Notices by Philip Cardella (philip_cardella@historians.social)

Hey folks, I've opened up a pixelfed photography account at @polonius916 please check it out!

Not that I know how it works. Anyway, there should be 10 pictures of #birds on it. But I can't see it from here.

#photography #noob

@WarnerCrocker here's where it gets scary. Textbook content is either driven by California or Texas almost every year. Because these states purchase, by far, the most textbooks (or digital ones) the books usually are designed to match one or the other state's standards.

Too bad these lessons won't include talking aboutDavid loving Jonathan the way a man loves a woman and Jesus loving John in such a way that he told John he, John, was now Mary's son, nevermind Mary had plenty of other sons.

One last thing, my dream is for the Democrats, more or less as they are, to be the party on the Right in the United States.

Today, that seems like a fantasy but I've got to keep my eyes on the horizon. We need a party to the Left of the Democrats.

It will take immense, at this point, almost unprecedented work and will come at a cost I can't really comprehend.

But I believe it can be done. Together.

So me saying the Democrats have always been a party too far to my right? That's not me saying, yay fascist party. That's me saying don't come at me with your entitled ahistorical modified right wing propaganda about how the Democrats used to be liberals.

That's BULLSHIT. Since the 1960s they've been far less racist but still plenty racist than the GOP while being very pro business.

I'm campaigning for the Dems (as I did in 2016, 2018, 2020, 2022 and 2024) until there's a better option.

Apparently needs to be said again. Why were most Black Americans Republicans until 1968?

Both parties were extremely, blatantly racist until about 1968. Yes, that includes Kennedy and absolutely LBJ. But while the Democrats tried to soften that with Civil Rights rulings from the Republican Warren's Court and then legislation, the GOP led by Nixon decided they didn't need people of color after all and went more openly racist. Then illiberal under Reagan and the Bushes and then fascist under 45.

Edited the last one for a bit of clarity. Everybody's opinion should matter. But just expecting your opinion to matter more than others, especially when you haven't put in the blood for it? No.

And don't anybody dare come at me with Genocide Joe propaganda.

I'm as irate and horrified as any one by what's going on in Palestine and Lebanon. We SHOULD be protesting that war. And the war in Sudan. And the ethnic cleansing in Western China.

And even then. Good grief.

Or even the run of the mill, tempted by Trump, labor unionists.

Do you have any clue how much labor union blood and bodies line our history?

If I want my very educated, informed, right opinion about policing and prisons heard I need to earn a place at the table.

I'm so tired of well intentioned white aligned liberal angst and hot takes.

Getting arrested for what you believe in absolutely counts. It does.

It doesn't count enough for you to make your demands mean more than that of others.

D) the Democrats have ALWAYS in your lifetime been a right of center party or just a plain right wing white supremacist party if you're old enough. Good old Earl Warren helped out a lot. He WAS A REPUBLICAN. Jimmy Carter beat Gerald Ford--by running to Ford's RIGHT. Arguably the most racist president in our glorious history of racist Presidents? Woodrow Wilson, Democrat. Harry Truman, Democrat, wasn't far behind. Get this notion that the Democrats were ever liberal out of your head. It's a lie.

I'm going to go out on a limb and piss some people off.

A) white supremacy won this election. White supremacy includes patriarchy and misogyny. White supremacy is the common ground with Russia, Hungary and MAGA. Without it the Dems win in a landslide.

B) disinformation also won this election. Without blatant attempts to game the system through immoral lies the Democrats still win.

C) voter suppression and outright lawbreaking won the election--those 200,000 votes in three states? There.

E) the people demanding the Democrats be more liberal/progressive/whatever are 1) gobbling up Reagan era propaganda to make believe the Democrats were ever liberal 2) demanding their voices be heard without paying the cost everyone else paid to be heard 3) haven't a clue how our government worked until it collapsed on November 5. These people did not cost us the election. But they didn't help either.

F) those liberal/progressives down ballot that won? They didn't face the rightwing propaganda.

I've said it before. There are ways that I'm VERY far left. I don't want to defund the police and prison system. I want to yeet them into the sun and start over from scratch.

I think any policy short of abolition is short minded, deeply rooted in (often unintentional) racialized or racist thinking and frankly disqualifying from even allowing one a place at the table to discuss it.

But you can't find me talking like that in my timeline, can you? Why? Because it DOESN'T WORK.

F) (continued). While Harris and a few key Democrats or issues were heavily focused on with blatant lies and propaganda, a lot of down ballot wins happened despite Harris' performance. This does NOT SHOW Harris wasn't *whatever* enough policy wise. Her policies were VERY POPULAR among the public. So what's the difference? The relentless lies from Musk and Russia.

No. Seriously. You can find this or that example and I'll slap the San Francisco mayor in your face. Look it up.

I can't stand in the middle of my campus and demand to be heard and expect that to be remotely enough.

How insulting is it to the Black people who died for the right to be considered citizens, including the very first person martyred in the Revolutionary War, for generations for you to think your opinion (or mine!) deserves the same consideration as Black folks?

And then there's women and their fight for being considered human. And the Chinese. Then the Mexicans in this country. LGBTQIA folks.

@TonyStark what I just posted is plenty for me to stay away, especially the CEO being a software engineer for a crypto company and not, you know, an exec. Although the new CEO did found a company called Happening.

I've never heard of it. But I'm old.

https://techcrunch.com/2024/11/15/what-is-bluesky-everything-to-know-about-the-x-competitor/

@TonyStark reasonable question. What is certain is Bluesky was created to be decentralized by Jack Dorsey while he was still Twitter Ceo. When Jack sold Xitter he splintered Bluesky off.

He claims it's decentralized and privately funded. All I can see so far that's decentralized is there's no algorithm and privately funded is a scary thought for me.

Jack left most of Bluesky to the new CEO Jay Graber, who previously worked as a software engineer for the cryptocurrency Zcash.

Many flags.

The Dem volunteer network I was on this election's leader just posted "hey guys I just discovered this alternative to Twitter called Bluesky!"

Le Sigh.

I just don't see a path where Bluesky doesn't end up in the Xitter or the shitter.

It looks like it was literally created to be enshittified to me. Like, that's the actual plan. It's a bunch of promises by people who've proven themselves entirely unworthy that it's good now because it's what Twitter used to be but one day it'll be great.

I can't emphasize this enough, if someone is publishing a non fiction non memoir book that wasn't published by a university press you should examine it extra closely.

Why? First, because there's plenty of shit published by university presses that should never have been published--and university presses, in theory, have many people deciding if it meets the accuracy requirements for publication.

A non university press book, or trade press, book, *might* only care about sales. 1/3

Also keep in mind Heather Cox Richardson earned your trust so it's ok to not be as skeptical.

And here's a fun thing: Richardson's most recent books are not presenting new research. They're essentially opinion books based on her encyclopedic knowledge.

I own ALL of her books. I use her as an example because I love her and I'm saying, yes, still question her non up books more.

btw those books aren't formally peer reviewed... But she does have them informally peer reviewed. 3/3.

Am I saying don't by trade press books? OF COURSE NOT. I'm just saying be MORE cautious.

And if Oprah says it's good, I'm truly sorry to say, be even more skeptical. This means the trade press used an agent to get it in her hands so *selling* books is likely the priority over accuracy.

What if a well know historian publishes in a trade press--like Heather Cox Richardson has for her last few books?

Yes! Be MORE skeptical of those books. But 2/3

I'm just gonna say it, Jon Stewart is on my shit list.

Unlike before he left TDS I'll admit I only watched him a few times. But he was so angry and lashing out at Democrats that I just couldn't.

I've said MANY times that I've got more complaints than most people with the Biden Administration.

But what I saw from Stewart was basically just regurgitation of Chris LaCivita talking points mixed with his own self righteousness.

I just don't need that misguided privilege in my life right now.