These are the times I prefer teaching at a small private college. We struggle, but not with this BS.

Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. Always loved it better than the Civ franchise, and now that I've become an historian, the only one of his I can play without cringing. Still play it through once a year most years. After that, Super Metroid & Link to the Past. Still want to go back to Half Life again too.

Malibu in the process of helping me consider the best pedagogy for contrasting the Spartan, Athenian, and Roman constitutions.

Prepping my Alexander to Augustus class & once again struck by the parallels between the beginning of the collapse of the Roman Republic & what is happening to democracy in our own times. We're not in the end stages - it gets so much worse - but we are proving just as incapable of course-correcting.

If Trump’s concern was drugs, he’d not have pardoned Honduras’s corrupt leader; if terrorism, he’d have gone after Iran; if world order, Russia; if preserving US power, China. If democracy, human rights or humanitarian motive, dozens of other worthy cases. What’s left is oil. And Epstein.

Marco Rubio is reportedly saying Maduro will stand trial in US courts. Which means it’s now the US administration’s position that US courts can hold foreign presidents, but not the US president, accountable for crimes.

What I'm not seeing is stories about how US generals and admirals and servicemen and women resigned in protest rather than carry out these blatantly illegal orders. And that terrifies me. Because if they will do this abroad, they will do it at home.

I did not think I had the capacity to be shocked anymore. Or to feel more ashamed of my country.

A lot of people on here keep better track of what they read & write than I do. But despite 2025 being the year after my mom's traumatic decline & death, in which I also lost her sister & was surprised with a difficult probate case for their intestate cousin, I managed to accomplished a fair amount.

just so it's clear: this is the exact core function of genAI Fascist government and climate deniers love it because it can produce the aesthetics of knowledge without any actual tendency towards truth. It is automated denialism. Shame on every climate scientist promoting its use (there are lots)

If anything, I think this oversimplifies the picture of the Hellenistic genealogies

A thought for using AI to teach: I was going to assign each student a successor of Alexander as a way of helping them navigate the complicated politics after his death. Instead of writing a bio themselves, what about making them use AI to do it, and then have them have to check the AI's"work"?

In this calendar for December, we see that the feast of St Thomas Becket on 29th December has been erased as part of the suppression of the cult of St Thomas by Henry VIII. BL Royal MS 2 B VII; 1310-1320; 'The Queen Mary Psalter'; London; f.83r

Looking up Robert Burnell for fun, I note Google's AI answer calls him "Former Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain," which is wrong on at least one count (as he died in 1292 he predates the union of England & Scotland by over 400 years), & possibly another (that "High" descriptor sounds modern).

Okay, hear me out: the John Wick movies do a surprisingly good job of explaining how feudal relationships work in practice vs theory.

The complete Bayeux Tapestry has finally been released and proves that Bishop Odo had absolutely nothing to do with the illegal Norman invasion of England.

United in artistic form: Qur’ān & Hebrew Scriptures British Library Or 12523C; 13th century; Volume 39 of a Qur’ān, copied probably in Granada, Spain ; f.37r Bodleian Library MS. Kennicott 1; 1476CE; La Coruña, Spain; ff.122r @bodleian.ox.ac.uk

Nothing like waiting at the airport for seven hours only for your flight to be canceled. 😑

Took a much-needed vacation this week planned long before my aunt's passing last week. Thought some of you would enjoy some up-close pics of the exhibit on medieval desire at the Met Cloisters right now. This is the centerpiece: Aquamanile in the Form of Aristotle and Phyllis, Netherlands c1400

AI is the death of academia, top to bottom, front to back.

The only "problem" AI solves is the problem of having to employ humans. What a shit decision on their part.

Your annual festive reminder that Saint Nicholas bears an uncanny resemblance to Lieutenant Worf.

🌲1️⃣2️⃣🎁 Ancient Celtic languages The Maynooth Department of Early Irish is not only known for its academic expertise in the cultural heritage of medieval Ireland. My other huge interest for more than 30 years has been the ancient Celtic languages of the Continent (Lepontic, Gaulish, Celtiberian). 📖

My aunt, Ann, died yesterday. Her sister, my mother Kathryn, died a year & a half ago. I feel profoundly empty. I have many people who love me, for which I am especially grateful now, but I fixate on the fact that with their passing, I am the last descendant of their family. No siblings. No cousins.

„Ohio State U announced that using AI would no longer count as an academic integrity violation. ‘All cases of using AI in classes will not be an academic integrity question going forward,‘ Provost Bellamkonda told WOSU public radio.“ Too many high-level admins are destroying their universities.

Really fast we are going to have to decide if universities exist to help humanity cultivate lives worth living or to crank out workers, it can't be both.

Movie you’ve watched more than six times with a gif. Hard mode: no Stars (Wars nor Trek), LOTR, or Marvel, Disney Animated or Pixar. (A number of Xmas movies like Die Hard would have worked, but I went for the movie I demanded so often as a child I was only permitted to watch it with babysitters)

Finally joined the Tolkien Society, mostly because my town has its own Smial. Reached out and will be meeting with them in January for a discussion of part of Beren and Luthien. I'm quite happy about this.

As an atheist reading Dante I struggled to appreciate his description of Limbo. I understood it intellectually: to a theist, being cut off from God is in itself a form of torment. In many ways it underpins his entire theology of the Comedy. But I did not understand it emotionally.

Framing GenAI as a battle between teachers and students is a red herring. Students and educators are on the same side. The real opposition are the data extraction firms and brokerages and their allies among the managerial class.

Anyone else bothered that Stranger Things made a big anachronism by referencing sorcerers as a character class in D&D 20 years before their introduction in 3rd ed? Yes I know Al-Qadim introduced a sorcerer class in 2nd ed, but 1) that was the 90s & 2) the show references them as spontaneous casters

Students reading by “candlelight” in my Book History and Materiality course.

The Santa Chiara polyptych (1335-1340) Gallerie dell’Accademia #Venezia

I've decided to just lean in with being a sword guy. To be fair, they're really useful as teaching props, students love these.

A fun afternoon yesterday with the @rialibrary.bsky.social Stowe Missal! MS D ii 3 dates to the late 8th/early 9th centuries, and contains excerpts from the Gospel of St John and a Latin Missal. The last folio features Irish charms to protect against loss of eyesight and urinal diseases! 📜🎉

So no one knows this, but if my sign off is ever "sincerely" I am at the least deeply exasperated, and quite possibly actively enraged.

And to Cuivienen there is no returning

“...Time, irresistible, ever moving, carries off & bears away all things...History is a great bulwark against this stream of Time...it holds in a tight grasp whatever it can seize floating on the surface & will not allow it to slip away into the depths of Oblivion.” - Anna Komnena, The Alexiad

Hear me out: the Lord of the Rings soundtrack, but just five hours of Shire music with the occasional elven hymn thrown in.

The greatest con the Right ever pulled off is convincing America that mainstream media leans left.

1/ The US Government has quietly removed a memorial to Black soldiers who died in World War II from the Netherlands American Cemetery in Margraten, South Limburg. The move follows a complaint from the right-wing Heritage Foundation to the American Battle Monuments Commission. ⬇️

A high-resolution digital map allows people to plan their routes along the ancient roads of the Roman Empire go.nature.com/4nHZmoM

and her and my joint article which introduces the concept of the prodrome of the pandemic www.cambridge.org/core/journal... 3/4

Ugh. Daylight savings ending combined with other stressors seems to be giving me insomnia. An unfortunate week to have to make my 105 mile round trip commute all five days.

Wow. Watching R1s finally realize that academia is dying because it's starting to impact them is... well, it turns out, just as annoying as when they were oblivious. It's still all about them. They still have no idea what higher ed looks like beyond their quads. www.thecrimson.com/article/2025...

🚨 COMING TOMORROW🚨 🎙️ Dive into the untold history of Eastern Europe with @drfrancisyoung.bsky.social ! Explore the significance of the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth and the rich tapestry of cultures that exist beyond the 20th century narrative.

I'm rewatching Picard after a complete rewatch of TNG (post season 1), DS9, & VOY, and at first I was surprised, it seemed much better than I remembered, but about seven episodes into season one the writing takes a real downturn in quality.

Signum amoris in operibus

My (delightful) partner, assessing our visit to Segovia: "It's only a real castle if it's in Castile, otherwise it's just sparkling battlements."