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Dael Norwood

@dael.bsky.social

3.4K followers 560 following 9.5K posts

Historian of America's old, weird political economy. Unincorporated but proudly unionized citizen of Delaware. Adding “levity to discussions of financing and high politics” since 2022. Wrote Trading Freedom: How Trade with China Defined Early America.

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Dael Norwood @dael.bsky.social · Jul 14

A moderate-length but immodest proposal: it's time for Delawareans to start planning for a future beyond the corporate franchise – and we need to do it before angry billionaires force it on us first.

The Best Thing to Ever Happen to the State of … Delaware?

This post argues that the forces pushing DExit – and thus the death of the corporate franchise –cannot be appeased by Delaware, so we must consider the future without the franchise ourselves,…

daelnorwood.com

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Reposted by Dael Norwood

Karl Jacoby @karl-jacoby.bsky.social · 4h

History faculty at Columbia & Barnard decrying the harassment of @mark-bray.bsky.social: "This is the first case in recent memory of a historian who has fled the country after receiving death threats on account of the history that they teach."

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Aaron Reichlin-Melnick @reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · 4h

The entire incident is infuriating and terrifying. She’s a Latina woman who was working a service job. On her way home late at night, with her headphones in, she was detained for an hour by masked federal agents who wouldn’t give her their names.

Maria Greeley, 44, had just finished working a double shift at the Beach Bar on Ohio Street
earlier this month when she said she was surrounded by three federal agents who grabbed her, forced her hands behind her back and zip tied her.
Headphones in, Greeley had been focused on getting home to her two dogs for a walk.
Instead, she said she was detained by masked agents who did not answer when she asked for names. They questioned her for an hour, she said.

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Dael Norwood @dael.bsky.social · 8h

Well this is a five alarm fire I didn’t need tonight

Robert Kelchen @robertkelchen.com · 8h

After getting zero firm commitments to this point from the first nine invitees, the Trump administration is extending its proposed compact to all colleges. Expect some red-state publics to say yes.

Trump Offers All Colleges Preferential Funding Plan Rejected by MIT

The Trump administration is inviting all US colleges to participate in a compact — initially rejected by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology — that would grant preferential federal funding in re...

www.bloomberg.com

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Reposted by Dael Norwood

Robert Kelchen @robertkelchen.com · 8h

After getting zero firm commitments to this point from the first nine invitees, the Trump administration is extending its proposed compact to all colleges. Expect some red-state publics to say yes.

Trump Offers All Colleges Preferential Funding Plan Rejected by MIT

www.bloomberg.com

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Reposted by Dael Norwood

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick @reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · 10h

I posted about this on X, and Tricia McLaughlin, the DHS spokesperson, QTed me to say the kid was actually a hardened criminal arrested with a knife and a gun.

So far she has provided no evidence of this. I share this to give DHS's response, and for the possibility she is telling the truth.

My original post on X: "This makes NO SENSE. A 13-year-old was arrested by local police for unknown reasons, and then turned over to ICE, which is detaining him far away from his mother — who is going through immigration court, has an asylum application on file, and is legally authorized to work." Underneath that I posted a link to the opening paragraphs of the article and the headline.

In response, DHS Spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin, @TriciaOhio, wrote: "Here are the facts: he posed a public safety threat with an extensive rap sheet including violent assault with a dangerous weapon, battery, breaking and entering, destruction of property. He was in possession of a firearm and 5-7 inch knife when arrested."

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Rachel Maddow @maddow.msnbc.com · 12h

"After the warning, neighbors showed up and formed a human chain outside the church to guide parishioners home. NBC Chicago found more organizers doing the same for the beginning of the 6 p.m. mass..."

www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/c...

Chicago priest urges parishioners to leave mass with caution after ICE agents reported nearby

Chicago's Rogers Park community remained vigilant after reports of federal agents near a Catholic church during Sunday mass.

www.nbcchicago.com

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Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · 11h

www.instagram.com/p/DPm507ljBJ...

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Dael Norwood @dael.bsky.social · 11h

As always the images the committee chooses to share with the award announcement illustrate nothing so much as the fundamental ridiculousness of economics as a field

(I believe their intention is to explain the winners’ ideas; so perhaps it’s the source material)

www.nobelprize.org/prizes/econo...

A giant arrow labeled GROWTH pointing to “BETTER PRODUCTS”

People falling off of lightbulb block stairs

Dael Norwood @dael.bsky.social · 12h

The same is not true of the other big tech innovation boom currently underway, in green tech (solar, batteries, evs etc), all of which is readily explainable in scientific terms and not at all framed as incomprehensible magic.

Dael Norwood @dael.bsky.social · 12h

Awarding the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel to someone for their work on how tech innovations generate economic growth only when ppl understand why they work is an interesting thing to do in a moment when AI’s most ardent proponents can’t explain how it works

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Dael Norwood @dael.bsky.social · 12h

The Horrors! but competitively decorative

Dael Norwood @dael.bsky.social · 14h

Can confirm I still don’t enjoy the experience of a post going viral

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Dael Norwood @dael.bsky.social · 15h

Joe this is hinged as hell

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Dael Norwood @dael.bsky.social · 15h

Not bad, just distracting to get a lot of notifications.

Reposted by Dael Norwood

Rachel Hands @rachelhands.com · 16h

I wrote about Benioff’s call to send the National Guard to San Francisco and what it means for those of us whose careers are entangled in Salesforce. Hoping it’s also got something for others who are facing a tension between power in their industry / their own values. rachelhands.com/2025/10/13/w...

what we can do, today

Every so often I’m presented with a reason to rethink what I’m doing for a living. Over the past few years that’s generally come in the form of layoffs, or the big global crises that make one want …

rachelhands.com

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Reposted by Dael Norwood

Dan Greene @dmgreene.bsky.social · 17h

University management thinks "academic freedom" means free choice, free speech. But your individual choices don't matter if the institution won't support them: if they won't raise the money to support defunded climate science, if they tell you that teaching about Anti-Black Racism is illegal

University Senate re-considers ‘U.S. Anti-Black Racism’ course

The University of Connecticut Senate met to discuss the future of a U.S. Anti-Black Racism course amidst federal government scrutiny at 4 p.m. on Oct. 6 in the Student Union.

dailycampus.com

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Reposted by Dael Norwood

Thor Benson @thorbenson.bsky.social · 20h

As Trump tries to rule the nation as an authoritarian, it's important to understand the role of mass surveillance in all of this.

I talked to @mguariglia.bsky.social about that for my newsletter

The threat of mass surveillance under Trump

The Trump administration is collecting our data to realize its authoritarian goals.

madness.ghost.io

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Reposted by Dael Norwood

Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social · 19h

Inspired by Northwestern students protesting EdTech-delivered loyalty oaths, by the student-led Luddite Renaissance, by Matthew Josephson, Connie Bruck & @tressiemcphd.bsky.social, I tried to track how kleptocratic antitrust policy enables a surveillance megalith.

open.substack.com/pub/theameri...

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Dael Norwood @dael.bsky.social · 1d

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Dael Norwood @dael.bsky.social · 1d

Chaser:

" “We dishonor those who came before us if in this moment of crisis we remain silent,” Mr. Stevenson said. “I don’t think it’s just unempathetic. I don’t think it’s just cowardly. I think it’s dishonorable.” "

(gift link)

Civil Rights Lawyer Bryan Stevenson on How America’s Story Should Be Told

www.nytimes.com

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Dael Norwood @dael.bsky.social · 1d

Shot:

“Too political in a country too unstable, to make it short,” one source familiar with the game and its cancellation told Game File."

Scoop: Ubisoft cancelled a post-Civil War Assassin’s Creed last year

Company leadership deemed the project too controversial for the moment, sources tell Game File

www.gamefile.news

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Dael Norwood @dael.bsky.social · 1d

That’s a long way of saying that in aiding tyranny, Everett’s cops are acting in their city’s namesake’s immoral, cowardly, and blinkered fashion – and the people of Massachusetts should demand better, as they did in the mid-1850s, when Everett’s political star faded due to his compromising nature

Dael Norwood @dael.bsky.social · 1d

Indeed, in Boston, Everett was *surrounded* by staunch conservative unionists who during the 1850s dropped their attempts to make peaceat any cost bc they saw planters for the tyrants they were.

Hell, even Boston’s biggest opium traders – the Forbes bros, no great moralists, they! – got it.

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Dael Norwood @dael.bsky.social · 1d

Like many biographers, Mason is more generous to his subject’s moral failings than others might be. (See link).

Mason thinks Everett wrestled with his (conservative) antislavery conscience alongside an intense nationalist commitment. Maybe so; but other conservatives saw slavery’s sins sooner.

Movement within Bounds on the Antislavery Political Spectrum: The Case of Edward Everett

Several years ago I was at work on what I thought would be a group biography of the doughfaces, Northern politicians favorable to compromise with the South over slavery. I was prompted in large pa…

thepanorama.shear.org

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Dael Norwood @dael.bsky.social · 1d

The best biography of Everett, by far, is Matthew Mason’s Apostle of Union (UNC, 2021). It’s an excellent, thorough book that puts Everett thoughtfully in his context – and reveals a lot about elite 19th-century US politics.

uncpress.org/978146966607...

Apostle of Union

Known today as “the other speaker at Gettysburg,” Edward Everett had a distinguished and illustrative career at every level of American politics from the...

uncpress.org

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