Today’s #MisinformationNation thread (3 days til publication!) is about numbers.

It might not be interesting if you have published a book, but I think I would have liked to read this thread while I was writing the book. First, length: the book has 110k words (726k characters, 1,733 paragraphs).

In Word, that worked out to 312 pages of text and 80 pages of endnotes (double spaced/Times New Roman/12). When typeset, it worked out to 226 pages of text (with one illustration) and 37 pages of notes.

It's four days until the publication date for #MisinformationNation!

Today's thread is about the biggest anxiety I have about the book.

Probably not a great idea to tweet about this just before it comes out, but you know how it is when you've had a half beer on a Friday evening I think I’m slightly heretical among some print historians because I’m really skeptical about how many people actually read print sources in early America—especially newspapers.

oh hey, look it's something I probably shouldn't have read and shouldn't argue with, but definitely did and will!

https://twitter.com/TIMEHistory/status/1542901253889560582

if there's one thing I hope my book can do, it's push back against this kind of framing of the media crisis of the 21st century as a declension from an age of plain, honest, facts.

Study the Founders to find out how we got into the mess we're in. Don't study the Founders because they were wise sages with uniquely brilliant insights into the science of government. They weren't. Otherwise we probably wouldn't be in this mess.

https://twitter.com/aaronmphillips/status/1542496209725804544

I really do mean that first part, though. So many of our problems come back, ultimately, to the Founders' laziness, wishful thinking, irrationality, and intentionally anti-democratic thinking.

But we're supposed to revere them!

I'm reading through this "1776 Returns" plan cited in the Proud Boys case. It's chilling.

But it also accidentally makes the case that we need to INVEST in educating students about the American Revolution, because this isn't it.

storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco… I wrote (on 1/7) about the insurrectionists using the iconography and language of the American Revolution to support their insane conspiracy theories.

They didn't realize that they were recreating the insane paranoia of many of the Patriots in 1776.
washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/0…

Are modern conservatives the true heirs of the American Revolution?

This article by @DrSamuelGregg makes the case that today's conservatives should claim the revolution for themselves.

This is sort of a pet peeve of mine, so please excuse this long 🧵.

nationalreview.com/2022/02/why-th… Gregg insists that, like conservatives today, the American revolutionaries were realists who accepted “human imperfectability.”

Instead of trying to regenerate humanity like the French Revolution, the American revolutionaries created institutions built on human weakness.

So I just noticed that it's been 4 months since I quit my VAP a year early and started a non-academic editing job.

I spent most of the last decade working hard to win the lottery of a TT academic teaching job. I'm glad I didn't!

A 🧵 for grad students figuring out what's next. Some observations before I start: I have benefited from a lot of luck and privilege. Hundreds of people applied for the VAP gig I had, and most of them would have done a great job I'm sure. It paid well, which gave me some cushion to take a risk.

Not everyone can.