Walker Robins

this one is of all y'all postin'

The Public Domain Review@publicdomainrev.bsky.social

Illuminations by Evrard d'Espinque for a circa 1480 French translation of Bartholomaeus Anglicus' 13th-century De Proprietatibus Rerum. More marvellous maps from the manuscript here: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/despinque-anglicus-illuminations

the edmond ok turkey trot made ai garbage t-shirts this year and i am so sad

why are the sooners dressed like the nebraska buckeyes

mini-stroke of genius

boomer

some people would like ai to read to their child in their simulated voice. others spend years of their life writing dirty rap songs with their friends only to realize it was all meant for them to be able to absolutely smoke the rhyme scheme of fox in socks to the delight of a three year old.

go-gurt: the snack you can't put down

the way the mbta announces that there are restrooms on the commuter rail makes it sound like they are warning passengers that an uncertain number of restrooms boarded at the most recent stop

going to be embarrassing when the ai boyfriend publishes his own piece in the globe breaking up with her

just going to assume that rolling stone article is about the pee-pee penalty yesterday

skattebo's eating that dog food. we know that.

only good thing about watching football today is that I got to show the 4yo a man named booger

really when you select your favorite teams on your espn profile the site should hide anything to do with them rather than put it up top

Mateer: youtu.be/d-pxMm_UdY4?...

youtu.beyoutu.be

21 Sept

Bill Grueskin@bgrueskin.bsky.social

You will never find more insipid claptrap than this, from RFK Jr., which Trump installed on a plaque in the Kennedy Center "A lot of life is about trying to turn bad experiences into something good. Usually if you work at it, you can figure out a way to do it. Even our worst misfortunes are gifts."

20 Sept

kind of whack every athlete named terry gets nicknamed "scary" when "hairy" is right there

20 Sept

hairy terry mclaurin not ready for that one

6 Sept

when chelsea first signed kai havertz years ago roger bennett said he looked "more like a consumptive poet than a 9" and it's all i've ever been able to think of when i watch him play

5 Sept

LuUuUuke Knox 👻@lukeknox.me

28 Aug

what's a "lake" but a pronunciation of "llc"

Walker Robins@walktalks.bsky.social

@pablo.show

28 Aug

@pablo.show

28 Aug

the only lake i recognize is lake tenkiller, oklahoma's clear water lake

hnn.usAI Is an Anti-Primary Source MachineReal voices from the past are threatened by chatbots designed to amplify — and ultimately become — the loudest voices in the room.

yep yep yep

History News Network@myhnn.bsky.social

Real voices from the past are threatened by chatbots designed to amplify — and ultimately become — the loudest voices in the room. www.hnn.us/article/ai-i...

View full thread

But last fall I was deluged with chatbot-hallucinated quotations (i.e., falsified evidence), including the hilariously-generalized quote, "You see? That's the Great Migration right there."

It remains my platonic ideal of a fake chatbot quote--adding nothing but using the form of a primary source quotation to do nothing but confirm aggregated generalizations.

hnn.usAI Is an Anti-Primary Source MachineReal voices from the past are threatened by chatbots designed to amplify — and ultimately become — the loudest voices in the room.

yep yep yep

History News Network@myhnn.bsky.social

Real voices from the past are threatened by chatbots designed to amplify — and ultimately become — the loudest voices in the room. www.hnn.us/article/ai-i...

View full thread

Russell has several interesting things to say about his family's experiences in West Monroe, LA, and what prompted them to leave during WWII.

Many are quite quotable!

hnn.usAI Is an Anti-Primary Source MachineReal voices from the past are threatened by chatbots designed to amplify — and ultimately become — the loudest voices in the room.

yep yep yep

History News Network@myhnn.bsky.social

Real voices from the past are threatened by chatbots designed to amplify — and ultimately become — the loudest voices in the room. www.hnn.us/article/ai-i...

before I had to shift away from papers, my main paper assignment in my post-1865 course was on the Great Migration.

I always took care to compile an intriguing list of primary sources for students. Since I teach north of Boston, I would include an oral history interview that Bill Russell did with the LOC several years before his passing.

i don't know why but "islands in the stream" is the one i've been rocking with the most since dolly passed

so i was just listening to "ghetto supastar" and discovered that the "1st phone interlude" that follows it on pras's album has a "call" from...donald trump

25 Aug

"In My Town, a Truck is a Troop," by Zach Luke Bryan Brown

Walker Robins reposted

Rodger Sherman

@rodger.bsky.social

23 Aug

The Trump-endorsed IndyCar race on the DC streets into a great unintentional advertisement for the effectiveness of raised crosswalks as a traffic calming measure

21 Aug

wednesday: hey we're slaughtering a bunch of wild horses friday: hey we're importing tons of "beef" now

21 Aug

there is a fox in my backyard eating grapes under a pergola. will report when i learn the meaning of this fable.

merrimackhistorylab.comUrban Renewal in LawrenceIn the fall semester of 2025, students in Dr. Walker Robins’s HIS 3320 (“The American City”) were tasked with examining the impact of urban renewal on nearby Lawrence, Massachuset…

I am pleased to share this online exhibit that undergraduates in my "American City" course researched and wrote last fall on urban renewal in Lawrence, MA: merrimackhistorylab.com/urban-renewa...

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Students used a variety of source materials to study the block parcel-by-parcel--including records from the Lawrence Redevelopment Authority that are housed in the Lawrence History Center. (Thanks to Amita Kiley!)

viewer.allmaps.orgAtlas of the city of Lawrence and the towns of … / Allmaps ViewerView georeferenced maps and their metadata with Allmaps Viewer. Compare them with modern maps and discover the history behind each map.

They also were trained up in georeferencing by @bplmaps.bsky.social (Thanks to Garrett Nelson and Ian Spangler!) The 1926 atlas they georeferenced can be found here: viewer.allmaps.org?url=https://...

I am pleased to share this online exhibit that undergraduates in my "American City" course researched and wrote last fall on urban renewal in Lawrence, MA: merrimackhistorylab.com/urban-renewa...

The idea behind the project was to tell the story of renewal in the city by focusing on a single block in the area designated for the city's first renewal project in the 1950s and 1960s--"Common-Valley-Concord." (If you know Lawrence, it's the block where they built the new police station.)

the metaphors are escaping

in america you must warn fellow drivers that you're going to drive the speed limit

19 Aug

fun fact: i filmed alexander vindman's wedding.

19 Aug

when he popped the champagne, the cork hit me in the head

19 Aug

this is all true!

zeteo.comSCOOP: Trump’s Iran War Has Burned Through Well Over 90% of Key Long-Range MissilesSources tell Zeteo the percentage of critical long-range missiles that the Trump administration has depleted in its failing war is in ‘at least the high nineties.’

17 Aug

look I've played civilization and this is fine. if we build the space colony we can still win

29 U.S.C. § 157@organizingpower.bsky.social

HOLY FUCK MAN zeteo.com/p/scoop-trum...