNS) — Pastor Nepthali Zozaya Saucedo, 36, said he and his wife, who came to the U.S. legally, were repeatedly pressured to sign voluntary departure papers but that they had refused.
The tariffs will continue until morale improves
I'm going to need the mayor to change direction here if she wants my vote again. mass.streetsblog.org/2026/07/22/f...
Failures of Communication and Accountability Plagued Mayor Wu's Election-Year 'Review' of Transportation Department - Streetsblog Massachusetts
An internal "30 day review" of city transportation projects that Mayor Wu requested during her re-election campaign last year was supposed to improve the public's trust in the city's ability to manage...
mass.streetsblog.org
We found two major shoe factories that employed new women voters in the 1920 Boston voter registers. Learn more about the Boston stitchers, topmakers, and eyeleters who registered to vote after the 19th Amendment. sites.google.com/view/maryeli...
A reminder that UC _faculty_ and Faculty Associations — not the universities themselves nor their administrators — are waging this battle in court, demonstrating great bravery and moral clarity.
White House admits it used keywords to kill billions worth of California research grants
Federal agencies that terminated more than a thousand research grants at the University of California last year admitted that they used keywords related to diversity, gender, vaccine hesitancy and COV...
apnews.com
companies are sourcing millions of printed books for AI labs that scan them for training data, then destroy them. printed books are more valuable because they're free of AI slop, and AI labs know destroying them is an "optics problem." www.404media.co/ai-companies...
AI Companies Are Buying Tons of Old Books Because They're Free of AI Slop
ISBNdb, a company that sources printed books for AI companies to turn into training data, tells clients “the optics problem is real.”
404media.co
Before sports betting was legalized everywhere, I was neutral about it, thinking that it was a personal choice. Now that it exists everywhere I have been radicalized against it like a 19th century suffragette
shauna@goldengateblond.bsky.social · 3w agoi worked in several casinos and later for an online sportsbook. the best advice i can give you is to stay the hell away from all of it.
"They bought it because this is the publicly available information," says Gabe Sterling of the Georgia Secretary of State's office. "They can't change a vote. They can't change a tally. They can't take your vote away. None of that works." https://to.pbs.org/4prRIRG
Battleground state election officials respond to Trump's efforts to reshape voting process
To discuss how state election administrators are responding to President Trump’s speech, Liz Landers spoke with two election officials in key battleground states: Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fon...
to.pbs.org
This is just brutal. “Mayor Wu’s administration had already identified the Mission Hill intersection where Louisa Gag was killed last week as a threat to public safety & had spent over a hundred thousand dollars to develop plans to make the area safer.” Then they didn’t do it. Killed by politics.
Wu Administration Shelved Safety Plans For Mission Hill Streets Where Driver Killed Louisa Gag - Streetsblog Massachusetts
"We knew there were dangers. We had a plan to make it safer. It is blatantly irresponsible for the city to make a deliberate decision to not follow through."
mass.streetsblog.org
