From an email to one of our faculty members.... Not even Plato can escape censorship at Texas A&M!

Can state-building disrupt rather than stabilize society? In a new @apsrjournal.bsky.social article, @victorgayeco.bsky.social and I show that the expansion of state communication networks spurred rebellion for decades in France before the Revolution 👉 Article: doi.org/10.1017/S000... 🧵1/X

Yes. Smaller classes. (My class sizes and course load are being increased. Oh well).

Both books sound incredible

Saying it again, anthropomorphized "chatbot" user interfaces to LLMs should be illegal. There's zero reason these interfaces have to be like this—other than companies making people addicted to them.

If I were an LLM, my tell would be the word "striking." Everything is "striking." All pieces of evidence are "striking." I am perpetually struck.

Been spending my evenings of late reading this book. Well deserved!!

Devouring Edith Wharton‘s “The Custom of the Country” as though it’s a thriller

These depictions and their "abbreviations" seem to follow some kind of convention, or even standardisation. This could imho indeed speak in favour of a #communication system for storing and transmitting specific content and #knowledge.

And sometimes there are even #symbolic substitutes for larger, more complex depictions. Like, for example, the #bucranium ("ox head") instead of an aurochs in its entirety, arrow-like zigzag lines instead of snakes, or large birds reduced to a few lines.

These depictions are well fitting into PPN #iconography known from a variety of typical find groups - apparently shared over a wider region and forming a common set of symbols within what seems a large-scale communication respectively exchange network. www.dainst.blog/the-tepe-tel...

These so-called stone #plaquettes (the type originally named at (and after) the site of #JerfElAhmar in modern day Syria) are a very fascinating find group in particular since they seem to serve no other purpose than indeed carrying these symbols (see e.g. 5-7 in the figure here).

“They study not only the artifacts, but also the hands that forged them, the minds that conceived them and the hearts that loved them. Behind every object there is a person, a soul and a community…it gives a voice to the silence of history, restoring dignity to the forgotten”

I believe this in my soul; there is no such thing as "deserve" in academia and if you are lucky enough to have a TT academic job all you can do is to try to live up to it - this is not to take anything away from the terrific people working hard who have those jobs, but we're all on a knife's edge

"But the correlation between school AI adoption and personal AI relationships is clear across multiple behaviors." Ummm...this also seems bad.

Area Studies Centers at UNC shuttered due to insufficient "return on investment," unclear "metrics of success," and non-alignment with the chancellor's "priorities." One day (soon), we will look back on the miracle of the public research university and will scarcely believe that it ever existed.

My latest for @hyperallergic.com looks at a new article in JRA on Berenike, Indo-Roman trade, and of course some pet monkeys which may have had pet piglets or kittens? 🐵 Really this is just amazing research showing us the extensive connections between the Mediterranean and India. #GlobalAntiquity

A response to the problem of fake academic papers— and of course! But are you going to then check every citation in all of those papers? And every citation in THOSE cited papers? Once this slop spreads enough, it will get very hard to weed out.

the car! and that advert!!! i just think this is incredibly, perfectly funny bsky.app/profile/over...

Bringing this back in honor of Hanukkah

In Google Scholar's defense it's not listing these fake journals/articles as real, but it does list them in the full text results so you can see which real articles are citing things from them So real(?) things are picking up fake things so real people & LLMs take that as a signal that they're real

The Roman city was an unhealthy place to be

'Skull of St. Thomas Aquinas being transported to Fossanova Abbey.' Photograph by Daniel Ibanez

I went in to work today, just to visit and meet with my longterm sub. I was told that my whole 7th grade English team has been using AI this semester to grade written assignments. My sub, a retired teacher, said it's been pretty bad and she's gone back and graded them herself afterwards

She says kids ask if it's AI or her grading their stuff, and they don't like when the AI does it. On one assignment, it counting them as not using evidence from the text if they paraphrased the text instead of using direct quotes.

Reviewing this book got me thinking about how quantitative and archeological methods can be used to advance the history of sexuality. Not a light read, but a recommended one. Thanks to book review editor @cethompson.bsky.social for the opportunity. #histsex #histmed academic.oup.com/jhmas/advanc...

“AI models not only point some users to false sources but also cause problems for researchers and librarians, who end up wasting their time looking for requested nonexistent records…”

Once again, we see that it is expensive to be poor

One argument I used to make to my students about why it was important to learn history (and historical thinking) is that someone was always going to be trying to tell you things were natural or had always been this way and that you needed to be able to see that as an exercise of power.

The actual publication is unsurprisingly much more nuanced-- notes that the beans and fruit were being preserved, that beans were fundamental to Pompeian diet in general, and that access to the food was likely restricted. That is, food used for control of enslaved? pompeiisites.org/e-journal-de...

Thread! But I’ll also add that there’s little evidence ANYONE from Pompeii or Herculaneum ate “worse” than this— food research there shows a rich and varied diet even in non-elite areas. This is just beans and fruit. Is it too strong to call the framing outright foolish? There’s just no sign…

Interesting review of what seems like a fascinating book. One of the major conclusions-- that painters were flexible, small-scale, and itinerant and could not make enough to live on just a Pompeii-- fits well with increased attention to mobility & with Kim Bowes'... bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2025/2025.12...

Thinking of the student Mary Young who 106 years ago today 'said "shan't" under [her] breath when told to repeat poor work'.

Very intrigued by the wax tablets

I am thrilled (and a little overwhelmed) to share that my book God's Ghostwriters was award the 2026 Grawemeyer Award in religion. I am deeply honored to join this group of distinguished award winners. lpts.edu/friends/graw...

Had students take a whole class period to annotate an article (chosen by them) & answer questions on it, and I am very pleased with the results. This is a larger, lower-level class, so research papers never worked that well anyway. They were v. thoughtful & I learned so much about how they read.

On Tom Stoppard: open.substack.com/pub/macspaun...

Enjoying this student’s reaction to the Ptolemies

A story Stoppard told several times, in several places:

Not quite as extraordinary, but a production of Hamlet I saw began with his father’s funeral and one by one all the guests left until Hamlet just sat there alone before his father’s coffin…and sat…and sat…

I’m not seeing this, exactly—which isn’t to question the experience but to offer a (slightly) more hopeful example. AI is a big challenge for out-of-class work but most students are attending and working hard on in-class stuff and tests. I do find that it’s hard to get them to do reading outside...

this op-ed is a video reel of interviews with some of the 47 million people in the US experiencing food insecurity right now. if you can, i hope you give to local mutual aid groups today/this weekend.

Reminds me of Tell Brak. Lots of interesting questions to ask about how large sedentary communities became sustainable— or not— from a social perspective.

Chilling amazing read

The operating assumption of those who design and champion this software is that it's all just 'content' anyhow, and the easier it is to access that content without having to deal with the orthographic or material form that it takes the better. Nothing of evidential value inheres outside the semantic

Always fight back when they try to close you down. Because even when it looks hopeless, you'll never know that you might actually win. Bravo @antrelclaottawa.bsky.social

🏺🗃️ Something else I love about this? It shows women together gaming: they're playing knucklebones #Matriarcha