CHOTINER: So finding weekly availability for your whole committee is challenging. ME: Yes! We're all so busy! But we can use scheduling polls. CHOTINER: I see. And you always fill them out honestly? ME: Um CHOTINER: Yes? ME: CHOTINER: You don't always fill them out honestly? ME: Now hold on.

When a driver approaching the intersection where I am waiting turns *before* reaching the intersection but *without* using their turn signal, forcing me to wait *unnecessarily* (and almost invariably with a long train of cars behind them, so that I am stuck, unnecessarily, that much longer).

What a thrill to be invited to be the keynote speaker for a conference in Paris! What a splash of cold water to note that the conference is on "forensic chemistry," and that the organizers value my "expertise" in "criminalistics" and that my "insights" would be crucial for a "global" audience!

Recently spent a few days in a ruby red state. In a 30-minute shuttle drive to the airport, I talked politics with the driver. It was a good discussion. We agreed that it's important to talk to one another and "turn the temperature down." And yet I left feeling more disheartened than before. 1/4

A good day to get away from the news. (Lands End, San Francisco)

Finally got around to deleting my academia dot edu account. That site had its (limited) uses, but it always felt vaguely predatory to me. The new privacy policy was the last straw... Anyway. Where are people going? Where does one upload papers?

Have been on the plane but at the gate at DFW for 90 minutes. The entire communications system at Air Traffic Control is down. We have just been told that flight plans are being faxed—wait, what—one by one (seriously?), and that we just have to wait for ours. 😵‍💫

6th annual Erich S. Gruen Prize for best graduate student paper on multiculturalism in the ancient Mediterranean world. Deadline for submissions: September 30. Spread the word! Or, better: throw your hat in the ring!

The latest iteration of the "global antiquity" conversation. Lots of enthusiasm and lots of questions, both substantive (what *is* "global antiquity") and programmatic (how do we do it?). I find all of it energizing!

Announcing publication of Melina Tamiolaki (ed.), *Leadership in the Ancient World: Concepts, Models, Theories* (2025). Vol. 3 in ANTIQUITY IN GLOBAL CONTEXT series by CUP. Chapters on Mesopotamia, Egypt, Achaemenids, China, Hellenistic Judaism, Athens, Republican Rome, and later Roman empire.

Announcing publication of Melina Tamiolaki (ed.), *Leadership in the Ancient World: Concepts, Models, Theories* (2025). Vol. 3 in ANTIQUITY IN GLOBAL CONTEXT series by CUP. Chapters on Mesopotamia, Egypt, Achaemenids, China, Hellenistic Judaism, Athens, Republican Rome, and later Roman empire.

A few new details have come to light, most of them noted in this essay by Judith Butler. My dismay has only deepened. It is a shocking violation of institutional trust—and I write as an undergraduate alumnus and 20-year faculty member of a place that has meant so much to me. Devastating.

Pritzker and a big delegation of Chicago officials should fly to Memphis and hold a joint news conference with the mayor and his team and declare, loudly, "Nope; you're not comin' here, either." 🇺🇸

I will reserve judgment until I know the full story here, but what I will say now is this: disclosing the names of individuals, including *students*, to the Trump regime is not only worse than making a big monetary payment to the "government." It is *much* worse.

Centrist responses to Charlie Kirk's death ("We must continue his work," "He did politics the right way," etc.) crystallize for me just how deeply fragmented our current moment is. These people either don't get it, at all, or they *do* get it and are really and truly not on our side. Both are 😬.

I am thrilled to share that my article, “Hoc Saxsum: History as Conversation inside the Tomb of the Scipios” is now available on the Journal of Roman Studies website via FirstView. (It’s also open access!)

NEW: Darcy Tuttle, "Hoc Saxsum: History as Conversation inside the Tomb of the Scipios," *Journal of Roman Studies* 2025. A fundamental reinterpretation of a major mid-Republican monumental complex, arguing that "history" was made and remade here through "an ongoing dialogue with the dead."

Ezra Klein is well informed, reasonably articulate, and reasonably thoughtful. But there must be tens of millions of people out there with a similar profile. He's really just a guy. With a HUGE platform. Today's piece suggests that he lives and breathes inside of that platform. He has lost touch.

I think I really must insist on the distinction between "uninterested" and "disinterested."

When historical scholarship on the ancient past is *explicitly subordinated* to social activism in the present, the results are usually both disastrous (for the scholarship) and useless (for the activist project). Wanting things in the (deep) past to be a certain way can't make them so. Alas!

Parenting is a lifelong attempt to maintain the right balance between hands-on and hands-off responses to whatever is happening in their lives—from infancy right on through adulthood. Getting it right is some mix of love, common sense, and sheer, dumb luck.

By late summer, Northern California's hills turn from a brilliant gold to a more subdued golden brown. And every evening, at this time of year, there's a fleeting moment at sunset, about 5 minutes long, when they turn a pinkish red. It's very nice.

I am seeing some tenure-track ads in my field in which the institutions have stated that they are NOT willing to a sponsor a visa for the candidate. Is that . . . normal? Kind of stunned to see this, tbh.

The Golden Gate Bridge, with a patch of low-lying fog, as seen from Twin Peaks.

A ranking of the "most unsettling questions of our times." 1. Is nuclear armaggedon a possibility? 2. Can we prevent environmental collapse? . . . 19. Do people think cereal is a soup? . . . 54. Is Cal football for real in 2025? . . . . 770,451,393. Can AIs suffer?

This (great) thread confirms my sense that the priority now is not to patch up coalitional differences. That's step two. The priority is to get everyone across the opposition to understand that we're not in a pluralist, politics-as-normal world. We're in a zero-sum world. The stakes are existential.

For all we know, he's fine and will live to 105. But if he goes, I predict the whole thing will collapse. I don't think things will carry on this way, and I don't think they'll get worse. There might be a burst of violence -- and that's obviously worrying -- but it will be the end of the nightmare.

NEW: Tenure-track position in History at UC Berkeley in the GLOBAL HISTORY OF TECHNOLOGY. We are casting a wide net here: *all* periods, places, and fields are under consideration. I'm on the search committee, so do let me know if you have questions.

And so begins year 25.

I teach my first class of the new academic year tomorrow. It will be my 25th year in the profession. We are saturated with "discourse" on the state of higher ed these days, but as an academic, I'm afraid I simply can't help myself... A few remarks at the quarter-century mark of my career. 1/8

The total failure to respond in any meaningful way to the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting (2012) was the moment the bottom fell out of our society. There have been other turning points, but to me, that episode exposed the *irredeemable* emptiness of our collective commitments to one another.

And that's that. We moved our younger son into his first-year dorm at San Diego State, did some (rather frenetic) last-minute shopping, and have now said our goodbyes. Lots of feelings!

Hanging with the Filipino in-laws in San Diego. Love the energy ⬇️

“At night, Nero used to don a cap or wig and make a round of the taverns, or prowl the streets in search of mischief . . . One of his games was to attack men on their way home from dinner, stab them if they offered resistance, and then drop their bodies down the sewers.” Suetonius, *Nero* 26.

Oh dear. Michael was a giant—one of the great formalist readers of Latin poetry of the last century. And such a sweet and gentle man. I knew him mainly in connection with the American Academy in Rome, where his was always a voice of reason (sorely needed). A truly major loss.

I have completed an exhaustive review of current events and some longer-term timelines and conclude that the vibes are not immaculate.

look I'm not myself an astrophysicist so I can't say what effects it would have for a spate of tech bro frauds to crop saying "we can build a Dyson sphere around the solar system" while drizzling the wrong kind of olive oil in the pan but I think we should not try this

The greatness of a university is a measure of its capacity for enabling synergies between a small number of big disciplines and the largest possible number of *small* ones. That's the magic of the modern university and a big part of its unique and priceless contribution to humanity.

Hey guys! What are you up to this weekend? Dunno. Thinking about watching the game. Maybe build a Dyson sphere around the solar system (excluding the Kuiper Belt). And a little laundry, if we have time. Neat!

If we removed all the Minnesotans and all the Philly sports fans from Bluesky, there would be about 19 active accounts remaining, according to my calculations.¹ ___________ ¹ I like the Minnesotans and the Philly sports fans, by the way.

Revised syllabus complete. Big changes include (i) reduced reading load, (ii) lots of in-class time for reading, and (iii) lots of in-class time for writing. Reading: c. 40 pp/week = 25-30 as "homework" + 10-15 in class. Writing: 3 in-class essays (45-60 mins) and 1 term paper (7-8 pp.). 1/3

Institutional response to the Trump/Project 2025 onslaught has been characterized by a mix of complicity, corruption, and cowardice. SCOTUS and Congress have been the worst offenders, obviously, with local police, the mainstream media, and the Ivy League universities right behind them. 1/2

Everyone should take 5 minutes to look through this harrowing series of vignettes about what America will look like over the next several years. Some version of what it depicts is definitely coming -- and coming soon. Unless we turn things around very quickly.

Thrilled to announce a new digital protocol that I am calling Artificial Stupid Stupidity, or ASS. ASS is not just stupid. It is *artificially* stupid. Though it will seem indistinguishable from AI, don't be fooled. ASS is actually stupider. Oh yeah: valuation is currently at $550M. Boom.

A question for the Latinists: do you use the TLL? Regularly or even periodically? I think it's my favorite reference work in our whole field (and we have a *lot*). I'm pretty much blown away every time I consult it. If you haven't checked it out, you should! Untold treasures await. Seriously.

📢 New SCS Blog Post Kathleen Coleman, "Biographies of Latin via the endangered TLL Fellowship" A vital resource for the SCS under threat. Please read!

Early-morning sunlight and a field of gold (Point Reyes, CA).

In which Cliff Ando concentrates his formidable powers of analysis in a broad-based and razor-sharp indictment of the University of Chicago over the last few decades. My lord. This is *withering*.

OK. A serious comment on the Yale unyoke the sciences from the humanities guy. My guess is that his is not a consensus view amongst the STEM crowd. I have served on many university committees with colleagues from STEM at Berkeley, and they have been *consistently* thoughtful about the humanities.

I have some friends in astrophysics and chemical engineering. They're brilliant. Sure. But when I realized that I couldn't consult them on my research into ancient Roman imperialism, since they had nothing to offer, I decided to shun them in the "faculty lounge." Sorry. But they deserve it.