iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Oliver Clarke @astroclassicist.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Fundamentally, my views on EA will always be coloured by the fact I was literally nextdoor neighbour to their Oxford office for several years, and they eventually sent letters of apologies to everyone for hosting very loud and late parties regularly (the office was entirely surrounded by houses)

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Oliver Clarke @astroclassicist.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

I bring you the coolest sheep from today's agricultural show

Prize-winning sheep wearing red sunglasses

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Oliver Clarke @astroclassicist.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

Wonder what this guy's blusky handle is

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Oliver Clarke @astroclassicist.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

Idyllic sky in Dorset this evening

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Journeyman Torturer Reaction Video @tabloidsores.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

Listening to someone describe Hermes Trismegistus as "emerging out of the whole Hellenistic situation" and I cannot help but imagine a YT thumbnail titled The Hellenistic Situation Is Crazy

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Oliver Clarke @astroclassicist.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

The Odyssey: what a strange, interesting, affecting film with ace visuals and sound design, and the worst script I've suffered through for a long time

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Oliver Clarke @astroclassicist.bsky.social · 29/06/2026

Not a huge amount links my year in politics with my current academic work, but "Should larger cities govern smaller ones?" is amusingly relevant to both late 4th century BC western Asia Minor *and* 21st century Britain

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__________ @jenbren.bsky.social · 28/06/2026

Hydration break

John Major & Boris Yeltsin having a pint down the pub

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Oliver Clarke @astroclassicist.bsky.social · 28/06/2026

Your early 30s are now spent watching acquaintances go in two directions: happy, developing and even thriving personal lives and careers; or trapped online in self-tormenting horror, in pursuit of fleeting fame and ephemeral fortunes

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Oliver Clarke @astroclassicist.bsky.social · 07/06/2026

Browsing local auctions for furniture etc. in preparation for a *fingers crossed* upcoming move to a Victorian terrace and the quality of 19th/early 20th century furniture you can buy for perfectly reasonable prices remains astonishing

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Oliver Clarke @astroclassicist.bsky.social · 03/06/2026

Ethereal light just now on the train between Reading and Didcot, the setting sun shining weakly through a storm ahead of us, a pale brown-yellow sky over the green fields.

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Oliver Clarke @astroclassicist.bsky.social · 30/05/2026

Almost a decade ago, I helped write a policy document saying that the mayor should push for this line. Nice to finally ride it in a quite different place and stage of life.

An on-train screen showing the destinations of Moseley Village, Kings Heath, Pineapple Road and Kings Norton

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Oliver Clarke @astroclassicist.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

@ourcs.bsky.social you may be amused to know/pass on to the commentator that the James Kennedy subbing into New College M1 later today is the same James Kennedy who was at bow for New College M1 at Eights 2009

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Allan Faulds @afaulds.bsky.social · 25/05/2026

Somehow did not occur to me that salt and pepper grinders could ever be made of material that would cross into the triple digits in £££ never mind into quadruple ££££, but Peter Murrell managed to find them

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Normal Guy @guy-normal.bsky.social · 24/05/2026

the discovery of my dinner party risk mitigation matrix - scoring each friend by their flakiness and their conversational added value - has caused disquiet among my guests

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Oliver Clarke @astroclassicist.bsky.social · 22/05/2026

And this is why, as all epigraphers know, you *have* to be careful and pick the right stone, and location, to erect your eternal monument. No point in carving your name in foot high letters if it'll be worn away next millennium.

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Oliver Clarke @astroclassicist.bsky.social · 11/05/2026

I wonder what terrible choice Starmer will make in his resignation honours list

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phillip crymble @phillipcrymble.bsky.social · 26/04/2026

Fifty years ago today, Elizabeth Bishop's "One Art" was published in the pages of @newyorker.com. What a poem!

ONE ART

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

--ELIZABETH BISHOP

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Oliver Clarke @astroclassicist.bsky.social · 22/04/2026

This term's second home/place of work looking very fine in the April sunshine

A view across one of the lawns of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford

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Oliver Clarke @astroclassicist.bsky.social · 17/04/2026

That the number is so small is a little disconcerting

White men aged 25-34 from the West Midlands, who rent a home in a city, are in work and have a postgraduate degree. There are about 2,000 Britons like this

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Oliver Clarke @astroclassicist.bsky.social · 12/04/2026

First of a new series, on coins I come across in my work open.substack.com/pub/astrocla...

open.substack.com

Coin of the Week: Punic Pegasus

A New Series

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Oliver Clarke @astroclassicist.bsky.social · 12/04/2026

Not sure if I think The Drama was a good film, or if a film involving a posh British curator in a complicated transatlantic relationship is worryingly closely targeted at me, specifically

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Oliver Clarke @astroclassicist.bsky.social · 12/04/2026

First of a new series, on coins I come across in my work open.substack.com/pub/astrocla...

open.substack.com

Coin of the Week: Punic Pegasus

A New Series

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Oliver Clarke @astroclassicist.bsky.social · 02/04/2026

What a beautiful, optimistic moment this is.

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Roman Scotland @romanscotland.bsky.social · 28/02/2026

A lovely bit of Roman glass from Koblenz, Germany

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Nick Stone @typejunky.bsky.social · 14/02/2026

I once got a shouted ‘whatthefuckyuhthinkyerdoin?’ From an upstairs window of a house. ‘Your house got bombed on the 27th April 1942, I’m recording the evidence.’ ‘Oh, did it? blimey, that didn’t come up in the survey.’

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Normal Guy @guy-normal.bsky.social · 01/02/2026

hey man. me and a few of the guys were thinking about attempting the transition from seasonal foraging to early sedentary city-state status later if you're down ?

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Oliver Clarke @astroclassicist.bsky.social · 19/01/2026

Coinage and a Conference in the City of World's Desire: Istanbul, Part 1 open.substack.com/pub/astrocla...

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Oliver Clarke @astroclassicist.bsky.social · 10/01/2026

@youngvulgarian.marieleconte.com I feel you will appreciate this tiny gold hand from the Istanbul Archaeological Museums I saw today

A tiny gold hand at the end of a long, thin pointer, in a display cabinet)

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Oliver Clarke @astroclassicist.bsky.social · 31/12/2025

Trundling by train across Wessex on a day of perfect blue skies, apart from brief patches of dense fog, and all outlined by hard frost, the British countryside in Winter cannot be beaten.

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Oliver Clarke @astroclassicist.bsky.social · 30/12/2025

Argument for "Steal away" as the single best piece of music to ever come out of America?

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Oliver Clarke @astroclassicist.bsky.social · 26/12/2025

One sad/amusing part of this is that his take was politely queried by an expert in Roman law (and not on political grounds) and Vermeule chose to have strop and unfollowed him

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Oliver Clarke @astroclassicist.bsky.social · 13/12/2025

Working on the material for a paper I'm giving in Istanbul in January, and in a day's work I have increased the number of questions, and not come to any firm answers.

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Oliver Clarke @astroclassicist.bsky.social · 13/12/2025

@bretdevereaux.bsky.social the hoplite blog series is making its way onto all my undergraduate reading lists as I do my post-term revisions and updates, it really is a fantastic set of discussions

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henry @runeberg.bsky.social · 08/12/2025

the twelve days of christmas - and I cannot emphasise this enough - are 25 December - 5 January. we are not currently in a day of christmas. marketing departments stop it. STOP IT

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Oliver Clarke @astroclassicist.bsky.social · 30/11/2025

Come back quite often to Weber's viva, and what a moment this must have been (from this article on Weber's Dissertation journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1...)

On the occasion of his dissertation viva voce on 1 August 1889, the final
hurdle before receiving his doctorate, Weber published his dissertation in a
pamphlet entitled ‘Development of the Principle of Joint Liability and a
Separate Fund of the General Partnership out of the Household Communi-
ties and Commercial Associations in Italian Cities’ (Weber, 1889a).18 Next to
his dissertation, Weber included in the ‘Development of the Principle of Joint
Liability’ his vita and five theses, together with the names of three persons
he had invited as opponents at his viva voce: Otto Baumgarten, his cousin
and the son of Hermann Baumgarten, who had exerted some influence on his
political views while a student; Karl Mommsen, son of Theodor Mommsen;
and Walter Lotz. All of them were friends of Max’s during his student years
(Weber, 1889a: 1, 57–61; see also Winckelmann, 1964). The examination was
uneventful, except for a momentous occasion. After Weber had defended
three of his five theses against his three opponents (called the Rigorosum), the
public disputation part followed. During this, the famous Roman historian
Theodor Mommsen rose to engage Weber on one of his theses on Roman law
– independent of Weber’s actual dissertation – and then proclaimed that ‘he
was still not entirely convinced of the correctness of Weber’s thesis, but that
he did not wish to impede the candidate’s progress and would withdraw his
opposition. The younger generation, so he said, often had new ideas that the
older one could not immediately embrace, and that might be so in this
instance.’ He went on: ‘But when I have to go to my grave someday, there is
no one to whom I would rather say, “Son, here is my spear; it is getting too
heavy for my arm”, than the highly esteemed Max Weber’ (Marianne Weber,
1988: 114).19

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Oliver Clarke @astroclassicist.bsky.social · 26/10/2025

Since I start tomorrow, I thought it was time for a bio update: excited to say that I'll be taking up a half-time role as Curatorial Assistant for Greek coinage at the Ashmolean. So expect/beware more Greek and Roman Provincial coinage from this account over the next few years

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Oliver Clarke @astroclassicist.bsky.social · 19/10/2025

Excited to discover which mad branch of French pretenders is rushing to hold a coronation with the stolen jewels

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Oliver Clarke @astroclassicist.bsky.social · 28/09/2025

Am I being blind, or has the BBC website not published an article on the death of Tony Harrison?

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Oliver Clarke @astroclassicist.bsky.social · 22/09/2025

The presenter on Radio 3 describing Newman as an Anglican priest in his intro to tonight's performance of Gerontius somewhat missing important developments in his career!

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Nathan Edwards @grackle.space · 22/09/2025

dudes rock

Tumblr post from every-lemon
Sep 8

so my spouse is part of a weirdly intense but mostly benign men's workout group that meets at like, 5:30am outside every day, even in winter. they do a lot of burpees and lugging cinder blocks up hills and stuff.
they take turns leading the workouts and tomorrow is his turn. I asked what he was planning. he handed me a sheet of William Carlos William poems from a large stack he'd printed.
I said "what" and he explained, helpfully, "it's a William Carlos William themed workout." I asked what inspired it and he said "l've been planning this for months."

Follow up tumblr post
every-lemon
Sep 9
it was a smash hit.
a dozen guys showed up (more than usual). spouse brought a red wheelbarrow and they took turns bringing cinder blocks up the hill with it. then they broke up in teams and did a relay with an "icebox" (cooler filled with 40lbs of ice). at the end he opened the cooler to reveal it was full of beach plum lacroix and all the guys cheered. they drank sparkling water as he read 'approach of winter' out loud.
he was home by 6:30am.

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