spencermcdaniel.bsky.social - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

i already knew this, but it makes me mad all over again to remember the irish famine of the 19th century wasn't caused so much by potato blight as by protectionist, exploitative grain export and sale laws

submitted 3 days ago • 19 comments

Optimist: the cup is half full Pessimist: the cup is half empty Alcibiades: the cup only has dregs and they’re coming for your face

submitted 169 days ago • 1 comment

PhD Timeline xkcd.com/3081

submitted 20 days ago • 614 comments

Since Procopius describes Porphyrios as "sometimes disappearing for a rather long interval," there's reason to suspect that there's a whole lineage of Rome-hating whales rather than 1 Guy. The eventual beached whale was allegedly 13m long, presumably a sperm whale though dolphin-eating is unusual.

submitted 22 days ago • 1 comment

I know it's one of our longest standing major global exports, but I would really like it if America would stop trying to find new and varied— or, hell, even our time-tested— ways of doing eugenics.

submitted 24 days ago • 6 comments

This is profoundly, the most disturbing story I've ever read. Elon Musk believes his children are a legion and he needs to make as many babies as possible before the apocalypse. He has a breeding fetish mixed with a messianic doomsday cult obsession. archive.ph/H7U2a

submitted 30 days ago • 174 comments

Another kitty today! 🐈 This one is a lion protome on a gilded silver Parthian rhyton (drinking horn). The gilding has accentuated the lion's mane, and even the veins in his paws, and he has flashing red garnets for eyes. A very royal bit of bling for someone's tomb.🏺 🦁 1st c. BCE. 📸 me #GettyVilla

submitted 31 days ago • 2 comments

Evidence that we need ancient history/classics: Heard multiple scholars between panels surprised to learn that tax records & petitions to government officials existed before modernity

submitted 34 days ago • 12 comments

You are the mayor of Eastern Thebes in the reign of Rameses IX and you have just learned about mass looting of the tombs in the Valley of the Kings. You suspect that your counterpart Paweraa, the mayor of Western Thebes, is collaborating with the looters. What do you do? buff.ly/nqUHrMX

submitted 44 days ago • 0 comments

submitted 44 days ago • 5 comments

Yep

submitted 48 days ago • 765 comments

Important note about this breakthrough: Literally would not exist without the kind of Federal support the current administration is slashing. Took 15+ years of research at a federal lab (Lawrence Berkeley) to get this to a point at which private enterprise could take over and make these at scale.

submitted 54 days ago • 96 comments

The 2024 film 'The Return' does some interesting things with the 'Odyssey', but it fails to explore the complexity of Odysseus and Penelope's characters and fails to live up to the high potential of its premise. #Odyssey #Classics #GreekMyth #Odysseus talesoftimesforgotten.com/2025/03/14/e...

submitted 58 days ago • 3 comments

I have been thinking this thought for days and I don’t think it’s hyperbole. The brilliant Dr. Dresner is talking about higher ed, I believe, but it’s way more broadly applicable. The fragile systems of a semi-functional government are being dismantled and sold for parts. Also not hyperbole.

submitted 64 days ago • 1 comment

How is the "Cannibal Hymn" from the Pyramid Texts of the pyramid of Unas not quoted in every single mummy horror story ever? Come on horror writers. We have a real pharaoh bragging in his tomb inscription that he eats gods, men, women, and children to consume their magic and you didn't use this?

submitted 66 days ago • 2 comments

In the final chapter of my book, Between Two Rivers, I talk about rock art and inscriptions in Saudi Arabia that tell us a bit about Nabonidus, the Babylonian king. This dark boulder sits on reddish sand outside of Tayma, a major, multicultural hub of ancient trade. It seems unremarkable at first.

submitted 69 days ago • 8 comments

All military aid from the U.S. to Ukraine from 2014-2024 has cost the U.S. tax payer $19.94 per person per year. In return they got to destroy Russia’s entire Soviet equipment inheritance and still complain it is a bad deal

submitted 68 days ago • 30 comments

The Ides of March 44 BC is notorious as the day that Roman senators wore pink to protest the actions of Julius Caesar

submitted 68 days ago • 61 comments

This is absolutely, utterly appalling. I have multiple friends who were in other countries just last year on Fulbright scholarships. I can't imagine what it must be like for scholars this year who have had their scholarships suddenly and arbitrarily revoked while they are still abroad.

submitted 69 days ago • 0 comments

On #WorldWildlifeDay2025 [Probably Christ as] Orpheus, found near Jerusalem's Damascus Gate in 1901 during Ottoman dominion over Palestime. Late 5th c. I particularly like the boar. Now in Istanbul. Greek myth meets Roman craft; Christian, Muslim & Jewish history converge.

submitted 74 days ago • 3 comments

If it looks like there are two different fonts on this clay tablet from ancient Babylon, that’s because there are. In December of 603 BCE, a young scribe named Balāṭa made a faithful copy of a far more ancient inscription of Sîn-Kashid who had ruled Uruk over 1,000 years earlier.

submitted 85 days ago • 17 comments

"Die ich rief, die Geister, / werd' ich nun nicht los!" ("The spirits I have summoned / I now cannot make go away!") —Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, "Der Zauberlehrling" (1797)

submitted 86 days ago • 0 comments

"Have allowed" is a really interesting way of saying "have following laws passed by Congress mandating."

submitted 86 days ago • 1 comment

AI mistakenly tagged an Excel spreadsheet of Palestinian high school students as a list of militants in the system that Israel uses to decide how to launch strikes. apnews.com/article/isra...

submitted 86 days ago • 17 comments

I think we have quite possibly just discovered the cringiest use of a Latin phrase in any context of all time. #ClassicsBlueSky #classics #Latin

submitted 88 days ago • 3 comments