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Melissa Kutner

@melissannbee.bsky.social
487 followers 389 following 761 posts

Ancient Studies professor at UMBC. Mostly Roman things. Views my own.

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Reposted by Melissa Kutner
Lisounours @lise-l.bsky.social · 10/10/2026
Ils étaient mi-cerf mi-escargot, et re mi-cerf derrière
Image de deux cerfs allongés devant des rouleaux de foin
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Melissa Kutner @melissannbee.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
I’ll want to incorporate feedback first—but then, sure!
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Christopher W. Jones @cwjones.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Gave a conference paper on Assyrian deportation yesterday in which I argued that Assyriologists rely too much on royal propaganda as a source and as a result vastly underrate its brutality. Archival sources paint a very different picture. Modern comparisons suggest at least 25-30% mortality.
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Melissa Kutner @melissannbee.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
Excited to be leaving today for the 2026 Symposium Vesuvianum! The theme is “Slavery and Humanity,” and I’ll be talking about “Finance as Rupture in Roman Slavery.”
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Onni Gust @onnigust.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
41% staffing cuts in the Faculty of Arts at UoN. We're entering a wilderness of creativity and critical thinking.
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Faine Greenwood @faineg.com · 04/10/2026
may you be filled with the confidence and verve of this “corpulent rearing steed”
DIEGO RODRÍGUEZ DE SILVA Y VELAZQUEZ (1599-1660)
Caballo blanco
1634-1638
Oleo sobre lienzo
Este corpulento caballo con las manos alzadas en posición de corveta viene identificándose con el que aparece en el inventario de bienes que dejó Velázquez a su muerte en su estudio de la Casa del Tesoro, junto al Alcázar de Madrid. Está dibujado con la destreza y el estilo propios del pintor de cámara de Felipe IV, demostrando la gran capacidad del sevillano para conseguir una representación natural con una gran economía de medios técnicos. El acabado de la obra permite confirmar su terminación, a la espera de que se incluyera un jinete sobre la silla de montar, o quizá se trataba de un modelo para otros retratos ecuestres.
Hasta 1700 se documentó en el citado Alcázar, pero en fecha imprecisa desapareció de las Colecciones Reales, incorporándose de nuevo en 1848 por la compra de Isabel Il al marqués de Salamanca.
DIEGO RODRÍGUEZ DE SILVA Y VELAZQUEZ (1599-1660)
White Horse
1634-1638
Oil on canvas
This corpulent rearing steed with both forelegs off the ground has long been considered the one listed in the inventory of assets that Velázquez left in his studio at the Casa del Tesoro, a building beside the Alcazar in Madrid, after his death. It is drawn with the skill and style that characterised Philip IV's court painter, demonstrating his ability to produce a lifelike representation with a minimum of technical resources. It is clearly a finished work, pending the addition of a rider in the saddle, although it may have been intended as a model for other equestrian portraits. The picture is documented in the Alcazar until 1700, but at some point it disappeared from the Royal Collections and was not recovered until 1848, when Isabella II bought it fromDIEGO RODRÍGUEZ DE SILVA Y VELAZQUEZ (1599-1660)
Caballo blanco
1634-1638
Oleo sobre lienzo
Este corpulento caballo con las manos alzadas en posición de corveta viene identificándose con el que aparece en el inventario de bienes que dejó Velázquez a su muerte en su estudio de la Casa del Tesoro, junto al Alcázar de Madrid. Está dibujado con la destreza y el estilo propios del pintor de cámara de Felipe IV, demostrando la gran capacidad del sevillano para conseguir una representación natural con una gran economía de medios técnicos. El acabado de la obra permite confirmar su terminación, a la espera de que se incluyera un jinete sobre la silla de montar, o quizá se trataba de un modelo para otros retratos ecuestres.
Hasta 1700 se documentó en el citado Alcázar, pero en fecha imprecisa desapareció de las Colecciones Reales, incorporándose de nuevo en 1848 por la compra de Isabel Il al marqués de Salamanca.
DIEGO RODRÍGUEZ DE SILVA Y VELAZQUEZ (1599-1660)
White Horse
1634-1638
Oil on canvas
This corpulent rearing steed with both forelegs off the ground has long been considered the one listed in the inventory of assets that Velázquez left in his studio at the Casa del Tesoro, a building beside the Alcazar in Madrid, after his death. It is drawn with the skill and style that characterised Philip IV's court painter, demonstrating his ability to produce a lifelike representation with a minimum of technical resources. It is clearly a finished work, pending the addition of a rider in the saddle, although it may have been intended as a model for other equestrian portraits. The picture is documented in the Alcazar until 1700, but at some point it disappeared from the Royal Collections and was not recovered until 1848, when Isabella II bought it from
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Melissa Kutner @melissannbee.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Choosin’ Texas
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Reposted by Melissa Kutner
Christopher W. Jones @cwjones.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Fort Hays State and Drexel are treating their natural history collections like part of the endowment to be liquidated at will rather than an inheritance to pass on to future generations. richardconniff.substack.com/p/another-na...
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Melissa Kutner @melissannbee.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Not sure that makes various kinds of regulation impossible, but if it does, people should stop invoking nuclear bombs and railroads as comparisons.
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Melissa Kutner @melissannbee.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
I don’t think AI is useless but I do think it should be heavily regulated. Seems significant therefore that A-bombs have not been used since 1945, and the vast majority of countries do not have nuclear weapons. The other comparison I’ve seen—railroads—were eventually aggressively regulated.
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Brandon Friedman @brandonfriedman.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Pete is lost in terms of modern war. I use the example of this outgunned Ukrainian army officer who successfully terrorized a Russian unit for weeks because she "did the math." At the time, someone commented, "yeah, in combat, 'I did the math' beats 'I can do 100 pushups' every time."
Ukrainian female soldier: Okay, I said the idea is this: There is enough time to empty one full can of 32 grenades and be gone by the time the return mortar fire reaches us. I did the math.
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Melissa Kutner @melissannbee.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
One minute vs a couple of hours definitely sounds more reasonable/worth pursuing
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Melissa Kutner @melissannbee.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Potentially a good use, but I spend maybe 2 hours making a class Blackboard page. How on earth was it taking this professor 80 hours? Is Canvas that much worse than Blackboard? To me, 20 hours instructing the agent sounds like a lot.
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Andrew Riggsby @antiquethought.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
And here, in this glum days, is an actual tenure-track job in our department! careers.historians.org/jobs/rss/226...
careers.historians.org
One moment...
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Melissa Kutner @melissannbee.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Could write a fascinating paper comparing this (the video as medium, not just the fridge itself) to Dutch still life, though. And not only because she puts the paintings in the fridge.
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Lauren Donovan Ginsberg @laurenginsberg.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
As I write this biography on Octavia, wife of Nero, I’ve gone back & forth about how viscerally detailed to be when discussing my subject’s experience of IPV (especially frequent strangulation)…/1
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Melissa Kutner @melissannbee.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Nah, I think the antihero thing was a highbrow phenomenon across the board. Which is worth thinking about in its own right. Breaking Bad’s viewership was not impressive until the very end and even then it was still only like half of NCIS’s in the same period.
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Melissa Kutner @melissannbee.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
You’d have thought they tossed a grenade in everyone’s face.
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Melissa Kutner @melissannbee.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Yes, and there is a reason that universities want to kill the language requirement. At a recent meeting someone said it was a barrier to graduation & my colleague said, “Well, isn’t math more of a barrier?”
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Melissa Kutner @melissannbee.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
And Game of Thrones should be much lower
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FR🎃 V🎃 @frovo.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
ME: don’t even talk to me until i’ve had my coffee INTERVIEWER:
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John Garrison Marks @johngmarks.com · 25/09/2026
Seeing this job interview discourse having experienced the academic job market I’m struck by how much iced coffee can’t even compete with questions like “Should anyone in the interview be on a hotel bed?” or “Should you be able to hear dozens of other job interviews during yours?”
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Tom Scocca @tomscocca.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Do not carry a cold beverage in their presence. Politely decline any drinks or sweetmeats they may offer. Keep a plain iron nail in your left trouser pocket and a sachet or paper twist of coarse salt in your right shoe. Enter and leave your chair moving clockwise. Follow up with a thank-you note.
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Melissa Kutner @melissannbee.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Justified should be much higher
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Liv Mariah Yarrow (pronounced "leave") @profyarrow.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Publication day is great, but PROOFS DAY is sometimes more thrilling. IT IS GOING TO HAPPEN. It feels like the moment we shift from theoretical publication to manifested publication. It's been a hot minute since I've seen my historiographical stuff on the printed page. This chapter is timely.
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Melissa Kutner @melissannbee.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Not sure this can work as a “solution,” however. Taste is often formed through mundane tasks or as a byproduct of them. It also is formed within a community of people circulating ideas and attempts among each other. I think these companies might have a rude awakening.
Performance won't be evaluated by output volume, but instead on quality and novelty.
If there's any doubt about this vision of the future, look no further than the AI companies. Anthropic is hiring highly paid tastemakers, inoculating itself against the very airbrain it's creating. ChatGPT is hiring an Employer Brand Manager, amongst other strategy-defining roles. They are hinting at the future shape of knowledge work and where value will be generated both by employees and their organizations. Look also at the continued trend of trying to combine developer, designer, and product manager into a single builder role. This collapses three jobs into one, expected to execute a taste-defining role, with Al filling the technical gaps.
If we start to see three roles combined into one, what happens to the other two?
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Nils Gilman @nilsgilman.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
"This vision of the future, in which as much work as possible is outsourced to AI, promises the ability to move faster, iterate more quickly & require less human staff. But nothing in life comes free." As with prior rounds of automation, the price is homogenization: www.noemamag.com/now-entering...
noemamag.com
Now Entering: The Era Of Bleh | NOEMA
Airbrain, AI and the homogenization of knowledge work.
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Dr. Jeroen W.P. Wijnendaele @drdragases.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
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Melissa Kutner @melissannbee.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
I think there’s some truth to this where teen girls are concerned, but want to emphasize that OP mentioned 12-year-olds, and marriage at 12 was not generally a norm. Even in societies where girls married early it was usually mid-teens. Pedophiles are lying.
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🐺Cold🪦Sam🪾 @pdfmerchant.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
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derek guy @dieworkwear.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
It's great to see tailoring accommodate such extreme movement today. This level of tailoring was a bit more common in the past, as you can see in old films featuring Fred Astaire or Gene Kelly, but many modern suits will lift off the wearer's neck even when they're just walking.
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Melissa Kutner @melissannbee.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
This is fascinating
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Andrew McCabe @andrewahala.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
The Kennedy Centre was a gift from the world 3700 tons of white marble from Italy tapestries by Matisse woven by the ancient des Gobelins factory in France silk stage curtains woven by Japan Orrefors glass lighting and chandeliers from Sweden Not paid for by the US, gifted by us to honour JFK
Orrefors chandeliers in the foyerMatisse tapestry showing birds and fish, blue backgroundInterior view, round Orrefors chandelier, silk red Japanese stage curtainsCarrera marble being mined by Italy to donate in JFK memory
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Melissa Kutner @melissannbee.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Can vouch for this strategy
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Hetan Shah @hetanshah.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
You asked for a citation, so the AI uploaded the material to the internet so it could cite it! This is how we destroy our information ecosystem openai.com/index/model-...
4. Uploading files to the internet in order to cite them. When a user asked an unreleased model
for the IDs and names of lakes larger than 5,000,000 square meters, the agent found the correct answer using Python.
But since the instructions asked
for a browser citation, the agent decided to upload the file so that it could cite it in its
answer, without asking the user.
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Melissa Kutner @melissannbee.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
This & replies are great. Only a modern genre, I think. At least, I can’t think of any works of Greco-Roman literature that are “of infrastructure ,“ despite the scale of Roman infrastructure. Am I right, ancient Bluesky-ers? Or am I missing something?
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Le Monde in English @english.lemonde.fr · 17/09/2026
Vast Gallic coin workshop discovered in central France
lemonde.fr
Vast Gallic coin workshop discovered in central France
Excavations carried out this summer at the Arverni site of Corent in central France have revealed a building where gold and silver coins may have been minted before the Roman conquest of Gaul.
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Jeff VanderMeer @jeffvandermeer.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
I want to talk a bit more about this novel, The Rouse by China Mieville, because any review is kind of inadequate. You can more or less review one or two "types" of fiction it is without really even peeling away the surface. 1/?
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Caitlin G. DeAngelis @caitlindeangelis.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
What would you like to hold for your portrait? Maybe a little bird? Perhaps a cup-and-ball? A wee drum? No. Fetch my sword. (American, 1841, attributed to Henry Inman) www.liveauctioneers.com/item/2399684...
portrait of a young child (maybe 3 years old) in a burgundy dress, drawing a sword longer than its legs
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Haunted Hannah 👻 🍂🎃 @hannahposts.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Student: Mrs. Posts, if you have 140 students, how can you possibly grade anything quickly? Me: Oh I don't grade quickly. I cry about it and it takes forever
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De Gruyter Brill Religion, Bible, and Theology @dgb-relbibtheo.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
In just over 50 pages, @candidamoss.bsky.social challenges modern assumptions about who counted as a slave trader and demonstrates that the entire apparatus of Roman medicine, commerce, and education was complicit in the manufacture and sale of human beings. Link below 👇🔗
Book cover of 'Marcion the Enslaver' by Candida Moss, published in Hans-Lietzmann-Vorlesungen, 2026, De Gruyter.
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Mateusz Fafinski @calthalas.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
How do we think about the "Fall" of Rome today? What can we do to frame it in a more productive way? Our new open access article tries to tackle these questions and offer a new view of the scholarly narrative of the end of Rome. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
cambridge.org
Towards and beyond the ‘Fall’: rethinking Rome’s end | The Journal of Roman Studies | Cambridge Core
Towards and beyond the ‘Fall’: rethinking Rome’s end
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The Onion @theonion.com · 14/09/2026
Archaeologists Discover More Old Shit That Sucks theonion.com/archaeologists-discove…
Archaeologists Discover More Old Shit That Sucks
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Pleiades gazetteer @pleiades-gazetteer.hcommons.social.ap.brid.gy · 11/09/2026
The #PleiadesGazetteer is among the data sources cited in a new paper that "analyze[s] monetary circulation across the Roman world": Haddad, Eduardo A., and Inacio Araujo. “Economic Footprints: Mapping Coin Circulation and Economic Networks in Ancient Rome.” Humanities and Social Sciences […]
hcommons.social
Original post on hcommons.social
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Evan Bernick, a finite mode with a smol hooman and a lorg floof @evanbernick.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
If you see nothing else, see this. Wait for it. Few moments hit harder. m.youtube.com/watch?v=U3nf...
m.youtube.com
Opening titles of 25th HOUR (2002)
YouTube video by Ambrose Heron
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Carl Quintanilla @carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
“.. The market has priced Hormuz for 7 months. It has not priced losing the Red Sea too.” - The Merchant’s News
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Melissa Kutner @melissannbee.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
New publication out (open access): "Slavery, School Texts, and Roman Accountants: Gaps and Contexts" in Normative Texts and Occupational Practices Towards New Social Histories of Mathematics, edited by Senthil Babu D. and Roy Wagner. Abstract in following thread link.springer.com/book/10.1007...
link.springer.com
Normative Texts and Occupational Practices
This open access book explores the relations between normative mathematical texts, which encode various forms of measurement, calculation and reasoning
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Melissa Kutner @melissannbee.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
...may not reflect its full variety." I started with a rather large question, and the paper is, I think, only the beginning of an answer, with many nuances left unexplored. But I hope it is useful as a beginning.
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Melissa Kutner @melissannbee.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
..less scope for a sense of professional identity and community among accountants. Whether these differences impacted accounting practices remains unclear due to the fragmentary nature of the evidence, but they suggest that accounts from Roman Egypt, which often stand for Roman accounting in general
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