THE SCREAM I LET OUT, JESUS WEPT

in retrospect, it was amazing how much power people like Steven Pinker and Malcolm Gladwell had at their fingertips in the pre-social media era. They could write an airport book claiming potato chips killed more people than all historical wars combined and it would become universal received wisdom

'The find, which dates to the 6th or 7th century, comes with extraordinary grave goods such as swords and shields, while the horse burial is remarkably similar to the one found at Sutton Hoo’s Mound 17.' A day's ride from Sutton Hoo... Exciting stuff from @cotswoldarch.bsky.social.

Confirmation needed but JFC

Kicking off the new year as God intended by freezing my ass off at a mediocre-quality EFL game

Read this absolute banger of an article by Michelle Wang in the new issue of Speculum! www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

Coming soon! We are excited to share our first issue in just a few months. We are also accepting submissions for issue 2 onwards! Feel free to send any questions or ideas to @calthalas.bsky.social @sihonglin.bsky.social or me on here, or with the editors via email tinyurl.com/tph5wvmd

A tune so ancient, it's positively prehistoric. #CursedCarols

Coming soon! We are excited to share our first issue in just a few months. We are also accepting submissions for issue 2 onwards! Feel free to send any questions or ideas to @calthalas.bsky.social @sihonglin.bsky.social or me on here, or with the editors via email tinyurl.com/tph5wvmd

The first issue is shaping up nicely already, look out for more news in 2026 and an appearance from the team at the Leeds International Medieval Congress!

And there it is, the Pescia altar panel, signed by Bonaventura Berlinghieri, and dated 1235, just a decade after St Francis's death. Our earliest example of a panel with scenes of his life and posthumous miracles. Well-displayed in San Francesco, Pescia, its proper home.

Believe it or not, this is even worse than it sounds. Unmissable.

An academic disliked an Oxford Very Short Introduction (145 pages) in his field so much that he wrote a 200 page book review attacking it. www.pierre-legrand.com/ewExternalFi...

SKULL OF THOMAS AQUINAS: TAKE A LEFT NOW PRIEST: No, the GPS says we have to keep going— SKULL: I KNOW A SHORTCUT PRIEST: Do you remember the last ti— SKULL: FOR THOSE WITH FAITH, NO EVIDENCE IS NECESSARY; FOR THOSE WITHOUT IT, NO EVIDENCE WILL SUFFICE

REPEAT AFTER ME (but really, after Neil Kraus): Wage stagnation and underemployment are not problems that education can fix. We cannot "upskill" students into well-paying jobs that do. not. exist.

can't stop watching this clip of a tesla Optimus teleoperator taking his headset off before properly logging out the robot

My new article has now been published in the 2025 volume of Traditio. I use a little examined episode on the lower Rhine in the late 350s with the aid of agricultural archaeology to reveal fiscal dependency relations between the Empire & Barbaricum, & the consequences of their rupture. #medievalsky

Figurative Norman fonts in the East Riding of Yorkshire. Unwrapped.

The mosaic was found only quite recently (in 2021) and it really is a stunner www.bbc.com/news/uk-engl...

Troy Story: The Ketton Mosaic, Aeschylus, and Greek Mythography in Late Roman Britain | Britannia | Cambridge Core www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

When Frank Gehry submitted his first proposal for the Eisenhower Memorial, it included a mock-up for a monumental sculpture. The statue depicted Ike as neither the president nor general but rather as a "barefoot boy," which is how he described himself returning to Kansas in victory after WWII.

I wrote a book, it now has a cover, it's all feeling very real! Coming out (open access) in February, for all those with an interest in, well, religion, gender, and/or politics in Sri Lankan history. www.arc-humanities.org/978180270309...

1 Dec: Lk 2:1: وكان فى تلك الايام خرج امر من قبل قيصر اغسطس ان يعدل الدنيا كلها wa-kāna fī tilka l-ʔayyām ḫaraǧa min qibali Qayṣar ʔAġusṭus ʔamr ʔan yuʕaddala d-dunyā kulluhā 'In these days, a decree was issued by Emperor Augustus that [the number of people of]* the entire world should be measured'

"After Mr. Paul learned from his wife that the authorities were threatening to deport her without a hearing ... their lawyer filed a lawsuit in federal court in San Diego to halt her removal and secure her release. In response, the government approved Ms. Paul’s green card on Tuesday and freed her"

News to me, but apparently this article is out now in #openaccess! I study the perfuming and ritualization of spaces associated with the memory of the Prophet Muhammad in early Islamic Medina. Part of a special issue on Scents in Medieval Material Culture www.brepolsonline.net/doi/abs/10.1...

I’m thrilled to share my new article, online and open access in Medieval Encounters! It’s called “Beyond Belief: Byzantine Statue Stories and their Absent Objects,” but it could be called “A Tale of Two Boars” 🐗 🐗

Latest update from @britishlibrary.bsky.social says they are launching a new version of their main catalogue on Monday 8 December and around that time also launch an interim version of their Archives and Manuscripts Catalogue. Hooray! www.bl.uk/stories/news...

How did the built environment shape social contention in Late Antiquity? Very pleased that this article, which has been in Early Access for just shy of a year, is now also out in print www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

It strikes me that a lot of educational conversations around AI and cheating have to do with the uncomfortable coexistence of our institutions of learning as both hierarchical merit systems and spaces of knowledge acquisition/production

my most butlerian jihad coded belief is that we should probably make it illegal – and more importantly, we should work toward a cultural consensus that it is immoral – to design a computer program whose interface uses the first person

It's Julia Child Day (at Smith College)! Queen of the organized kitchen // download the special issue of Design Quarterly or a poster here walkerart.org/magazine/des...

How did the built environment shape social contention in Late Antiquity? Very pleased that this article, which has been in Early Access for just shy of a year, is now also out in print www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

ANUBIS: (presses button with paw) [guilty] OSIRIS: im sorry he does this when he's hungry ANUBIS: (button) [guilty] [bad] [food] OSIRIS: you already ate ANUBIS: (button) [bad] [bad] [bad] OSIRIS: he's right though we weighed your heart against the feather and its not looking good

more coverage of this administrative buzzword coup “vision new synergies of the future with the School of Human Expression” "eliminating all the academic departments in a liberal arts college that is not hemorrhaging enrollment would be a very unusual step." www.nytimes.com/2025/11/19/n...

This isn’t “efficiency” it’s an ideological shift towards a Little England university system. Nottingham is set to become the only Russell Group university with no modern languages or music degrees. 48 courses on the line. We’re fighting it. www.theguardian.com/education/20...

UMass-Amherst is hiring “a specialist in the visual arts, architecture, and/or material culture of the Islamic world” ! careers.umass.edu/amherst/en-u...

ROFL. Eco is not wrong. He's not wrong at all.

I have been WAITING for a journalist to write this story. I specialize in manuscripts produced in England between 1300 and 1500. If this had occurred in the midst of writing my dissertation or first book, it would have exploded my career.

To be honest, I had no idea that Merriam-Webster is based in Springfield

The serpent head of the Oseberg Viking ship, carved in 820, and shown for the first time to the public in the Oslo Historical Museum

Academia thrives on status and its aspirational pursuit. For universities, the status conferred by “prestigious journals,” many rolled up into these publishing conglomerates, is “worth” the price paid for it. Likewise, the accrued, supposed status is why the sector can’t break free of them.

Congratulations to @rachelschine.bsky.social for winning the Best Book Award from the Middle East Medievalists association for her book, Black Knights: Arabic Epic and the Making of Medieval Race! Brava!!! 🍾🍾🍾 Here's the link, if you haven't already read it: press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...

What a thrill to read Jess Plant’s article on “Plastic Approaches to Roman Design” - open access, in the new issue of Art History!

I must admit that I didn't have a movie based on an early Christian apocryphal text starring Nicholas Cage on my 2025 bingo card apnews.com/article/carp...

Three German universities offering post-docs for researchers "who cannot conduct or continue their work in the USA appropriately because of actual political pressure. " www.uni-konstanz.de/zukunftskoll...

A recent study found that more than *20 percent* of UCDavis students relied on SNAP benefits—

BREAKING: Cornell caved. Here is the settlement agreement, signed today by the university's president, Michael Kotlikoff: statements.cornell.edu/2025/documen...

TIL there was a 2017 reboot of The Mummy starring... Tom Cruise?!