I suspect there’s a market 😊

Reading and writing can lower dementia risk by almost 40%, study finds Cognitive health in later life is ‘strongly influenced’ by lifelong exposure to intellectually stimulating environments, say researchers

The study points to using libraries and visiting museums as bringing these enormous brain health benefits ... who would have thought? Well, librarians and museum folk for a start ... www.theguardian.com/society/2026...

Surely someone with a 3D printer and a sufficient version of nerdyness could make the right cookie cutters for this 🤔

YES to all of this. 📌

Every year I briefly consider not going, in part because I miss my kitty.

An orange tabby cat with white paws, chest, and muzzle lounges among orange packing cubes in a partially-packed suitcase. He is grooming so enthusiastically that he has turned one of his ears inside out.

I leave very soon and for my annual stint at the excavation of a Roman villa in Portugal (the Santa Susana Archaeological Project.)

Watson will not be tagging along, so while I pack he is making sure that I have an adequate supply of cat hair on my stuff for the next several weeks.

Gosh, it’s like being able evaluate complex sources of information and understand nuance are useful 🤔🙄🤓

"Majors in nutrition, art history and philosophy all outperformed STEM fields when it comes to employment prospects, according to a recent analysis of labor market outcomes of college graduates by major by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York."

I had this conversation with one of my students just last week *sigh*

Dishonor Code Tressie McMillan Cottom recently offered a neat little summary of how universities have responded to generative AI: "Academics initially lost our minds over the obvious threats to academic integrity. ...

On cheating 2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com/dishonor-cod...

The scope of issues confronting research and scholarship is 😱🤯 among them for publications the profusion of AI slop.

But the direct political intervention in funding and publishing research as well as in libraries and universities shows this to be a 360 crisis.

I strongly believe that Pratchett is the most impactful thinker on ethics in recent history.

A ginger tabby cat with white splashes on his face and white paws and chest lounges on a stack of Roman art tests. The head of the 1st century BCE sculpture called The Tivoli General is visible just below his outstretched paw.

Watson takes his TA duties seriously. 😉🐈

Art History Booklist for Toddlers to Teens — Art History Kids Artists are just really just regular people. And when a great storybook introduces someone like Andy Warhol to kids, they just get to know him on a personal level as the wacky guy who liked cats. Mayb...

There’s a big list on this website www.arthistorykids.com/blog/358
At the end is a DK Eyewitness art history book. DK books in general are really well illustrated, so even the ones that aren’t specifically about art will have relevant art for a given place/time/topic.

Time to start buying stock in yaupon companies.

Absolutely! I’ll DM my email address.

This is why universities are “the enemy”, why the arts need to be defunded, why humanities degrees are a “waste of time”.

You cannot have authoritarianism without manipulating history first.

Comic by Stephen Collins for the Guardian. Script as follows: Scene is a British WOODLAND by a RIVER. A NATURALIST is stood next to a cage, and TV NEWS REPORTERS are filming him and the cage. 1 NATURALIST: And now It is my great honour 2 NATURALIST: to reintroduce the first wild beaver back into Britain 3 [Cut to the BEAVER’S CAGE. Its door is open and the Beaver is leaned nonchalantly up against the opening, smoking a cigarette.] 4 BEAVER: Well, well, well. 5 BEAVER: Look who's come crawling back. 6 BEAVER: Got a rubbish ecosystem have ya? 7 BEAVER: Not happy with the *critical anti-flood infrastructure* engineered by the flippin *badgers*? 8 BEAVER: I almost didn't recognise you without one of my ancestors on your head… 9 BEAVER: First you wipe us out… now you ask us to come back and build dams for free… You actually expect me to be *pleased* don’t ya? NATURALIST: I'm so sorry I…I… 10 BEAVER: “Ooh la la, the Brits have come crawling back…” Do I look like *Michel flippin’ Barnier*? 11 NATURALIST: I-if there’s some kind of… *remuneration* we could offer I-I’m sure… 12 BEAVER [throwing cigarette to the ground]: Unlimited pond weed, two tickets to Abba Voyage. NATURALIST: Done. [ends]

beaver's return

I’m going to make the best of a very dumb layover in NYC

View of a terribly messy desk. Organizational supplies, to do lists, a tea mug and teabags, research materials, and spinning supplies for a class on ancient textiles are piled haphazardly. The interior of my mind is much the same.

Midterm season — grading is piling up, and I’m presenting a conference paper in a couple of weeks, various things I’ve promised to organize are heating up. I have downtime scheduled for 4:15 pm on the 14th and for about 20 hours on the 22nd. 🤪

Sesame Street really tells the story of America:

- Created for PBS to educate young (especially Black!) children
- Becomes a beloved institution cherished by the entire country
- Gets privatized and kicked to premium cable due to budget cuts
- Unionization leads to mass layoffs

What a country!

I think this is the first time I’ve had all my books unpacked since I left home thirty years ago (….although there is still a box of paperbacks in my mom’s basement…)

Every Era Has Its Own Way of Thinking About the Middle Ages. Here’s 2025’s. Tapestries, stone walls, chain mail, crossbows. This era’s medieval mashup has it all.

slate.com/news-and-pol... “This particular faux-medieval aesthetic depicts wealth and power while criticizing a certain other—more tech-y, maybe more tacky, definitely more male—version of wealth and power.” @lollardfish.bsky.social @profgabriele.com #medievalsky

Thank you for sharing!

Don’t Panic! How to Fight Fascism as an Archaeologist Hey, archaeologists! As archaeologists, we tend to be the doing sort, the busybodies shovelling and sorting, keeping and caring, custodians of time, places, people. It’s time to lean into that, to …

Don't Panic! How to fight fascism as an archaeologist.
Hey, archaeologists! As archaeologists, we tend to be the doing sort, the busybodies shoveling and sorting, keeping and caring, custodians of time, places, people, it's time to lean into that!
blacktrowelcollective.wordpress.com/2024/11/13/d...

Wild in Love When Jackie and taxidermist Bud went on their first date in 1954, Jackie knew she was in for an adventure. “Wild in Love,” takes you for a ride on their 68 years of love.

Valentine’s Day might be a Hallmark holiday, but this love story from StoryCorps is too delightful not to share.

storycorps.org/animation/wi...

An orange and white cat sleeps on top of an open cookbook with one paw tucked under his chin.

Just an adorable cat photo.

Thank you to Rafi Greenberg for his open letter to his colleagues participating in next week's grotesque occupation archaeology conference taking place in Jerusalem
His letter was shared via @EmekShaveh's newsletter. It is quoted in full here (# 72): everydayorientalism.wordpress.com/2024/03/21/c...

Why Is There an Ancient Rome Researcher on Musk’s DOGE Staff? Luke Farritor, who used AI to decode a Greco-Roman scroll from Pompeii, is reportedly part of the team leading Musk’s chaotic takeover of government systems.

A young researcher who made headlines last year for using AI to decipher a Greco-Roman scroll is reportedly part of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), established by President Trump.

We've reached the chapter in Gibbon where the mad emperor is appointing magicians, acrobats, and paid agents of the Persians to the highest offices of state.