iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

M. Willis Monroe @willismonroe.com · 18h

Just voted in the US midterms in Rhode Island... entirely electronically from Canada. Thanks to the Rhode Island Board of Elections for making it so easy to complete my ballot safely and securely.

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Will Robertson @anthrowill.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Spent yesterday working on a detailed critique of some of the "methods" that Joseph Henrich used in his recently released report attacking sociocultural anthropology. He was the sole anthropologist involved with the Vanderbilt Report. It's long, but the more I looked the more issues I noticed.

notebook.anthrowill.com

Rigor for thee, but not for me! – Notebook

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Department of Historical Studies at University of New Brunswick @histstudiesunb.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Very happy to share that this year's guest speaker for our 4th Annual Queer History Month lecture is Dr. Celeste E. Orr!

Poster for the UNB Department of Historical Studies' 4th annual Queer History Month lecture. Features a photo of a Celeste E. Orr standing before a brick wall, with big glasses and a leather jacket, and the following text:

Temporal Disobedience: Intersex Studies & Chronopolitics

Dr. Celese E. Orr
Associate Professor in Sociology and Wendy J. Robbins Professor in Gender and Women's Studies, University of New Brunswick

October 20, 2026, 5:30-7PM
Alden R. Clark Theatre
NB Sports Hall of Fame
503 Queen Street, Fredericton

Everyone is welcome!

Text of the poster

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M. Willis Monroe @willismonroe.com · 20/09/2026

I'm a bit late, but today is my 25th anniversary* of switching to Linux... *I don't remember exactly when but a few years ago I searched for an old email address of mine and found a mailing-list post where I was asking for help configuring XFree86, so that's the date I recognize.

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Billy Domineau 🇵🇸 @billydomineau.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

9/11 is a great day to reread my viral Seinfeld spec and to remember I’m one of the most talented TV writers available to write for your show. I have $225k in student loans and my family is about to pay OOP for my dad’s post-stroke rehab, so you’d better believe I’m gonna give you my best!

avclub.com

Read This: A darkly comedic Seinfeld spec script set days after 9/11

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M. Willis Monroe @willismonroe.com · 31/08/2026

This is so dangerous... not in @atrupar.com's summary but in the video is a very purposeful dig into Carney's popularity, by referencing his polling before the election. They're trying to seed distrust into Canadian electoral systems, right in line with the funding of Alberta separatism.

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M. Willis Monroe @willismonroe.com · 27/08/2026

Everyday when I get to work I put my lunch on this shelf... I like to think of it as a little kadrû offering, presenting food to the Neo-Assyrian spirit who resides in my office. Incidentally, the relief is from the Gipsformerei (www.gipsformerei-katalog.de/Sammlungsgeb...)

A photo of a bookshelf in an academic office, on the shelf is a large replica of a Neo-Assyrian protective spirit. On the same shelf in front of the replica is my lunch...

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M. Willis Monroe @willismonroe.com · 27/08/2026

This stands out as a really important thing that MIT is trying to do that so many universities are just not at all engaging with... As so many others have said, professors feel left adrift making/implementing/arbitrating policies with no support from administration.

A selected section of MIT's report on Generative AI: "MIT should provide a shared framework – including a common policy menu, disclosure expectations, and accountability standards – within which departments and instructors can make choices."

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Stephen Chrisomalis @schrisomalis.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

I am actively recruiting MA and PhD students in linguistic, historical, and cognitive anthropology at Wayne State for Fall 2027. No GRE; multi-year funding for all PhD students. Application deadline 01/15. Share widely, or contact me for more info. clasprofiles.wayne.edu/profile/dz6179

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Huw TD @huwtd.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

I have an hour's delay at the train station, so here's a thread about the Trojan Horse. Basically, the plot motif of sneaking into the city disguised as tribute isn't original to Homer, although the use of a horse statue might be. 1/

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Rebecca Stephens Falcasantos @rsfalcasantos.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

Our department is hiring. TT position in Hebrew Bible and Ancient Judaism. I’ve found great colleagues and students here. Please share! apply.interfolio.com/189845?fbcli...

apply.interfolio.com

Apply - Interfolio {{$ctrl.$state.data.pageTitle}} - Apply - Interfolio

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M. Willis Monroe @willismonroe.com · 06/08/2026

I'm thinking of finally moving away from Dropbox... I've been using it for over 15 years and always sung its praises. However, it's expensive, I'm self-hosting more of my own services and... I want to move my data out of the US. @opencloud.eu on my own server looks like a great alternative.

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Serial Experiments Abigail @popeguilty.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

2 Vast 2 Trunkless

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Nathan Kalman-Lamb @nkalamb.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

New reporting from @breachmedia.ca shows that Canadian universities operated a secret national effort to coordinate surveillance and policing of anti-genocide activism and encampments. breachmedia.ca/canadian-uni...

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Ed Hagen @edhagen.net · 18/07/2026

The relationship between testosterone and grip strength, an index of physical formidability, in a representative sample of US adult men (point sizes are survey weights). 🧪

A scatterplot of combined grip strength (y-axis) vs. serum testosterone (x-axis) in 3498 US adult men (18-60) from NHANES 2011 - 2014. A polynomial smooth regression line is completely flat. Combined grip strength is the sum of grip strength in both hands. Point sizes are survey weights.

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Nicky 2 @nickyflowers.com · 15/07/2026

permanent daylight savings doesn't go far enough

GET RID OF TIME, BUT NOT THE ZONES

a map of the US, divided vertically into 12 time zones, permanently fixed to 1:00 to 12:00. it's divided horizontally by the AM/PM line

FIXED TIME FIXES TIME!
"It's always 11:00am in Philadelphia!"

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

it’s amazing how often the solution to endlessly multiplying pedagogical problems turns out to be restoring an actual pedagogical relationship between instructors and students

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Andrew Tobolowsky @andytobo.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

We often blithely say stuff like "indoctrinate them, I can't even get them to do the reading!" which is true but also indoctrination isn't the point! Me teaching you about the history of ancient Israel isn't trying to get you to like or dislike 'em or want to be an ancient Israelite

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Huw TD @huwtd.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

Every. Damn. Time. It drives me up the wall. For all the conniptions over the term 'Classics', the way they use 'Ancient' is infinitely more problematic, IMO.

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M. Willis Monroe @willismonroe.com · 06/07/2026

Another one today on BMCR "Impaired Consciousness in Ancient Medical Texts" sounds fascinating it would be really interesting to look at cross-cultural descriptions of these mental phenomena (see: @moudhy.bsky.social), oh wait, it's only ancient Greek texts... (NB: the reviewer does point this out)

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M. Willis Monroe @willismonroe.com · 02/07/2026

Wish I could order my coffee by Munsell soil color... I like it right about at 10YR 5/3

A chart of Munsell soil colors for the 10YR range

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M. Willis Monroe @willismonroe.com · 25/06/2026

🦀 see a crab, post a crab 🦀 (Neo-Assyrian wall-relief found in Nineveh from the time of Assurbanipal, ~645 BCE, www.britishmuseum.org/collection/o...)

A crab in a riverine scene from a Neo-Assyrian wall-relief found at Nineveh.

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Will @evolvingmoloch.bsky.social · 22/06/2026

This nonsense claim from this paper is making rounds on Twitter, claiming fertility & gender (in)equality correlated at .81. But the Gender Inequality Index includes adolescent fertility as part of the measure! When you rebuild the index without circular reproductive outcomes correlation cut in half

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M. Willis Monroe @willismonroe.com · 11/06/2026

Brilliant work from newly minted Dr. Deloucas: political history, microhistory, quantitative work, it's all there... and all centered on the Old-Babylonian period!

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M. Willis Monroe @willismonroe.com · 29/05/2026

The classic kids song Down by the Bay, popularized by Raffi, was a prescient warning of parents being taken in by AI-generated engagement slop... "my mother will say: Did you ever see a moose kissing a goose!?"

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M. Willis Monroe @willismonroe.com · 08/05/2026

I wrote a short piece for the most recent issue of the New Farmer's Almanac (greenhorns.org/almanacs/). The theme was "premonition". I wrote on agriculture and divination in ancient Mesopotamia... it's a gorgeous (full-color) volume and full of fascinating short pieces of fiction and non-fiction...

The cover of an issue of the New Farmer's Alamanac on a white table with a cup of coffee. The cover image is a paper cut image of an agricultural scene. The title of issue at the top of the image is "premonition".

The magazine held open to an article on divination and agriculture in ancient Mesopotamia. The leading page of the article features a large photo of a proto-Cuneiform tablet.

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Dr Selena Wisnom @lswisnom.bsky.social · 02/05/2026

Marduk visits his ziggurat in Oxford (or: Jupiter visible over the Said Business School) @ox.ac.uk

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M. Willis Monroe @willismonroe.com · 11/04/2026

Less than a month after getting our solar panels hooked up to the grid we had our first negative power day ever! It was a battle against the city's heritage protection bylaws to get the solar panels installed on our victorian house, but this makes it all worth it.

A line chart showing amount of power supplied by the grid in blue and the amount of power generated by our solar panels in red. The second to last day on the chart has the red line above the blue line meaning we generated more than we used. A pinkish-red exclamation point was drawn on top of the graph at that point adding emphasis.

An aerial view of our roof showing the solar array.

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E.L. Meszaros @iastranger.bsky.social · 25/03/2026

It was such a treat to be included in this! Also time is a social construct.

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Department of Historical Studies at University of New Brunswick @histstudiesunb.bsky.social · 24/03/2026

Historians in the news! Our very own @willismonroe.com spoke to the BBC yesterday about the ancient Sumerians and the origins of the 60-minute hour. www.bbc.com/future/artic...

bbc.com

The ancient reason there are 60 minutes in an hour

A mysterious 5,000-year-old decision led directly to how we still count time today.

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M. Willis Monroe @willismonroe.com · 24/03/2026

Where does the 60 minute hour, or 60 second minute come from? Turns out some aspects go way back... this was a fun conversation with Jocelyn Timperley from the BBC: www.bbc.com/future/artic... Glad to see @iastranger.bsky.social quoted as well!

bbc.com

The ancient reason there are 60 minutes in an hour

A mysterious 5,000-year-old decision led directly to how we still count time today.

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Eric J. Harvey, Ph.D. @blindscholar.bsky.social · 23/03/2026

I'm launching part of a new project today, bringing 4000-year-old proverbs to the modern audiences who crave them! Go check it out and subscribe, because there will be new proverbs every day! www.youtube.com/channel/UCKVdJytXEM…

youtube.com

Parchment and Clay

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dogthr.com @dogthr.com · 23/03/2026

Looking for a tool to manage a writing group? Dogthr.com can help friends stay in touch with each other's progress towards weekly goals... earn badges, see end-of-week statistics and chat with each other to organize check-ins and encourage writing progress. #writingcommunity #writing #writingroups

A table of goal progress by members of a group on Dogthr.com. Each row represents one user who set a quantitative goal, each day of the week is a column and their progress is charted through the week.

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M. Willis Monroe @willismonroe.com · 17/03/2026

While building this app I went back through all the previous versions starting with a Mellon funded reading/writing group on inequality, we used a convoluted Google sheet writing tracker back then, but a lot of those ideas were fundamental to designing the current version of the website.

A screenshot of a Google sheet writing group tracker.

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dogthr.com @dogthr.com · 16/03/2026

Some people find sharing and tracking individual goals with friends motivating. I built Dogthr.com to do just that. Create a group with friends, set weekly goals and track progress. A goal is anything you can count... words, pomodoros, kilometers run, minutes meditated, the sky's the limit...

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M. Willis Monroe @willismonroe.com · 16/03/2026

I created the first version of this back in grad school over a decade ago in google sheets... now it's finally a real thing. I'm excited to launch Dogthr.com for group goal tracking and (asynchronous) accountability. It's the perfect tool for writing groups or running clubs, any numerical goal...

dogthr.com

Welcome - Dogthr

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M. Willis Monroe @willismonroe.com · 13/03/2026

I'm once again asking scholars of Greco-Roman antiquity not to use "Ancient World" for book titles when what they really mean is ancient Greece and Rome... Fabian Horn's recent book (reviewed on BMCR today) looks like a fascinating collection of chapters looking at Conceptual Metaphor Theory, but...

Meme based on an old Facebook UI the text reads "Marked Safe From" and then I've inserted custom content that reads "A book on the Ancient World having any chapters outside of Greece and Rome".

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Jesspooka Kant 🎃 @jessdkant.bsky.social · 26/02/2026

As of tonight, licenses of trans people across Kansas are being invalidated en masse, enabling the overnight criminalization of an entire group of people for going about our lives. It’s often said you never know when you’re living through history, so let me assure you: that’s what’s happening now.

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Coach Finstock @coachfinstock.bsky.social · 02/02/2026

Incrementalists take it on the chin again. This is why they hate Mamdani. He's giving up the game that people in power HAVE POWER and don't solely exist to beg you for $5 every day. He's ruining the Democratic Party by showing voters that they have the power to do stuff instead of crouching in fear

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The Database of Religious History @religionhistory.bsky.social · 02/02/2026

We've just released version 3 of our publicly available dataset: zenodo.org/records/1839... This represents an additional years worth of collected data as well as a long-standing project to start normalizing some of the user-entered tags used to describe religious groups.

zenodo.org

Standard Cross-Cultural Sample of Religion

The Standard Cross-Cultural Sample of Religion is a product of the Database of Religious History (DRH). The DRH is a qualitative-quantitative encyclopedic database of historical religious data across ...

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Department of Historical Studies at University of New Brunswick @histstudiesunb.bsky.social · 15/01/2026

We're excited to share the details of our Department's upcoming 10th Annual Black History Month lecture. Our featured speaker will be Dr. Nicholas R. Jones (Yale), lecturing on "Cervantine Blackness as an Ethics of Care."

A poster featuring an image of Dr. Jones and his book, Cervantine Blackness, and giving the details of the talk and event.

Thursday, February 5th, 5:30 PM at the Fredericton Public Library, in Chickadee Hall.

Nicholas R. Jones is a Tenured professor at Yale University. His latest book is Cervantine Blackness. This lecture takes its audience on a journey that explores Miguel de Cervantes' portrayal of black Africans and sub-Saharan Africa, challenged entrenched paradigms and inviting a reevaluation of the complexities surrounding racialized blackness and black social life in Cervantes' literary corpus.

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M. Willis Monroe @willismonroe.com · 03/01/2026

The US made a big deal sanctioning Russian business execs who supported Putin in his illegal invasion of Ukraine. Now's the time to do the same for the US. The list of donors to Trump's inauguration is here: www.opensecrets.org/trump/2025-i... These are businesses/people we need to be sanctioning.

opensecrets.org

Trump Administrations: 2025 Inauguration Donors

A look into the donors to Trump's 2025 Inauguration

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Andrew A.N. Deloucas @aandeloucas.com · 17/12/2025

The field of Assyriology has been moving toward automatic translation of Akkadian for over a decade because, when it does happen, it will be a game changer. Historians are now putting money on the line to test current capabilities of machine learning. Can automatic translation finally be possible?

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Erin Grievances @erinbartram.bsky.social · 07/12/2025

One argument I used to make to my students about why it was important to learn history (and historical thinking) is that someone was always going to be trying to tell you things were natural or had always been this way and that you needed to be able to see that as an exercise of power.

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M. Willis Monroe @willismonroe.com · 05/12/2025

Breaking news for you Proto-Elamite fans: our team just had a new article come out in the journal Near Eastern Archaeology (88.4) on our recent progress towards deciphering "one of the few remaining undeciphered scripts from the ancient world". www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

A screenshot of the front page of an article on Proto-Elamite

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Eric J. Harvey, Ph.D. @blindscholar.bsky.social · 04/12/2025

Would 100% be sharing my Oracc Wrapped.

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M. Willis Monroe @willismonroe.com · 28/11/2025

I asked my students in my Gilgamesh class to divide the epic into three parts on their summary test. Afterwards, in class we all drew them on the board. We talked about how the second division has more salience than the first (i.e. more people agreed on where the second division should go).

A white board with lines drawn across it. Each of the lines represents a division of the Epic of Gilgamesh. Students drew the lines and were asked to divide the epic into three parts.

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