Melissa Kutner
@melissannbee.bsky.social
Ancient Studies professor at UMBC. Mostly Roman things. Views my own.
Paraphrased a bit
November 25, 2025 at 12:10 AM
Paraphrased a bit
Aurora borealis near DC!
November 12, 2025 at 2:27 AM
Aurora borealis near DC!
Omg there are more: meet Ta-Miu, cat of Prince Thutmose's (son of Amenhotep III, seems to have died young). Egyptian Museum, Cairo.
November 4, 2025 at 5:32 PM
Omg there are more: meet Ta-Miu, cat of Prince Thutmose's (son of Amenhotep III, seems to have died young). Egyptian Museum, Cairo.
I like when trees are cut around power lines so that they look like giant wings
November 4, 2025 at 1:56 AM
I like when trees are cut around power lines so that they look like giant wings
This also made me think of Kehoe's point (drawing on Maiuro) about the Roman emperor's control of resources, in contrast to the position of later monarchs (who thus had to borrow, and deal with Parliament etc.)
(From Kehoe, "Land and Securing the Future in the Roman Empire," 2023)
(From Kehoe, "Land and Securing the Future in the Roman Empire," 2023)
October 31, 2025 at 6:28 PM
This also made me think of Kehoe's point (drawing on Maiuro) about the Roman emperor's control of resources, in contrast to the position of later monarchs (who thus had to borrow, and deal with Parliament etc.)
(From Kehoe, "Land and Securing the Future in the Roman Empire," 2023)
(From Kehoe, "Land and Securing the Future in the Roman Empire," 2023)
Accounting is a narrative that can be manipulated; the amazing thing is that everyone sees the manipulations, but hopes to be the one to outrace time and walk away from the ruins with profit.
October 31, 2025 at 1:07 PM
Accounting is a narrative that can be manipulated; the amazing thing is that everyone sees the manipulations, but hopes to be the one to outrace time and walk away from the ruins with profit.
Delighted to discover (thanks to the Walters Art Museum's "Soulful Creatures" exhibit, to which this is on loan from the Brooklyn Museum) this sarcophagus for a cat mummy, which seems to depict a cat seated before an offering table, much like a human in a standard offering scene.
October 30, 2025 at 7:09 PM
Delighted to discover (thanks to the Walters Art Museum's "Soulful Creatures" exhibit, to which this is on loan from the Brooklyn Museum) this sarcophagus for a cat mummy, which seems to depict a cat seated before an offering table, much like a human in a standard offering scene.
Every time I open an assignment to grade, I see this ("AI Writing Tools") and my blood pressure rises.
October 24, 2025 at 7:52 PM
Every time I open an assignment to grade, I see this ("AI Writing Tools") and my blood pressure rises.
Still going as the sun sets
October 14, 2025 at 9:53 PM
Still going as the sun sets
And our marathon reading of the Aeneid begins, with the beginning SUNG in Latin by Molly Jones-Lewis
October 14, 2025 at 2:14 PM
And our marathon reading of the Aeneid begins, with the beginning SUNG in Latin by Molly Jones-Lewis
PBS made a mystery show with Detective Lucius Verus (that is, Maigret)
October 12, 2025 at 3:09 AM
PBS made a mystery show with Detective Lucius Verus (that is, Maigret)
Look forward to asking my department chair for money for a seance to resurrect Cato
September 26, 2025 at 9:58 PM
Look forward to asking my department chair for money for a seance to resurrect Cato
But we do have visual evidence that calculating was often "a group sport" as described. And for those who doubt that the butcher's wife (?) in the below relief was actually keeping accounts, as opposed to playing some symbolic role (Skulpturensammlung, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden)....
September 19, 2025 at 2:42 PM
But we do have visual evidence that calculating was often "a group sport" as described. And for those who doubt that the butcher's wife (?) in the below relief was actually keeping accounts, as opposed to playing some symbolic role (Skulpturensammlung, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden)....
“…to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.”
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.”
September 14, 2025 at 1:31 AM
“…to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.”
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.”
Fight for the Smithsonian as best you can, but also support the National Memorial for Peace and Justice (for victims of lynching), and the Legacy Museum (on slavery, lynching, segregation) in Montgomery, AL, which they cannot touch. Below is the block with lynchings from my home county.
August 19, 2025 at 10:19 PM
Fight for the Smithsonian as best you can, but also support the National Memorial for Peace and Justice (for victims of lynching), and the Legacy Museum (on slavery, lynching, segregation) in Montgomery, AL, which they cannot touch. Below is the block with lynchings from my home county.
Why would I want to create a stormtrooper that looks like a teapot
August 11, 2025 at 2:02 AM
Why would I want to create a stormtrooper that looks like a teapot
I'm reading Caroline Fraser's "Murderland" & the stuff about smelters is WILD. Showers of arsenic & lead falling from the sky, dogs and cats dying, kids unable to sit up or walk, workers hallucinating. Companies calculating that paying settlements for poisoned kids was cheaper than fixing emissions.
![Woodruff writes a memo to chew over with corporate. He and Gulf know all about El Paso and what children there were recently deemed to be worth, and they consider the costs as if weighing up pork by the pound. "El Paso—200 children—$5 to 10,000 [per] kid," he writes. 0 Another official at Bunker Hill works the math in a back-of-a-napkin calculation, estimating that the legal liability for poisoning five hundred children would amount to a mere "6-7 million."107 If Gulf and Bunker Hill decide to keep running the smelter flat out, increasing production, they'll come out $10
million or $11 million ahead, even if compelled to pay an inflated $12,000 per child. The choice is children or profits. Guess which they choose.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:fzup2hayae72i5mckllhhctu/bafkreifs5fabeoelpoejbet3nhrmbd5jm22mpd2kwolmvarifqmb5j5htq@jpeg)
July 30, 2025 at 2:13 PM
I'm reading Caroline Fraser's "Murderland" & the stuff about smelters is WILD. Showers of arsenic & lead falling from the sky, dogs and cats dying, kids unable to sit up or walk, workers hallucinating. Companies calculating that paying settlements for poisoned kids was cheaper than fixing emissions.
Hmm, but isn't using the benchmark of "external rationality" more or less the same as discussing rationality vs irrationality? I just don't see the two approaches here as very different. (From Bresson's "The Making of the Ancient Greek Economy"). Perhaps I'm missing something.
July 2, 2025 at 4:32 PM
Hmm, but isn't using the benchmark of "external rationality" more or less the same as discussing rationality vs irrationality? I just don't see the two approaches here as very different. (From Bresson's "The Making of the Ancient Greek Economy"). Perhaps I'm missing something.
How I feel being part of the dwindling Bluesky community right now
July 2, 2025 at 12:12 AM
How I feel being part of the dwindling Bluesky community right now
In northern CA for a bit, visiting the seals
June 7, 2025 at 11:22 PM
In northern CA for a bit, visiting the seals
I wonder what a little abacus like this would have cost, for a Roman.
June 4, 2025 at 4:51 PM
I wonder what a little abacus like this would have cost, for a Roman.
Happy to report that EVERY student (who was actually in class) remembered & got correct on their exam this amazing coin of Maximinus Thrax that was modified to put his head on a pike with a worm eating his brain and bird pecking out his eye. The most memorable damnatio memoriae!
May 21, 2025 at 6:19 PM
Happy to report that EVERY student (who was actually in class) remembered & got correct on their exam this amazing coin of Maximinus Thrax that was modified to put his head on a pike with a worm eating his brain and bird pecking out his eye. The most memorable damnatio memoriae!