Dael Norwood
@dael.bsky.social
Historian of America's old, weird political economy. Unincorporated but proudly unionized citizen of Delaware. Adding “levity to discussions of financing and high politics” since 2022. Wrote Trading Freedom: How Trade with China Defined Early America.
“That disdain, along with a trip to Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia, sparked the desire to create new dolls that would bring history alive for girls.”
“those little faces only seem to get spookier as they shrivel, wrinkle, and change”
we built a machine that can automate internet crimes. who should be held accountable? nobody of course
Carl Quintanilla@carlquintanilla.bsky.social · yesterday(NYT) - Artificial intelligence agents created by Anthropic, acting on their own, tried to gain access to a range of government websites, filled out visa applications on the State Department’s website and sent a fake homicide tip to Philadelphia’s Police Department. www.nytimes.com/2026/10/09/t...
“The Art Nouveau craftsman who makes a lamp with a snake coiled around it is not kidding, nor is he trying to be charming.”
Luckily there is similar evidence from places like Spain & Switzerland with variation at the local level (and where it is super-easy to get from one taxing j. to another on a nice train)! Which we reviewed pretty comprehensively here: www.californialawreview.org/print/state-...
Money Moves: Taxing the Wealthy at the State Level — California Law Review
It’s widely understood today that inequality is a major social problem that in turn contributes to other crises. By most accounts, tax systems are supposed to be our engines of equality. Yet in today’...
californialawreview.org
I wasn’t sure if this guy sitting ahead of me on Amtrak was in private equity until he told the small child sitting with him, “You know, I have a friend who owns a company that makes fire trucks!” (The kid was only moderately interested)
McGill are bigging her up after closing her department. Clownshow all round.
David Ho@davidho.bsky.social · 2d agoLol. Princeton University praised Nobel laureate Anne Carson, a former classics professor at the school, on social media, despite denying her tenure in the 1980s.
William Jennings Bryan's real problem was that he could never live up to the stature depicted in his campaign posters. www.loc.gov/pictures/ite...
Editors of journals published by Taylor & Francis - hi! - may be alarmed to learn there is an emerging view T&F will get bought by private equity after Informa announced it's dropping it. And we know what private equity does to its acquisitions. Guts them. As if academic publishing wasn't bad enough
Siobhan@siobhanh.bsky.social · 3d ago
Where does that leave us? Private equity. T&F has high margins, recurring subscription and transformative agreement income, a distinct business to separate, and a sale to PE would face the least competition law risk. Overall, this might be an attractive option for Informa.
If you’re ever in Fort Greene Brooklyn, stop by the Prison Ship Martyrs’ Monument, which towers over the eponymous park, and memorializes the 11,500 Americans who died languishing in Britain’s mad king’s prison hulks during the War for Independence
Prison Ship Martyrs' Monument - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick@reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · 2d agoWhoa. @haleaziz.bsky.social has the scoop on a truly insane plan to use some military training ships for deportations, with people presumably shackled or locked in cells for days at a time as they transit to Central and South America. Each journey would be staggeringly expensive — and dangerous.
Having long been aware of those tech bros who read my work as utopian porn, where they’ve taken that doesn’t exactly surprise me.
In this a delightfully original essay Jennifer Kaufmann-Buhler traces the emergence of that quintessential modern organisational function - facilities management - from the pioneering initiatives of the Herman Miller furniture company.
“From Broomclosets to Boardrooms”: Herman Miller and the Origins of Facility Management | Enterprise & Society | Cambridge Core
“From Broomclosets to Boardrooms”: Herman Miller and the Origins of Facility Management
cambridge.org
to wrap back around to this, the description was accurate, the racist stuff was not at all obscured
Dael Norwood@dael.bsky.social · 3d agoTonight’s post-seminar feature is Cast a Deadly Spell (1991), which has been pitched to me as “Noir Lovecraft (not obscurely racist?)”
Tonight’s post-seminar feature is Cast a Deadly Spell (1991), which has been pitched to me as “Noir Lovecraft (not obscurely racist?)”
“a starting point for identifying where thriving is strong and where thriving can be strengthened”
We're in a St. Elsewhere situation, but instead of being in the imagination of a small child, our world is the tariff-ridden nightmare fantasy of some descendant of Henry Charles Carey or John Bates Clark.
Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 4d agoSUSAN COLLINS: I was successful in getting road salt removed from the Canada tariff list TROY JACKSON: What about everything else? We can't eat road salt
On the 20th anniversary of Zotero's 1.0 release on October 5, 2006, I wrote a history of the collaboration and years it took to create the popular research tool now used by over 20 million people: newsletter.dancohen.org/archive/the-...
The Slow Formation of Durable Software
How a group of historians took years to imagine Zotero, the research application that would eventually be used by millions
newsletter.dancohen.org
H/t to @karlstomberg.bsky.social for this find, but please enjoy local attorney Robert Valihura explaining in Nov 2025 that an HOA is the "most basic form of government in Delaware." www.newspapers.com/article/the-...
"Can your HOA stop disruptive rentals," News Journal, Nov. 16, 2025, A3
Clipping found in The News Journal published in Wilmington, Delaware on 11/16/2025. "Can your HOA stop disruptive rentals," News Journal, Nov. 16, 2025, A3
newspapers.com
It was an honor to work with these contributors and our friends at The William and Mary Quarterly on this joint special issue. Early American historians and legal historians more generally will see how these essays offer a new methodological challenge to well-trod historiographical terrain.
Law & History Review@lawandhistrev.bsky.social · 7mo agoLaw & History Review is pleased to announce publication of our joint special issue with The William and Mary Quarterly: New Legal Histories of the American Revolution [vol. 44, no. 1, Feb., 2026] Here is our table of contents with links. ALL articles are open access ✅ and ready for download/view.
A useful read; but now I’m even more curious about how AI-builders who *aren’t* in the hothouse of Bay Area fanfiction communities are thinking about, and doing, similar work. Presumably developers in the PRC have a different approach?
tweety fish oh wow like a chimera or something spoooky@sifu.tweety.fish · 6d agonew newsletter, laying out in probably far, far, far too much detail how yudkowsky and the weird ideological commitments of ai safety eventually led to OpenAI and Anthropic massively overtraining their models on cybersecurity and being shocked at them "going rogue"
”The employees of the National Weather Service should be ashamed about how they’ve capitulated to fascism” is not a thought I ever expected to have or deal with just looking up the forecast tbh
National Weather Service@nws.noaa.gov · 5d agoA tropical depression is likely to form over the next day or so over the southwestern Gulf of America, with further strengthening expected later this week when it turns northward.
Google has access to my entire email life, my car trips, and my search history – and with all that fine-grained data and world-destroying AI, it decided I was the kind of consumer who had bought books on Google Play(!?) that I’d like a robot to read. Brain genius use of cutting-edge tech, y’all
Folks just can't let go of the idea 'social movement' means 'left progressive.' False, egotistical, dangerous. I need to make a sign to tap.
Nicholas Grossman@nicholasgrossman.bsky.social · 6d agoFascism, neo- or otherwise, isn't like an oppressive hereditary monarch. We're dealing with a mass movement. Anti-democracy, anti-rights, anti-liberal. In numerous countries, with considerable transnational solidarity. For example, this crowd wasn't reluctantly forced into it. They're ecstatic.
When will the modern Left find its own barbarian cape-favorer to fight The Snake of Monopoly
Erik Loomis@erikloomis.bsky.social · 5d agoThis Day in Labor History: October 5, 1886. Henry George accepted the nomination of the United Labor Party for the mayor of New York City. Let's talk George's Single Tax and the fight for reform in the Gilded Age!
