Read away! miriamposner.com/classes/is29...

'As AI-augmented research proliferates, the scope of scientific inquiry is contracting.' A vital point, and a nettle that universities everywhere must grasp firmly however painful that is, with respect both to research and to teaching/learning across all discipline (SHAPE+STEM)s. 1/2

every quantitative measure is actually a stack of qualitative assumptions in a trenchcoat

Wait wait, I know! Bring me some elephants!

Intriguing ! www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Or the LLM version: “Many said it was the best of times. But some felt that times were worse.”

I hadn’t latched on to the Dardanelles as the go-to analogy. But I suppose I should have. First World War historians! Your time is now.

No one in this administration could read a map, could they

My mother's funeral-- which I say not to be a downer, but because she taught Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar" for many years, and she would have been quite pleased to have her funeral on that day

Money and numeracy...

I love getting things notarized. I love the stamp and the thing that crinkles the paper and the signatures and the Important Book, all the different physical traces. It's the best.

remember you can always burn Shein clothes for petroleum

A nice comparandum for Roman illustrations of human powered cranes

This is true, if “the good life” means “drinking heavily and networking with other sons of the gentry, followed perhaps by an easy job in the Church,” and “the humanities” mean “Latin and theology.”

Imagine viewing this and concluding that academic Gender Studies is no longer relevant as a field of inquiry.

I like Denzel and all but he is TOO OLD to be Hannibal during the 2nd Punic War. Scipio should also be young but now if they make him young it will look weird. Napoleon also should have been young. Stop making everyone in historical epics old! Nevertheless, I will watch it.

New discovery: A large burial ground dating from the Early Imperial Age to Late Antiquity has been uncovered in Rome’s Ostiense Necropolis during pre-construction works. cultura.gov.it/comunicato/2...

"Neglect of technological unemployment in academic circles has given rise to a common view in debates about the future of work that any negative impacts of innovation are short-lived...the scale and duration of unemployment question sanguine views about the consequences of technological change."

..."Revealed and Concealed: Carrying and the Sinus in Ancient Rome" and cited the Gellius version, but sadly hadn't noticed the contrasting Polybius one, and am sharing it here for my own satisfaction. For more, including how the sinus was and was NOT like a pocket: muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/articl...

...right there in the Senate, and tear it up. By the time Gellius was writing, the sinus (fold of the toga) served as a carrying space in a way that it did not in the time of Polybius, which meant that Gellius could have Scipio be much more dramatic. I wrote about the development of the sinus in...

When Polybius tells the story of how Scipio Africanus was accused of embezzlement in the Senate (23.14.7-8), he says that Scipio sent his brother to get his account book (which Scipio tore up). When Aulus Gellius tells the story (Gell. NA 4.18.9), he has Scipio take the account out of his toga...

The latest Pasts Imperfect is out, focused on the closing of humanities depts. & museums. @otavano.bsky.social discusses the U. of Ottawa, @mokersel.bsky.social on the DePaul Art Museum, @meirazk.bsky.social & @vox-magica.bsky.social on shuttering religious studies depts, & Justin Vorhis on U. Iowa.

When Polybius tells the story of how Scipio Africanus was accused of embezzlement in the Senate (23.14.7-8), he says that Scipio sent his brother to get his account book (which Scipio tore up). When Aulus Gellius tells the story (Gell. NA 4.18.9), he has Scipio take the account out of his toga...

Allergic to anyone who uses the word “workflow”

🏺 Nice study, though not surprising there are differences since cuneiform evolved out of symbols that seem related to administration, eg seals on jars. Palaeolithic & Aurignacian markings maybe closer in context/meaning to Chinese late Neolithic/early Bronze Age symbols eventually used in pyromancy

Now in #paperback, @rorynaismith.bsky.social's Making Money in the Early Middle Ages is an examination of coined money and its significance to rulers, aristocrats and peasants in early medieval Europe. Learn more: press.princeton.edu/books/paperb... #History #ReadUP

Hi friends. As I previously noted, the U. of Iowa is planning to get rid of African American studies; Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies, & the Classical Languages major—along with others. If you wish, please sign the classics petition: www.change.org/p/keep-the-c.... I will add more as I find out.

This quote by Andre Tchernia is striking in light of the fascination of ancient historians with NIE: "It may not be coincidental that the transaction-costs theory emerged after the other transport revolution, the one caused by the advent of containers in the late 1960s. They drastically reduced...

Hello Bluesky! My new book, THE FIREARM REVOLUTION, is out on 14 April. It’s about how a new technology changed society, and how hard it was to control. Here’s a little thread of what’s inside:

The long 2010s are finally over

I didn't realize this was already out, and the deadline is near, but here's the CFP for a really interesting conference on "Willful Imprecision" (aka non/failure/gap standardization) in Louvain in September. www.fabula.org/actualites/1...

#Paleolithic sign sequences as information #recording system? This is quite a fascinating re-evaluation of the "ornaments", i.e. repeated lines, notches, dots and crosses, on 34,000 to 45,000 y/o artifacts from #Swabian Jura caves: 🏺 nachrichten.idw-online.de/2026/02/23/s... via @idw-online.de

A highlight of early Hellenistic Taranto is the stunning terracotta group of Orpheus and the Sirens, recently returned from the Getty to Italy. While striking, their original setting, possibly on a funerary monument, remains a mystery. Taranto, late 4th c. BCE, 📷 by me #Archaeology 🏺

Just chillin’ at the glue factory

Love the glimpse into the beautiful mind that notated this used copy of Moby Dick I got

There's a lot going on. But it deserves FAR MORE ATTENTION that Whiskey Pete is going to seize the means of AI production so he can 1) engage in mass surveillance of Americans and 2) shoot without human intervention. Dystopias this bad would be deemed unrealistic. www.axios.com/2026/02/24/a...

we may have cultures that are matrilocal, or matrilineal, or that celebrate female freedom, or sexual agency, or have lots of little goddess-statues... but we must also ask "what about the violence." is violence or the threat of violence used to extract reproductive labor from women.

AI is going to put LMS systems out of business because it will be impossible to have any work or materials online, ever, and there’s something a little beautiful about that companion.ai/einstein?fbc...

An advantage of having kids in your late 30s/early 40s is that there is no universe in which you could ever be intimidated by such a woman

The inevitable next stage of academic publishers profiting from academics' work is here - scraping it for AI then charging subscriptions for access to the AI summaries, and then again for the citations. Academic content assetization as we called it in a recent paper. www.science.org/content/arti...

A big proofs day!!! I worked on this chapter for a long time and it’s so exciting to finally see it in this form! This is part of a wonderful volume edited by @chrissieplastow.bsky.social and @hilarylehmann. Shoutout to @dominicmachado.bsky.social @antiquethought.bsky.social

Me (in a draft paper): "Surely only a fraction of Roman society was literate." Student providing feedback: "This statement is meaningless. Anything less than 100% is a fraction." Lol, harsh but fair!

Please support the petition against the planned #closure of #Archaeology at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Archaeology has been a part of Humboldt-Universität academic tradition for almost 200 years, so closing it would break a long-standing research tradition weact.campact.de/petitions/sc...

I knew about the latrines in Aurelian's wall but, like the BMCR reviewer (Clarke), did NOT know about "trough-like urinals lining the corridors of the Colosseum and the Circus Maximus." Yet another source nuancing our notions of a uniquely disgusting Rome...BUT... bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2026/2026.02...

Extremely eager to read this book and glad it has arrived. Have already underlined much of the introduction.

So many extraordinary performances, but for me he’s always Gus McCrae in Lonesome Dove.

"Empires are not defended by marble" -- *stares in Augustus*

Art History will continue to be seen as an elitist discipline if the public apparatuses for communicating it refuse to acknowledge the scholarship that has drawn attention to art's role in serving and subverting power. Read the righteous review by Sherry Lindqiust here. hnanews.org/hnar/reviews...