Jacob Bruggeman
@jacobbruggeman.bsky.social
Intellectual & political historian writing on hackers, libertarians, and tech in the modern US | Examining the ideologies in/of Silicon Valley | Friend, Neighbor, Cat Dad & Baltimorean
“The liberal died by assassination and there were multiple shooters.” New at PB: @jacobbruggeman.bsky.social interviews Kevin Schultz on his book “Why Everyone Hates White Liberals (Including White Liberals).”
“As Good As It Gets”: Talking Liberalism with Kevin Schultz - Public Books
“Up until Franklin Delano Roosevelt, very few Americans actually called themselves liberals or embraced anything that was called ‘liberalism.’”
publicbooks.org
Snapshots from the @reaganinstitute.bsky.social's "Cities on a Hill" retreat, which I was honored to co-convene at the Greenbrier in the Alleghenies. Here's our lively panel on history vs. nostalgia with Bev Gage, @kathrynbrownell.bsky.social, and @joshuatait.bsky.social, moderated by yours truly.
They destroy mountains to get limestone for concrete, the second most used building material in the world, so being able to recycle it is amazing news. #sharegoodnewstoo techxplore.com/news/2026-05...
Recycled concrete slabs match or beat traditional builds, even at 100% replacement
Steel and recycled concrete composite slabs with equivalent—and in some cases superior—performances compared to traditional ones: This is the outcome of the SARCOS (Steel And Recycled Concrete Slab) p...
techxplore.com
Very glad to share this piece in @modamhist.bsky.social! I am glad they let me squeeze 7 figures into the article. You can see one of them here:
Modern American History@modamhist.bsky.social · 5mo agoUp now on First View: "Phreaking Politics in Modern America" by @jacobbruggeman.bsky.social explores the changing political valence of activists' use of American technology systems to critique the state. Link below!
A moving manifesto against despair in higher education from @adapalmer.bsky.social: "Despair is very emotionally tempting." Yet: "We can endure this, and be a guiding light through it, but only by recentering, by teaching citizens, not workers." www.chronicle.com/article/high...
Higher Ed Is at a Turning Point. 11 Scholars Predict What’s Next.
AI, enrollment, finances, politics, and the turbulent road ahead.
chronicle.com
An exciting AI an citizenship initiative at Georgetown. It's being led by some wonderful humanists!
AIDC@gu-aidc.bsky.social · 6mo agoAnnouncing Georgetown University’s Initiative on Artificial Intelligence & Democratic Citizenship (AIDC)! 🎉🎊 Funded by @nehgov.bsky.social, our network of humanists explore the impact of AI and democratic life. Read more at www.aidc.georgetown.edu. Fellowship opportunities coming later this week!
This how you isolate and capture "the worst of the worst" of these dangerous immigrants. You show yourself to be in need of help, and the worst criminals reveal themselves and their criminality by doing whatever they can to provide you with help. Masterful law enforcement.
Tina-Desiree Berg@tinadesireeberg.com · 6mo agoCCTV footage appears to show DHS agents posing as people having car trouble in order to lure a target out of his house before arresting them. The target comes out and starts helping them before 3 vehicles surround the scene. The car "experiencing" trouble then drives off with them.
Glad to share a new article in @modamhist.bsky.social: "Phreaking Politics in Modern America." Come for fun bits about Abbie Hoffman and Steve Jobs, stay for the analysis of how critiques of AT&T planted seeds of the techno-libertarian politics all around us today. doi.org/10.1017/mah....
Phreaking Politics in Modern America | Modern American History | Cambridge Core
Phreaking Politics in Modern America
doi.org
Jacob Bruggeman has a neat new article out, "Phreaking Politics in Modern America," which covers telephone hacking, AT&T's status as an icon of American technology, and the New Left-to-libertarian pipeline in modern American political order doi.org/10.1017/mah....
"In his search for the Antichrist lurking in college protests and international institutions, Peter Thiel never glances at the mirror. The real threat to his eschatological vision may be staring back from it." 🔥 from @jacobbruggeman.bsky.social in @theunpopulist.net
Peter Thiel Looks Everywhere for the Antichrist Except the Mirror
The tech billionaire’s AI technology is ushering in a dystopian Big Government as he races to beat his political opponents to the end times
theunpopulist.net
It's out! My review of "Abundance", my review of "Breakneck" and the slogan "rent extraction is always what the other guy does" open.substack.com/pub/hypertex...
What happens when Chinese resolve meets American rent-seeking?
Reading "Abundance" and "Breakneck" side by side suggests that learning from one another is not enough.
open.substack.com
Have we acclimated? 5 million people were in the streets, nationwide 3 days ago
Sam Adams@samadams.bsky.social · last yr.it is genuinely insane that we have just kind of acclimated to the fact that we have masked secret police now
These illustrations of the basic components of a home computer in Family Computing Magazine issue 4, from 1983.
🚀 New podcast alert! Introducing Future Knowledge—a podcast from the Internet Archive & Authors Alliance exploring how knowledge is created, shared & preserved in the digital age. 🎧 Listen and subscribe: futureknowledge.transistor.fm #FutureKnowledge @archive.org @authorsalliance.bsky.social
“The group estimated that reducing the operating budget by $900 million, as the Trump administration wants to do, would require closing 350 of the 433 parks, monuments, historic sites and other locations overseen by the Park Service… we would be witnessing the dismantling of a century-old system”
Opinion | Is This the Beginning of the End of America’s National Parks?
nytimes.com
@alisongopnik.bsky.social suggests that there is no such thing as general intelligence, natural or artificial. Instead, multiple intelligences trade off in salience throughout our life histories: As children, we explore. As adults, we exploit. As elders, we empower.
“The product will be capable of being fully aware of a user’s surroundings and life, will be unobtrusive, able to rest in one’s pocket or on one’s desk, and will be a third core device a person would put on a desk after a MacBook Pro and an iPhone.” 🫠
Exclusive | What Sam Altman Told OpenAI About the Secret Device He’s Making With Jony Ive
The idea is a “chance to do the biggest thing we’ve ever done as a company here,” Altman told OpenAI employees Wednesday.
wsj.com
Giving political donors “dedicated VIP experiences” with the US military is not only corrupt, it will damagingly make Americans think of our military as partisan. Congress should prevent this.
Exclusive | Donors Promised ‘VIP Experience’ at Military Events With Trump
Top donors to a committee supporting events celebrating America’s 250th birthday will receive special access to a military parade and other festivities.
wsj.com
Digital criminals depicted in a 1978 issue of an Ann Arbor paper
Science as Culture has a CFP for contributions to a forum on "Tech Oligarchy": think.taylorandfrancis.com/special_issu...
Science as Culture Forum on “Tech Oligarchy”
think.taylorandfrancis.com
Monica Isham is the 1st woman & 1st minority to serve as a circuit court judge in Sawyer County. In an email to all Wisconsin state judges she said: “If there is no support for us, l will refuse to hold court. If this costs me my job or gets me arrested, then at least I know I did the right thing.”
Wisconsin Judge Monica Isham Threatens Not To Hold Court Over Hannah Dugan Arrest
Wisconsin Circuit Judge Monica Isham is threatening to refuse to hold court and even raise bail on defendants because of the arrest of Milwaukee Judge Hannah
wisconsinrightnow.com
New at PB, Jacob Bruggeman (@jacobbruggeman.bsky.social) interviews historian Steven Conn about his new book “Lies of the Land” (@uchicagopress.bsky.social) which interrogates the myth of the rural in American politics and culture.
America’s Pernicious Rural Myth: An Interview with Steven Conn
When you think of rural America, what comes to mind? In his new book, Lies of the Land: Seeing Rural America for What It Is—and Isn’t, historian Steven Conn contends that what we imagine as…
publicbooks.org
More evidence that Trump 2.0/DOGE is setting the stage for unprecedented cyberattacks. Or, as Bruce Schneier has quipped, this administration represents the most significant hack in the country’s history. www.nytimes.com/2025/04/05/u...
Trump’s National Security Firings Come as He Weakens U.S. Cyberdefenses
The firing of the head of the National Security Agency was only the latest move that has eroded the country’s fortifications against cyberattacks, especially those targeting elections.
nytimes.com
A prominent computer scientist who has spent 20 years publishing academic papers on cryptography, privacy, and cybersecurity has gone incommunicado, had his professor profile removed by employer Indiana University, & had his homes raided by the FBI. No one knows why. arstechnica.com/security/202...
FBI raids home of prominent computer scientist who has gone incommunicado
Indiana University quietly removes profile of tenured professor and refuses to say why.
arstechnica.com
My thoughts on the Signal business: "nobody wearing an American military uniform can doubt that if they took details of an ongoing operation off a classified system and transmitted them on an unclassified commercial platform, they would be court martialled and probably go to prison."
aei.org
A 1980s computer surveillance cartoon to brighten up your morning...
> Every day, about 100 terabytes of material are uploaded to the Internet Archive, or about a billion URLs, with the assistance of automated crawlers. Woah.
Internet Archive@archive.org · last yr."We want to preserve public health data that are crucial for people's well-being," - social epidemiologist Nancy Krieger, on the value of the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine www.npr.org/2025/03/23/n...
📢 CALL FOR PAPERS 📢 "Moral Economies of the Polycrisis. Conflict, Critique, and Legitimation in Critical Times" Workshop, June 16-17 University of Hamburg Deadline for abstracts: 07/04 Supported by the Economic Sociology section of @dgsoziologie.bsky.social linuswestheuser.com/cfp-moral-ec...
