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Isabel Köster

@iotasubscript.bsky.social
2.3K followers 815 following 3.9K posts

PhD; associate professor of Roman history and literature; particularly enthusiastic about Roman religion and insults; author of Stealing from the Gods: Temple Robbery in the Roman Imagination (Michigan, 1/2026); never speak for my employer

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Isabel Köster @iotasubscript.bsky.social · 30m
(“Got seasick from a Prezi” is another great academic “date yourself”)
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Isabel Köster @iotasubscript.bsky.social · 31m
We somehow survived Prezi.We can do it!
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Isabel Köster @iotasubscript.bsky.social · 10h
Hometown on the internet! And they even have hometown hero Tuffi (Tuffi is a baby elephant. Tuffi had zero interest in being transported in this thing, so jumped off. It ended well)
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Isabel Köster @iotasubscript.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
We overlapped at Harvard. I was very sorry to hear about this turn of events. Thanks for posting this.
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Isabel Köster @iotasubscript.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Happy birthday!
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Isabel Köster @iotasubscript.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
I’m still super-confused they don’t have it.
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Isabel Köster @iotasubscript.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
The dress was lost on me. I believe people, but can’t reconstruct their ocular achievements.
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Isabel Köster @iotasubscript.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
My eyes keep jumping between the two options, but the strong initial impression was goat.
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Isabel Köster @iotasubscript.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Enjoy!
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Isabel Köster @iotasubscript.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Oh I hate grading history Mad Libs. Where can you even go for points?
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Isabel Köster @iotasubscript.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
And that's without even factoring in the kids who miss zoom school because they could watch the lecture videos in triple time...
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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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Isabel Köster @iotasubscript.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
I love premade baked tofu, so, yes, this sounds awesome.
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Isabel Köster @iotasubscript.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
No, this is "hate that Crusader Kings expansion pack!"
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Isabel Köster @iotasubscript.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Usually when an ad is like this you then go on the department website and see like 4 Spain specialists in desperate need of not that. But no, this seems just "ugh, Spain." Fascinating.
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Reposted by Isabel Köster
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
Yes, and it's worth remembering that the enrollments thing is getting some STEM fields very hard as well because they can't get the numbers for classes beyond the 1–2 intros the aspiring pre-meds need. Physics is a poster child here. They often get screwed in the same emails that come after us.
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Isabel Köster @iotasubscript.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
To be followed up with a cool "don't we have AI for that math thing now?" if they say another word.
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Isabel Köster @iotasubscript.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Language courses aside, the idea that sequences build on each other and that you need to have a body of foundational knowledge to succeed in what the course catalog calls upper division classes is something we've lost.
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Isabel Köster @iotasubscript.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Yes, and also a great reluctance to have prerequisites for anything. The main reason why math/science classes in college are hard is that there's stuff you're just expected to know that will not be taught again in later classes.
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Isabel Köster @iotasubscript.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
It was already pretty wild before the pandemic. I'm sure other people have also had course evaluations where "estimate the total amount of time you spent on this class per week" came out to well under even just the scheduled meeting time.
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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 · 26/09/2026
I mean, the weather hasn’t committed to a new season yet nice summer downpour and all…
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Isabel Köster @iotasubscript.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Tell them you’ll be there! Apparently that can summon copies.
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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 · 25/09/2026
Simcity 2000 and Commander Keen are truly “they don’t make them like that anymore” games.
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Isabel Köster @iotasubscript.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Need, yes. Want/will pay for, no.
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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
Since inscriptions came up earlier: those corpora are usually a beast to track down and $$$. Also, museum and exhibit catalogs. But: getting things shipped from abroad is borderline impossible right now unless you have a publisher set up for US distribution, so that complicates things.
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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 · 22/09/2026
Or just trying to compensate for the horrors…
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Isabel Köster @iotasubscript.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
You appear to need to finish a sentence. Do you require assistance?
static.klipy.com
Clippy Says Hi
ALT: Clippy Says Hi
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Isabel Köster @iotasubscript.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
But at least this time I have Zeus's Law, which I came this close to setting as an ID term on the midterm.
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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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Isabel Köster @iotasubscript.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
My favorite line from that book!
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Isabel Köster @iotasubscript.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Probably sooner than that. Cultural memory seems to be like 2 years max. (“Are you bitter about having made too many outdated jokes lately, Isabel?” -“Nah”)
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Reposted by Isabel Köster
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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Isabel Köster @iotasubscript.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
I switched my own flashcards to Anki over the summer since you control the degree of robot infestation. For notetaking, I'm a big fan of Obsidian (again, no AI unless you install a plug-in), but the learning curve is interesting.
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Reposted by Isabel Köster
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 · 19/09/2026
I’m waiting a little longer with flu, but I intend to carry on with Widow’s Bay and maybe a little more of For All Mankind to facilitate the installation of fresh covid microchips.
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Isabel Köster @iotasubscript.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Huge if happens!
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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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