Sometimes I too feel ‘misbound but perfect’, Francis Jenkinson. Written in a copy of Gaspar Ens’s book on Dutch discoveries in the New World (Cologne, 1612). @theulspeccoll.bsky.social N*.5.51(G).
In 2026, colleges must teach students that this is not the end of the world. We must teach hope. Current undergraduates can barely remember a time before the threats of climate change and authoritarianism loomed to catastrophic scale. Since 2010, the future depicted in TV, books, and games has been dystopian or apocalyptic, so for our current students the end of the world feels more familiar and realistic than a future with hope. Now we are asking them to choose majors and life paths when the desirability, indeed the very existence, of whole sectors of employment are in question, due to the overwhelming promises of LLMs and machine learning. As young people hear daily that vocation after vocation may vanish into automation’s maw, and that democracy, liberty, land, sea, and sky are all in jeopardy, despair is growing. Despair is very emotionally tempting. It means freedom from the responsibility to shape the future. This is a terrifying turning point, but many generations before us have faced such turning points, and met them. We can offer our students perspective. Only a few dozen institutions on Earth are more than 900 years old, and the vast majority are universities. The university system is not a house of straw to buckle in this storm: We are the rocks that have sheltered the knowledge, hope, and truth through tumults which have toppled kingdoms while classrooms endured. We can endure this, and be a guiding light through it, but only by recentering, by teaching citizens, not workers; power, not PowerPoint; aspiration, not apocalypse. Despair is how we lose. The classroom is where we battle it. All other battles flow from here. Ada Palmer is an associate professor of history at the University of Chicago.
This, from Ada Palmer as part of The Chronicle's survey of 11 scholars on the future of higher ed, is what I needed to end the week.
A PSA from Thomas Massie:
a medieval drawing of a woman falling and hitting her head on the ground with a serene expression on her face
ow, france, 15th century
If Jeff Bezos could afford to spend $75 million on the Melania movie & $500 million for a yacht to sail off to his $55 million wedding to give his wife a $5 million ring, please don't tell me he needed to fire one-third of the Washington Post staff.
Democracy dies in oligarchy.
A photo of the man murdered by ICE today, just before the shooting. He’s standing and holding a phone in his right hand and holding his empty left hand to the sky and looking behind him at a woman running away while an ICE agent closes in on him from the front. On the ground behind the man is a woman that the victim will soon try to help, leading several ICE agents to attack him and pin him to the ground, before shooting him several times.
We’re supposed to believe this is a domestic terrorist attacking ICE with a gun
Weird to be commemorating the 250th anniversary of the Am Rev while living under a government that has a) sent armed troops to occupy cities perceived to be too rebellious, b) rendered largely irrelevant the representative branch of government, and c) claimed imperial right to rule other countries.
A detail of a broadside showing a man, a postal messenger with a letter in his hand, positioned within a text part. More details in the thread
A man travelling within the lines of a text printed in 1621. Enjoy this short 🧵 for #skystorians and friends of news flows.
Thank you so much!
Loved kicking off 2026 with one of my first and favorite historical figures!
Louise de Clermont: Catherine de Medici's Closest Friend
open.substack.com/pub/feminist...
Just re-listened to this fantastic episode with Natalie Donnell. Mary of Hungary is so fascinating. @nataliedonnell.bsky.social @sixteenthcgirl.bsky.social podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/h...
Thank you so much, Micheline! She was a formidable politician and deserves much more credit for Charles V’s success than she’s received!
Thank you so much!
My first research article is out today with the Sixteenth Century Journal! It's been a long road for this one. "Networks of Affection and Alliance: Catherine de Medici and Female Political Practice during the Minority of Charles IX," available now!
www.journals.uchicago.edu/eprint/TG44V...
So it turns out... the US air travel system was incredibly, deeply dependent on federal funding to just run day-to-day all this time, to the benefit of private airline shareholders, when everyone thinks that state-run trains are leeching off the government. Weird!
