India, energy + infrastructure history, environment and/vs. development @UChicagoHistory
Chicago/Yorkshire
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Is there anything new to say about the 1973 oil shock or Indira Gandhi’s India? Here’s hoping so.
At long last, my article is out in the AHR: “Late Acceleration: The Indian Emergency and the Early 1970s Energy Crisis.” 1/
doi.org/10.1093/ahr/rhae068
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A historic day. Good riddance to coal-fired power in Britain after 142 years!
A few minutes ago, Unit 4 turbo-generator at Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station desynced from the GB grid system, marking the END of electricity generation from COAL after 142 years 🇬🇧🙏🏻 @RobBurnett92 and I present a 🪡🧵on the evolution of coal fired power from 1882 to today 1/n
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Freebie of the day: my new colleague Sam Daly’s exciting new book on militarism as an ideology and a (counterintuitive) legal culture, helping to explain the troubling persistence of military rule across Africa. Ft. oracles, Fela Kuti, and a lot of men in uniform
Why did so many African countries become military dictatorships in the twentieth century? Militarism promised a utopia, and to some people it still does. Read Soldier’s Paradise: Militarism in Africa After Empire for free here: doi.org/10.1215/978147805982…
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"LIFE PUNISHES THE THRIFTLESS." Subtle thoughts on banking in/on the art deco Trustees System Service Building, Chicago (1929-30), ft. red marble from Oran, Algeria
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Guilty as charged. I see epigraphs like montages over the opening credits, a bit of mood music for what’s to come. But totally agree that they’re secretly more for the author than the reader, a little hoard of shiny magpie things displayed with all the charm of a rock collection
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This great new paper by @adityaramesh11 complicates cliches about big multipurpose dams reinforcing state power. At Mettur, he shows that hydroelectricity ran up against the irrigation interest of "an older extractive apparatus, that of agrarian property"
doi.org/10.1353/cap.2024.a93…
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liz chatterjee retweeted
During the 1970s, rising popular expectations in India collided with the energy crisis to impel a state-led embrace of coal, despite elite reservations about the environmental damage that would follow. Read more by @natterjee in the AHR’s June issue. doi.org/10.1093/ahr/rhae068
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Georgia O’Keeffe paints the fossil fuel city (1927-8). Current exhibition “My New Yorks” is well worth visiting at @artinstitutechi
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Happy to see @MeeraMahadevan's superb article—which already has dozens of citations as a pre-print—out at last. Her innovative methodology exposes data manipulation and systematic politicization of electricity in India, and its long-term costs, proving what's long been suspected
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liz chatterjee retweeted
To give you an idea of how significant Labour’s challenges with Muslim voters has been here is the swing in the seats where over 20% of the population are Muslim. Labour clearly have a real challenge to rebuild trust when in Government.
Crikey. Every focus group we've done in the area suggests Wes is hugely popular, so I think this really does show that Labour have a bigger problem on the left - driven by Gaza than we thought.
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"I look forward to voting these incompetent, hubristic grifters out and I hope they spend a very long time in the wilderness." AMEN.
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liz chatterjee retweeted
Justice Gorsuch's opinion refers five times to "nitrous oxide" (aka laughing gas) rather than the entirely different chemical compound -- smog-causing "nitrogen oxides" -- actually at issue in the case.
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Bush Jr. called Enron's CEO & long-term Houston pal "Kenny Boy." Defenders argued they weren't that close, Dubya just really loved nicknames. Some of his others:
"Pootie-Poot" = Vladimir Putin
"Saint Jim" = James Comey
"Balloon Foot" = Colin Powell
"Turd Blossom" = Karl Rove
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Alt-fossil fuel lobbying
"Mr. President... I urge you to attend the upcoming UN Conference on Environment & Development... and to support... establishing a reasonable, non-binding, stabilization level of carbon dioxide"
—Enron's Ken Lay to his buddy George H.W. Bush, 3 April 1992
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liz chatterjee retweeted
An important thread on the relentless heatwave
In collaboration with the National Hawkers Federation, we have launched our latest report Heatwave Havoc: Investigating the Impact on Street Vendors.
The findings highlight the severe challenges and critical effects that extreme heat waves impose on street vendors
A thread
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Is there anything new to say about the 1973 oil shock or Indira Gandhi’s India? Here’s hoping so.
At long last, my article is out in the AHR: “Late Acceleration: The Indian Emergency and the Early 1970s Energy Crisis.” 1/
doi.org/10.1093/ahr/rhae068
15
126
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101,779
Life too short for a monstrous 38-page article? There’s also a podcast version, miraculously edited into shape by Matt Hermane from my jetlagged ramblings historians.org/all-history-i…
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