also, can we talk about the indictment (just revealed), in which a head of state (no matter how repugnant) is charged with "possession of machine guns and destructive devices and conspiracy to possess machine guns and destructive devices."? Does Trump also possess such things?

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.

I'll be honest, I did not think it could get much dumber than the war in Iraq. And yet here we are!

I actually would disagree with this take - though he might not have known it, Hitler has essentially set the conditions to make eventual defeat and regime extinction very likely (and so his great power position very poor) by November 1940 at the latest, even with the success of Fall Gelb/Rot.

If you want a good summary of what we know about when various bits of Roman kit are showing up in Italy, @drmichaeljtaylor.bsky.social 's "Panoply and Identity During the Roman Republic" PBSR 88 (2020): 31-65 has a good rundown of the often scattered and difficult evidence.

I don't understand the point of this comment. Because from where I'm sitting, it is actually not a Good Thing for a world class university--situated in a democracy that is frequently at war, where a disproportionate number of future policy makers are educated--to NOT teach military history.

Since we're apparently debating the popularity of military history, the department I generally teach for probably fills close to 300 seats of military history each year. It also has no tenure lines assigned to the field and no intention to assign any in the future.

UAlbany, one of those, NY state universities, has been hovering around 4 percent tenure track Black faculty since ever. I am THE Black tenure track political scientists. These folks are just little liars.

AI is just terrible at Roman stuff, in no small part because a lot of its training set seems to be 1950s Sword and Sandal epics. One reason among many to never use AI!

Annual repost of my thread on Hasmonean military equipment. ] Happy Hanukkah!

But backed by the multi-ethnic republican superpower of the era (yes lots of irony if you know what happened next)

Right at Hanukkah the Maccabees are in the news, as archaeologists reveal finding a bronze coin from Side and several lead sling bullets at the site of ancient Beth Zecharia. A few thoughts on the finds and how they do--AND DON'T--connect to the Maccabean battle. And happy Hanukkah!

Today on the blog, Stephen DeCasien (@sdecasien.bsky.social) discusses the parallel evolution of two ancient warships, one from Greece and one from China. www.classicalstudies.org/scs-blog/ste...

Question for the hive mind: recently there was a genetics article that suggested a radical reassessment of the tomb complex at Vergina--rather than the debate of was Philip II on Tomb I or Tomb II, it suggests Tomb I may date not later than the 360s.

Tom Cotton here is lying about what constitutes sailors being hors de combat (though these guys were never valid military targets), and he knows he is lying about it. Unarmed, clinging to capsized wreckage, these guys were clearly shipwrecked and the orders to fire on them manifestly illegal.

Hot off the keyboard and gifted: Hegseth has to go. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/1...

While the literary sources who unanimously attest the early Roman phalanx may not be reliable, we have a painting of two phalanxes facing off in an Oscan tomb from Paestum.

Autumnal Read: @zacharyherz.bsky.social *The God and the Bureaucrat.* Written with great verve and infused with far more humor than one expects or deserves to find in a tome about Roman law.

If you want to know why Hegseth is panicking about reminders that there is accountably for giving or carrying out illegal orders, it’s likely because he knows he has given illegal orders to murder people.

Happy Victory for US Arms and Down With Treasonous Slavers Day!

Teaching Greek history stumbled into a puzzle about ancient fiscal sociology, namely relationship between extractive external resources and democracy. Conventional thinking is that democracy in general is closely linked with internal taxation. Taxpayers vote because they get taxed.

Very glad to see this series will run to four installations.

Anyone interested in the hoplite controversy should tune into what promises to be an absolute banger of a series.

MechaQ just dropped (Q as in Quelle not Anon).

"Text With Jesus offers users an interactive experience with a religious deity." Now I'm curious who the best* (maybe most entertaining?) divine text partner would be.

There is a reason we’re seeing crackdowns on academic freedom now; the old AF paradigm was rooted in the “golden age” job market where profs could and did vote with their feet if any institution or state became too restrictive.

Please take note folks in DoD. It is still DoD. DoW is an optional nickname (literally; that's what the White House said). So opt out.

A Co, 1-160 IN, Iraq, 2007-2008.

Burnt out tank hull (T-72?) from Desert Storm, just north of the Kuwait border (K-Crossing) on ASR Aspen. 2007-08.

Camp Cedar II, near An-Nasiriyah, 2008. 1-160 IN (CA National Guard).

Need that copy of Soldiers and Silver? Now is a great time to buy: use the code UTXGIFTS to get 40% off the print version or 50% off the Ebook when you buy direct from the Press. More soldiers for less silver....can't beat that! utpress.utexas.edu/9781477330777/

Post Halloween experimental archaeology

Lots of elections today! I voted early in local elections here in Upstate New York... not as exciting as NJ, VA or NYC, but wherever your are...exercise your suffragium!

I reflect on this grimly: if we are lucky, RFK Jr. will be the cabinet secretary that kills the most Americans by his malice, whereas if we are unlucky, it will be Hegseth who does it by his incompetence.

Anyone who lives on the same planet as a terrorist or drug trafficker can be killed with impunity it seems.

Slap this quote on the side of Air Force One, the White House, your front lawn, everywhere. We should hear this on every media outlet and echoing through the streets.

Great book, with ominous implications.

Retired U.S. Army Major General Randy Manner: "The deployments we’re currently seeing inside American cities…are not only un-American and wrong, they’re being done at the expense of our young men and women in uniform." newsletter.ofthebrave.org/p/i-helped-l...

Autumnal read: Rhyne King's House of the Satrap. Fascinating dive into the basic building block of the Achaemenid empire, the satraps house, and argues that the imperial system should be viewed as a set of hierarchically structured overlapping houses: the king, his satraps and their subordinates.

Doug Krugman is a 24-year Marine Corps veteran who chose to resign rather than participate in Trump's and Hegseth's #ForeverWars. His voice carries the weight of someone who has personally made "life and death targeting calls" in combat zones like Iraq and Afghanistan.

Trump’s tearing down the East Wing to build himself a $350M ballroom while Americans struggle to afford health care. Senator Ruben Gallego went to the site of the Trump teardown.

NEW: NBC News confirms that the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden, on the east side of the White House, has been destroyed as part of the demolition of the East Wing. (📸 Getty Images)

American institutions don't crumble. But they can be destroyed.

Not sure why this image is so shocking, given everything he’s done but: it’s shocking! www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...

I guess if I *had* to pick my favorite part of the video the president posted where he’s a big boy pilot and he pew pew pews his poop all over everyone, it would be the part where he shits on the American flag?

The Nika riots but instead of turning soldiers on his people Justinian returns to the Blachernae and sketches pictures of elephants defecating on the Hippodrome

World War 2 veterans, the original antifa, took part in the nationwide protests against the fascist Trump regime. #3E #NoKings #50501Movement #indivisible #wearetheflood

Albany NY

Go time!