iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Oh gosh, that's great. I would buy that version in a heartbeat.

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Does passing GO net you 200 sestertii? Asking for a Centurion.

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Well... gap years are all about learning new skills and self-discovery I suppose.

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ljredux @ljredux.com · 05/03/2026

The first documented case of someone buying a monitor that's far too wide for the desk. 😜 OK, so it's really a fresco from the Temple of Isis Portico (Pompeii) depicting a Nile scene with pygmies & a theatrical mask peeking over the top. 🏛️ Naples Archaeological Museum. #FrescoFriday #AncientBlueSky

Roman fresco from Pompeii painted on a red wall. It depicts a long, narrow landscape panel, painted to look like a framed picture resting on a white marble shelf. The scene shows a Nile marsh with birds, ducks, straw huts and straw enclosure walls, small pygmy figures, and two dogs, with a crocodile in the water at the far right. A large theatrical mask with comically tall hair and a dramatic, shocked expression appears to rest on the panel, giving the impression of a person behind peeking over its top edge.

Photo by Jebulon (Wikimedia), CC0 public domain dedication.

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Who knew little flying willies could be so powerful? Excavated from the Roman settlement at Stonea Grange, Cambridgeshire in the early 80s, these winged phalli promised protection from harm, envy, and bad luck. Which obviously worked. (43-409 AD) #AncientBlueSky #AncientRome #PhallusThursday

An ancient ceramic beaker with a dark, clay-coloured finish. The vessel has a wide, rounded body that tapers sharply to a small circular base. The exterior is decorated in barbotine, a technique of trailing liquid clay, with a row of small dashes circling the top, just below the rim. Two visible phallic symbols (fascinii) dominate the design. The prominent phallus at the front is winged, while a partly obscured one on the left is unwinged. There are four in all (two not visible in the photo), conveying the idea they are flying or swimming around the vessel. Chips and wear in the dark coating reveal a lighter terracotta colour beneath.

© The Trustees of the British Museum. CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.

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ljredux @ljredux.com · 05/03/2026

Sorry if you saw that #phallusthursday post before I ninja deleted it twice. Made myself queasy with my own joke. It was definitely too much. Tamer version incoming.... 😅

ljredux @ljredux.com · 02/03/2026

Veii: famous for a 4th century BC siege, but in the 4th century AD it may have been one of Imperial Rome's wild-animal depots. This mosaic of an elephant boarding a ship was found there (modern-day Isola Farnese). #mosaicmonday #AncientBlueSky 📷 by Carole Raddato. Badisches Landesmuseum, Germany.

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ljredux @ljredux.com · 02/03/2026

Thanks for the context. They really knew how to make an entrance. Literally!

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ljredux @ljredux.com · 01/03/2026

Don't forget this one. Not a god. Just a guy who (i) keeps screwing up, (ii) facing consequences, (iii) promising he's changed, (iv) rolling the same dumb boulder back up the same dumb hill.

ljredux @ljredux.com · 28/02/2026

Seems to follow the same number/side convention too. 1 opposite 6, 2 opposite 5, 3 opposite 4. (Opposite faces always add up to seven.

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ljredux @ljredux.com · 28/02/2026

I'd have fainted on the spot the moment I saw IMP DOM on the stamp.

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ljredux @ljredux.com · 14/08/2025

Ils sont devenus ce qu'ils dénonçaient.

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ljredux @ljredux.com · 14/08/2025

The perfect Bloody Mary jug.

ljredux @ljredux.com · 14/08/2025

Looks like you can still see some of the original pigment. The Ara Pacis is my favourite thing in Rome. The procession panel is *everything*. 🤩 Not enough tourists go to see it, though there is a silver lining to that.

ljredux @ljredux.com · 03/08/2025

I remember them shoving tips and guides behind premium rate numbers eventually. Enshittification never fails to happen.

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ljredux @ljredux.com · 03/08/2025

Why use 3 lines of text when 20 minutes of video (with 2 unskippable ads and a lengthy Patreon ramble) will do it? 🥱

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ljredux @ljredux.com · 03/08/2025

From 2 mph to 8.7 mph. That's more than a fourfold improvement! The horses must have been thrilled.

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ljredux @ljredux.com · 02/08/2025

Great article. Some parts of Rome would have smelt far worse than others too. Tanneries were banished to the Transtiberim district by law due to the stench. It must have been horrendous since fullers were on every second residential block washing clothes in urine. 🤢 #AncientBlueSky #AncientRome

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ljredux @ljredux.com · 02/08/2025

Pliny would probably write for the Daily Express if he was alive today.

ljredux @ljredux.com · 01/08/2025

Pliny The Elder's parenting hack for restless babies? Bung some goat poo in their nappies. It's a gender thing, mostly for girls... because science? Or something. 😬 Found in J.C. McKeown's *A Cabinet of Roman Curiosities*. A great coffee table addition! #AncientRome #AncientBlueSky #Books #History

A page from a book displaying historical child-rearing advice. An italicized quote by Pliny the Elder reads: "Putting goat dung in their diapers soothes hyperactive children, especially girls (Pliny Natural History 28.259)."

The cover of the book "A Cabinet of Roman Curiosities" by J. C. McKeown. The cover is designed to look like a wooden cabinet with five horizontal drawers. Each "drawer" features a brass pull handle on the right and a framed artefact on the left. From top to bottom, the images depict: a man playing a a pipe and a woman dancing; a human skull surrounded by various objects; two draped classical women; and a flamingo-like bird, it's body in a woven sling (possibly a carrier) restricting its wings and legs. The full title reads "A Cabinet of Roman Curiosities," with the subtitle "Strange Tales and Surprising Facts from the World's Greatest Empire" at the bottom. The author's name, J. C. McKeown, is on the label of the bottom drawer.

ljredux @ljredux.com · 29/07/2025

Your 8bit potato is by far the higher resolution image here. No, I'm not proud of myself for noticing. Sorry. 😞

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ljredux @ljredux.com · 28/07/2025

So *this* is the guy to blame for deadlines!

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ljredux @ljredux.com · 28/07/2025

Looks like Gosditch Street or Market Place. How wonderful.

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ljredux @ljredux.com · 28/07/2025

I read somewhere a while ago that Cloudflare Turnstile tracks mouse movement and click timing to separate bots from humans, but I guess that was a load of 💩.

ljredux @ljredux.com · 26/07/2025

Always. It feels like they want a beard-free, expressionless void. They'll probably come for our eyebrows next.

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ljredux @ljredux.com · 26/07/2025

Yeah, the tech is rubbish. Best bet is to create a separate browser user/profile just for social networks, since they will all be doing this soon. Install the ProtonVPN extension and use the free version to access them. It’s fast and never routes traffic through the UK. Bit of a pain, though.

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ljredux @ljredux.com · 26/07/2025

I shaved mine off after 45 minutes of that crap, and it still took another half hour to stop rejecting me. Flawless tech, obviously. 🙄 I'd been cultivating that beard two weeks too. The bastards.

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ljredux @ljredux.com · 25/07/2025

After 45 minutes of arsing around with the #Yoti face scan app because I want to read my #Bluesky DMs, I can confirm that I don't have a real face. Turns out I've been a hallucination this whole time. Sorry to anyone who's made eye contact with me. It was probably just pareidolia.

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ljredux @ljredux.com · 25/07/2025

Daedalus: "Okay, so hear me out. What if I made a cow... and *you* get inside it?" Pasiphaë: 👀 Everyone else: 😬 #FrescoFriday #AncientBlueSky (ALT text has more.)

Roman fresco from the House of the Vettii, Pompeii: Daedalus, wearing a reddish-brown tunic with his back to the viewer and arms outstretched, presents a large white cow to Queen Pasiphaë. She is seated, wearing a sheer pale pink garment that exposes one shoulder and clings to her upper body, with a sheer, ruffled yellow fabric draped around her lower half, partially covering the layer beneath. She looks towards Daedalus, who gestures to a cow on a wheeled platform at the right. Two attendants (one female, one male) stand behind her seat looking towards the cow. In the foreground at lower left, the boy Icarus works on a piece of wood with tools. Image: WolfgangRieger, Wikimedia Commons.

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ljredux @ljredux.com · 24/07/2025

'🔁 ReTruth' Haha. I can't even. 😂

ljredux @ljredux.com · 24/07/2025

The Real Lives of Roman Britain by Guy de la Bédoyère. While you lot are busy with battles and boundaries, I'll be over here finding out who was sleeping with whom behind Hadrian's Wall. 😏 #AncientBlueSky

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ljredux @ljredux.com · 23/07/2025

23rd July = Neptunalia *and* #ReliefWednesday. I'd love to share some amazing Neptune reliefs I found online, but too many museums lock down their content tight. Cultural heritage should be easier to share than this. #OpenCulture

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ljredux @ljredux.com · 21/07/2025

I'm getting lost in Roman art while reading the Aeneid again (Fagles this time) & came across Virgil in a 3rd C AD mosaic (oldest known depiction). On his scroll: "Musa, mihi causas memora, quo numine laeso, quidve...." It feels like an ancient teaser! #MosaicMonday #AncientRome #AncientBluesky 🏺

Ancient mosaic of the poet Virgil seated between two standing female Muses. He wears a white toga and holds a scroll bearing the words: 'Musa, mihi causas memora, quo numine laeso, quidve...'. On his right, Clio (the Muse of History) wears a green sleeveless garment with gold drapery over her shoulder and around her hips; she holds a scroll. On his left, Melpomene (the Muse of Tragedy) wears a long, red and gold patterned gown with green draper over her shoulder; she holds a tragic mask. Photo: boyd1960 (Wikipedia Commons).

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ljredux @ljredux.com · 16/07/2025

'Velificatio' 👀 Finally, a fancy Latin justification for my unironed shirts.

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ljredux @ljredux.com · 14/07/2025

This #BastilleDay, I've chosen Racine's Britannicus as my emotional torture device. Why did Molière's Le Misanthrope make Early Modern French seem so easy?! Send help! 😭 #Books #French #AncientRome

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ljredux @ljredux.com · 14/07/2025

Wonderful! The dog is full of clever details for so few tiles. Warm tones for the fur, dark outlines emphasising bone structure, a checkerboard collar, and subtle grey tiles for outlining and depth. It's not quite as simple as it seems at first glance.

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ljredux @ljredux.com · 14/07/2025

Meet Cuiriacus, a champion charioteer flashing the ancient signs of victory (palm branches for him *and* his horses). Made in Carthage around 500 AD, this mosaic fragment underscores how Roman art & circus culture persisted even under Vandal rule. #MosaicMonday #AncientBlueSky #Art #History

Ancient Roman mosaic fragment from Carthage (ca. 500 AD), depicting a victorious charioteer named Cuiriacus (inscribed above him in Latin). He stands helmeted on a four-horse chariot, holding a victory wreath in one hand and a palm frond in the other, dressed in a tunic and protective gear; the horses have palm fronds on their heads, and wear black strap harnesses, each with decorative elements dangling below the neck. The mosaic fragment is made of colourful marble and glass tesserae.

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ljredux @ljredux.com · 07/07/2025

I can see it now: "Keeping Up With The Julio-Claudians... sponsored by garum and excessive hubris." #MosaicMonday

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ljredux @ljredux.com · 05/03/2025

When you forget your armor but remember your mission.

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ljredux @ljredux.com · 03/03/2025

Roman boxing was naked & brutal. This mosaic shows a winner wearing spiked gloves with a palm branch in his mouth. The other crouches in defeat. People of short stature were often hired for this entertainment. The third figure is likely the umpire. 1-2AD.British Museum. #mosaicmonday #AncientBlueSky

Description by the British Museum: "Stone (?) mosaic showing a victorious boxer. The winner’s palm branch is held in his mouth, and his defeated opponent crouches beside him. The boxers appear to be people of short stature, commonly hired by Romans to perform and compete for their entertainment. The third, draped, figure is probably the umpire. The boxers are naked except for their gloves, which in the case of the winner appear to be fitted with vicious spikes. Roman boxers are known to have worn gloves (caestus), which were weighted with metal to increase injury to their opponents."

© The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.

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Your 'minute' is a figure of speech with meaning, his 'day one' is a figure of imagination with none. 🙂 I look forward to reading your article later. The network I'm using really doesn't like your redirect.viglink.com links. :/

redirect.viglink.com

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By the gods.... 😲

Ancient problems require ancient solutions, I guess. 🤔

James Coverley @jamescoverley.bsky.social · 21/02/2025

Just your average 1st-century Roman group figurine… Horny old Silenus, arms around a lady, giving her a big kiss while she grabs hold of his ding-dong. Totally not awkward, right? #PhallusThursday #AncientBluesky🏺

Ancient Roman clay figurine of Silenus, an old bearded man, seated with a woman. He has one arm around her shoulder and the other grasping her chin as he kisses her. The woman wears a brimless, bowl-shaped hat (similar to a simple pillbox hat) and a draped tunic, while Silenus is nude. His legs are spread, and the woman grips his penis. Their short, stocky proportions and exaggerated features are typical of Roman theatrical caricature.

Origin: Apulia (1st Century AD). Acquired by the Louvre in 1861. Not on display.

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Reposted by ljredux

#AncientBluesky #Skystorians #RomanHistory Were the Romans really as grumpy as they seem in movies or on TV? They laughed at all manner of stuff, but how did laughter manifest itself in Roman society? Please remember to help yourself to a free sub! open.substack.com/pub/jamescov...

open.substack.com

What Did the Romans Laugh At?

Romans were a grumpy old lot, or so modern depictions of them would have you believe.

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ljredux @ljredux.com · 21/02/2025

I have been eagerly awaiting her book on Fulvia for a while. Only six weeks or so to go! 🙌