ok if you see me back here I better be promoting something I’ve published or posting a manuscript wordcount
Joseph Howley
@illdottore.bsky.social
I’m a Latin professor and book historian working on slavery and scribal labor in Ancient Rome. Co-edited volume “Writing, Enslavement and Power in the Roman Mediterranean” out now from OUP. Find my other writing in The Nation.
Fun fact: While Jews made up less than 1% of the population of Argentina, they comprised up to 12% of those disappeared during the Dirty War, due to the antisemitism of the right-wing junta and the association of Jews with leftism. More Jews were killed in the Argentine Dirty War than on 10/7/2023.
Joel S.@joelhs.bsky.social · 2w agoYes, Argentina, that country that has famously never dabbled in antisemitism, unlike Spain. Just don't ask the people in Javier Milei's government where all of their ancestors came from and why.
In Ionic poetry his name has the 'd', and it looks like his name has something to do with hate. But in early west Gk. inscriptions his name has an l followed by s's or t's. (hence Latin Ulixes, w/ l). Some scholar, name I forget, suggested the scar (oule) story was prompted by west Gk. 'Olyttes.'
I’m too tired to write this up but I got these screenshots together for a private chat and thought I’d just leave them here and you can work it out yourself. last one is from Wilson, I love that translation and this choice in particular
Nolan’s Odyssey is a gift to anyone teaching myth, Homer, vel sim this fall. But I’m interested to hear how folks make that pitch. The course where they read the odyssey is required of all first years here, but it’s not a classics dept course, so it’s not immediately clear we can recruit off this
"My field of scholarship had become a legal and criminal minefield." Arabic Literature professor Huda Fakhreddine on seeing herself unfortunately reflected in "Law and Order": https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/law-order-racist-dick-wolf-middle-eastern-studies/
NEWS: The Trump administration has activated a secretive and never-before-used legal process to quickly deport foreign nationals deemed to be “alien terrorists” or their immediate family members. w/ @joshgerstein.bsky.social www.politico.com/news/2026/07...
If you've heard me talk about booklabs at any point over the last decade you've heard my bitter anger over a Vice Provost's shortsighted decision to shutter & give away our legendary campus press. A bunch of us never forgot. In 2027 Silver Buckle Press comes home. education.wisc.edu/news/silver-...
Silver Buckle Press returns to UW–Madison, expanding hands-on learning for students
After nearly a decade at the Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum, the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s historic Silver Buckle Press is returning to campus, under the ownership of the Art Department ...
education.wisc.edu
Not a scrap of Linear B in the film and he had the chutzpah to make Matt Damon say this
Joseph Howley@illdottore.bsky.social · 3w ago“They’re going to forget how to write, something no one has been seen doing this entire film”
We (faculty at USC) took on an institutional behemoth with all the money and clout on earth, and we WON. We won our union. We're the biggest private-university faculty union in US history. Trying to make people care about this, challenge level IMPOSSIBLE
reread Emily Wilson’s translation of the Odyssey today and you know what’s pretty fucking great is the Odyssey, thanks Christopher Nolan for this magnificent experience (me reading a book in my house)
THE ODYSSEY (dir. christopher nolan, 2026) doesn't have much in common with TROY (dir. wolfgang petersen, 2004), but they do both claim that the trojan war was orchestrated by agamemnon in order to seize control of trade routes to the black sea. star wars prequel ass subplot imo
Nolan has adapted the stories The Odyssey is based on more than he’s adopted the text itself. There’s a smoothing out of the text‘s complication that inevitably unwinds it a little. It’s also a puzzle box movie where whats in the box is Trauma, but the Trauma of learning where you are in history.
ICE thugs tackled and tried to handcuff a man at Las Vegas airport. When they realized they were being filmed, they simply walked away, leaving the man on the ground with a handcuff attached to one arm. The Las Vegas Police found no outstanding warrants for the man and removed his handcuffs.
Outrage after ICE agents tackle man at Las Vegas airport
Video footage of ICE agents tackling a man at Las Vegas Airport has sparked public outrage and criticism from officials.
bit.ly
I’m not giving up hope. If The Odyssey makes a gajillion dollars there’s still a chance we can get Nolan to make a The Iliad where Priam intones “Our bicameral mind is breaking down” and Achilles replies “But perhaps this will be the origins of consciousness”
Joseph Howley@illdottore.bsky.social · 3w agoDo you think Christopher Nolan has read Julian Jaynes
what if the real sea peoples were the friends we made along the way
This scam targets authors with LLM-generated personalized messages praising their work, which means this bookshop cat named Aeschylus has received an email about how great the Oreisteia is and how it should really be a bestseller
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
I'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
this is not true. the palace at Pylos had an IMAX dome (technically Omnimax, but operating under the IMAX brand) but we do not know if it was broadly accessible to more than just the wanax.
Wesley Morgan@wesleymorgan.bsky.social · 3w agoAnother historical inaccuracy from Nolan—IMAX had not yet been invented in the Mycenaean period, so this is not the aspect ratio that people saw in! Smh
The whole group chat loves when I do my “Joaquin Phoenix in Gladiator” but with the sideways thumb emoji. It never gets old for anyone
lauren@lauren.rotatingsandwiches.com · 3w agowww.engadget.com/2215190/the-... oh man. guy cracking apart plus "get a load of me" thumbs are going to get a lot of reps
My review of Batya Ungar-Sargon's "The Jews and the Left" for Shaul Magid's Substack.
Guest Essay: Abe Silberstein's Review of the new book by Batya Saragon-Unger *The Jews and the Left* (Broadside Books, 2026)
Introduction: Periodically I publish guest essays including reviews of new books I find are interventions in the larger conversation about America Jewry and Judaism more generally.
shaulmagid.substack.com
@ztul.bsky.social do you still have the old posts from the bad website about how super Mario odyssey implies a super Mario iliad
this feels personal because it is. I didn’t file this suit. this is @thrasherxy.bsky.social’s story, but it’s close to my own. it isn’t lost on me that three of the faculty pushed out of our center (me, steven, and our colleague alithia) were the three present in the pro-Palestine encampment.
