Hannah Sparwasser Soroka
@hannah-historian.bsky.social
PhD Candidate working 17th century intellectual history at McGill | I want to talk on your podcast/write for your publication | she/they
Pinned
I'm gaining a couple of followers here and there, so here's a few (early modern, diss-related) things I am working on right now and would love to talk about:
- kidney/gall stones
- cider production (esp. in 17th century England)
- perpetual motion machines
- decline and decrepitude
- kidney/gall stones
- cider production (esp. in 17th century England)
- perpetual motion machines
- decline and decrepitude
Basically all pie is good, actually. Most people just don't make good pie crusts and underseason their fillings.
Apple pie is bad. This is not really debatable. So is key lime pie, while we’re on the topic. Pecan pie is the 🐐 tho.
November 25, 2025 at 9:28 PM
Basically all pie is good, actually. Most people just don't make good pie crusts and underseason their fillings.
I recently had a conversation with some friends about the weird realization that we've "aged out" of the attention of creepy men. None of us are over 30 and most of us felt like it had happened years ago.
This also tracks with my experience of street harassment and physical abuse.
An adult man -- a complete stranger -- photographed me playing on the swing set in the playground after school when I was younger than 10.
When I tried to run away, he started following me until I screamed for a teacher.
An adult man -- a complete stranger -- photographed me playing on the swing set in the playground after school when I was younger than 10.
When I tried to run away, he started following me until I screamed for a teacher.
I was talking with a friend my age not long ago about how she received the largest amount of male interest from older men when she was ~8 years old to around 19 or so.
At least a couple of them--from church, mind you--said she was "worth the risk with law enforcement". She wasn't safe at church.
At least a couple of them--from church, mind you--said she was "worth the risk with law enforcement". She wasn't safe at church.
November 12, 2025 at 10:15 PM
I recently had a conversation with some friends about the weird realization that we've "aged out" of the attention of creepy men. None of us are over 30 and most of us felt like it had happened years ago.
Reposted by Hannah Sparwasser Soroka
The far right is obsessed with Lord of the Rings and Musk keeps posting about "hobbits" because modern scientific racism owes more to fantasy worlds and gaming systems than genetic science, and they see both as effective mediums for right-wing propaganda www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/1...
Why Elon Musk Needs Dungeons and Dragons to Be Racist
The fantastical roots of “scientific racism”
www.theatlantic.com
November 11, 2025 at 2:42 PM
The far right is obsessed with Lord of the Rings and Musk keeps posting about "hobbits" because modern scientific racism owes more to fantasy worlds and gaming systems than genetic science, and they see both as effective mediums for right-wing propaganda www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/1...
Reposted by Hannah Sparwasser Soroka
Gut Shabbos and Shabbat Shalom especially to everyone who understands, now more than ever, that Jewish safety will not come from spreading Islamophobia and othering other communities.
November 7, 2025 at 10:22 PM
Gut Shabbos and Shabbat Shalom especially to everyone who understands, now more than ever, that Jewish safety will not come from spreading Islamophobia and othering other communities.
Reposted by Hannah Sparwasser Soroka
since chatgpt has coached another young person in a mental health crisis to their death, I am yet again tapping the sign
November 7, 2025 at 10:59 AM
since chatgpt has coached another young person in a mental health crisis to their death, I am yet again tapping the sign
And I repeat: nothing a chatbot can do is now or ever will be as valuable as the life of this one individual person.
I fully believe in the corporate death penalty and believe we would be a better world if OpenAI lost its corporate charter and was forcibly dissolved.
www.cnn.com/2025/11/06/u...
www.cnn.com/2025/11/06/u...
ChatGPT encouraged college graduate to commit suicide, family claims in lawsuit against OpenAI | CNN
A 23-year-old man killed himself in Texas after ChatGPT ‘goaded’ him to commit suicide, his family says in a lawsuit.
www.cnn.com
November 8, 2025 at 1:56 AM
And I repeat: nothing a chatbot can do is now or ever will be as valuable as the life of this one individual person.
Wait no way
don't want to spoil anything here but it does not go great for her, in the interview with Isaac Chotiner
October 28, 2025 at 4:36 AM
Wait no way
Reposted by Hannah Sparwasser Soroka
what do we do with a labor situation where arguably the most class conscious and unionized sector are people that had to attend multiple years of post-HS education to do their jobs, but are nonetheless wage laborers?
October 24, 2025 at 10:42 PM
what do we do with a labor situation where arguably the most class conscious and unionized sector are people that had to attend multiple years of post-HS education to do their jobs, but are nonetheless wage laborers?
Really don't like this phenomenon where I give myself one singular extra day off and immediately become sick enough that it looks like I'll lose the rest of the week
October 15, 2025 at 8:58 PM
Really don't like this phenomenon where I give myself one singular extra day off and immediately become sick enough that it looks like I'll lose the rest of the week
I've been told that the angels are modeled on his children.
By Fra Filippo Lippi, Madonna and Child with Two Angels, 1465. Everything about this picture is stunning but I really love the angel smiling at us!
October 7, 2025 at 2:59 PM
I've been told that the angels are modeled on his children.
Reposted by Hannah Sparwasser Soroka
every day brings us one step closer to the promise of creation (Mountain Goats "Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald")
GOOD MORNING TWO NEW MOUNTAIN GOATS SONGS ONE WHERE ME AND PETER BALKAN AND ADAM START CALCULATING HOW TO SURVIVE AFTER A SHIPWRECK & ONE WHERE ADAM EXITS STAGE LEFT NEVER TO BE SEEN AGAIN
30tgrs.ffm.to/coldatnight-...
30tgrs.ffm.to/coldatnight-...
The Mountain Goats - Cold at Night / Rocks in My Pockets
Choose your preferred music service
30tgrs.ffm.to
October 7, 2025 at 11:43 AM
every day brings us one step closer to the promise of creation (Mountain Goats "Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald")
- Mashed potato w/ fried egg on top
- Orange juice and buttermilk mixed together
- Sweet and sour cabbage soup with raisins in it
- Veggies dipped in curry mayo (Thad just mayo with some curry powder stirred in)
- Weißwürste (a Bavarian sausage you have to peel)
- Currywurst
- Sweet noodle kugel
- Orange juice and buttermilk mixed together
- Sweet and sour cabbage soup with raisins in it
- Veggies dipped in curry mayo (Thad just mayo with some curry powder stirred in)
- Weißwürste (a Bavarian sausage you have to peel)
- Currywurst
- Sweet noodle kugel
What foods do you love that you fully acknowledge make you a pervert for loving them?
October 7, 2025 at 2:40 AM
- Mashed potato w/ fried egg on top
- Orange juice and buttermilk mixed together
- Sweet and sour cabbage soup with raisins in it
- Veggies dipped in curry mayo (Thad just mayo with some curry powder stirred in)
- Weißwürste (a Bavarian sausage you have to peel)
- Currywurst
- Sweet noodle kugel
- Orange juice and buttermilk mixed together
- Sweet and sour cabbage soup with raisins in it
- Veggies dipped in curry mayo (Thad just mayo with some curry powder stirred in)
- Weißwürste (a Bavarian sausage you have to peel)
- Currywurst
- Sweet noodle kugel
Reposted by Hannah Sparwasser Soroka
I see pieces like this a lot, often w/ a spin of lamenting cultural degeneration, but reading is a LABOR issue, it’s declined because so many people are working overtime or two jobs & employers expect after hours work. France has Earth’s highest reading rate b/c long lunch breaks & labor protections
October 7, 2025 at 12:25 AM
I see pieces like this a lot, often w/ a spin of lamenting cultural degeneration, but reading is a LABOR issue, it’s declined because so many people are working overtime or two jobs & employers expect after hours work. France has Earth’s highest reading rate b/c long lunch breaks & labor protections
Reposted by Hannah Sparwasser Soroka
Brother Herbert's Big Onion
October 4, 2025 at 10:09 PM
Brother Herbert's Big Onion
Reposted by Hannah Sparwasser Soroka
Oak gall wasps are my current obsession - galls are a key ingredient in European writing inks before industrialisation.
Countless ideas on paper start with the relationship between an oak tree and a wasp.
Marcello Malpighi observed galls to understand and illustrate their growth in the 1670s
Countless ideas on paper start with the relationship between an oak tree and a wasp.
Marcello Malpighi observed galls to understand and illustrate their growth in the 1670s
September 30, 2025 at 8:05 AM
Oak gall wasps are my current obsession - galls are a key ingredient in European writing inks before industrialisation.
Countless ideas on paper start with the relationship between an oak tree and a wasp.
Marcello Malpighi observed galls to understand and illustrate their growth in the 1670s
Countless ideas on paper start with the relationship between an oak tree and a wasp.
Marcello Malpighi observed galls to understand and illustrate their growth in the 1670s
As an early modernist, I can do quarantine to guillotine
So I used to like to joke I taught from Plato to NATO
But really I taught from, say, Gilgamesh to Luther.
But they don't rhyme. I want them to rhyme.
But really I taught from, say, Gilgamesh to Luther.
But they don't rhyme. I want them to rhyme.
September 30, 2025 at 1:13 AM
As an early modernist, I can do quarantine to guillotine
Reposted by Hannah Sparwasser Soroka
I know I’ve been posting a lot about this, but it’s telling of how this government looks at society that at the very moment Mark Carney can’t stop talking about nation-building projects, he’s throwing the biggest nationwide service-delivery network on the scrap heap because it doesn’t make money.
September 26, 2025 at 1:11 AM
I know I’ve been posting a lot about this, but it’s telling of how this government looks at society that at the very moment Mark Carney can’t stop talking about nation-building projects, he’s throwing the biggest nationwide service-delivery network on the scrap heap because it doesn’t make money.
I will take any and every opportunity to blame Rousseau for any and everything.
as François Furet used to say, there's a straight line leading from Rousseau to Trump
September 24, 2025 at 3:24 PM
I will take any and every opportunity to blame Rousseau for any and everything.
This is how your email finds me
change of plans. feeling like I'm just gonna come to terms with my rusty cage
September 12, 2025 at 3:05 AM
This is how your email finds me
My high school English class read Dario Fo's "Accidental Death of an Anarchist," which is a wacky farce about the Piazza Fontana bombing, police collusion with fascism, and the manipulation of fact.
Thinking about the 1969 Piazza Fontana bombing and how Italy's security services blamed it on anarchists, arrested nearly 100 activists and threw one of them out the 4th floor window of the police station.
The bombing was carried out by a neo-fascist group with ties to the state security services.
The bombing was carried out by a neo-fascist group with ties to the state security services.
September 11, 2025 at 11:32 AM
My high school English class read Dario Fo's "Accidental Death of an Anarchist," which is a wacky farce about the Piazza Fontana bombing, police collusion with fascism, and the manipulation of fact.
I'm working on 4 different knitting projects, restarting therapy, and writing my dissertation! I'm proud of me for trying really hard every day!
i wrote this post in july two years ago when blue sky had around 200,000 total users and i thought i would ask again
tell me what u are doing
be proud of what u do and share it here
tell me what u are doing
be proud of what u do and share it here
tell me what u are doing
be proud of your work and share it here
be proud of your work and share it here
September 11, 2025 at 1:20 AM
I'm working on 4 different knitting projects, restarting therapy, and writing my dissertation! I'm proud of me for trying really hard every day!
Reposted by Hannah Sparwasser Soroka
Always a good time to rewatch this speech. I forgot she called out the publishers for charging libraries so much for ebooks. Sad she’s gone, but happy she left us with so much fantastic work to discuss and think about at every read.
Ursula Le Guin
YouTube video by National Book
www.youtube.com
September 8, 2025 at 11:48 PM
Always a good time to rewatch this speech. I forgot she called out the publishers for charging libraries so much for ebooks. Sad she’s gone, but happy she left us with so much fantastic work to discuss and think about at every read.
This is not solace. The fact that the thing can't say "I don't know" is specifically the thing that worries me.
A little solace for the Anti AI crowd. The greatest weakness of AI is its inability to say “I don’t know”.
Our ability to admit what we don’t know , will always govern humans an advantage.
Our ability to admit what we don’t know , will always govern humans an advantage.
September 9, 2025 at 4:43 PM
This is not solace. The fact that the thing can't say "I don't know" is specifically the thing that worries me.
Perfect quiet and grey Saturday for blocking a bunch of finished projects and putting some work in on the Christmas gifts
September 6, 2025 at 7:36 PM
Perfect quiet and grey Saturday for blocking a bunch of finished projects and putting some work in on the Christmas gifts
Really glad and interested to read that In Our Time is one of the most popular BBC podcasts for the under-35 demographic.
A huge moment -- Melvyn Bragg steps down from In Our Time after over a quarter of a century. What a programme and what a legacy! Just a model for how to make great, clever, engaging radio, and a twenty-seven-year experiment that proves there's a huge global audience for smart, scholarly programming.
Melvyn Bragg decides to step down from presenting In Our Time
After 26 years on the programme, the legendary presenter bids farewell to the series
www.bbc.co.uk
September 3, 2025 at 11:37 AM
Really glad and interested to read that In Our Time is one of the most popular BBC podcasts for the under-35 demographic.