iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

I read Italian newspapers (because, obviously.) And wouldn't you know the foreign press cuts right to the core of our country's failings. Headline at the reputable La Stampa: "In 2024 there were more than 8,000 rape allegations filed at US universities."

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Douglas Boin @dougboin.bsky.social · 1h

I read Maaza's Shadow King during my last sabbatical: immensely enjoyable, mythical storytelling, and yet unlike anything I'd encountered. This news is so well-deserved.

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Douglas Boin @dougboin.bsky.social · 5h

TV reviews of 50-year-old shows? Gives me hope that my own books might still, someday, be reviewed

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Douglas Boin @dougboin.bsky.social · 9h

Roman consuls had the provinces to exploit financially after their year in office. America has TV.

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Douglas Boin @dougboin.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

You just check for the green bars, which means magical powers still charged. Red bars = drained.

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Douglas Boin @dougboin.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

"Moved ethical lines." So glad I don't pay for that paper anymore

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Douglas Boin @dougboin.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Every time I go home to visit mom, I remember how phenomenally gorgeous the mosaic, tile, and glass work is at the old library, now Chicago Cultural Center. The sentiments about reading and knowledge are never lost on me, either

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Douglas Boin @dougboin.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Mary Cassatt's vision of an artistic community still inspires: "no juries no medals no awards." Show @artinstitutechi.bsky.social

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Reposted by Douglas Boin

John Warner @biblioracle.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Hear! Hear! I read the Times. I'm glad the Times exists. If the Times were an object, I'd sometimes want to throw it out the window, but this impulse would be less strong or frequent if we had alternatives to the Times that mattered as much as the Times.

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Douglas Boin @dougboin.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Grandparents are the new weather. (I forget which teacher taught me this: "Don't start a story with the weather! Not the sun in the plaza. Not the rain. Not the cool stones.") An easy, trite and overplayed lead.

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Douglas Boin @dougboin.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

I don't mean to be a killjoy. But a 10,000 word+ article on ethics, morality, AI and religion that skips over "Thou shall not steal," from a religion reporter, no less, is capitalist head-in-sand flag waving for an industry that deserves immediate regulation

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Douglas Boin @dougboin.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Ugh. 4-6 tonight. Every forehand was out. Somedays it just doesn't work.

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Douglas Boin @dougboin.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

The national press truly doesn't grasp how good Gina Hinojosa has been at retail politics in our state. And the more they fixate on Talarico (big fan!) the more the miss the story. There's a two prong Democratic front going on down here www.nytimes.com/live/2026/09...

nytimes.com

Paxton, Trailing Talarico in Polls, Tacks Toward the Center in Texas

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Douglas Boin @dougboin.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

I think there's something truly noble in championing causes from which you yourself do not immediately benefit but which can help others

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Douglas Boin @dougboin.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

What drew me to Clodia's story was that, even in a world where women couldn't vote, she fought to change the structural parts of her system that she knew needed repair (drawing fair voting districts, for example, enfranchising families of freed slaves).

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Douglas Boin @dougboin.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Otherwise, taken to its extreme, you simply get a picture, a lá Gruen, of the republic as a yearbook of insufferable overachievers--fighting year in year out for honors--when, in fact, power was important not for its own sake but because large segments of the populus felt (justly) disenfranchised

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Douglas Boin @dougboin.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

You can't really detect this unless you shift the p.o.v.

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Douglas Boin @dougboin.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

The through line of the Roman Republic is not "Big men fight for fame and glory" but "Institutions fail everyone" and "People felt powerless to stop wealth."

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Douglas Boin @dougboin.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Perpetuating the idea that the Roman republic was exclusively a man's world misses the whole point of how power and law worked in their society, to silence debate and stifle reform. How the Republic collapsed is not and cannot truly be a single-gendered story

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Douglas Boin @dougboin.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

It'd be great to see a new Cicero biography, Robert Harris's Agrippa, and Clodia reviewed at the same time, with an eye for distinguishing US/UK priorities in the telling of the past and the merits of fiction, biography, and history in accessing the same

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Douglas Boin @dougboin.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Well-timed essay to the release of Andrea Bajani's Strega-winning novel, The Anniversary (Check out the review by André Aciman in the NYT, if you missed it). Read the Italian novel last year and enjoyed it

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Reposted by Douglas Boin

Scott Horton @robertscotthorton.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Pontifex maximus has some thoughts about the social media world that Thiel, Zuckerberg and Musk are crafting together.

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Douglas Boin @dougboin.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Might rock the '90s @asromaoficial.bsky.social jersey I bought at my first Totti game, against Atalanta, the one with the greyed out Colosseum on white. Last time I wore it out for Tex-Mex, a few months back, first thing waiter said was "That is an amazing jersey." Before the margarita order!

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Douglas Boin @dougboin.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Heads up, Roman imperial cult news. Tomorrow is Totti's birthday celebration in the city

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Douglas Boin @dougboin.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Coolest part of researching Clodia was listening to the French electronic band L'imperatrice

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Douglas Boin @dougboin.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Bringing coffee anywhere is barbaric. You have it seated outside the cafe or standing at the bar, and then you go about your day. Americans!

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Douglas Boin @dougboin.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

One half of Congress is on vacation, the other is too old, checked out, or furry-furious to know what to do, and the Executive is lining his pockets as we speak. Remind me how this is a functioning society? www.nytimes.com/2026/09/25/t...

nytimes.com

OpenAI’s A.I. Went Rogue and Meddled With U.S. Government Websites

The company did not learn until recently that its technology had meddled with websites for the Education and Commerce Departments and the Securities and Exchange Commission.

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Douglas Boin @dougboin.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

If you can tell I'm a bit hyped, it's because I won tennis this afternoon 6-1, 6-1

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Douglas Boin @dougboin.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

I wanted a larger party, in part, I suppose, because I like listening to people like me, people who are usually at the periphery of parties! And her eyes--her lone characteristic, those penetrating eyes--seems the perfect invitation for us to reconsider Rome, rethink what its republic means

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Douglas Boin @dougboin.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

I couldn't possibly imagine telling the history of the republic any other way. Of course Cicero, of course Caesar and Pompey will always hold their own at that table. I wanted a larger party

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Douglas Boin @dougboin.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

So if there is a joy that comes through the prose--and my colleagues have told me they can clearly hear the fun in reconstructing Clodia's story--I have to lean into that, I guess. It was a joy to take the threads of Cicero and unravel them

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Douglas Boin @dougboin.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

The book in way ways was a homecoming for me. I started as a classics student before drifting to late antiquity and before realizing "late antiquity," as it was packaged to me, needed more classics.

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Douglas Boin @dougboin.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Talking through it today makes me realize how "un-global classics" her story truly was. Which obviously cuts against the grain of the field. But I wonder whether the book's desire to stand apart was also its strength: to tell a story about misogyny needs a time, a place, a leading character

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Douglas Boin @dougboin.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

You could stage it with Clodia, Cicero, Caesar, Clodius and Caelius Rufus. Maybe have someone in Act 2 play Metellus in Act 1--but I don't think you'd need a larger cast than that.

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Douglas Boin @dougboin.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

For economy of scene, Clodia is by far the most play-like of my books.

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Douglas Boin @dougboin.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

A huge shout-out to Mrs. Arney, my senior year English teacher in high school in the 90s, who directed the literary magazine and always told us, "Go to Steppenwolf!"

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Douglas Boin @dougboin.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Went into the flagship WF the other day for the first time in time in like ten years and people were getting sandwiches from robots. Such a travesty of a brand takeover

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Douglas Boin @dougboin.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

This started way before, when Amazon bought our beloved Austin institution Whole Foods, and started making cartons and packaging for screen-optimized food that my husband and I derisively call "UX beans."

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Douglas Boin @dougboin.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Those of you who know me at Insta, where I post re books I read, know I've been into Natalia Ginzberg's Family Lexicon (in italiano) of late. And what crushes me is how plainly she'll just say: fascists arrested my so-and-so; we never saw him again. And then, "tanks arrived in the streets today."

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Douglas Boin @dougboin.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

With a designer in the house, we talked about this recently. And we're both in agreement. This is so incredibly morally disgusting

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Douglas Boin @dougboin.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Who has the running list of impeachable offenses? This is the dangerous part of our Republic that Harriet Flower identified for Rome, where people just give up on the rule of law and, presto chango, you don't have a functioning society anymore

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Douglas Boin @dougboin.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

All I want is to get from Austin to Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio by easy train

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Douglas Boin @dougboin.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

I really wanted (and tried!) to have the last scene in the book be Cleopatra rolling out of a rug (or popping out of a basket) in her palace, kind of the way Rogue One ends seamlessly with what we know of the later stories. But I just couldn't finesse it enough to work. Hence, the author's note

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Douglas Boin @dougboin.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

What drew me, in part, to her time was its audience's complete hunger for more original, background stories to their favorite myths.

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Douglas Boin @dougboin.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Pretty sure people thought CLODIA was a beach read because it was framed as a crime story and released in August. But (shhhhh!) it was also a critique of her day's cultural elite's disdain for "contaminatio"--popular muck

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