Whenever people find out I was originally a theater major before becoming an historian they go "oh now that makes sense." Not sure if I should be offended?

Because what I was really missing right now in the semester was spending an hour at 2 am in my basement for a tornado watch.

Every time a conservative complains about free speech or calls libs whiney, bring this up.

Part of me is really hoping Leo escalates this to an Interdict. Haven't used that lever in a long time.

The best way to fix gerrymandering is to increase the number of representatives (dramatically, by 50%). The best way to fix SCOTUS is to increasing the number of justices so each one is less powerful, there's more turnover, & they have more capacity to handle the caseload (& oversee circuit courts).

Congratulations to Hungary, Europe, and the free world. May this be a turning point for us all.

This is what Biden should have done, and any Democrat hoping to replace Trump MUST do.

As people consider the impact of Hungarian politics on European institutions today, it might be fun to re-share this post from last year, in which the archbishop of Salzburg tries to explain to an annoyed pope why there's a Hungarian army in Italy in 900. salutemmundo.wordpress.com/2025/05/15/d...

Poor old #Calvin is much maligned and misinterpreted. A stoic pacifist, who abhorred slavery; an opponent of fanatical biblicism and political tyranny. Unlike #Hegseth he knew his Cicero, Plutarch and Seneca.

The amazing, letter-perfect performance of NASA this week is a ferocious rebuke to the right-wing fools who constantly tell us that for-profit businesses always do a job better than the government.

In retrospect, I probably should not have offered a new prep the same semester I was chair and going up for tenure.

Every Robin Hood narrative I've ever seen acts like Eleanor doesn't exist, when she was the primary check on John's ambitions to seize the throne and the main agent freeing Richard. And we all know why she's left out, and it sucks.

The rehabilitation of the luddites is a beautiful thing

Enough about me. Let's focus on the professors getting paid less than uber drivers to teach your kids how to write in full paragraphs, okay?

Not specifying which civilization has big Monkey's Paw energy

Trump's threat to end Iranian civilization is laughable. They survived Alexander, the Arab Conquests, the Mongols, Saddam... there aren't a lot of civilizations that have endured more. Honestly not sure Trump will crack their top five - certainly not with his usual half-*ss TACO tactics.

Cet article commence par une réfutation fort classique de billevesées telles que "Easter = Ishtar", quand soudain :

So for complicated reasons I now have vinyl records, but no record player. does any kind soul feel like sharing their deeply-felt opinions/favorite websites/youtube channels on what to look for in a record player/speaker system? I have done some research, but this is very outside my area.

Even after years of teaching the Romans, it's disturbing to be confronted with the fact that Sallust (a contemporary of Caesar) is the earliest surviving historian writing in Latin whose work survives intact.

I needed an image for discussing the "Cilician" pirates of the early 1st century BCE, because pictures keep the students engaged. But not exactly an obvious one from contemporary sources... So I just used the pirate ship from Asterix, because, well, I like the reference

Could I actually get the students to do the reading? 🤔 Would be great tho.

Trump's unquenchable thirst to be perceived as rich would be hilariously pathetic if so many people didn't buy it (literally and figuratively). It's still pathetic, but it's not funny.

Here’s a review of my book, which unsurprisingly is not even on the Wiki page— contingentmagazine.org/2024/03/31/b...

Every university and college in America should demand that the College Board refuse to use AI to grade APs, and refuse to accept AP credits otherwise. They won't, because they're also trying to figure out how to cut teachers out of their budgets. But they should.

Saxon copper disc brooch intricately decorated with gold and garnets, AD 650-670. This must have been a treasured possession! From Floral Street, Covent Garden, once the heart of ‘Lundenwic’, the early Saxon town of London. Museum of London 📷 by me #Archaeology

So how do the people claiming trans is a new thing explain Elagabalus?

📣If you plan on attending ICMS Kalamazoo or IMC Leeds, there are still some few seats remaining for the Digital Medieval Studies Institute. Join us for hands-on sessions with Digital Methods for Medieval Data! #medievalsky #digitalhumanities #DMSI

Publication day! We are pleased to announce that "Digital Medieval Studies-- Crusaders and Computers" is now availble. This is the first deep dive of the DMS series into a specific subfield, and we are really pleased with the results. www.arc-humanities.org/978180270291...

The Supreme Court did not strike down conversion therapy bans today. Not nationwide. Not in Colorado. Not anywhere. Here's what actually happened in Chiles v. Salazar—and why the coverage you're seeing serves the conservative legal movement more than it serves you.

new quinnipiac poll on ai suggests bluesky users are not the ones living in a bubble over this shit. nobody trusts it, nobody’s excited about it (6 percent say they’re “very excited” about it- more believe in mermaids). 21-point majority thinks it does more harm than good poll.qu.edu/poll-release...

🗃️March 28, 1898: In United States v. Wong Kim Ark, the Supreme Court upheld the principle of birthright citizenship enshrined in the Fourteenth Amendment. A thread on birthright citizenship… 1/6🧵

Our next seminar will be Thursday 9th April at 17:15 GMT, with talks from Mehdy Shaddel (University of Cambridge) and Majideh Qazizadeh (University of Exeter). Please follow the link to register: forms.office.com/Pages/Respon... #medievalsky #thelongmiddleages

It occurs to me that three eras Americans are most interested in across history, namely, the vikings, the golden age of piracy, and the wild West, all share in common an absence of effective state institutions. It doesn't speak well of our ability to govern ourselves that we idealize such times.

Starting the Roman Revolution in my class on Alexander to Augustus now, & I find myself fixated on the fact that even when the late Republic managed to survive bouts of disruptive demagogues & political violence, it was ultimately never able to stabilize its political institutions again after 133.

Israeli police blocked the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem from celebrating Palm Sunday Mass at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, for the first time in centuries. www.cnn.com/2026/03/29/m...

History is much more about the present than it is about the past.

St Peter rescued from prison by an angel BL Cotton MS Caligula A XIV; The 'Caligula Troper'; 11th century; England; f.22r @blmedieval.bsky.social

There are also NO benefits to "cursive" teaching. None. Zip zilch nada. There are benefits to writing information by hand for many students, but the manner of writing doesn't actually matter.

The IHR's guide to its Monumenta Germaniae Historica collections (@monumenta.bsky.social) is a superb introduction for students of medieval German and European history. #medievalsky

So we practiced the Macedonian phalanx in class today. My makeshift sarissas held together, no one was injured, and everyone has a lot more respect for the Macedonian infantryman.

After several days of DIY work, everything should be ready for my Alexander to Augustus students to practice using sarissas in formation tomorrow. This involved taking my existing 8' plastic pipe "spears" and drilling holes in them as well as 5' connector larger-diameter pipes to get the 16' length.

Our favourite Welsh Viking is having a lovely rant about all the ways Vikings are portrayed wrongly in film, tv and games. Black biker-gang outfits, lack of colour, filth everywhere, it all comes up! Enjoy: youtu.be/SiQnkLflvHc?...

AI translation and Latin, a 🧵. I want to explain to English speakers a bit about how LLMs are fundamentally unsuited for Latin translation work. This also applies to Ancient Greek, and a lot of other languages, but Latin is what I know so we're going to talk about Latin translation.

This is senility salad, even for Trump.

So, um... this is bad. Really bad. I looked at the letters that were translated by the AI, and the very first one I found was almost entirely hallucination. Thread:

In many ways human beings treat science like a religion. Especially the ones who disdain religion the most.

I describe it as such as a historian of disability because I want to remind scientists and the world that the history of science IS the history of eugenics, scientific racism and medical racism, and more. I’m not comforting them with the idea that it was a ‘pseudoscience.’ This is your history.

A great review but also just generally a great reminder that the Middle Ages were not a hole in human history but a chain that links the modern to the ancient.

wellcomecollection.org/stories/medi... Examples!

Anyone know a good book on the historiography of "The Fall of Rome" going back to Gibbon? I'm making an undergrad course & want to spend the final week engaging students with how historians debate such key concepts. I'd rather not reinvent the wheel if I don't have to. #classics #history #Rome