Dr Naomi Scott
@drnaomiscott.bsky.social
A.G Leventis Fellow in Greek Studies at the University of Bristol. Julius Pollux superfan. Expert in Ancient Greek jokes. My research profile: https://tinyurl.com/2fc8fbzh My book: https://tinyurl.com/2x256h64
Trying to channel this energy as we queue interminably to board the Eurostar while the kids squabble in the back of the car 😬
Your Daily Homer@dailyhomer.bsky.social · 2d agoYour day will be like... a speeding cormorant, crossing the waters, catching fish as it hurtles into the waves, salting its wings. Odyssey 5.50-4
Oh gawd I see we are doing Covid discourse again. I had my first child 2wks into the first lockdown. Having a complicated birth and then a sick newborn in lockdown was unspeakably traumatic & I’ll never quite be the same again after that experience. But you know what would have been worse? 1/
People who think Wilson’s review of Nolan’s Odyssey was harsh clearly don’t read Bryn Mawr Classical Review on the regular. When Classicists go scorched earth it’s really a sight to behold. By our standards that review is a solid ‘6/10 please do go buy the book’ 😂😂😂
This trend has huge (bad) implications for the provision of Greek and Latin (especially Greek) at universities
Margot Finn@eicathomefinn.bsky.social · last wk.'Strip away the grandiose language and a pattern emerges – some combination of fewer, larger modules, almost always wedges of 30 credits, an all-core or heavily prescribed first year, reduced optionality in later years, curated pathways instead of individual module choice... [cont.] 1/4
This is just to say I have OCRed the text thet was in tne arch:ve and whicb yov were prabaldy seamhing for "breahtast" Fargme ms fheg mem debo:w5 sb ?mccf mmb 5c oc1b
Also: too much horse. Too much dog. Not nearly enough clinging to the rocks like an octopus. No octopus content whatsoever wtf.
Dr Naomi Scott@drnaomiscott.bsky.social · last wk.Odysseus monotropos.
Ok so I’m home sick on day two of a tv binge and my question is: who did the Latin for Buffy? Lots of Latin in Buffy. Some of it vaguely coherent when I can make it out through the mumbling. Did they have a Classicist on staff? How does one get a gig like that? 😂
Quick Q how many times does my Israeli-born Hebrew-speaking mum have to be arrested at protests supporting Palestine before the JC revokes her Jew card? Does mine get revoked when hers does? She makes a mean challah bread does that get her some extra points in favour? How are we totting this up?
Dmitry Grozoubinski@explaintrade.com · 2w agoHey, so as a Jew I would consider it a personal favor if the "world's oldest Jewish newspaper" could avoid writing articles implying one can quantify Jewishness... ... let alone those that seem to imply the formula for quantification hinges on vocal support for the Israeli government's policies.
The feeling when you enter the air-conditioned Reading Room and finally feel cool again! This illustration of a sea monster can be found in our sixteenth-century atlas of the counties of England and Wales by Christopher Saxton. 📷 Rare books B 1590/SAX/XX
Ok Pollux is flat out trolling Plato at this point. Imagine taking the word δευτερουργός (‘working in secondary place’) from a discussion in Laws X of THE SOUL IN THE HEAVENS and listing it in a chapter ‘On Menial Skills’ alongside words for manual labour and banausic occupations 😂😂😂
yep, I'm very cheap - was interesting in my first year as a VC fellow, we got £5k each, a number of my STEM colleagues couldn't figure out what to do with it as it wasn't enough to do anything with, I had my most productive research year ever, still working through the archival haul 2 years later
Waitman Wade Beorn, PhD, FRHistS@waitmanwbeorn.com · 2w agoExactly right. Humanities costs are: salary, office space, computer. We fund lots of other disciplines across the university.
Redundancies target arts and hums because there are so few non-staff costs to cut, i.e. they work miracles on austerity budgets as a norm and then are punished for it
I find the idea that Shabana Mahmood has made 'progress'on immigration farcical. She has normalised Far-Right talking points, helping Reform. Undermined the UK economy, decimated the rights of migrants and destroyed civil liberties. The county would be in a better place if she had done nothing.
The most depressing thing about this is that the current state of UK higher education means that most of us are overworked, miserable, & swamped with admin all the time. Precisely the conditions under which a bit of joyful creative imagining is really bloody difficult.
Today, Pollux has brought me this: οὐκ εἰσὶν οἱ παμπλούσιοι ἀγαθοί· εἰ δὲ μὴ ἀγαθοί, οὐδὲ εὐδαίμονες. The very rich are not good people, and because they are not good, they are also not happy. (Plato Laws 743c) Hmm I guess maybe Plato has some merits. Also quite enjoying the Timaeus.
Thinking back to 2022 when I made it through 3 PMs and 2 monarchs in the course of a single pregnancy. My friends were literally taking bets on what the final count would be by the time the baby came 😂
Jonn Elledge@jonnelledge.bsky.social · 2w agoKing Charles III is about to welcome the fourth Prime Minister of his reign, which is not yet four years old.
GUSTAVO DUDAMEL IS CONDUCTING ANIMAL this is so bonkers wtf even Sesame Street cannot redeem this monstrosity
Dr Naomi Scott@drnaomiscott.bsky.social · 2w agoWhy is the VAR room so blue? Why is a man in a brocade dinner jacket shouting at everyone. WHAT IS THIS?
@bobbyxinyue.bsky.social is making me watch the World Cup final with him and I am torn between boredom and aesthetic horror.
If you have small people in London (and honestly even if you don’t!), the British Library’s Fairy Tales exhibition is so great. My weirdly Baba Yaga obsessed 3yr old loved it, and they have the original manuscripts of Alice in Wonderland AND Clever Polly, both delightful for my not-so-inner child.
Pollux has a whole chapter on midwifery! Interesting to see it grouped with other chapters on male areas of medicine, which are themselves part of a longer section on the sciences (astronomy, maths, etc.), and therefore v much recognising midwifery as a science.
Easily the funniest thing I’ve read about Aeschylus since the Frogs, only these people are v much not in on the joke 😂😂😂😂
The Haunted Bookshop@thehauntedbookshop.com · 3w agoI'M DYING OVER HERE 💀💀💀 THE CAT GOT AI SCAM EMAIL 🐈 Aeschylus, our orange tabby, got an obviously AI email about selling more copies of the Oresteia on A**zon
Another excellent example of just how incurious and limited the UK press has been about this crisis. Not one mention of the cuts to humanities that Bristol’s own VC is trying to push through at the moment in this article about her position on the cuts 🤔🙄. www.theguardian.com/education/20...
Florence Welch’s mother says cuts to arts and humanities ‘absolutely tragic’
Exclusive: Prof Evelyn Welch, vice-chancellor of Bristol University, believes her daughter’s success shows value of arts education
theguardian.com
Obviously feeling great about this in this week where the major road that connects my son’s nursery to my daughter’s school has been closed due to a massive burst water main, thereby making our mornings and afternoons a total fucking nightmare. Did I mention this is the second time this year?
Jim Pickard@pickardje.bsky.social · 3w agolooks like Thames Water has given a 14% pay rise to its chief executive and a 26% rise to its finance director
Jesus. 35 UK universities quietly- without debate - joined the Ministry of Defence’s “Battlefield Alliance” which seeks to “reorientate academia towards Defence and National Security” They’re destroying the social sciences and humanities while militarising the institutions
Friends who bring you veg from their allotments are the best kind of friends. Thai salad much enlivened by some picked-this-morning courgette.
My morning began at 5:30am with a small (brave!) child POURING crime-scene levels of blood from her nose. All the caffeine in the world will not be enough. And how’s your Friday? 😳
