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Sarah J. Purcell

@sarahjpurcell.bsky.social
4.1K followers 1.4K following 195 posts

(She/her) Historian-Teacher-Sometime Digital Humanist. Latest book: Spectacle of Grief: Public Funerals and Memory in the Civil War Era from @UNC_Press

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Reposted by Sarah J. Purcell
Aparna Nair @disabilitystor1.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
I just want to retire and go live in the woods with my dogs and hex anyone who ventures onto my land with boils in their armpits
When he asked, “Crystal,” DiSabatino says, “wouldn’t give any straight answers.” To test his theory he was talking with some sort of machine agent, he started asking questions “that had a nonlinear aspect… ‘What do you see when you close your eyes?’” he inquired. “’Can I ask, do you dream of electric sheep?’” 

In response, DiSabatino says “it glitched” and that Crystal repeatedly said “I’m sorry, I think you’re breaking up,” followed by more robotic giggling. He says he tried slightly less surreal questions: “’Do you know what a high school is? Do they program you to have a high school in the cybernetic world in which you’ve been created?’” Again, he recounted being rewarded with a robot giggle and the words, “I think you’re breaking up.”
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Phil Lewis @phillewis.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — New Jersey’s Democratic lieutenant governor resigns after a report accused him of sexual harassment and ethics lapses.
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Maris Kreizman @maris.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Join us for a telethon on Thursday for a great cause? www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/...
publishersweekly.com
Freedom to Read Orgs, Authors to Host Telethon
Anti-censorship groups, authors, librarians, and others will host a livestreamed telethon, Show Up, Speak Up! Vote for the Freedom to Read, on September 24, with special guests including Judy Blume, J...
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James Talarico @jamestalarico.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
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emptywheel @emptywheel.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
DHS is stealing Haitians money while they deport them. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/06/w...
nytimes.com
Haitians Deported From U.S. Are Left Broke and Stranded (Gift Article)
Hundreds have been deported to Haiti in recent weeks, and some say they have been left with no money, no protection from gangs and no place to go.
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Karen L. Cox 📚🏳️‍🌈 @drkarenlcox.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
Librarians are heroes. That is all.
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Molly Jong-Fast @mollyjongfast.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
Are we ever going to find out what happened to mitch McConnell
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Phil Lewis @phillewis.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
Judge strikes down Texas ban on drag shows, tells people offended by them ‘just don’t go’
nbcnews.com
Judge strikes down Texas ban on drag shows, tells people offended by them ‘just don’t go’
The federal judge, who cited Dolly Parton in his ruling, found that the state law violated the First Amendment.
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MeidasTouch @meidastouch.com · 14/08/2026
🚨EXCLUSIVE: Military families and service members are now describing horrific conditions across MULTIPLE ships: human waste flooding bathrooms, virtually no food, water or soap, months without port calls, exhausted crews, and no end in sight. This crisis is far bigger than just the Lincoln.
meidasnews.com
Not Just the Lincoln: Families Describe Human Waste, No Food, No End in Sight Across Multiple Ships
Since MeidasTouch began reporting on conditions aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, messages have poured in to MeidasTouch from military families and service
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Robert Reich @rbreich.bsky.social · 09/08/2026
70 percent of Microsoft's AI revenue is coming from a single customer — OpenAI. I have to ask: is the AI bubble about to burst?
youtube.com
Brace Yourself for the AI Bubble
Are we watching an AI revolution, or a slow-motion economic disaster?
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Allison Gill @muellershewrote.com · 06/08/2026
Showing up and taking the 5th is not contemptuous, it’s a constitutional right. NOT showing up at all like Jim Jordan didn’t when he was subpoenaed? THAT is contempt.
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Harry Litman @harrylitman.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
Rand Paul and The Rs on Homeland Sec committee, which just voted on straight party lines to refer Fauci for contempt, are an absolute kangaroo court. The Hollywood 10 were convicted of contempt during McCarthy days; and this will go down in history as a similar moment of opprobrium and insanity.
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The Liberal BoJack @thelibbojack.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
More cops have been arrested for using flock cameras to stalk women than there are transgender athletes in youth sports.
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Brian Finucane @bcfinucane.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
Well, at least it was for a completely lawless and pointless cause.
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Charles Logan @charleswlogan.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
Last call for the free, online @civicsoftech.bsky.social conference happening this week! Registration closes tomorrow, Wednesday, August 5, at 12pm ET. For more information on the sessions and to register, go to: www.civicsoftechnology.org/2026conference
A screenshot of the conference homepage. At the page’s top is the text “Against Tech Hype” and under the text are pictures of the keynote speakers Meredith Broussard and Natasha Singer.
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The New Republic @newrepublic.com · 20/07/2026
NEW INFO HAS REVEALED that the 28-year-old Mexican man killed while running from ICE last week was just visiting on short tourist visa—and already had a plane ticket to go home. newrepublic.com/post/213277/...
newrepublic.com
Man Who Died Running From ICE Was Tourist With a Ticket Home
The man has been identified as Juan Jairo Coronilla Duran, who was in the U.S. on a tourist visa and already had a plane ticket to go back to Mexico.
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Mrs. Betty Bowers @mrsbettybowers.bsky.social · 20/07/2026
The Pentagon is withholding causality and hit numbers. The CDC is withholding infection rates. The FDA is withholding information about food contamination. The EPA is withholding pollution and climate data. This corrupt administration is ALL about concealing the consequences of its incompetence.
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Dan of the Year @downwithdan.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
Dang they really got a category for everything
THR
The Hollywood Reporter *
@THR
Louis C.K. Wins Grammy for First Special Since Sexual Misconduct Allegations
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Levi Stahl @levistahl.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
Chicago’s got the prettiest Odyssey. (And, I legitimately think, as a longtime Odyssey reader who has read several translations, the best. Daniel Mendelsohn’s translation is gorgeous, faithful, and clever, the notes incredibly helpful and interesting.)
A hardcover of the Odyssey translated by Daniel Mendelsohn. The cover, designed by Matt Avery of Monograph Studios, features an illustration of a Greek ship seen from a ice in an expanse of ocean. The look is very midcentury, looking like classic book designs from then.
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Alicia Spencer-Hall @aspencerhall.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
You too can have an accessible conference! Accessibility makes things better for everyone! Open access guidelines, compiled by Alexandra R. A. Lee & me, here 👉 www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi... #MedievalSky #IMC2026 🗃️
Alexandra R.A. Lee and Alicia Spencer-Hall

Making Conferences More Accessible

Introduction

Many who work in academic settings live with impairments and/or chronic con-ditions, which mean that attending conferences can be a difficult issue. This can be the case for students, early-career researchers, independent scholars, tenured academics, and support staff. All require their needs to be taken into account so that their conference experience is as good as it possibly can be. After the first meetup of Medievalists with Disabilities in 2017, we crowdsourced ideas of how to make conferences more accessible. The ideas presented here came from this meetup, Twitter discussions with the community, and from the Medievalists with Disabilities Slack channel, an online communication platform. This document is the result of that collaborative work, which we have edited together into a more cohesive format. We have revisited and updated the original document, particu-larly bearing in mind the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the nature of con-ference attendance.

These guidelines aim to make conference attendance easier and indeed just simply possible for disabled people and people with chronic conditions by imple-menting certain strategies. If these guidelines are followed, it should mean less work for disabled and chronically ill people. Also, if they became standard, it would significantly improve accessibility. Many of the suggestions do not require many changes or much effort or expense but would make a huge difference to those they would support. You will notice that we have taken guidance from around the world, and a multitude of different contexts: while we are medieval-ists, after the first section, the guidance we offer is not disciplinary-specific and is universally applicable for academic events.2
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Bradley P. Moss @bradmossesq.bsky.social · 02/07/2026
Someone is going to die. This is insanity.
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Kevin Gannon (now a Moo Deng fan account) @thetattooedprof.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
So, uh, just to be clear: birthright citizenship is for everyone, not just immigrants. It's just that most of us in the US haven't ever had to think about it in our own lives. Take it away, and what replaces it?
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Abraham Gutman @abgutman.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
An iPad inside Independence Hall tells visitors that a second floor room was used in the 1850s to hold individuals “accused of crimes of the period.” Originally, the screen read “accused fugitives of slavery.” @fallonroth.bsky.social and I discover more retelling of history by Trump’s admin. 🎁 🔗
share.inquirer.com
Trump administration quietly removed mentions of slavery from Independence Hall, Thomas Jefferson portrait
The Inquirer's discovery of these changes come as Philadelphians are grappling with the Trump administration's attacks on the President's House Site.
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Joshua Zeitz @joshuamzeitz.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
Some faculty committee stalwarts are about to be schooled on parliamentary procedure and Roberts Rules of Order.
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Endless Screaming @infinitescream.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
AAAAAAHHHHHHHH
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Esther Mondragón @e-mondragon.bsky.social · 20/06/2026
This is a good start "..ask all the questions. Don’t settle for answers that you get from the media. Question incentive structures, question where you’re getting the information from, and just don’t stop going down the rabbit holes when you’re doing experiments or asking questions."
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Charles Gaba ✡️ @charlesgaba.com · 19/06/2026
“It happens all the time but I can’t prove it.”
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Mel Andrews @bayesianboy.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
When utilized in literature review, LLMs consistently 1. fail to mention female authors in female-led literatures, 2. insist that men are more influential or more heavily cited when this is contradicted by objective citation counts, and 3. attribute women’s work to hallucinated male scholars.
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Denny Carter @dennycarter.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
I guess one difference between Jim Crow then and Jim Crow now is that we have cool graphics to show how it's done.
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Michael Sainato @msainato.bsky.social · 16/06/2026
Trump appeared at the Libertarian National Convention in 2024 in front of a sign that said this, it was the convention's theme
Trump at the Libertarian Convention in 2024
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American Historical Association @historians.org · 16/06/2026
Looking for historical context on tariffs? Watch the AHA’s Congressional Briefing on C-SPAN, featuring historians Douglas Irwin, Sharon Ann Murphy, and Eric Rauchway. They explore how federal tariff policy has shaped domestic & global economies. 🗃️
c-span.org
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kim @kimmymonte.bsky.social · 14/06/2026
omg ffs we just want healthcare
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Bryan Edward Stone (שָׁלוֹם) @bestonetx.bsky.social · 14/06/2026
Makes the drunken Jackson supporters who trashed the White House in 1829 look classy.
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Sherrilyn Ifill @sifill.bsky.social · 13/06/2026
That’s the perfect name for this time of oligarchs: “the Re-Gilded Age.”
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Dr Jennifer Jones @jenniferewc.bsky.social · 12/06/2026
Trump likes to point to what he did in Venezuela as a success. The thing I find strangest about that whole debacle is how little everyone else has to say about it. He kidnapped and arrested a foreign president and his wife. At the very least, we should be keeping track of what’s happening to them.
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Endless Screaming @infinitescream.bsky.social · 11/06/2026
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH
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Senator Andy Kim @kim.senate.gov · 06/06/2026
This morning, I spoke to families with loved ones in Delaney Hall. They told me about an appalling lack of access to healthcare, violence and intimidation by guards, and horrible living conditions within the facility. I’m going back to Delaney today to continue the fight to shut it down.
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Charles Ornstein @charlesornstein.bsky.social · 27/05/2026
We're hiring an editor to lead our new California hub! If you're interested, check it out here: job-boards.greenhouse.io/propublica/j...
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Sarah J. Purcell @sarahjpurcell.bsky.social · 27/05/2026
Let’s hope it’s not the end…
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Laura R. Prieto @laurarprieto.bsky.social · 25/05/2026
#hatm if you love #suffs history, check out the @maryelizaproject.bsky.social, a digital humanities project researching the *54k women* in Boston who rushed to register to vote between August & November 1920. Their stories will surprise & delight you! And our dataset is there for YOU to explore!
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Melissa Gira Grant @melissagiragrant.com · 14/05/2026
Two police officers from Gratis, Ohio, an all-white town per the US census, showed up at a majority Latinx public school in Cincinnati—50 miles away—to search for kids for ICE, disguised as a “wellness check.”
theguardian.com
Unauthorized ICE ‘wellness checks’ by police at Ohio schools draw outrage
Community members and rights groups criticize police arriving at Cincinnati schools on behalf of ICE
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Andy Craig @andycraig.bsky.social · 13/05/2026
Indistinguishable from 1870s Redeemer rhetoric about "Negro misrule" and the like.
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Manisha Sinha @profmsinha.bsky.social · 11/05/2026
Historian of abolition here, history tells us how we got here, to put it succinctly “John Brown was hanged for treason and Robert E. Lee was not.”
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Tyler McBrien @tylermcbrien.com · 10/05/2026
🚨 NEW TOOL for U.S. legal journalists ⚖️ I turned @allyjar.bsky.social's incredible crowdsourced Google doc on accessing state court records into an interactive map. Check it out and let me know about any errors, missing information, or ways I can improve this thing (link below)
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Marc Elias @marcelias.bsky.social · 06/05/2026
This is proving more true every singe day. www.democracydocket.com/opinion/demo...
democracydocket.com
Democrats must gerrymander to save democracy
Redistricting is, in nearly every respect, a zero-sum game. When you remove a guardrail, the consequences are immediate and trigger others.
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onion person @junlper.beer · 06/05/2026
funniest thing i’ve ever seen
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