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Michael J. Taylor @drmichaeljtaylor.bsky.social · 6h

Also, not first come first serve...this is a BFD for the field, so hope to publish multiple reflections!

Michael J. Taylor @drmichaeljtaylor.bsky.social · 6h

🚨🚨🚨🚨Calling SCS members: would anyone be interested in writing an essay reflecting on Nobel Prize winner Anne Carson for the SCS blog? 500 to 1500 words, ASAP. Publication within days of submission. @scsclassics.bsky.social PS: Is the first Nobel Prize for a Classicist since Mommsen?

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Michael J. Taylor @drmichaeljtaylor.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

No one sad I needed to accept bad things to adopt email, MS World, spreadsheets or laptop computers!

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Michael J. Taylor @drmichaeljtaylor.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Ah yes, Cornell in the news for being a well led university and a model for the rest of us.

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Michael J. Taylor @drmichaeljtaylor.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

A yes, Cornell, in the news this week for being a well led university and a model for the rest of us.

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Michael J. Taylor @drmichaeljtaylor.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

And the recession also hit certain fields like law and academia hard, leaving a of smart people underemployed and bitter about educational investment

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Michael J. Taylor @drmichaeljtaylor.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

But the recession also turbo charged the insidious “the liberal arts are a waste of time” discourse. And Americans still associate college itself with things like English and History.

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Michael J. Taylor @drmichaeljtaylor.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

I suspect several things. During the recession some people went to college who in better times would have gone directly into jobs, and came away thinking it was expensive and unnecessary.

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Michael J. Taylor @drmichaeljtaylor.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Good god, in addition to being an arch-chud, its hard to believe that someone paid millions to be on TV is such a wretched public speaker.

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Michael J. Taylor @drmichaeljtaylor.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Yes, there may well be votes in the senate to convict, or at the very least pressure Hegseth to resign. As an idiot, he wants to be President someday, but can't hold any future office if convicted.

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Michael J. Taylor @drmichaeljtaylor.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Its a great philosophy if you happen to be the emperor of Rome.

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Michael J. Taylor @drmichaeljtaylor.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

My impression is that to the extent these vile ads resonated in 2024, it was "Harris cares about bespoke culture war issues like pronouns and not the country-at-large." But now running these ads basically say"the GOP cares about vicious culture war issues and not the country-at-large."

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Michael J. Taylor @drmichaeljtaylor.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

What if you get paid to ignore the context of the last 11 years?

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Michael J. Taylor @drmichaeljtaylor.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

When humanities departments produce a ton of high quality research publication, suddenly publications don't matter only grants. It is a game we can't win because it is rigged so we lose.

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Michael J. Taylor @drmichaeljtaylor.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

It is Calvinball. When humanities departments enroll a lot of students, admin only counts majors. When we have a lot of majors, admin stops scouting second majors, because students often list a "vocational" or STEM major as their first major.

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Michael J. Taylor @drmichaeljtaylor.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

One of the fundamental failures of higher ed leadership is caring about the inputs of research (grants) over the outputs (published research).

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Michael J. Taylor @drmichaeljtaylor.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Almost as valuable as the free parking you get at Berkeley.

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Michael J. Taylor @drmichaeljtaylor.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Also, it's very hard to get meaningful staff assignments in the Guard, so fewer satisfying challenges. It's still a blast to be an infantry platoon leader or command a tank company. But being an MDay S1 is a lot less fun.

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Michael J. Taylor @drmichaeljtaylor.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Hegseth is a genuine a-hole, but I would note that a lot of Guard careers stall out at Major. People are too busy with their families and civilian careers to do the PME; also not a lot of opportunities in the Guard past LTC, so people aren't as hungry. Very easy O rank to float at.

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Michael J. Taylor @drmichaeljtaylor.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Somewhat insane that both Italy and Japan managed to sack seemingly dictatorial prime minsters (Mussolini/Tojo) right in the middle of the war.

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Michael J. Taylor @drmichaeljtaylor.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

New Ancient Warfare arrived! Theme is Alexander, but Spurius Ligustinus makes a cameo in a special. @ancientwarfare.bsky.social

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Michael J. Taylor @drmichaeljtaylor.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

There are adjuncts who only make 2500 a semester!

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Michael J. Taylor @drmichaeljtaylor.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Yes, basic goals objective achieved! The moral question is larger: was it worth 4000 dead Americans to make a flawed democracy? Was it worth 1 million dead Iraqis? Obviously the question may have to be answered in retrospect. The positive outcome of the Korean War only became apparent post 1987.

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Michael J. Taylor @drmichaeljtaylor.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Funny, though, as it pretty clearly shows that the wars SF is designed to fight are typically un-winnable in the first place.

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Michael J. Taylor @drmichaeljtaylor.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Korea is a total win! As an Iraq veteran who personally thought the Iraq invasion was a horrific mistake (and still do), you could make the case of coding Iraq as a Pyrrhic victory (win? tie?). Saddam is indeed gone, and Iraq has a (flawed) democracy. Just not worth the costs.

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Michael J. Taylor @drmichaeljtaylor.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

On the chart these are considered "real wars" and posted above the line. Korea is listed as a tie, Vietnam as a loss.

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Michael J. Taylor @drmichaeljtaylor.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

I mean, maybe 5th century BC Romans....but please can't young people tell an aspis from a scutum anymore?

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Michael J. Taylor @drmichaeljtaylor.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

The buyer's market also provides a lot of perverse incentives to departments (we don't want to hire a flight risk, we don't want to hire someone with more publications than we have, etc.) that makes the slim market feel even more capricious.

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Michael J. Taylor @drmichaeljtaylor.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

One thing that senior profs like Tom miss is that back in the 1990s adjuncts tended to be weaker scholars who washed out despite a strong market. But the job market today is so impacted and capricious that the adjunct pool includes lots of PhDs who would have landed Ivy League jobs 20 years ago.

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Michael J. Taylor @drmichaeljtaylor.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Maybe if Pete Hegseth chugs a bottle of gin and does a hundred push-up with meh form we can stop this.

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Michael J. Taylor @drmichaeljtaylor.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

And this is the terrible dynamic---the people most able to run the risk of getting a PhD are those who have some form of external support. Sometimes family wealth, or often a partner with a really good job who can carry them both. Both dynamics favor people already ensconced in the PMC.

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Michael J. Taylor @drmichaeljtaylor.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

So basically, accounting for salary and benefits you could hire around 400 assistant professors with this money. That's a lot of *natural* intelligence

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Michael J. Taylor @drmichaeljtaylor.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

He controls the entire government now! Why not just ask both houses of the Duma to pass his bribe check now?

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Reposted by Michael J. Taylor

David Burbach 🇺🇸 @dburbach.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Kind of astonishing to tell this blatant and disprovable of lie about such an emotional national trauma. Trump was in midtown that morning

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Michael J. Taylor @drmichaeljtaylor.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Trump pioneered the "what if you vote for a total asshole" theory of politics, and while it worked for him, it does not readily transfer to candidates who lack his feral charisma

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Michael J. Taylor @drmichaeljtaylor.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

I always liked that her name is Painter and she is a historian, just like Fabius Pictor. And then I discovered that late in life SHE TOOK UP PAINTING.

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Michael J. Taylor @drmichaeljtaylor.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Endless spam now. They often pretend to be organized by real libraries. Way back when it started I responded to one, thinking it might be real (again, real library, but notably gmail address for the organizer), but knew it was a scam for sure the minute they asked for a fee to appear!

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Reposted by Michael J. Taylor

Society for Classical Studies @scsclassics.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

Today on the blog, editor Michael Taylor shares his take on Christopher Nolan's Odyssey and the Late Bronze Age Collapse. classicalstudies.org/scs-blog/mik...

A black and white line drawing of a sea battle with ships and oars. Some men shoot arrows, others fall off of ships. There are some Egyptian hieroglyphics on top.

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Michael J. Taylor @drmichaeljtaylor.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Thersites the Historian gets the only vote that counts because its his show, but I'd love to drone on about the Social War, THE turning point (mostly very bad!) in Republican history.

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Michael J. Taylor @drmichaeljtaylor.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Ha, I actually ment to repost the proposal above to substitute Latin for AI training…

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Reposted by Michael J. Taylor

"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux @bretdevereaux.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

So I recall remarking a while back at the MET had two iron kopides that I was *sure* couldn't have been completely legally acquired (they stopped answering my emails when I asked about provenance) given their acquisition date and I check back on them and what do I see? LOL. ROFL. ROFLMAO, even.

A text book from the MET site, indicating the object in question was restituted in September of 2025.

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Michael J. Taylor @drmichaeljtaylor.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

This is the problem with being a secular dictator, operating under the fiction you are actually an elected official---you can't fall back on divine right when things go south.

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