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Robert Paulett

@robertpaulett.bsky.social
4.1K followers 913 following 3.4K posts

Historian of early America and bits of Britain. Apostate southerner. Yells about maps, St. Louis, and higher ed.

PostsRepliesMedia
Robert Paulett @robertpaulett.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
If they truly represent their state, no, they will never learn from their obvious failures and never change direction.
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Robert Paulett @robertpaulett.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Whatever it is Eric Schmitt is doing, a reminder that the people who bankroll his campaign are still getting their payoffs.
stltoday.com
Boeing lands contract to build 'next-gen' Navy fighter. Schmitt lauds St. Louis role
The award marked a major victory for Boeing, which had sought a new fighter jet program to replace its aging F/A-18 and F-15 production lines in north St. Louis County.
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Robert Paulett @robertpaulett.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
I am not joking when I say this. Ai will spare you the envy of other’s talents The jealousy of people cheering their accomplishments The pain of gravity’s pull on your own limitations The unbearable bliss of being a human on this Earth
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Robert Paulett @robertpaulett.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Glad someone is finally remembering higher ed’s true purpose: artificially inflating real estate prices in trendy urban zip codes.
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Robert Paulett @robertpaulett.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Missouri GOP is absolutely gonna run Sophie Cunningham in place of Eric Schmitt in 2028.
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Robert Paulett @robertpaulett.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
The Republican party is now staffed nose-to-tail with the sort of dweeby College Republicans who despise anything so common as sports so, no, none of them knew.
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Robert Paulett @robertpaulett.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Schmitt also maybe lies here because I don’t think we was ever actually a prosecutor? He was a corporate lawyer who got pipelined to Attorney General because he was too stupid to think for himself.
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Robert Paulett @robertpaulett.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Missouri continuing to prove why it should have its statehood revoked.
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Robert Paulett @robertpaulett.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Partly I think this moral hierarchy flows from high-stakes testing that has trained students to associate stressful, memorization-heavy work like engineering and nursing with rigor and research-intensive, expressive and creative work like the humanities with fun.
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Robert Paulett @robertpaulett.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Exactly when did we decide the purpose of higher ed was to pit every branch of knowledge against each other, Thunderdome-style, to determine who gets to eat?
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Robert Paulett @robertpaulett.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
The “skills” framing also treats students as employees whose productivity must in turn be maximized, driving everything from Ai adoption to punitive censorship to Pinkerton-style crackdowns on protests.
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Robert Paulett @robertpaulett.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Fucking rad.
“Land is Never a Gateway” by Nicholas Galanin, a Counterpublic installation at the St. Louis riverfront. Picture is of a  forced perspective art installation that makes it appear that the St. Louis Arch is a Native American-style drying rack for a tawed animal hide.
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Robert Paulett @robertpaulett.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Home office window is well placed for warbler migration season.
Black-throated green warbler perched on a tree limb. It looks small and grumpy the way all warblers do.
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Robert Paulett @robertpaulett.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Right in the title: “Julius Fucking Caesar”
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Robert Paulett @robertpaulett.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Not for nothing all of these shows are basically “What if we rewrote ‘Fargo’ but made Jerry Lundegaard seem cool and dangerous?”
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Robert Paulett @robertpaulett.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
History remains unmatched at ruining undergrads’ career plans. (Also, so so proud of Sam)
Screen shot that reads “"I have always enjoyed history but was not sure this was where my career would end up. I initially transferred to SIUE to get my requirements for pharmacy school out of the way. After two semesters, I dropped all my classes a week before the fall semester and signed up for history courses. It was like saying, 'oh, this is what I'm supposed to be doing.'
: From there, I got an internship as
an educator at the Saint Louis Science
Center, (and) then a job as an educator
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Robert Paulett @robertpaulett.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
When the Virginia Company is #goals.
nytimes.com
These Tech Utopians Want to Build a City for the Post-A.I. World (Gift Article)
After a sprawling world tour, Praxis, a New York-based, crypto-backed “digital nation,” has signed a deal to build a physical city in Uruguay.
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Robert Paulett @robertpaulett.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
I don’t know who needs to hear this but you can’t outsmart people who don’t know what they’re doing.
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Robert Paulett @robertpaulett.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Appropriately, eduroam works everywhere except my home institution.
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Robert Paulett @robertpaulett.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Pure, uncut Duke of Newcastle Whiggism.
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Robert Paulett @robertpaulett.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
This is why the battle for public memory is so crucial. You can turn a shallow decision into a greater principle through the judicious use of power, narrative, and repetition and don’t just “turn the page.”
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Robert Paulett @robertpaulett.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
The only question I have about the afterlife is how long it will take for St. Louis Commissioner of Revenue Gregory F.X. Daly to find my new address in hell.
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Robert Paulett @robertpaulett.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
At this point it would be appropriate to refuse to seat Missouri’s entire congressional delegation, Thaddeus Stevens-style.
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Robert Paulett @robertpaulett.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Ah weekend Bluesky, where we all kick back, grab our longest knife, and lunge for the nearest throat.
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Robert Paulett @robertpaulett.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
It seems worth pointing out that this is a very small-c conservative platform of constitutional order backing social stability backing financial stability. And that’s actually good and okay.
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Robert Paulett @robertpaulett.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
The millions our admin spent on branding, completely squandered by picking a dumb press fight with the student paper.
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Robert Paulett @robertpaulett.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Seems bad that St. Louis’s entire moral infrastructure rests on one single, kinda shabby coffee shop.
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Robert Paulett @robertpaulett.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
As a historian there is a comfort in knowing previous eras certainly had their rationalist-AI-sex-cult equivalents but oops there’s no record so guess we can keep pretending events turned on simple things like wheat blights or plague or whatever.
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Robert Paulett @robertpaulett.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
FIRE’s people must be on campus if this is getting to the Chronicle. Our admins are not ready for this.
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Reposted by Robert Paulett
Karin Wulf @kawulf.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
3. That college is about reading for “the workforce.” No, it’s about development for the adult force. Of which work is a part. 4/
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Robert Paulett @robertpaulett.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
Whatever, I got mahjong three times tonight and can’t none of you tell me nothing.
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Robert Paulett @robertpaulett.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
And every blue-state admin is looking at this and thinking “Gotta catch up to that!”
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Robert Paulett @robertpaulett.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
Seriously, what percentage of the current economy is basically people pointing a (metaphorical) gun at higher ed and demanding money?
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Robert Paulett @robertpaulett.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
Even for just old-fashioned pork barrel political reasons, these board members should be run out of town for sending taxpayer dollars to Silicon Valley instead of keeping them in Amherst.
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Robert Paulett @robertpaulett.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
Talking my co-teacher through rubric withdrawal, sponsor-style.
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Robert Paulett @robertpaulett.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
Fugaziti
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Robert Paulett @robertpaulett.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
After 9/11 you had to go out and buy a stereo that lit up like a slot machine. It was the law.
An early 2000s stereo with a lot of crazy lights, a sweet double-casette setup and multi-CD disc changer. Bet that thing would still melt your face off.
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Robert Paulett @robertpaulett.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
“I bring such innovations as ‘debunking a metaphor that no one thinks is literally true’”
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Robert Paulett @robertpaulett.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
I don’t like to think of myself as the last generation of working historian. I prefer to think of myself as the first generation of folk revivalist historian.
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Robert Paulett @robertpaulett.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
Or you could, y’know, just tax some motherfuckers.
stltoday.com
Missouri is a long way from hitting sports betting goals. Officials are counting on the NFL.
State officials say they aren't concerned. The NFL season, which kicks off Wednesday, will bring in more than $13 million by the end of November, they say.
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Robert Paulett @robertpaulett.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
With its combination of high-toned political and media commentary, oddball pop culture obsessions, and unapologetic smut, Bluesky is clearly the alt-weekly of social media platforms.
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Reposted by Robert Paulett
Chanda Prescod-Weinstein 🌌 @chanda.blacksky.app · 06/09/2026
It’s actually ok to be a person who does not enjoy doing research but then you should not be doing research for pay
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Robert Paulett @robertpaulett.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
Well, yeah, that’d be about right.
Map of the U.S. showing heavy concentrations of certain linguistic markers in southeastern Virginia.
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Robert Paulett @robertpaulett.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
Lol.
Screen shot of S I U E student newspaper with headline that reads “Overbearing marketing policies protested by students”Screenshot of email from S I U E Chancellor James Minor announcing the resignation of the university’s director of marketing and communications
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Robert Paulett @robertpaulett.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
Ah so just doing the same thing and expecting different results.
Screen shot from article that reads “Kehoe said the two bills create new tools for economic development in St. Louis and other places in the state. One such tool is the new Missouri Innovation Zones, which allow municipalities to establish districts with accelerated redevelopment approvals, property tax abatements and public safety funding.”
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Robert Paulett @robertpaulett.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
stlpr.org
Are the stars aligned for a downtown St. Louis renaissance? Spencer and Kehoe say yes
Gov. Mike Kehoe and other officials say two new economic development laws aim to help downtown St. Louis recover from decades of decline.
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Robert Paulett @robertpaulett.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
They finally gave us a New Thing in the humanities building for the first time in 10+ years and it’s… …soap dispensers you can’t actually put your hands under.
Wall-mounted soap dispenser placed less than one inch above the stone basin beneath it.
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Robert Paulett @robertpaulett.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
Sigh, old enough to remember Ferguson when “stay woke” meant “beware of white moderates who will tie your movement up in language games and tokens of false progress.”
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Robert Paulett @robertpaulett.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
Skipped the dean’s 2+ hour, 83-slide “state of the college”powerpoint and feeling pretty good about that choice.
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Robert Paulett @robertpaulett.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
Ah, but you forget 65% of half-assed is 32.5%
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