Clare Corbould
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clarecorbould.bsky.social
Clare Corbould
@clarecorbould.bsky.social
2.8K followers 2.3K following 400 posts
Historian 🗃️| Associate Professor.
Books: Harvard UP; 2026 The New Press.
Bylines: Conversation; WaPo; Guardian.
She/her 🌈 | Personal account
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clarecorbould.bsky.social
Presidency Upending: season 2 with colleague Dr Zim Nwokora is a go! Ep 1: a brilliant talk with Prof Ned Foley about his distinguished research in US election law & recent discovery of a 19th century Australian voting model to prevent polarization.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpQk...
October 15, 2025 at 3:30 AM
clarecorbould.bsky.social
And will he have them wear brown shirts or black shirts?
Photo of headline “Trump to take over DC police, deploy National Guard.” And of Trump, in his red tie, white shirt, blue suit jacket, announcing same.
August 11, 2025 at 7:09 PM
clarecorbould.bsky.social
Truly, nothing at all to see here. Just a cool $1.5 billion dollars "Epstein moved through the banking system to fuel his vast sex-trafficking network." Follow the money, says Dem Senator Ron Wyden, who has been doing just that for 3 years.
“We felt from the beginning this was a follow-the-money case,” Mr. Wyden said in an interview. “This horrific sex-trafficking operation cost Epstein a lot of money, and he had to get that money from somewhere.” In particular, filings by four big banks flagged more than $1.5 billion in transactions — including thousands of wire transfers for the purchase and sale of artwork for rich friends, fees paid to Mr. Epstein by wealthy individuals, and payments to numerous women, the senator’s office found. The filings came after Mr. Epstein was arrested in 2019 on federal sex trafficking charges.
July 18, 2025 at 12:40 AM
clarecorbould.bsky.social
this link worked for me. And um: WTF:
Dershowitz’s letter included a mock-up of a “Vanity Unfair” magazine cover with mock headlines such as “Who was Jack the Ripper? Was it Jeffrey Epstein?”
July 18, 2025 at 12:29 AM
clarecorbould.bsky.social
You say: Quarles was canny. It says: koels was Kenny

You say: Tate's foreword... It says: tights forward...

You say Quarles. It says: koels; coils; Qualls; quals! I gotta work morrrrre on those rrrrrrrs.
July 17, 2025 at 4:05 AM
clarecorbould.bsky.social
This 2014 cartoon hits a bit differently now
New Yorker cartoon featuring a king on a throne barking an order to a courtier in breeches with a sword. Caption reads: “I’m concerned about my legacy—kill the historians.”
July 15, 2025 at 5:53 AM
clarecorbould.bsky.social
Black historian Benjamin A. Quarles, asked in 1962 about key moments in US history since the Emancipation Proclamation. Without hesitation he said: the 14th Amendment, on which Black Americans "based [their] whole fight for equality."
A paragraph of text from a Crowley, Louisiana newspaper, which I summarise in the post.
July 11, 2025 at 7:33 AM
clarecorbould.bsky.social
Finally read that NYT piece on AI and history (book) writing. This line caught my attention. Does the journalist not understand that without Robert Caro to begin with, the AI cannot possibly generate even a poor imitation of Robert Caro…
Photo of a sentence from NYT, reads: “Then again, without a mania to touch every single source himself, and to pour the rigor of all that relentless reading into his prose, an A.I.-assisted Robert Caro would not have been Robert Caro at all.”
June 17, 2025 at 12:50 AM
clarecorbould.bsky.social
On Being a NYT editor… or, when the biggest risk to one’s wellbeing from the rise of fascism is the risk you might sound, now what’s the word… *shrill* in opposing it.
May 1, 2025 at 10:56 PM
clarecorbould.bsky.social
Aesop's Fables for a modern age. Absolutely spot-on, utterly perfect BS, 10/10, no notes
headline: "Saying 'please' and 'thank you' to ChatGPT costs OpenAI millions in energy bills
April 27, 2025 at 11:58 PM
clarecorbould.bsky.social
yeah nah that's the least crazy story running in today's Times
NY Times headline slash link reads: "Man's 7 'Emotional Support' Tigers Are Seized in Nevada"
April 8, 2025 at 9:21 AM
clarecorbould.bsky.social
WaPo ran a made-up bit written for a year 9 exam on logic.
April 3, 2025 at 9:07 PM
clarecorbould.bsky.social
Conservatives have been gunning for the NEH & NEA at least since Karen Finley et al. got the Supreme Court to agree “decency” is no grounds for suppressing free speech. And most definitely since the Smithsonian had the temerity in 1995 to question the morality of the 1945 dropping of A-bombs.
Nikki Haley annotating bombs in Israel, which would be dropped in Gaza. “Finish them,” she wrote.
March 31, 2025 at 9:57 PM
clarecorbould.bsky.social
For those who think the smartphone is unusually good at preventing people from concentrating on book-learning, I give you this lively piece from the _Minneapolis Star_ of 1953, about a man who bought a book--on the same day his newfangled tv arrived home.
Two images are a short satirical piece of apocryphal fiction about a man who bought a book--the same day he received a "television receiver." The book lay neglected for months, until the television had to be taken off for repairs, at which point the man who had been plagued by guilt said he would indeed now read the book... assuming he could remember *how* to read.
March 31, 2025 at 6:14 AM
clarecorbould.bsky.social
Late in 1963, Malcolm X told a cheering Manhattan crowd that JFK's murder was "chickens coming home to roost." Here's the response of Minneapolis Star editorial cartoonist, Roy Braxton Justus. IJS, apropos, you know, nothing. Nothing at all.
Some oversized and extremely pissed-off looking roosters, labelled collectively "100 Years of Civil Rights Neglect," clambering onto Uncle Sam's bed. Sam pulls the covers right up, looking alarmed. The caption is "Chickens Coming Home To Roost."
March 31, 2025 at 6:01 AM
clarecorbould.bsky.social
Vance Fails to Pull Off Classic Photo Stunt.
Striking photograph of VP Vance in Greenland, standing on snow with a bright blue sky behind him. He has his arm aloft, with thumb and forefinger parallel to the ground as if pinching something wide. Behind him (and, in two-dimensional perspective, adjacent to the open hand) is a large, snow-covered hill, with a flattened but rocky top.
March 29, 2025 at 6:17 AM
clarecorbould.bsky.social
March 25, 2025 at 10:32 AM
clarecorbould.bsky.social
Meme with Oscar Isaac and the older Skaarsgard, in a film I don’t recognise, because, well, middle age, probably. Oh hang on is it Dune? Or Dune II? Anyway. First panel: Bald, scary Skarsgard, looming over Isaac, says: “he signed an executive order. There are only two sexes. Say it!” Panel 2: Isaac replies “there are only 2 sexes. The sex I have with your mom and the sex I have with your dad.” Panel 3: Skarsgard with mouth open, saying nothing.
March 23, 2025 at 11:12 PM
clarecorbould.bsky.social
Well played, @theconversation.com! Well played.
List of writing tips for contributors to The Conversation. The final one reads “Don’t verb nouns.”
February 4, 2025 at 1:10 AM
clarecorbould.bsky.social
My attempt to buy eggs feeling like some sort of metaphor
The ever-shrinking shelf space for eggs, empty. 1/2 … 2/2. Not *quite* empty. Two broken eggshells sit forlornly on the otherwise blank shelves.
February 3, 2025 at 8:44 AM
clarecorbould.bsky.social
January 24, 2025 at 11:31 PM
clarecorbould.bsky.social
The language the Exec Order uses is scientifically inaccurate (there is no sex differentiation in foetuses at conception, that comes later). It is also legally dubious, implying that a foetus is a (legal) person:

newrepublic.com/post/190506/...
(d) “Female” means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell. (e) “Male” means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the small reproductive cell.
January 22, 2025 at 2:51 AM
clarecorbould.bsky.social
GOP House Resolution, 3 Jan: "the importance of access to comprehensive, high-quality, life-affirming medical care for women of all ages." The outfit it holds up as the national standard offers "abortion healing" & "abortion pill reversal". Here's how the clinic chain pictures its clients:
chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://nacn-usa.org/wp-content/uploads/PWHC-Booklet.pdf Cover of a pamphlet from the Pro Women's Healthcare Centers, featuring three white, blonde/grey women of different ages, whom I guess I interpret as being three generations of one family. They are all smiling.
January 22, 2025 at 2:27 AM
clarecorbould.bsky.social
government site for reproductive healthcare: GOOOOONE.
Sad homepage, which indicates reproductiverights.gov has been shut down.
January 21, 2025 at 5:27 AM
clarecorbould.bsky.social
Herbert Marcuse offering a cheerful assessment of things in 1973
The socialist tradition itself has always recognized and retained the alternative: either a free and human society, socialism, or a long period of civilized barbarism, a society entirely in the hands of an omnipresent and all-powerful administration and management – some kind of neofascism. I believe that it is not too late. I think that barbarism, neofascist barbarism, can still be fought. If it is not fought today, it may be too late because we know of no case where a fascist regime, once established, has been defeated from within. So it is not yet too late, but if this generation doesn’t fight it, it may very well be too late.
January 2, 2025 at 2:46 AM