Dr. Gabriel Baker

What We Lost When We Lost the Greatest Generation It's no coincidence that democracy is backsliding in the US exactly eighty years after the end of World War II.

As we mark the 80th anniversary of WWII's end, I’ve come to believe that in losing that Greatest Generation, we are losing more than just the memories of combat. We are losing the memory and experience of what it means to fight fascism and authoritarianism. www.doomsdayscenario.co/p/what-we-lo...

AI will never locate a new archive. It will never uncover a new source. It will never find a small, privately held collection of papers that can upend what we think we know about the past. It can never work with undigitized sources. It can never do real oral history or ethnography.

Regurgitating/remixing the work of historians ≠ doing history. But clearly the "researchers" who made this list had no idea what any of these professions actually do.

"You guys just memorize facts and dates right? And maybe speculate about ancient aliens? Prepare to be obsoleted!"

But because there's no giant 'history formula,' no tables of strange symbols (well, amusingly, there *are* but you don't work with them until you are much deeper in the field), folks assume that history is easy, does not require special skills and so contemptible. 12/

a good arbiter of how close we are to bad hybrid regime shit is if the political comedy shows start getting pulled for whatever reason

The tree at Sycamore Gap, on Hadrian's Wall in England.

American Teachers in Red States Are Walking Away for Good The predictable consequences of the right wing’s war on public schools are being felt as educators leave their communities—and their profession.

"We don’t make enough money to put up with this."

Last year, US K-12 schools opened short 55,000 teachers. Between book bans and political attacks on schools and educators, it's looking like this year's shortages will be even more dire, especially in red states.

newrepublic.com/article/1967...

To form a more perfect Union, implies as we all know, that we have something imperfect. But to strive for the betterment of all, and to keep striving no matter what - that is the American legacy. “For that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion.”

We strive still.

The article tries to determine when and in what circumstances acts of mass violence "became" atrocities for (some) Greeks and Romans. Link: ruhm.es/index.php/RU...

Many thanks to @badancient.bsky.social for suggesting my name to the editor, since otherwise I probably wouldn't have written it! (2)

New article out @ruhm.bsky.social! I examined negative reactions to mass violence (massacres, mass enslavements, etc) in Greek+Roman texts. Such reactions suggest that, for some ancient observers, acts of extreme violence were "atrocities"—i.e., transgressive, shocking, & worthy of condemnation. (1)

There are some things I miss about living in the Bay Area and some things I very much do not miss, but *that summer weather* is the thing I miss the most.

No problem! Tbh I wasn't 100% and had to double check it, too. A lot of this stuff is just rattling around my brain unmoored and half-remembered.

penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Rom...

It's in Suetonius, I believe!

Books? Authors, really. Larry Niven. Philip K. Dick. Michael Crichton. Stephen King. J.R.R. Tolkein.

My dad and I were different in so many ways, but my interest in genre fiction of all kinds is his doing.

But really, that just scratches the surface. Movies? All the OT Star Wars. Alien/s. Predator. Hunt for Red October. Star Trek II and VI. 2001.

Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Another good reminder from today is that to win this we all need to get used to cooperating with people we sometimes find highly annoying

I endorse this view.

Yeah this is an important point. One can find enough material for a survey class (Sources of the East Asian Tradition is a life saver) but have trouble finding sources that go beyond a broad sampling. I suspect that's at least partly due to my lack of familiarity w/the field and its resources.

...comparison, etc. The corpus is super rich and, in my view, very comparable. Of course I'm limited by relative lack of expertise in Asia / language training, which points to bigger challenges with a broader "global antiquity" field. (2/2)

E. Asia is the 1st thing I thought of reading this thread. I mainly teach early world history, & am currently trying to create more meaningful comparative content. The easiest 2 regions, by far, are the Mediterranean & E. Asia, given types, range, availability of sources, potential for direct (1/2)

I have a joke about Phylarchus but Polybius says it's too dramatic.

I'm a one-trick pony, but happy to help on those few occasions when I can!

Lol where did this come from?

The game was on easy mode, too.

Oops sorry, i didn't see that you had recommended this too! And totally agree, Ziolkowski is more historically minded, but he makes some philological arguments along the way, so perhaps still useful?

There's more good bibliography at Parabaino, too -- www.parabaino.com/resources/bi...
Hope that helps.

Paul, "Urbs capta: Sketch of an Ancient Literary Motif" (1982)
Laurence, “Ritual, Landscape, and the Destruction of Place in Roman Imagination” in Wilkins (1996)
Assenmaker, “Poids symbolique de la destruction et enjeux idéologiques de ses récits" in Driessen (2013)
(2/2)

Hi - a few recommendations:
Ziolkowski, "Urbs direpta, or How the Romans Sacked Cities" in Rich & Shipley (1993)
Barrandon "Les massacres de la République romaine: De l’exemplum à l’objet d’histoire" (2018)
Hulot, "La violence guerrière des Romains: discours et méthode" (2019) ...
(1/2)