iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Bobby Lee @bobbylee.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Pretty excited to see a Notes and Documents section in the new JER

Bobby Lee @bobbylee.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

If I'm reading this right, people have been so bad at spelling Frederick Douglass' name that Congress had to pass a law to prevent gifts to the 'Frederick Douglass Memorial and Historical Association' from being voided on a technicality

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Bobby Lee @bobbylee.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

Official nickname is 'Tree of Heaven.' Unofficial nickname is 'Tree of Hell'. Ban still on the books in 2026.

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Bobby Lee @bobbylee.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

This is what they look like (yes, I had to look it up)

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Bobby Lee @bobbylee.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

What's the most hated tree? In the US, it might be the Ailantus. Congress banned planting them on federal property in 1853.

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Bobby Lee @bobbylee.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

Really like how this photo turned out

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Bobby Lee @bobbylee.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

Seems like a different world where this Congressional resolution was possible, and it was still Trump I

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Bobby Lee @bobbylee.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

Made some bbq chicken on the grill

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Bobby Lee @bobbylee.bsky.social · 13/06/2026

Still thinking about this tortured footnote from the Vanderbilt/WashU report

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Bobby Lee @bobbylee.bsky.social · 19/04/2026

Cambridge is very flat except for these chalk pits

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Bobby Lee @bobbylee.bsky.social · 18/04/2026

Crazy stat from 1975: 5% of the population in the US owned nearly 2/3 of the privately held land. Wonder what it is today...

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Bobby Lee @bobbylee.bsky.social · 10/04/2026

The US used to have a federal balloon-school, now look at it

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Bobby Lee @bobbylee.bsky.social · 07/04/2026

This is why I love footnotes

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Bobby Lee @bobbylee.bsky.social · 03/04/2026

This ad gives 1996 the old-timey treatment

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Bobby Lee @bobbylee.bsky.social · 31/03/2026

1920s farmhouse vacation rental

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Bobby Lee @bobbylee.bsky.social · 27/03/2026

This is pretty weird. I've been looking through thousands of pages of the US statutes at large, and this is the first time I've come across something redacted. It's from the mid-1930s. No idea why

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Bobby Lee @bobbylee.bsky.social · 25/03/2026

I come back to this one again and again. One of the best hardback purchases I ever made

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Bobby Lee @bobbylee.bsky.social · 24/03/2026

Me when term is finally over

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Bobby Lee @bobbylee.bsky.social · 24/03/2026

This woman sued the government for blood money and won

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Bobby Lee @bobbylee.bsky.social · 16/03/2026

Native Land Digital has new relational map on its site: "Our Constellation Map reimagines how Indigenous nations can be shown by highlighting relationships, connections, and presence rather than strict borders." native-land.ca/maps/constel...

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Bobby Lee @bobbylee.bsky.social · 15/03/2026

I love footnotes, but even I'll admit things are getting out of hand when you get up over 2000

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Bobby Lee @bobbylee.bsky.social · 01/03/2026

Re-reading Custer Died for Your Sins this weekend. Easy to forget about all the jokes and zingers in here

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Bobby Lee @bobbylee.bsky.social · 28/02/2026

Discussed in this excellent book

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Bobby Lee @bobbylee.bsky.social · 22/02/2026

Interesting story lurking here

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Bobby Lee @bobbylee.bsky.social · 13/02/2026

It’s a great time to study the US from an ocean away. So apply for the 3-year Mellon postdoc in American History at Cambridge. Closes March 1. www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/mellon-...

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Bobby Lee @bobbylee.bsky.social · 11/02/2026

So, Arkansas used to employ prisoners as armed guards to oversee their fellow inmates. Called them 'trusties.' Sometimes they put them on horseback and gave them shotguns to oversee prisoners laboring in fields

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Bobby Lee @bobbylee.bsky.social · 10/02/2026

They carried a banner with the motto: ‘Into Civilization and Citizenship’

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Bobby Lee @bobbylee.bsky.social · 10/02/2026

Did not know this: Pratt had the students marching in the opening ceremonies of the World’s Columbia Exhibition in Chicago in 1893

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Bobby Lee @bobbylee.bsky.social · 10/02/2026

Shocking stat from the first paragraph of the annual report of the Carlisle Indian boarding school in 1893: the death rate of students was more than double the graduation rate

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Bobby Lee @bobbylee.bsky.social · 07/02/2026

‘America’ Vespucci was the Anna Delvy of the 1830s. Broke, charming, and European, she nearly convinced Congress to give her a land grant because the continent was named after her family. Her real name was Elena portraits.allenbrowne.info/Vespucci/Read/

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Bobby Lee @bobbylee.bsky.social · 07/02/2026

This outfit was so fly it caused riots

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Bobby Lee @bobbylee.bsky.social · 05/02/2026

Watching a documentary and it says the person telling their story is digitally anonymized?! Are they doing ai avatars now? Bring back blurring

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Bobby Lee @bobbylee.bsky.social · 05/02/2026

Still thinking about this mecca

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Bobby Lee @bobbylee.bsky.social · 04/02/2026

Ever seen this famous broadside? I finally looked up the pamphlet it's advertising. Turns out it's on hathitrust - read it here babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc...

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Bobby Lee @bobbylee.bsky.social · 04/02/2026

Rich Dad, Poor Dad, but for conservationists in the 1930s

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Bobby Lee @bobbylee.bsky.social · 30/01/2026

Really like the style of the these mid-century graphs

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Bobby Lee @bobbylee.bsky.social · 30/01/2026

Mid 20th C. infographic on the carving up of the US public domain

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Bobby Lee @bobbylee.bsky.social · 30/01/2026

Don't know if this can be topped. New Deal Interior Secretary Harold Ickes titled his life story, 'The Autobiography of a Curmudgeon' (1943) and slapped a cartoon of himself maxing out a hate-meter on the cover!

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Bobby Lee @bobbylee.bsky.social · 29/01/2026

Look at where these investors are from and where they’re buying up land to develop in the 1850s. This has a hand in cranking the flywheel of Native dispossession in the upper Midwest for sure

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Bobby Lee @bobbylee.bsky.social · 29/01/2026

These guys are taking profits from southern plantations and effectively running payday loan style mortgage schemes for settlers who want to buy land from the government. Crazy rates: 75% profit per year

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Bobby Lee @bobbylee.bsky.social · 29/01/2026

Has this phenomenon escaped the view of the New History of Capitalism folks(?): extensive southern investments in northern land before the Civil War…

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Bobby Lee @bobbylee.bsky.social · 28/01/2026

Flag from Custer’s Land Stand sold for $2.5 million www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-6...

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Bobby Lee @bobbylee.bsky.social · 28/01/2026

Rereading the Report of the Board of Indian Commissioners (1870) and this line about inexperienced federal officers is landing hard

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Bobby Lee @bobbylee.bsky.social · 23/01/2026

The history of US imperialism is filled with blustering failures that don't get much attention. Here's Thomas Hutchins, the first (and only) Geographer of the United States, talking about how the newly independent US would easily take all of North America back in 1784

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Bobby Lee @bobbylee.bsky.social · 19/01/2026

I would watch a doc about these folks 6abc.com/amp/post/phi...

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Bobby Lee @bobbylee.bsky.social · 17/01/2026

Media outlets are claiming that Greenland would be the largest ever US territorial acquisition as a way to pique interest. Problem is the original Louisiana Purchase was over 900k sq. mi. Greenland is 836k.

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