iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Robert Suits @robertsuits.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

16 December 2026, 15:00-17:00 London Time "Microbial Anthropocenes" with Claas Kirchhelle (INSERM) and Emily Webster (Durham) (No event page yet, but stay tuned!)

1899 sample of Yersinia Pestis -- two circular images (top and bottom) of small bacteria in clumps and clusters

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Robert Suits @robertsuits.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

I'm delighted to share our schedule for the autumn for the Anthropocene Histories seminar at UCL. Poster attached, but I will put details and links to specific event pages below. Please share widely!

poster image: black with white text and the iconic photo, "Earthrise". The Eart is offset slightly to the right. Dates and details for three seminars are on the Term 1 schedule, but it makes much more sense to share them in the subsequent posts than to duplicate them all in the alt text here!

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Robert Suits @robertsuits.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Jacket design by Chris Ferrante for mine! Chris also designed my own personal favorite history cover -- @joshspecht.bsky.social 's Red Meat Republic.

A photo of a book, Red Meat Republic: A Hoof to Table History of How Beef Changed America, by Joshua Specht. The book has a diagram of the cuts of meat on a steer, but the pièce de résistance is that the jacket is the color of butcher's paper (and for the hardback copy, it's also the texture of butcher's paper as well!).

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Robert Suits @robertsuits.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

The UK is a strange place to live sometimes. (This is a slug, hanging out on the rubber mat where we keep our dog's water bowl. This is... nowhere near the outside world, and we don't tend to keep doors or windows open.)

A slug, speckled two shades of brown, just chilling on a gray rubber mat, in an indoor space.

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Robert Suits @robertsuits.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

Today is the first day I saw my own book in the wild!!!

Me, pointing to a copy of The Hobo on a shelf. Hey, while you're here, why not buy a copy? I did the alt text for the images in the book myself, too!!! https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691284668/the-hobo

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Robert Suits @robertsuits.bsky.social · 04/06/2026

idk I'm not convinced 82-0 is possible here...

a game run with 75-7 projected, including LeBron, Jordan, Shaq, Tim Duncan, and Carmelo

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Robert Suits @robertsuits.bsky.social · 04/06/2026

Many more supported the Industrial Workers of the World (or "Wobblies"), a union (which still exists!) which intended to organize a general strike in order to topple capitalism from the bottom up.

An IWW poster, depicting a human pyramid. At the top is a bag of money, helpfully labeled "capitalism." Below this is a tier of men, a clear politician, banker, and priest, labeled "We Rule You." Below this, various clergy -- "We Fool You." Below this, the military -- "We Shoot at You." Below this, a dining table with the wealthy -- "We Eat for You." And finally, at the bottom, backs hunched with effort to hold the pyramid up, a crowd of poor, labeled "We Work for All" and "We Feed All." The whole diagram is labeled "Pyramid of Capitalist System."

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Robert Suits @robertsuits.bsky.social · 04/06/2026

He would go on to write Sister of the Road, a professed autobiography of Bertha Thompson, a girl whose life story in many ways largely paralleled Ben's own, but also drew heavily on his mother's experiences, Emma's, and other hobos.

A book cover, "Sister of the Road: The Autobiography of Boxcar Bertha."

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Robert Suits @robertsuits.bsky.social · 04/06/2026

One prominent hobo was Ben Reitman, who would be an excellent protagonist for a historical miniseries -- or an excellent love interest in one about Emma Goldman.

A photo of a man (Ben Reitman), wearing absolute drip in turn of the century terms -- a brimmed hat, neckerchief, and a tweed jacket, with a dope-ass moustache and piercing eyes. He was also a gynecologist and performed back-alley abortions for needy women, in case you needed more fuel for the historical hottie fire.

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Robert Suits @robertsuits.bsky.social · 02/06/2026

Let's talk about riding the rods. Day 17/31 of convincing you to buy my book.

A man lays horizontally on the brakebeam -- the undercarriage -- of a freight boxcar. It is captioned "On the Rods." (Source: Jack London's The Road.)

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Robert Suits @robertsuits.bsky.social · 20/05/2026

In lieu of a fun hobo fact today: Our dog, being progressively less and less interested in my author copies arriving.

A black and brindled Staffy mix doing a play bow next to a cardboard box.

The same dog, sniffing the now open box curiously.

No more dog, just a book: The Hobo: A History of America's First Climate Migrants, by Robert Suits

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Robert Suits @robertsuits.bsky.social · 17/05/2026

What does an energy transition look like for people experiencing it? Does it displace workers? Does it create new jobs? And maybe most importantly -- have we ever actually had an energy transition? You might be surprised how much 19th century US migrant workers can tell us about these questions.

A crew of migrant workers around a steam thresher. Even though there is an engine to thresh the wheat, it still requires a team of four horses and fifteen humans around it.

I WONDER WHY THAT IS??? MAYBE IT'S SOMETHING INTERESTING THAT REQUIRES SOMETHING LIKE 250 PAGES TO PROPERLY EXPLAIN???

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Robert Suits @robertsuits.bsky.social · 17/05/2026

Convincing you to buy my book, day 2/31! What can the past tell us about energy transitions? If you read some current historians, it gets quite dismal. In fact, they might tell you energy transitions never actually happen. Energy has been added to our economies. But no fuel has ever been replaced.

Two charts, stacked on top of each other, showing American energy use over time. Total energy consumption goes from an almost illegibly small amount in 1800 (2.4 Gigawatts) to a much, much higher level by 2020 (3.5 Terawatts, i.e. a more-than 1000 fold increase).

The top chart shows energy use by fuel, showing how we started out with biomass, and then successively added coal and oil and gas -- no fuel has been replaced, there have only been additions.

The bottom chart shows fuel use by economic sector -- mostly residential use at first, and gradually adding industrial and transportation uses over time.

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Robert Suits @robertsuits.bsky.social · 16/05/2026

Convincing you to buy my book, day 1/31: How to sneak onto a train? There are options. You can try when it's stopped, but there will be security. More reliable is to catch it "on the fly." You wait for the train somewhere you know it will being going slow -- a hill, a crossing. Then, you run.

A black and white photograph of a person leaping on board a train; another person catches his hand.

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Robert Suits @robertsuits.bsky.social · 15/05/2026

It's real!!!!! (Pre order at press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...)

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Robert Suits @robertsuits.bsky.social · 22/02/2026

I found this lying around in a random folder with other things I made in grad school: FOOTNOTE ALIGNMENT CHART

an old-school DnD alignment chart, a grid of 3x3 squares, with the two axes being lawful to chaotic and good to evil.
lawful good: a lengthy, well-formatted footnote with additional explanatory text
neutral good: a note to future self of what to do with a footnote, but the full citation already pulled
chaotic good: an incomplete footnote but the various authors are at least listed in brackets
lawful neutral: a somewhat more restrained footnote than lawful good, without explanatory text
true neutral: just the footnote
chaotic neutral: a note from the author to the author, saying only "find this again!"
lawful evil: a curt footnote saying "see, again:" with the full citation after it
neutral evil: text, cut off by the screenshot: "I swear I read this somewhere; I've lost the bloody [...] goes to publication"
chaotic evil: a completely blank footnote

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Robert Suits @robertsuits.bsky.social · 03/02/2026

@emilywebz.bsky.social got me a delightful birthday present this year

A wooden puzzle in the design of the cover for my book (The Hobo: A History of America's First Climate Migrants), out in June 2026!

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Robert Suits @robertsuits.bsky.social · 09/01/2026

Anyway, smooth transition to shameless plug: you can read more about Starke, Dick (Wobbly), and hobos in general in my book, coming out this summer: press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...

cover of my forthcoming book, The Hobo: A History of America's First Climate Migrants

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Robert Suits @robertsuits.bsky.social · 09/01/2026

And this same energy transition crops up in the story of Starke in a second way. Hobos, as a rule, took the train -- they were expert in dodging railroad police by finding increasingly implausible places to hide.

Jack London, The Road, "riding the rods" -- that is, bracing oneself on the brakebeam below a traincar, to ride out of sight and only a few inches from the tracks beneath.

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Robert Suits @robertsuits.bsky.social · 09/01/2026

And the IWW matched a lot of hobo politics quite well. Some hobos were idealistic from the start. Some were radicalized by their experiences on the road. Anarchism, socialism, syndicalism, and communism all held a certain appeal.

An IWW poster showing the "pyramid of capitalist system" -- capitalism at the top of a tower as a bag of money, with a group of nobility below and the caption "we rule you", clergy below that saying "we fool you", soldiers below saying "we shoot at you", elites below that saying "we eat for you" and workers supporting the whole pyramid, with the caption "we work for all; we feed all"

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Robert Suits @robertsuits.bsky.social · 09/01/2026

It's a story familiar to many of us who break to go across the American West -- or who go off the grid for a while.

my own picture, from Glacier National Park, sometime in the 2010s (probably 2014).

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Robert Suits @robertsuits.bsky.social · 09/01/2026

Barbara's fate was laid out for her, and her frustration with it is palpable: "That was just what we were supposed to do with the hours of life! We were to do boresome work, and then buy pink hats with them."

a book cover for Born in Captivity: The Story of a Girl's Escape (alternatively titled "Touch and Go", showing a young woman celebrating her freedom atop a mountain

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Robert Suits @robertsuits.bsky.social · 09/01/2026

Starke is the pseudonym for a fantastic and undeservingly unknown author, Helen Card, whose first book was an autobiographical retelling of her road trip across the country in 1927, one that received not a little attention at the time as well.

a map of Starke's journey, starting from Massachusetts, going through New York to Buffalo to the Midwest, striking out across the Plains to Denver, then northwest through the Rockies to Idaho, then cutting back down to LA. She returns via SF, northern Nevada, Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, and back through the Midwest and Pennsylvania.

SOURCE: https://lvgaldieri.com/2024/09/05/hitchhiking-according-to-helen-card/

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Robert Suits @robertsuits.bsky.social · 09/01/2026

So, the world is dark -- let's talk about something that starts out quite silly. Why does my book's index have an entry for "Dick (Wobbly)"?

a fragment of an index, with the entries: dendrochronology, deportations, Depression, Dessert family, Dick (Wobbly), diesel trains, diseases, diversification, Dolmar, Dragstedt A. W., and droughts

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Robert Suits @robertsuits.bsky.social · 30/12/2025

The hockey sticks chosen are often a mix of social trends mostly regarded as neutral-to-good across the political spectrum, juxtaposed with implicitly or explicitly related Earth system trends, all of which show an inflection point around the same time (as in the image below):

A series of charts in two panels. First: socio-economic trends population, real GDP, foreign direct investment, urban population, primary energy use, fertilizer consumption, large dams, water use, paper production, transportation, telecommunications, and international tourism. Second, Earth system trends: carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, methane, stratospheric ozone, surface temperature, ocean acidification, marine fish capture, shrimp aquaculture, nitrogen to coastal zone pollution, tropical forest loss, domesticated land, and terrestrial biosphere degredation.

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Robert Suits @robertsuits.bsky.social · 19/10/2025

question answered, incidentally

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Robert Suits @robertsuits.bsky.social · 18/10/2025

Did "hand grenades" used to mean something else? Or was this fairly normal mixed used building in 1895 South Side Chicago packing a *lot* of heat?

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Robert Suits @robertsuits.bsky.social · 29/09/2025

Coal is a fuel used almost exclusively in electricity generation, which is going out of business almost exclusively because it cannot compete with cheap fracked natural gas.

chart showing the proportion of electricity generated by different fuels, with rising natural gas displacing coal since c. 2005

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Robert Suits @robertsuits.bsky.social · 02/08/2025

Two environmental historians go for a short walk in London...

Maybe a half gallon of blackberries in a container, just like wow

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Robert Suits @robertsuits.bsky.social · 11/03/2025

well this could really go one of two ways

a cropped part of a Sanborn Fire Insurance Map, with a building labeled "asbestos covered potato warehouse"

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Robert Suits @robertsuits.bsky.social · 14/01/2025

feels very telling that "decommodify" is marked as a spelling error

the original post in draft form, with 'decommodify' having a red underline

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Robert Suits @robertsuits.bsky.social · 12/12/2024

literally the one and only reason I use Reddit is to get actual answers from actual humans, what the actual fuck is this, I hate it here

screencap of an article title from the Verge: "Reddit's New AI Search Tool Helps You Find Reddit Answers Without Google"; lede: "Reddit is launching a new AI-powered search tool called Reddit Answers to help you more easily find information on the..."

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Robert Suits @robertsuits.bsky.social · 30/11/2024

You, uh... you sure about that, grammar check?

in the sentence "He was humming to himself, something that sounded oddly like birdsong," a grammar checker suggests removing the "to" in order to "make the sentence clearer"

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Robert Suits @robertsuits.bsky.social · 16/10/2024

Come to the UCL Anthropocene Histories Seminar, hosted online twice per term this year! Details below -- it's an absolutely stellar lineup of scholars.

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Robert Suits @robertsuits.bsky.social · 24/06/2024

Wild strawberries from near our house in Durham!

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Robert Suits @robertsuits.bsky.social · 03/04/2024

hmm what about this from Bar-On et al 2018? trusts that the reader can infer why this is important, of course.

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Robert Suits @robertsuits.bsky.social · 12/03/2024

I think because the relatively robust global petroleum market mean US oil markets/gas prices are actually affected by international trends (pretty much no other energy commodity has ever been traded at the same scale), Americans don't think of the US as oil rich. But hoo boy, it REALLY is.

graph of oil production by country, the US has almost always been in the lead

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Robert Suits @robertsuits.bsky.social · 09/03/2024

U.S. livestock masses, c. 1840-2015. Chicken was almost exclusively a seasonal meat until relatively recently.

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Robert Suits @robertsuits.bsky.social · 30/09/2023

"I am nearly certain this did not actually happen."

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Robert Suits @robertsuits.bsky.social · 11/09/2023

trawling University websites and reminded of this gem

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Robert Suits @robertsuits.bsky.social · 08/09/2023

A beautiful passage from the very end of Heather Davis's excellent book Plastic Matter (2022), on the complex feelings of enjoying nature.

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Robert Suits @robertsuits.bsky.social · 01/09/2023

One trick that has been absurdly successful for me (for kicking multiple projects into a new gear) has been to literally handwrite first drafts. It's been lovely, oddly therapeutic, and crazy productive! (Doesn't hurt my history to sketch figures and maps directly into the first draft, either...)

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