2025
I’m streaming my mother’s church service to her in the living room. On a Facetime call, my three-year-old granddaughter asked what this service was. I referenced circle time, which she immediately understood. Preschool for the win.
Great remarks by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau last night on the unconscionable tariffs announced by President Man Baby: https://youtu.be…. 🇲🇽🇺🇸🇨🇦
I plainly have a cold. On a video chat, my granddaughter reported that she had a lot of boogers in her nose too.
Just now reading a bit about the student protests in Serbia against government corruption. Inspiring stuff, both the students' actions and the trust people are putting in them (AP News report yesterday). Solidarity (Bluesky post this evening).
📽️ I rewatched “Amsterdam,” dir. David Russell (New Regency, 2022) because machinations in and around the current administration give the story fresh relevance. Set in 1933, with flashbacks to the World War and postwar, there is cruelty, but also defiance, friendship, love, music, and dance.
Shit is Getting Conspiratorially Dark
“Senior U.S. Official to Exit After Rift With Musk Allies Over Payment System” (Wasington Post) https://archive.ph/omS67
Typically only a small number of career officials control Treasury’s payment systems. Run by the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, the sensitive systems control the flow of more than $6 trillion annually to households, businesses and more nationwide.… The clash reflects an intensifying battle between Musk and the federal bureaucracy as the Trump administration nears the conclusion of its second week. Musk has sought to exert sweeping control over the inner workings of the U.S. government, installing longtime surrogates at several agencies…
This Musk business is getting increasingly dark. Democrats and Republicans should fight this, except there aren’t any Republicans in government anymore.
I love this image of reading. We’ve all been there, if not with a donkey in tow.
Source: [Pursuit of knowledge under difficulties] by Wordsworth Thompson, chromolithograph (L. Prang & Co.), 1878., Library of Congress, Popular Graphic Arts Collection, https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2016649779/.
The AHA’s members and their colleagues teach students how to think, not what to think. Preparing future generations to read, think, and analyze provides a much stronger foundation for informed patriotism and civic participation. This executive order does just the opposite, providing a blueprint for widespread historical illiteracy.…
– James Grossman, “On the K–12 Education Executive Order,” American Historical Association.
The historyofknowledge.net domain is no longer live. Use historyofknowledge.hypotheses.org instead.
I’m in the process of checking and changing links on this site that point to the old domain. I’m also removing Twitter links still lurking in my markup.
Inspiring Photo from 1971 for Our Troubled Times
“Isabel Miller and Barbara Gittings hugging librarians” in 1971 at the American Library Association Conference in Dallas, Texas. (Miller is on the left. Gittings is on the right in the floral sleeveless dress.)
Librarians can be central in the fight against bigotry and for equal rights, which might explain why some gay rights activists were there. (An important example: early professional Black librarians.)
Photo by Kay Tobin, via the Barbara Gittings and Kay Tobin Lahusen Gay History Papers and Photographs Collection, NYPL Digital Collections, image ID 1606079. 🏳️🌈
I’m terrible at memes, but poking fun at the oaf is never not fun.
If you choose not to continue in your current role in the cult, we thank you for your service to your Dead God, and you will be provided with an unsummoning spell from the Gore Palace utilizing a deferred immolation program.
– “Deferred Culling Email to President Nyarlathotep’s Workforce” by Andrew Paul, www.mcsweeneys.net…, January 29, 2025.
If Merz thinks he can control the AfD, he should remember that parliamentary elections have consequences, and political predictions are worth as much as Orange Oaf’s word, diddly-squat. Merz should also consider the American grifter-in-chief’s takeover of the Republican party, which is no longer recognizable. This path was made easier by the Tea Party nuts of the mid-1990s and early aughts (think debt ceiling and endless obstructionism), but Orange Oaf, who believes nothing, co-opted the party completely. If Merz has learned from Trump that norms need not constrain him, what does he think the AfD has learned?
PS: The joyful picture of Barbara Gittings I posted earlier today came from the private sphere, but even their private moment was political. Certainly they left their papers to the NYPL under terms that allow it to share the image online.
#PrivateLives #PublicPolicy #ThePersonalIsPolitical 🏳️🌈
Maybe 4 in (10 cm) of snow last night. Not as good as down on the Gulf of Mexico, but still something.
Where is big pharma on a Sec RFK Jr for HHS? Do they really want to work with dozens of different health departments because there are no more common national standards? Or will lobbying only begin after a monster takes over HHS?
Photo of Joy and Love, 1962
So much joy in this photo, so much love: “Barbara Gittings in shower, circa 1962” by Kay Tobin. 🏳️🌈
Via Barbara Gittings and Kay Tobin Lahusen Gay History Papers and Photographs collection, NYPL Digital Collections, image ID 1605708.
“One of the many young newsboys selling late at night…, November 1912” by Lewis Wickes Hine for the National Child Labor Committee.
Via New York Public Library, image 464486.
Orange Ogre’s economic warfare on poor people and blue states undermines the rationale for a federally administered income tax. Why should rich states send money to Washington if there is no ethos or practice of solidarity?
We haven’t had enough fresh snow lately, so wind on the dry roads, driveways, and parking lots is kicking up a lot of sand, salt, and other things that’ve made me reach for a rescue inhaler today. Cough. Hack. 😷
Thinking of a member of Orange Oaf's cast of terrible characters…
Don't Kill Our Wild Life – Department of the Interior, National Park Service – By Works Progress Administration – Federal Art Project NYC – [ca. 1936–40]
Via Library of Congress.