Alexis Christensen

Why do car dealerships have the biggest flag poles/flags. Like super size versions. Bigger than the Capitol building.

Oooh, this looks like a great Dad Christmas present. Thanks for sharing, I’m lacking gifts for him.

Snow is hitting Utah valleys for the first time this season. Here's a look at a few areas receiving snow this morning.

FULL FORECAST: bit.ly/48abxGl

amazing what a difference plants/trees make in a reconstruction.

Photo of terracotta tile with imprint of a boot

My favourite of course was the Roman tile with a boot imprint...I can hear the potter cursing 2000 years later 🤣
#archaeology #Nottingham #Romans

Ugh. Nightmare stuff.

My dad and I got stuck on one of those airplane rides that lift up and spin around when I was about 5. Hate spinning rides still.

A simple, yet beautiful, map by @milosmakesmaps shows Italy’s topography and bathymetry. It’s always nice to see the Po Valley stand out so clearly.

And what will that 12% do?

📢 #CfP #medievalsky #Ovid
📜Teaching with Ovid: An online pedagogy symposium
📅12-13 June 2026
📃The International Ovidian Society and the Societas Ovidiana invite paper proposals on any aspect of teaching Ovid in the classroom
📲Details: shorturl.at/RiviU
⏰Submission deadline: Friday 16 January 2026‼️

is there a good, popular book (i.e. non-academic) that discusses the Antikythera Mechanism? Both how it may work and how we've learned about it?

this is pretty solid spiritual advice tbh

“Be prudent, be wise, be careful that your use of AI does not limit your true human growth. Use it in such a way that if it disappeared tomorrow, you would still know how to think, how to create, how to act on your own, how to form authentic friendships.”

Name a PlayStation 2 game.

The same friend who informed me that a PS2 could play dvds and so convinced me to buy my first gaming console, gave me a copy of this. I played way too many hours of it.

Congratulations!!

Toxic dust from the Great Salt Lake could cost Utah billions, report warns The dust blowing from the dry bed of the Great Salt Lake is creating a serious public health threat, two environmental nonprofits warn, that policymakers and the scientific community aren’t taking ser...

Its politicians are busy hyping Winter Olympics in 2034—when there’s currently no skiable snow in 2025—but it’s this looming disaster that will decide whether Salt Lake City (and regional population of 2.8 million), is still habitable, let alone a winter sports Mecca.

www.sltrib.com/news/environ...

An amazing atmosphere in a game is a silent screenplay.
No dialogue, no exposition…just a whole narrative carried on mood alone.

And when done right…
what you remember isn’t just what happened, but how it felt.

That’s what stays with you 💙😊

The front cover of the book: 'Star Wars: The Rise and Fall of the Galactic Empire'

For those who enjoy ebooks on Kindle, it seems that 'Star Wars: The Rise and Fall of the Galactic Empire' is *massively* discounted today down to $1.99 in the US and £7.99 in the UK. Which feels like a pretty good deal really.

US: www.amazon.com/Star-Wars-Ri...

UK: www.amazon.co.uk/Star-Wars-Ri...

Oooh, looks cool! Will be sharing with my sports students in the spring.

🏺 Archaeology question:
Say I've found some shell midden that has been removed from its original context and placed into a secondary context. But I know that its org. location is likely one of the middens nearby. Is there a way for me to test to determine its org. location, like an XRF for shell?

The trick was to add crackers as you went so that they didn’t get soggy.

Nebraska. We managed by consuming so many oyster crackers with it.

Ugh. Christmas Eve dinner was always oyster stew in my house. It was a tradition in my father’s family. My mom and I hated it. My family is all from the Great Plains’ states, so no fresh oysters.

Yeah, that’s pretty bad. Gonna send this to my wife who was a graphic designer and see what she has to say.

Ancient prison graffiti in Sicily reveals games and fears of Early Modern inmates Graffiti from a Sicilian castle prison reveals gameboards and ship carvings that shed light on Early Modern inmates’ daily lives.

The Central Mediterranean Penal Heritage Project (CMPHP) is an important project using remote-sensing methods to scan premodern prisons. They have now found medieval graffiti on Sicily & game boards etched by prisoners archaeologymag.com/2025/11/anci... Publication: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Met up with a former student who did a great undergrad research project with me. She’s applying for a PhD now. She’s done some really cool work for her master’s on photography at Pompeii. It was so wonderful to see how successful she’s been doing really cool work!! #TinyJoys

Nice extinction history article.

Steller’s sea cows are one of my favorite extinction encounters in museums. I discuss them in chapter 8 on playful figures (examples from @mnhn.fr & Smithsonian NatHist) and chapter 1 on forms (example from @nathist.bsky.social )

press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...

rotate it so the slot is on top and it is an ancient business card holder. Or recipe card holder.

No idea, but it's cool and I hope some one in the responses has the answer.

A decorated, slender wooden item made from wood, featuring intricate geometric carvings and a long open slot along its side

What could this be? The label simply describes it as a ‘decorated part of an item of unknown function made of maple wood’.

A lot of effort clearly went into decorating it, whatever it was. Any suggestions?

Found in the Bronze Age pile dwelling settlement of Ludwigshafen-Seehalde, 2000–1600 BC

🏺

One of the most colorful figures in the black market for ancient art has died. For @lrb.co.uk, I wrote about Jonathan Tokeley-Parry - a smuggler who made fake fakes to defeat border inspections to get Egyptian artifacts to the UK and US, whose downfall both changed and didn’t change the market.

Not sure. I did a bunch of little bowls with some new glaze combos, so I’m waiting to get those back and see how they look.

They are.