Apparently when my father said “guess what happens in 8 days” he was referring to their dog’s 10th birthday and not Baby New Year 2026’s bris and somehow I’m the weird one in this conversation.

This proverb is still used idiomatically in Modern Standard Arabic but it's come to mean "to not budge," "to not move a muscle." Apparently the idiom reanalyzes what was originally a verbal object as adverbial (الحال).

I did a lot of things in 2025, too. Some were smart, some were dumb, a couple started out dumb and turned out smart, and one started smart and spectacularly blew up in my face. Mostly though, I’m still gay married in Texas and the fact that it pisses people off pleases me. Happy New Year!

Every day a fresh humiliation

🤪

The destruction of knowledge and history is haphazard & breathtaking. NASA’s Largest Library Is Closing Amid Staff and Lab Cuts.

Idk about you guys but I did a lot of dumb shit in 2025 and I think that fits well with the overall rhythms of the universe, so I'm at peace with it. No you will not get an accomplishment thread from me.

😭😭😭

*inhales deeply* we love the smell of copy-edits in the morning

The cover’s up, btw.

I’ve been following @meganlcook.bsky.social’s dirtbag medievalism project eagerly - looking forward to this:

It's so hard to keep track of when Gregorian New Years falls each year. Some years it falls at the end of Kislev; other years, it falls almost at the end of Tevet.

Amazing

Claude Monet, The Magpie, 1868-69

If Islamophobes knew anything about classical Arabic poetry this would be a great opportunity to claim that the poet will be rewarded with twenty thousand silver taxpayer dirhams.

The past 2 years of Islamic Studies in my new collection basically don't exist FWIW. Paula Curtis has noted this in East Asian jobs as well (far better than my data work): prcurtis.com/projects/job....

Hi it's my birthday. If you think I have added anything to your bsky experience, please donate to the Elhakawati Theater in Jerusalem. el-hakawati.org/support-us/s...

Ok so I'm supposed to lead a little workshop for advanced UGs and grads soon and I'm wondering whether it would be too navel-gazing to make it on using "others' theory," that is, integrating contemporary scholarship from the regions/languages we study into our work on premod. cultures...

Niiiiiiiice!

Clay goblet from Early Bronze Age Troy. Known as a depas goblet after the Homeric ‘depas amphikypellon', recent residue analysis shows these two-handled vessels were used for drinking wine some 4,250 years ago! Istanbul Archaeological Museum 📷 by me #Archaeology

Portuguese invasions of west-central Africa (in red) and counter-attacks by Kongo (blue) and Ndongo (green) www.africanhistoryextra.com/p/guns-germs...

TIL vagina and vanilla are etymologically related. You’re welcome.

we should have unapologetic commitment to art, including literature, in public schools

Reminds me of a classic... I can totally relate to Linus.

Pablo Picasso, Still Life with Glass Under the Lamp. Linoleum cut, 1962

Just in time for the new year, my latest article in Medieval Feminist Forum is out! I am so grateful to the award committees for the SMFS Graduate Student Prize and the 2024 Debbie White Gender and Medieval Studies Essay Prize for believing in it. Read illicitly here: tinyurl.com/BAP-BADTRANS...

I don’t like people but I like them a lot more than the no-people option, just saying.

sonoma coast bounty

David got his hands on my diary again.

Something lovely for the weekend! Beautiful blue glass beads from the late Bronze Age 💙 Ploughed up by a farmer in Denmark in 1885, analysis shows the beads were made in Mesopotamia, pointing to long-distance trade in luxury goods some 3,000 years ago. 📷 National Museum of Denmark #Archaeology

A glass panel of men praying at Thomas Becket's tomb shrine at Canterbury Cathedral.

Hey @nathanielbdemiller.bsky.social, ‘tis you!

Hi, hello! My book _Impressive Politics: Print before the Press in Late Medieval England_ is forthcoming from University of Pennsylvania Press. I think about print all the time but in ways you might not expect. sonjadrimmer.com/blog-1/2025/...

Watching people fight over alleged “historical accuracy” of Ancient Greek myth is amusing. Guys, myth was enduring because it has always been extremely elastic, flexible, & mutable. Calm down and get off your performative high horse. Enjoy the movie or don’t but don’t make “accuracy” a meter-stick.

I’m just glad it happened. It should be a no-brainer to advocate against disappearing researchers.

I might delete my Discourse because I hate being perceived and y’all are really good at perceiving lukewarm Discourse…

No one says to legit business owners, "hey I see there's an underground market selling toxic knock-offs of your product: how will you incorporate the toxic product AND protect your customers against its harms?" But apparently it's fine to make this suggestion to educators with respect to AI.

As a Jew, it’s fun watching the administration post Christian nationalist messages while also saying they are doing everything they can to curb antisemitism.

I had a candy cane for breakfast does that somehow get me Internet points?

December 25: A really great day to remind people who try and tell you otherwise that actually, Mithras didn’t even have a birthday—he was born from a rock 🪨—and Christmas really doesn’t have anything to do with Mithraism. Mythbusting: the gift that keeps giving historical truth.

Our Lady of the Snows (c.1600), a damaged but surviving glimpse of Japanese Christian devotional art before the suppression of Christianity in Japan

COVER REVEAL! Proud to officially announce my next book, THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO HOBBY LOBBY: Inside a Billionaire Family’s Quest to Craft a Christian Nation, to be published by PublicAffairs on July 14, 2026. #ChristianNationalism #Bible #Politics #Religion #ReligiousFreedom #AntiquitiesTrafficking

New meaning to JFC

you indeed cannot make art or class struggle if you're dead, which is why I await support for my class development grant proposals on "History of Agricultural Practices 1500-Present" and "Sanitation Work in the Byzantine Empire"

Is Zotero running? Then you should go catch your citations!

Spent all day staring at an article revision and I now believe my own argument more than I did before, but that could be entirely because of said relentless staring.

I kind of like this whole “We won’t buy your liquor but we will air your state-suppressed news stories” niche that Canada’s apparently carved out.

so I'm glad that this is getting more attention - the far right's obsession with the crusades is way more than just Hegseth's white supremacist tattoos in this THREAD I'll collect some of my own recent work on how the American right has used the crusades 1/