A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry
A look at history and popular culture
A bit of an editor's note before this post, since this is going to involve some 'inside baseball' for Classics and some necessary background (also, this is not going to be a 'family friendly' post due to the subject matter; reader discretion is advised). The following essay is one I wrote very early in July … Continue reading Miscellanea: What’s the Problem With Antigone?
Happy Holidays to everyone, however you observe them! I normally take this week off every year but since we had the whole of last month off and I had some things I wanted to expound on, I thought I would do a Fireside instead. Percy getting into the holiday spirit. In particular, I want to … Continue reading Fireside Friday, December 23, 2022 (W(h)ither History)
This week we're going to take a look at the worldbuilding of Amazon Studio's Rings of Power from a historical realism perspective. I think it is no great secret that Rings of Power broadly failed to live up to expectations and left a lot of audiences disappointed. In the aftermath of that disappointment, once one … Continue reading Collections: Why Rings of Power’s Middle Earth Feels Flat
Note from the Editor: I'm excited to feature another guest post with you all! This week we have James Baillie discussing how digital humanities and prosopographic methods can be used to better understand the history of the medieval Caucasus. Prosopography is a historical tool-set that is about charting the networks, connections and commonalities of people, … Continue reading Meet a Historian: James Baillie on Digital Humanities and the Medieval Caucasus
Welcome back! We are back from our November hiatus and thus back to regular weekly posts! This week we're going to answer the runner-up question in the last ACOUP Senate poll (polls in which you too can vote if you become a pater aut mater conscriptus via Patreon). The question, posed in two different ways … Continue reading Collections: Why Roman Egypt Was Such a Strange Province
Fireside today to close out the week; if you missed the main post for this week - a review and discussion of Victoria III - because it appeared earlier you can head back to read it. This is going to be the last post, however, before my November break. As I've noted before, I'm planning … Continue reading Fireside Friday, October 28, 2022 (The Book Project)
This week's post is coming to you all a bit early, as the folks at Paradox Interactive were kind enough to send me a review code for Victoria III - Paradox Interactive's long awaited historical grand strategy game set during 19th and early 20th centuries - so I could have something to say about it … Continue reading Miscellanea: Victoria III Confirmed! (First Impressions)
This week, I'm going to offer a fairly basic overview of the concept of strategic airpower, akin to our discussions of protracted war and nuclear deterrence. While the immediate impetus for this post has been Russian efforts to use airpower coercively in Ukraine, we're going to focus more broadly on the topic: what is strategic … Continue reading Collections: Strategic Airpower 101
This is the last part of a four part series (I, IIa, IIb, III, IV) examining the historical assumptions behind the popular medieval grand strategy game Crusader Kings III, made by Paradox Interactive. In the previous sections, we'd laid out what CKIII does very well: building a simulated model (albeit a simplified one) of power … Continue reading Collections: Teaching Paradox, Crusader Kings III, Part IV: Emperors, Soldiers and Peasants
This is the third part of a four part series (I, IIa, IIb, III, IV) examining the historical assumptions behind the popular medieval grand strategy game Crusader Kings III, made by Paradox Interactive. In the last part (in two sections), we discussed how CKIII attempts to model decentralized political power in the fragmented polities of … Continue reading Collections: Teaching Paradox, Crusader Kings III, Part III: Constructivisting a Kingdom