iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Isabel Köster @iotasubscript.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

The last Greek thing I'm doing with my "Crime and Punishment" class is Thucydides to get some war in there. That means an appearance of the fantastic BBC adaptation from 1991 called "The War That Never Ends." Thucydides in 70 minutes with excellent actors.

imdb.com

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Isabel Köster @iotasubscript.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Starting the day off with a gentle "that writing task you've been putting off for months? Yeah, that didn't even take a full two hours of concentrated effort."

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Isabel Köster @iotasubscript.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

This is great to hear (and I love the layout)

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Isabel Köster @iotasubscript.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Happy National Coffee Day from double Julius (who is questioning both this weird beverage he’s never heard of and why I’m writing stuff on Cicero)

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Isabel Köster @iotasubscript.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

And with an amphitheater and all… Very cool.

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Colette Delawalla, PhD @cdelawalla.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

These gpt’s are NOT your ~thinking partner~, they are not your assistant. They exist to steal your brilliance at SCALE. Yes, of course, there are machines that are closed systems that aren’t genAI, that actually do support research. That’s not what I’m talking about.

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Isabel Köster @iotasubscript.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

In the language of youth: 🎉📣👍

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Isabel Köster @iotasubscript.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Supernatural yogurt to go with supernatural Socrates (not pictured: supernatural coffee because no one needs caffeinated Socrates)

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Isabel Köster @iotasubscript.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

What?! Oh don't worry about "reputational risk"... you can go straight to "reputational damage."

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Isabel Köster @iotasubscript.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Classics prof amateur hour/self-own: I don’t want my students to have to buy another book, so how bad can this open access translation of Plato’s Crito possibly be? Well, “my supernatural Socrates” (ὦ δαιμόνιε Σώκρατες)… it’s an awkward read.

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Isabel Köster @iotasubscript.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Today’s AI-generated book promo scam pitches a workshop on my book for “ambitious professionals.” Again, I have no practical advice to offer on temple robbery except “don’t.”

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Isabel Köster @iotasubscript.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Yes, and then in the next round you use friends’ published books to check formatting stuff.

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Isabel Köster @iotasubscript.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Though the last time I taught this class, Serial Season 1 was really taking off, so that was the best possible tie-in for talking about legal storytelling, appealing to a jury of 1000s etc. I miss having that tie-in for Athenian homicide week this time.

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Isabel Köster @iotasubscript.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

I had forgotten what a trip of logical fallacies Antiphon's _Against the Stepmother_ is. That will be so much "questions? comments? concerns? unconvinced noises?" fun in class tomorrow.

en.wikipedia.org

Against the Stepmother for Poisoning - Wikipedia

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Isabel Köster @iotasubscript.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

I got asked a couple of weeks ago whether my textbooks were on Instagram. Here we are, I guess.

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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshks.org · 20/09/2026

Too many of us in the humanities have naturalized the idea that our job is to do bildung for 18-24 year olds and STEM is for serious research.

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Jeremy Cohen @jeremyfcohen.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

I'm putting together a list for my students of productivity, notetaking, flashcard, transcribing, language learning, annotation, etc apps that don't use generative AI. Any recommendations?

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Isabel Köster @iotasubscript.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

I haven’t seen the full list yet (geo-block), but I think we can assume that “academic size and shape initiative” once more stands for “let’s vandalize the humanities.”

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Isabel Köster @iotasubscript.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

My eyebrows just hit the ceiling…

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Jeffrey A. Becker @serviliusahala.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Dear academic everybody: I hate your AI-generated drawings on CFPs, social media posts, and articles. I am automatically much less likely to take you seriously if you use this crap. /rant

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Isabel Köster @iotasubscript.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Now getting nostalgic about the fresh books piles (and it was usually not even that bad cost-wise since it was mostly used paperbacks with the marginalia of a few other readers already in them).

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Isabel Köster @iotasubscript.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

I guess I really do need to start watching Widow's Bay...

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Isabel Köster @iotasubscript.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Duolingo Dutch has moved on from rhinos, but continues to keep its content practical.

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Isabel Köster @iotasubscript.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Taking advantage of a writing assignment to learn a little more about a local celebrity’s work as a classicist (Hazel Barnes, though she had her PhD in Classics, became much more famous as a translator of Sartre)

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Isabel Köster @iotasubscript.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Very late to the game here (there are just too many good academic podcasts), but “Drafting the Past” is so much fun. www.draftingthepast.com

draftingthepast.com

Drafting the Past

Reviews, craft essays, news and more for readers and writers of history.

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Isabel Köster @iotasubscript.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

"Think of the global cheating gig economy" was not something I saw coming, but this is fascinating.

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Lauren Donovan Ginsberg @laurenginsberg.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

This. This right here.

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Isabel Köster @iotasubscript.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

The color doesn’t work for me (especially not going into fall/winter), but this is so cool!

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Julia Laite @julialaite.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

25 years ago, almost every plane that was over the North Atlantic when the second tower was hit was forced to land in Newfoundland. A call was on the radio: they needed folks who spoke various languages to come to the stadium to help organize the sea of humanity that just showed up at our door.

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Annalisa Nicholson @apuddleofmuddle.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

It's just weird isn't it when the British Museum is running a sold-out exhibition, when The Odyssey reports $1billion at the box office, when the V&A has just opened the most innovative and accessible museum model in Europe....and this is what our minister for research comes out with.

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Rev. Dr. Liz Gloyn @lizgloyn.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Time for a resource shout-out! Please share any apps, videos, web-based articles or similar resources that you find helpful for keeping you on the straight and narrow! Specific areas of interest: time management, planning, reading, note-taking, organisation, executive function, sensory sensitivity.

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Isabel Köster @iotasubscript.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

To break from antiquity for a little (though I overheard today that “only really old people” remember 9/11), this is the local news of the day. It’s since been cancelled, but the entire thread is a wonder of “event planning is my passion” to behold.

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Merriam-Webster @merriam-webster.com · 09/09/2026

Not to brag, but our product has been foldable since 1828.

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Isabel Köster @iotasubscript.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

I’ve fallen into a bit of a rabbit hole with Marcus Porcius Cato, son of Marcus Porcius Cato (Cato the Youngest), who gets pardoned by Caesar after Utica and then joins team Brutus to get killed at Philippi (supposedly by walking into the enemy line without armor)

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Isabel Köster @iotasubscript.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Boulder would like to know why no activated charcoal.

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Isabel Köster @iotasubscript.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Yup. It’s especially fun when the database just disappears when funding runs out.

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George Takei @georgetakei.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Sixty years ago today, the starship Enterprise launched and with it, a vision of the future where humanity had moved beyond its divisions. I was there at the beginning, and I can tell you...

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Isabel Köster @iotasubscript.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

I think I've now played enough to join Team "Nah!" on Civ VII. It looks beautiful, but it's removed so much of what I like about the game. I'm glad I got to try it for free the last few days, but the eras play really isn't for me.

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tunes to make you run away @whippoorwont.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

"people are anthropomorphizing LLMs because they are so astonishingly good at processing human thought and language" people will anthropomorphize a chair if you put the stitches in the right place.

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Isabel Köster @iotasubscript.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

See also: my reaction to “you should switch to oral exams.” It’s the perfect format to administer by the hundreds, really.

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Isabel Köster @iotasubscript.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

Civilization VII is free to play on Steam this long weekend, you say? Cancel my other plans. (No, not really, but given the extremely mixed reviews and that I feel like I overspent on "Humankind," I've been looking for a way to give it an extended test drive before committing)

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Isabel Köster @iotasubscript.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

Remember to decorate your dystopian sci-fi with Latin (food dispenser in “Silo” episode 3.10; hopefully spoiler-free)

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Deidre Lynch @drbibliomane.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

This dean's e-mail to the students mentioned assignments he thought faculty should be designing instead of essays. "We might instead go further by asking you to “embody” the expertise you’ve developed, perhaps through a presentation or oral defense for classmates, teachers, and clients." CLIENTS?

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