It's here! It's finally here! Happy to share that my article "Miscarriages of Justice: Enforcing the Law in the Works of Tacitus" has now been published online (open access) by Mnemosyne. Want to know more? See: doi.org/10.1163/1568...

As @elckerlieke.bsky.social rightly reminded me, books bought abroad don't count.

A bit delayed, but since I just wrote the recipe down I hope you'll allow me to brag about the cake I made for my birthday for a moment! It's a pistachio cake with mascarpone filling, home-made pistachio praline and rosewater buttercream. All references to actual ages are completely coincidental.

I recently co-taught a MA course on Ancient Apocalypses at @unileiden.bsky.social. Each student wrote a blogpost on an Apocalypse (past/present/future) of their choosing, and a selection of their work is now being published - second one out today! www.leidenartsinsocietyblog.nl/articles/pro...

Prophets with Guitars: How Folk Music Gave Voice to the Modern Apocalypse

What if the apocalypse had a soundtrack? Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan used folk music to turn revelation into protest and the end of the world into hope for a world remade. In their songs, the apocalyp...

leidenartsinsocietyblog.nl

I recently co-taught a MA course on Ancient Apocalypses at @unileiden.bsky.social. Each student wrote a blogpost on an Apocalypse (past/present/future) of their choosing, and a selection of their work is now being published - second one out today! www.leidenartsinsocietyblog.nl/articles/pro...

Prophets with Guitars: How Folk Music Gave Voice to the Modern Apocalypse

What if the apocalypse had a soundtrack? Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan used folk music to turn revelation into protest and the end of the world into hope for a world remade. In their songs, the apocalyp...

leidenartsinsocietyblog.nl

Ooooh boy, someone is telling us to have more children again, and this time they’re going for a good old fashioned guilt trip: if you don’t ‘give’ your children siblings, you’re depriving them of something – they’ve done research don’t you know. www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2026/... (1/x)

Opinie | Het leven is beter met broers en zussen

Gezinnen: Grote gezinnen zijn er tegenwoordig in Europa en de VS steeds minder. Terwijl Catherine Ruth Pakaluk in haar onderzoek naar ouders met grote gezinnen vaak hetzelfde hoorde: opvoeden is makke...

nrc.nl

Circe setting up a pig butchering scam. (terrible term, I know, but the pun was too good to pass up)

David Klemperer@dmk1793.bsky.social · 2w ago

got a text today from an unknown number asking me if I'd seen Christopher Nolan's Odyssey and if I had any thoughts on it ... it turned out to be from a friend's new number, but for a while I really thought it was a devious new scam targeted at heterosexual men

Coming up in a future issue of Mnemosyne: my article on "Miscarriages of Justice. Enforcing the Law in the Works of Tacitus"! brill.com/view/journal...

Coming up in a future issue of Mnemosyne: my article on "Miscarriages of Justice. Enforcing the Law in the Works of Tacitus"! brill.com/view/journal...

If you have an academic in your life, please be gentle with them this weekend because they're probably freaking the fuck out.

Joseph M. Adelman@jmadelman.bsky.social · 3w ago

Because the 1st is a Saturday, “How is it August already?!” will be observed today, Friday, July 31, 2026. Please panic accordingly.

Noooo, don't throw out the garum!!!! nos.nl/artikel/2624... (Headline translation: Canadian village finally to be liberated from a million litres of intensely smelly fish sauce)

Canadees dorpje wordt eindelijk verlost van miljoen liter intens stinkende vissaus

Het opruimen van de saus is geen kwestie van een doekje en een emmer sop. De saustanks moeten worden opengesneden. In een andere plaats is een speciale afvalput gecreëerd.

nos.nl

trans rights frankly is a top 5, potentially top 3 issue for me despite not being trans and not having any trans family being bigoted against trans folks not only hurts my trans friends and every trans person but is so predictive of further bigotry

Noooo, don't throw out the garum!!!! nos.nl/artikel/2624... (Headline translation: Canadian village finally to be liberated from a million litres of intensely smelly fish sauce)

Canadees dorpje wordt eindelijk verlost van miljoen liter intens stinkende vissaus

Het opruimen van de saus is geen kwestie van een doekje en een emmer sop. De saustanks moeten worden opengesneden. In een andere plaats is een speciale afvalput gecreëerd.

nos.nl

Apparently there’s some kind of revival of interest in Homer which reminds me I saw him live in Thrace in 790BC I bet most of these posers can’t even name three of his epics

CFP: a postgraduate conference hosted by the University of Edinburgh, focusing on labour and employment in the Graeco-Roman world (6th century BC to 6th century AD). More details are available at: drive.google.com/file/d/1dWs3... The conference will take place during the week of 11 January 2027.

SPARTA, OH—Noting that her desires were becoming increasingly less subtle, local man Tommy Hull confirmed Monday that his girlfriend, Bess Glickstein, kept dropping hints about wanting a 17-hectare mausoleum complex.

I haven't talked a lot about my current research project on here (see anchoringinnovation.nl/projects/leg... for details), but if there's one thing I've learned from the (for me) very new experience of conducting interviews, it's that our field is full of amazingly helpful people.

Legal Innovation. Anchoring Change in Roman Legal History | Anchoring Innovation

Despite its long, influential history within both classical and legal studies, scholarship focussed on Roman law and adm

anchoringinnovation.nl

Blueberry muffins! The six with walnut (on the left) are flavoured with rose water, and the six with almond (on the right) are made with lemon zest.

History colleagues: for those of you who still have jobs (😢) & are updating your teaching notes/syllabi for the Fall, a reminder that free, open-access materials on teaching the Black Death are already available. Your students are pandemic survivors. Give them the narratives they need. Links ⬇️.

Sidenote: I've noticed that people who are not able-bodied, cis, straight, white and/or male are (generally) more nervous about time travel thought-experiments. If, however, I am there only to see and not be seen, I want to know what the hell people in Roman Gaul did with these funky little guys:

Sarah Z@sarahz.bsky.social · 5mo ago

You can briefly time travel to any time and place to witness any historical event. You can't affect the course of history; you can just witness it. Where do you go/what do you see?

The only type of divination I'll except - the kind that involves watching birds.

Foxes In Love@foxes-in-love.bsky.social · 4w ago

Do you think they're finally going to realise that actually reading the stuff you use, you know... matters?

TechCrunch@techcrunch.com · 4w ago

David Bowie's song "Five Years," which Meta used in a supposedly inspiring advertisement, is about humans learning that they have five years left to live before the apocalypse.

Today is a 'computer says no' sort of day - both because my actual computer started the day by refusing to computer, and because my brain does not want to brain. One of these problems has been solved.

The end-of-contract sadness of having to take your carefully un-curated pile of books back the library.

I'm going to say one thing about Nolan's Odyssey and one thing only, and that's that Elliot Page did an amazing job and lifted that film to a much higher emotional plain than it could otherwise have achieved. Also the film was fine.

Academics on temporary contracts: how do you choose the email address that you list on publications? In general, journals seem to prefer the more 'professional' institutional addresses a personal one, but does that make sense if it's likely to be expired by the time people actually read the piece?

Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis is op zoek naar een nieuwe recensieredacteur! Een mooie stageplek voor studenten Geschiedenis (ba/ma). Je leert hoe een academisch tijdschrift wordt gemaakt en vergroot je netwerk in de historische wereld. Reageren vóór 7 augustus.

Ik snap dit, en het is ook niet onterecht. Aan de andere kant was die tas ook wel een fijne barrière tegen de incidentele creep die in een verder bijna lege coupé toch direct naast je komt zitten. Gelukkig is er nu een telefoonnummer voor wie zich onveilig voelt, maar toch... nos.nl/artikel/2622...

Tas moet op schoot in de trein, ook als het niet druk is

NS past de regels in de trein aan waardoor reizigers niet meer een andere stoel bezet mogen houden met hun handbagage.

nos.nl

I feel deeply icky for saying this, but... 300.

A. M. Vincent@vincent.northsky.social · last mo.

Name a (non musical) movie with a soundtrack that slaps, regardless of the quality of the movie itself. My starter list: Captain Marvel 10 Things I Hate About You Shrek

I hope Count Binface knows that he has the ardent support of a lovely retired Dutch couple who absolutely do not live in the UK, do not ever plan to live in the UK, and only learned about him last night.