Brian Leech

@brianleechphd
14 Followers
1.2K Following
2K Posts
Historian of the U.S. West and Midwest. Professor at Augustana College in Illinois. Research on environmental history, mining, food, energy, pop culture. Currently writing about the portrayal of mining in popular culture and the history of U.S. speed limits. He/him. Opinions my own and not my employer’s. #histodon #histodons #envhist #envhum #mininghistoryhttps://brianleechphd.net
@ebrandom Right. They'll take care of work and relationships so that I can read more books.
Pretty soon life is just going to be computers talking to each other. #AI
Calling this phenomenon “loon fallout” certainly makes it sound worse than it is (although I am still concerned for the birds). https://www.dakotanewsnow.com/2023/04/22/loon-fallout-weather-causing-birds-fall-sky-wisconsin/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=snd&utm_content=ksfy
Loon fallout: Weather causing birds to fall from sky in Wisconsin

Reports of loons falling out of the sky have been increasing in northern Wisconsin.

Dakota News Now
I need to find an #artist who can create covers for Kindle Shorts books, science fiction, in a style that evokes the pulps of the 1930s/40s/50s. Will have to be relatively inexpensive, as (hopefully) there will be a lot of them. Does anyone have any recommendations before I spin the roulette wheel on Fiverr?
#bookcovers
“This would be far more reliable than Twitter’s current pay-for-a-checkmark system. Because the CBC’s Mastodon server would be connected to the larger fediverse, the CBC would both enjoy global reach and local autonomy. And no billionaire could ever take that away.”
#Fediverse #Autonomy #Mastodon #CBC #Media
https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/2023/04/20/why-the-cbc-should-quit-twitter-and-run-its-own-mastodon-server.html?rf
Opinion | Why the CBC should quit Twitter and run its own Mastodon server

Elon Musk’s decision to label the CBC as “government funded” is a good catalyst for public broadcasters to join the fediverse.

thestar.com
I don’t know when, but someday I just know I’m gonna find use for this image in a lecture slide. #singapore
The worst thing that ever happened in software engineering was when Kirk asked Scotty how long something would take and Scotty said thirty minutes and Kirk said you’ve got five and Scotty got it done in five and impressionable children watched this and grew up to become managers.
I love the fact that multilingual film/tv and subtitles have become normalized in the English-speaking world. Watching so much stuff that might not have surfaced 10 years ago.
Filtering online product reviews to only show posts from before the public release of chatGPT like im scavenging shipwrecks for pre-1945 steel
You know FAQs aren’t lists sorted by frequency of asking because the first entry is almost never “Why me?”