From 17 Nov., I will be an “invited international professor” (grand title for a guest lecturer) for a short course at University of Lille, sponsored by Faculté des Humanités & invited by @ekaterinanechaeva.bsky.social. I am so excited about the experience ex-patria.univ-lille.fr/archives/4038

This is super funny. After four decades of dismissing pre-Islamic history & clinging to Islamic period symbolism, the IRI now is using things like this, a full size statue based on the famous Shapur I relief, to drum up support & get popular support. Ii doubt it will work as ppl are too jaded.

Wanna hear my new take on Marxism? Marx, and even more than him Engels, were nostalgic for the feudal age & were lamenting the disappearance of the traditional, aristocratic elite! They resented the burgess replacing the nobility & clearly using the labour of the working class for personal gain.

Partying and going out on Saturday night is a Capitalist conspiracy!

One of the biggest cultural shocks one gets when living in European apartments & houses is the insistence on building washrooms with no windows & putting toilets in rooms without a washing basin. It’s like they are telling people not to wash their hands?

Ummmm, Dracula was real, and he is buried in Comana monastery south of Bucharest in Romania?

Later this month we are hosting a new Book in the Spotlight. On Mon 24 Nov at 4PM CET Peter Van Nuffelen (Ghent) will present The Fragmentary Greek Chronicles after Eusebius, which he recently published with Lieve Van Hoof. Discussant will be @monica-berti.bsky.social (Leipzig)!

Austrian kings are handy…

I wonder if during my Dutch citizenship exam, I can just speak German with a Düsseldorf accent & tell them that I’m from Limburg? No one understands them anyway…

I wish I could show you all the joyous photos and videos being shared on Muslim and South Asian WhatsApp right now with people reacting to Mamdani's victory. It's really beautiful and cathartic. So many years of anti-Muslim bigotry, racism & hate. And all those tears are now sugar for our chai.

this is genuinely wild

And let's not forget Hyderabad-born Ghazala Hashmi this morning, new Democratic lieutenant governor of the state of Virginia. She's the first Indian-American and first Muslim woman there to be elected to a statewide office. edition.cnn.com/2025/11/04/p...

Mamdani!

Had the weirdest and most amazing sounding random music selection courtesy of my phone’s music app: Archspire’s Drone Corps Aviator followed by Chris de Burgh’s Crusader… try it, you will thank me (or thank my phone!)…

Say it to yourself in a whisper. But how do you actually pronounce the l in simultaneously?

The interlibrary-loan system of the Austrian Academy is a single person you have to email directly to ask for a book. They then request a book manually via email and arrange for it to be sent. Then it takes three weeks to arrive, two days before it is due to be returned! How I miss the Firestone…

No horse ever runs as fast as the money that you bet…

US gives its soldiers Socialism (housing, paid education, healthcare) to go abroad and fight for Capitalism.

Finally experiencing a Deutsche Bahn long distance trip that is only minimally (9 minutes) delayed. This is unbelievable. Still not at the destination, but this looks promising.

Énième exemple de converti devenu un "agent de conversion" faisant pression sur ses proches, et en premier lieu son épouse. Traditionnellement, le "privilège paulin" autorisait le conjoint baptisé à se séparer du conjoint non-chrétien pour se marier avec un.e chrétien.ne.

If Zohran Mamdani gets elected mayor of NYC, it means that two largest Anglophone cities in the world will be run by Desis!

Köln ist soooo… interessant?

Betrunken flirten ist wie hungrig Einkaufen!

All of a sudden, I am missing San Francisco a lot. Really want to be wandering the Chinatown/North Beach area right now and go get a sandwich at Molinari’s…

Met a little boy (no wide-rimmed hats, both eyes intact) yesterday named Odin! Greeted him with: “oh nice to meet you Odin! I’m Thor!” I expected a laugh. Instead his mum answered “oh what strong, masculine names!” Ummm. Perhaps I should have gone with Baldur?

Known as the Battle of Blair Mountain, this was the largest labor uprising in US history and the largest armed uprising since the Civil War. For a month, 10,000 coal miners confronted some 3,000 company guards, state soldiers, and strikebreakers. Nearly a million rounds were shot.

At the time, coal operators and their political allies conspired to pit workers against each other along racial lines. They segregated housing and work assignments; used Black and immigrant workers as strikebreakers; and tried to discredit organizers as “socialists” or tools of a "Negro uprising."

Perhaps the “Scotland First” crowd should first fix what religion Scotland primarily has before attacking one. I mean, from hardcore James II supporting Catholic crowd of the 17th c. to Presbyterians. You never know, you might all convert to Islam one day! ground.news/article/were...

I was giving a lecture on Zoroastrianism & why it was not the official religion of the Sasanians comparable with Christianity in Rome. Someone asked the question of whether this has to do with despotism in the Sasanian realm vs. Rome “which was democratic”!!!!! My head is still spinning…

Everyone already despises Teams. I'm not exaggerating. The only days I am not angry with Teams are days when I don't have any Teams meetings.

The Damnatio Memoriae this administration is planning for the previous one is unprecedented since that weird Venetian doge who also tried to end the Republic.

Four conferences and workshops in one month, in four different countries. If I see another train or plane again, I will run away screaming! Just me, my computer, and my couch from now on!

There is no love purer and more sincere than what one has for one’s own bed and pillow.

During the first T-rump consulship, I was all panicking & drawing parallels w Mussolini. comparing MAGA to the Basij thugs in Iran, etc. Some “reasonable” people then were shaking their heads & informing me of the finer points of American democracy & checks & balances. I sadly feel vindicated now…

Les milliardaires s'achètent déjà des présidents, il est normal qu'ils puissent aussi acheter une armée 🤷‍♂️

…

Ed Luce watching democracy die in the United States of America

Yeah, ok. Ok ok ok

No justification for this, and harbinger of mischief to come. Justice Department Will Monitor Elections in California and New Jersey www.nytimes.com/2025/10/24/u...

Recruiting an army of thugs & hooking them up on a combination of easy money & sadistic violence with impunity is the trick that IRI has used for over 45 years. It’s the formula that keeps on defeating the uprisings in Iran. It was also the original inspiration for Atwood’s the Handmaids Tale…

Next month, I will be convening a short-course at University of Lille in France, titled the Orient’s East: Iran and Eurasia in the 1st Millennium. I’ll be delivering six talks on the Sasanians, Central Asia, the “Silk Roads”, & the Iranian relations with China. ex-patria.univ-lille.fr/archives/4038

Certain amount of historical harmony in that statement! #RestoreBurgundy #OttoWilhelm #BourgogneLibre #FreigrafschaftBurgund

Since reading longer texts is apparently something students (increasingly?) struggle with these days, I periodically think about strategies for dealing with it as a teacher, which in turn makes me think about how I read scholarship. It's definitely a skill that's learned over time.

What is the reason that in Europe they insist on giving you a cup of hot (often warm) water and a tea bag when you ask for tea? Why is it that they don’t put the tea bag in, prepare the tea, and then serve it to you. Serious question. I want to know the philosophy behind it.

Now that the Halloween is near, I cannot think of anything scarier than this video: Highlights: T-rump is an instrument of divine will In time we will come to define that (the 22nd amendment) T-rump will be president in 2028. youtu.be/ijf7K_08YWk?...

A of us are a more concerned with the END of late antiquity, it’s terminus, than we are with the START of late antiquity. We seem to somehow have accepted a date vaguely in the 3rd c. as the start, perhaps bc of its eponymous Crisis? I reckon this is quickly becoming obsolete & irrelevant.

Conference at 8am… even the sun is not up yet!

Folks, I am sitting on a plane across the aisle from Juliette Binoche… I asked politely and she said no pics. How do I “insist” politely?

Everyone talks about the increasing levels of corruption. But no one seems to bother with THIS level of corruption at all. T-rump is spending the US tax payer’s money to prop up an ally in another country?! (FT, 21 Oct. 2025)

I was recently evaluated on an application by the thickness (or thinness!) of my book. I kid you not, dear readers…!