Jason L. Newton
@jason-l-newton.bsky.social
Assistant teaching prof, PhD, #history of #capitalism / #envhist
@CLTHistoryDept #laborhistory #historyofcapitalism #firstgenphd. Views my own. pages.charlotte.edu/jasonlnewton/. @aaup.bsky.social member.
@CLTHistoryDept #laborhistory #historyofcapitalism #firstgenphd. Views my own. pages.charlotte.edu/jasonlnewton/. @aaup.bsky.social member.
Pinned
It was the greatest honor of my career to be a runner up for the George Perkins Marsh prize for best book in environmental history at #aesh2025. I wrote this book for these people and it is so great to know they liked it! @wvupress.bsky.social
Clearly I'm loving the snow that we are getting in Charlotte but the city is pretty unprepared. That is likely because this level of snow fall has be come much rarer in the last 40 to 50 years. Source: www.weather.gov/media/gsp/Cl...
January 31, 2026 at 9:48 PM
Clearly I'm loving the snow that we are getting in Charlotte but the city is pretty unprepared. That is likely because this level of snow fall has be come much rarer in the last 40 to 50 years. Source: www.weather.gov/media/gsp/Cl...
Coal combustion does more than warm the earth. It also deviates local ecosystems like those in the Adirondacks. New research shows that Brook Trout have recovered very well since 1990 Clean Air Act improved air quality in the region. doi.org/10.1086/738871
Fish-assemblage and water-quality recovery with declining acidic deposition in Adirondack mountain streams, New York, USA | Freshwater Science: Vol 44, No 4
Abstract Long-term records of air-pollutant emissions and atmospheric deposition, as well as water quality in streams of the Adirondack Mountains of New York, USA, indicate that chemical recovery…
doi.org
January 31, 2026 at 3:25 PM
Coal combustion does more than warm the earth. It also deviates local ecosystems like those in the Adirondacks. New research shows that Brook Trout have recovered very well since 1990 Clean Air Act improved air quality in the region. doi.org/10.1086/738871
I have been annoyed by the media's tendency to overanalyze. Isn't it the case that all the major global and domestic issues today are the result of fact that the USA has granted too much power to the executive branch over the last 100 years? That explains everything.
January 30, 2026 at 6:16 PM
I have been annoyed by the media's tendency to overanalyze. Isn't it the case that all the major global and domestic issues today are the result of fact that the USA has granted too much power to the executive branch over the last 100 years? That explains everything.
This is an enclosure of public space which will make my neighbor less diverse & interesting. Through economies of agglomeration venders brought more business to the neighborhood & increased the size of the economic pie available to all businesses
qcnerve.com/noda-street-...
qcnerve.com/noda-street-...
NoDa Street Vendor Pilot Set to Expire, Citywide Regulation in the Works | Queen City Nerve
A pilot program that regulated street vending in NoDa will expire this month, with city officials planning further citywide regulation.
qcnerve.com
January 28, 2026 at 4:11 PM
This is an enclosure of public space which will make my neighbor less diverse & interesting. Through economies of agglomeration venders brought more business to the neighborhood & increased the size of the economic pie available to all businesses
qcnerve.com/noda-street-...
qcnerve.com/noda-street-...
Ok given the news I feel like I have to pull out this blog post I wrote in 2019 about times and places where people saw cold and snow as a great boon not a curse. We have much to learn from this history. edgeeffects.net/hey-snow-its...
Hey Snow! It's Not You, It's Us
How did Northeasterners survive winter before plows and blowers? A historian uncovers 19th-century lessons for working with—not against—the snow.
edgeeffects.net
January 24, 2026 at 2:02 AM
Ok given the news I feel like I have to pull out this blog post I wrote in 2019 about times and places where people saw cold and snow as a great boon not a curse. We have much to learn from this history. edgeeffects.net/hey-snow-its...
.#ai can be a force for good!
January 24, 2026 at 1:38 AM
.#ai can be a force for good!
I’ve been thinking more about the problems with the synoptic perspective inherent to macroeconomic thinking. Critics of immigration to the US don’t have a problem with the immigrant qua person but have a problem with the statistics on immigration and the alleged implications of those numbers.
January 23, 2026 at 9:41 PM
I’ve been thinking more about the problems with the synoptic perspective inherent to macroeconomic thinking. Critics of immigration to the US don’t have a problem with the immigrant qua person but have a problem with the statistics on immigration and the alleged implications of those numbers.
Have Americans accepted that we have had so many constitutional crises in the last year that the term is meaningless or irrelevant? Is The Constitution broken?
January 23, 2026 at 6:55 PM
Have Americans accepted that we have had so many constitutional crises in the last year that the term is meaningless or irrelevant? Is The Constitution broken?
A barista today in my neighborhood said she took my class The Invention of Private Property a few years ago. I didn’t recognize her but she said she liked the class and that she thinks about it a lot. For me, there are fewer higher compliments.
January 22, 2026 at 12:37 AM
A barista today in my neighborhood said she took my class The Invention of Private Property a few years ago. I didn’t recognize her but she said she liked the class and that she thinks about it a lot. For me, there are fewer higher compliments.
LinkedIn is the only sane social media but it is only sane relative to all the others. Giving that it is all about networking it has a type of quaint antiquated insanity.
January 20, 2026 at 10:36 PM
LinkedIn is the only sane social media but it is only sane relative to all the others. Giving that it is all about networking it has a type of quaint antiquated insanity.
I’ve been getting tired of the news coverage of the USA today because there is a tendency to over analyze. Much of this news defies analysis not because it’s complex but because the trends are so clear and need no further explanation. Case and point:
Board of Peace - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
January 20, 2026 at 6:24 PM
I’ve been getting tired of the news coverage of the USA today because there is a tendency to over analyze. Much of this news defies analysis not because it’s complex but because the trends are so clear and need no further explanation. Case and point:
Our evironmentally inefficient meat sources are thinking very clearly. Eat less meat
Back-scratching bovine leads scientists to reassess intelligence of cows
Brown Swiss in Austria has been discovered using tools in different ways – something only ever seen in humans and chimpanzees
www.theguardian.com
January 20, 2026 at 4:19 PM
Our evironmentally inefficient meat sources are thinking very clearly. Eat less meat
So let’s get this straight, the Trump admin just got done bullying NATO countries into increasing military spending and now the admin is getting belligerent with those same countries?
January 20, 2026 at 12:22 PM
So let’s get this straight, the Trump admin just got done bullying NATO countries into increasing military spending and now the admin is getting belligerent with those same countries?
Historians don’t try to predict. We don’t say “X will happen” instead we say “let’s work towards making sure X won’t happen.”
January 18, 2026 at 4:24 PM
Historians don’t try to predict. We don’t say “X will happen” instead we say “let’s work towards making sure X won’t happen.”
Reposted by Jason L. Newton
"Censoring Plato is an academic absurdity and a textbook violation of academic freedom. A university that censors Plato—as well as other significant texts—abandons its obligation to truth, free inquiry, and the public trust."
— AAUP President Todd Wolfson
— AAUP President Todd Wolfson
AAUP President Todd Wolfson: An Institution That Censors Plato is Not a Serious Institution of Higher Learning
Censoring Plato is an academic absurdity and a textbook violation of academic freedom. Barring a foundational philosopher who is a cornerstone of Western thought because his work touches on race or ge...
www.aaup.org
January 12, 2026 at 2:40 PM
"Censoring Plato is an academic absurdity and a textbook violation of academic freedom. A university that censors Plato—as well as other significant texts—abandons its obligation to truth, free inquiry, and the public trust."
— AAUP President Todd Wolfson
— AAUP President Todd Wolfson
Among the many ominous parts of this market is the fact that it says “Trump” and not “The United States.”
January 17, 2026 at 11:00 PM
Among the many ominous parts of this market is the fact that it says “Trump” and not “The United States.”
My book _Cutover Capitalism_ was recently reviewed in the December issue of the American Historical Review! Check it out here: doi.org/10.1093/ahr/....
Validate User
academic.oup.com
January 16, 2026 at 9:43 PM
My book _Cutover Capitalism_ was recently reviewed in the December issue of the American Historical Review! Check it out here: doi.org/10.1093/ahr/....
Is sports fandom the OG parasocial relationship?
January 14, 2026 at 3:05 AM
Is sports fandom the OG parasocial relationship?
Is “doomscrolling” really the problem, or a way to individualize what’s actually structural? Even offline, the world feels more unequal, polarized, and precarious than it did in the 1990s. Are screens the real cause of our endemic anxiety?
January 11, 2026 at 11:13 PM
Is “doomscrolling” really the problem, or a way to individualize what’s actually structural? Even offline, the world feels more unequal, polarized, and precarious than it did in the 1990s. Are screens the real cause of our endemic anxiety?
"you know, the fact that they had a boat land there 500 years ago doesn't mean that they own the land." Donald Trump, 2026
January 10, 2026 at 1:10 AM
"you know, the fact that they had a boat land there 500 years ago doesn't mean that they own the land." Donald Trump, 2026
"When any.. activity in the US takes 38k... lives in one year, it becomes a national problem... In the last 50 years... the automobile has killed more people in the United States than we have had fatalities in... all the wars of the United States since its founding 177 years ago." Eisenhower, 1954
January 8, 2026 at 5:38 PM
"When any.. activity in the US takes 38k... lives in one year, it becomes a national problem... In the last 50 years... the automobile has killed more people in the United States than we have had fatalities in... all the wars of the United States since its founding 177 years ago." Eisenhower, 1954
It is fine to criticize #AI energy and water use but to do so honestly means acknowledging that many other very common online activities like streaming video also have big energy and water demands. The digital world is actually very tangible.
January 7, 2026 at 7:53 PM
It is fine to criticize #AI energy and water use but to do so honestly means acknowledging that many other very common online activities like streaming video also have big energy and water demands. The digital world is actually very tangible.
I’m resonating so much with this Marc Bloch quote right now. “No survey will be made here of those paper wars in which scholars have sometimes engaged. History, not historians, is my concern.” I’m kind of over historiography.
January 7, 2026 at 2:33 PM
I’m resonating so much with this Marc Bloch quote right now. “No survey will be made here of those paper wars in which scholars have sometimes engaged. History, not historians, is my concern.” I’m kind of over historiography.
Vote here on the rendering that you like best for the Charlotte labor history mural that I helped to fund and manage! There are a lot of good options. www.instagram.com/p/DTGkikWAbq...
NoDa Neighborhood Business Association (@nodaclt) • Instagram photos and videos
157 likes, 0 comments - nodaclt on January 4, 2026: "🎨 Help Us Choose Our Next Mural! 🎨 The NoDa NBA is bringing a brand-new mural to life celebrating the stories, strength, and creativity of North...
www.instagram.com
January 4, 2026 at 10:49 PM
Vote here on the rendering that you like best for the Charlotte labor history mural that I helped to fund and manage! There are a lot of good options. www.instagram.com/p/DTGkikWAbq...